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ISIS Toyota Mystery solved. US n UK govt's supplied to Terrorists!

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http://abcnews.go.com/International/us-officials-isis-toyota-trucks/story?id=34266539



US Officials Ask How ISIS Got So Many Toyota Trucks
By MATTHEW MOSK BRIAN ROSS ALEX HOSENBALL
Oct 6, 2015, 12:43 PM ET
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Obtained by ABC News
U.S. counter-terror officials have asked Toyota, the world’s second largest auto maker, to help them determine how ISIS has managed to acquire the large number of Toyota pick-up trucks and SUVs seen prominently in the terror group’s propaganda videos in Iraq, Syria and Libya, ABC News has learned.

Toyota says it does not know how ISIS obtained the vehicles and is “supporting” the inquiry led by the Terror Financing unit of the Treasury Department -- part of a broad U.S. effort to prevent Western-made goods from ending up in the hands of the terror group.


“We briefed Treasury on Toyota’s supply chains in the Middle East and the procedures that Toyota has in place to protect supply chain integrity,” said Ed Lewis, Toyota’s Washington-based director of public policy and communications.

Toyota has a “strict policy to not sell vehicles to potential purchasers who may use or modify them for paramilitary or terrorist activities,” Lewis said. He said it is impossible for the company to track vehicles that have been stolen, or have been bought and re-sold by middlemen.

Obtained by ABC News
ISIS militants race through Raqqa in a propaganda training film released online in September 2014.more +
Toyota Hilux pickups, an overseas model similar to the Toyota Tacoma, and Toyota Land Cruisers have become fixtures in videos of the ISIS campaign in Iraq, Syria and Libya, with their truck beds loaded with heavy weapons and cabs jammed with terrorists. The Iraqi Ambassador to the United States, Lukman Faily, told ABC News that in addition to re-purposing older trucks, his government believes ISIS has acquired “hundreds” of “brand new” Toyotas in recent years.

“This is a question we’ve been asking our neighbors,” Faily said. “How could these brand new trucks... these four wheel drives, hundreds of them -- where are they coming from?”

ISIS propaganda videos show gunmen patrolling Syrian streets in what appear to be older and newer model white Hilux pick-ups bearing the black caliphate seal and crossing Libya in long caravans of gleaming tan Toyota Land Cruisers. When ISIS soldiers paraded through the center of Raqqa, more than two-thirds of the vehicles were the familiar white Toyotas with the black emblems. There were small numbers of other brands including Mitsubishi, Hyundai and Isuzu.


“Regrettably, the Toyota Land Cruiser and Hilux have effectively become almost part of the ISIS brand,” said Mark Wallace, a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, who is CEO of the Counter Extremism Project, a non-profit working to expose the financial support networks of terror groups.

“ISIS has used these vehicles in order to engage in military-type activities, terror activities, and the like,” Wallace told ABC News. “But in nearly every ISIS video, they show a fleet -- a convoy of Toyota vehicles and that’s very concerning to us.”

Toyota says many of the vehicles seen in ISIS videos are not recent models. “We have procedures in place to help ensure our products are not diverted for unauthorized military use,” said Lewis, the Toyota executive.

But, Lewis added, “It is impossible for Toyota to completely control indirect or illegal channels through which our vehicles could be misappropriated.”

Questions about the ISIS use of Toyota vehicles have circulated for years. In 2014, a report by the radio broadcaster Public Radio International noted that the U.S. State Department delivered 43 Toyota trucks to Syrian rebels. A more recent report in an Australian newspaper said that more than 800 of the trucks had been reported missing in Sydney between 2014 and 2015, and quoted terror experts speculating that they may have been exported to ISIS territory.

Attempts to track the path of the trucks into ISIS hands has proven complicated for U.S. and Iraqi officials.

Toyota’s own figures show sales of Hilux and Land Cruisers tripling from 6,000 sold in Iraq in 2011 to 18,000 sold in 2013, before sales dropped back to 13,000 in 2014.

Brigadier General Saad Maan, an Iraqi military spokesman, told ABC News he suspects that middlemen from outside Iraq have been smuggling the trucks into his country.

“We are spending our time to fight those terrorists so we cannot say we are controlling the border between Iraq and Syria,” he conceded. “We are deeply in need for answers.”

In a statement to ABC News, Toyota said it is not aware of any dealership selling to the terror group but “would immediately” take action if it did, including termination of the distribution agreement.

Toyota distributors in the region contacted by ABC News said they did not know how the trucks reached ISIS.

Sumitomo, a Japanese conglomerate that ships vehicles to the region, wrote to ABC News, “In terms of how anyone operating outside of the law obtain vehicles for misappropriation, we have no way to know and therefore cannot comment.”

A spokesman for former owners of the Toyota dealership in Syria said its sales operation was halted in 2012.

The former owners, a Saudi company called Abdul Latif Jameel, said it “made the decision to cease all trading activities in the country and fully divested the business in October, 2012,” according to a spokesperson.

