I don't know. Looks like a Caliphate, what with the turbans and camels and such.

Nitpicks aside, this is a fantastic look on the inside. Missusrolls, why don't you go to Syria and make a proper documentary?

"a destabilized group of untrained opportunists"

That's an interesting description. I was under the impression that a lot of them were made up from the numbers of very well trained former Iraqi Republican Guard. You know, there were a million of those guys, and George Bush fired them all, giving them not much to do except fill in whatever power vacuum opened up during the "Arab Spring." That's not what we did in Japan or Germany. They are also composed of defectors from various area militaries and police forces, especially from the Assad regime. That's not to say they will emerge victorious against an Egypt-Saudi-Pakistani alliance with Iran. They won't.

But they're not a bunch of angry ragtag deli counter workers who are angry that they aren't getting any pussy in Nebraska either.

The Saudi and their pals will do the things that the American military won't (officially), which is line people up against walls and shoot them in the skull as a matter of principle as if they were, sorry to make this comparison again, Papists in the Thirty Years War.

And after the Egypt-Sauid-Pakistan armies line up people and shoot them, there will be much rejoicing and all of Islam will bestow blessings upon them because god is great etc

"just carving up the levant along the sectarian faultlines that already existed" is a pretty insane achievement, really. Iran already controls lebanon, and sunni in the region are fractured by Assad's maneuvering... The point i think is being missed in all (including this) media about the islamic state is that they are predominantly Saudi. If you don't know why this is a big deal, think about our biggest allies in the region. This is why our recent detente with Iran, which was so mystifying to so many, is such a big deal- we're trying to run interference on a rise of Sunni extremism. Those m-16s and american cammies aren't in the IS arsenal by accident OR as spoils of war from iraq- they were funneled through the kingdom of Saud.

The game we're playing in the middle east has become a deranged juggling act- we played nice with the saudis in order to offset oil expenditures and have a nominal "friend" in the region (besides jordan, which is going quietly through massive changes more or less unsung), but that pissed off shia islam the world over to such a degree that they began building a true hegemony in the region- vis. Lebanon beating Israel back (with the help of Iran's revolutionary guard, and the ONLY time israel has ceded control of territory under force of arms) then eastern iraq (taken over wholesale by Shia elements controlled by Iran before AND after the US invasion) and now yemen (previously a hotbed for sunni militancy but now embroiled in a civil war between houthi, shia and sunni)...

i could go on. our foreign policy is so hilariously short-sighted that before this is done we will have laid waste to any possibility of secular peace there could have been.

Hell, the reason they have American weapons is because the US government spent 26 billion dollars to arm and train them. All the major news organizations reported on this fact. It is no secret. But otherwise, yeah, our good friends the Saudi's are by and large responsible for wahhabi extremism throughout the region, and the IS in particular.

It's almost as though none of them are thinking for themselves.

Welcome to the 21st century.

Well they can't afford the expensive teleprompters we have, so a paper script is it.