By Ben Connable, Natasha Lander, and Kimberly Jackson, RAND: “The National Security Council should lead a full-scope, bottom-up review of the strategy to counter IS. This review should address specific issues with the current strategy, including a lack of internal consistency in objectives, poorly defined objectives, and a narrow focus on defeating and destroying IS with insufficient emphasis on changing the conditions that allow such groups to exist and thrive.”
They made the captive children, weak from hunger, fight over a single tomato. Then the Islamic State militants told them that in paradise they could eat to their hearts delight, but they could only get there by blowing themselves up. The lesson was part of the indoctrination inflicted by the militants on boys from Iraq's Yazidi religious minority after the extremist group overran the community's towns and villages in northern Iraq. The group forced hundreds of boys, some as young as 7 or 8, into training to become fighters and suicide bombers, infusing them with its murderous ideology. – Associated Press