Blake Hall
You’ve seen a jackpot. But, have you ever seen a pot … get jacked? By enormous explosives dropped from the clear blue sky — thousands of feet up in the air?
Well then allow the following footage to be a banquet for your teary viewing orbs, because guess what? The Pentagon filmed it.
It’s a visual document of this story posted a few days ago on this very blog — one that detailed a U.S.-led coalition airstrike that blew up a storage facility in Mosul, Iraq that held millions of dollars in cash belonging to ISIS (Islamic State, IS, ISIL, Daesh, etc.).
According to the DoD and other sources, the building was in the crosshairs for a number of days before the trigger was pulled, due to strict rules of engagement. It was located in a populous urban area, and the coalition wanted the strike to result in the fewest number of casualties possible.
Gnarly video, right? It is. No doubt. A enviable nest egg up in smoke.
Suddenly, “making it rain” looks picayune.
But it does, seriously, raise a few questions about the aforementioned terrorist group’s profitability.
For one, what does ISIS do with this money? It might come as a surprise, but a portion of the dough is used to pay their fighters. Because they’re certainly not as divinely-lit as they’d like you to think they are. These paychecks don’t bounce, and some of them use the liquidity to support their vices — just like the rest of humanity.
Secondly, how does ISIS get this money? They bank it in many, many ways. Like black market oil sales. Like raiding towns and cities they invade. Selling off antiques and ancient heirlooms they steal (and sometimes completely destroy). Donations from wealthy Sunni Arabs. And imposing/collecting bully taxes.