Wallace, of the Counter Extremism Project, said his organization wrote directly to Toyota earlier this year to urge the company to do more to track the flow of trucks to ISIS, and noted that the trucks are stamped with traceable identification numbers.

“I don’t think Toyota’s trying to intentionally profit from it, but they are on notice now and they should do more,” Wallace said. “They should be able to figure it out... how are these trucks getting there. I think they should disclose that, put a stop to that, and put policies and procedures in places that are real and effective to make sure that we don’t see videos of ISIS using Toyota trucks in the future.”

Earlier this year, Toyota responded to Wallace’s organization with similar language the company has used to answer questions from ABC News, writing that Toyota stopped entirely its sales of vehicles in Syria several years ago.

Toyota told ABC News that after company officials briefed the U.S. Treasury team and that Treasury indicated the meeting was “helpful.”

“We cannot provide further details of our interaction with Treasury as we do not want to compromise its efforts to understand and prevent diversion, or make it easier for illicit groups to penetrate our supply chains or those of any other company,” Lewis said.

Treasury officials told ABC News they could not comment publicly about the agency’s engagement with specific private companies. But in response to questions about Toyota, the officials said investigators are “working closely with foreign counterparts and stakeholders” on the issue.

ABC News' Randy Kreider and Mazin Faiq contributed to this report.
 

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http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-mystery-of-isis-toyota-army-solved/5480921


The Mystery of ISIS’ Toyota Army Solved

By Tony Cartalucci
Global Research, October 09, 2015
Region: Middle East & North Africa
Theme: Militarization and WMD
*7405 *535 *182 * *11.6K

The US Treasury has recently opened an inquiry about the so-called “Islamic State’s” (ISIS/ISIL) use of large numbers of brand-new Toyota trucks. The issue has arisen in the wake of*Russia’s air operations over Syria*and growing global suspicion that the US itself has played a key role in arming, funding, and intentionally perpetuating the terrorist army across Syria and Iraq.

ABC News in their article, “US Officials Ask How ISIS Got So Many Toyota Trucks,” reports:

U.S. counter-terror officials have asked Toyota, the world’s second largest auto maker, to help them determine how ISIS has managed to acquire the large number of Toyota pick-up trucks and SUVs seen prominently in the terror group’s propaganda videos in Iraq, Syria and Libya, ABC News has learned.*

Toyota says it does not know how ISIS obtained the vehicles and is “supporting” the inquiry led by the Terror Financing unit of the Treasury Department — part of a broad U.S. effort to prevent Western-made goods from ending up in the hands of the terror group.

The report went on to cite Iraqi Ambassador to the US, Lukman Faily:

“This is a question we’ve been asking our neighbors,” Faily said. “How could these brand new trucks… these four wheel drives, hundreds of them — where are they coming from?”

Not surprisingly, it appears the US Treasury is asking the wrong party. Instead of Toyota, the US Treasury’s inquiry should have started next door at the US State Department.

Mystery Solved*

Just last year it was reported that the US State Department had been sending in fleets of specifically Toyota-brand trucks into Syria to whom they claimed was the “Free Syrian Army.”

US foundation-funded Public Radio International (PRI) reported in a 2014 article titled, “This one Toyota pickup truck is at the top of the shopping list for the Free Syrian Army — and the Taliban,” that:

Recently, when the US State Department resumed sending non-lethal aid to Syrian rebels, the delivery list included 43 Toyota trucks.

Hiluxes were on the Free Syrian Army’s wish list. Oubai Shahbander, a Washington-based advisor to the Syrian National Coalition, is a fan of the truck.

“Specific equipment like the Toyota Hiluxes are what we refer to as force enablers for the moderate opposition forces on the ground,” he adds. Shahbander says the US-supplied pickups will be delivering troops and supplies into battle. Some of the fleet will even become battlefield weapons..

The British government has also admittedly supplied a number of vehicles to terrorists fighting inside of Syria. The British Independent’s 2013 article titled, “Revealed: What the West has given Syria’s rebels,” reported that (emphasis added):

So far the UK has sent around £8m of “non-lethal” aid, according to official papers seen by The Independent,*comprising five 4×4 vehicles with ballistic protection; 20 sets of body armour; four trucks (three 25 tonne, one 20 tonne); six 4×4 SUVs; five non-armoured pick-ups; one recovery vehicle; four fork-lifts;*three advanced “resilience kits” for region hubs, designed to rescue people in emergencies; 130 solar powered batteries; around 400 radios; water purification and rubbish collection kits; laptops; VSATs (small satellite systems for data communications) and printers.

It’s fair to say that whatever pipeline the US State Department and the British government used to supply terrorists in Syria with these trucks was likely used to send additional vehicles before and after these reports were made public.

The mystery*of how hundreds of identical, brand-new ISIS-owned Toyota trucks have made it into Syria*is solved. Not only has the US and British government admitted in the past to supplying them, their military forces and intelligence agencies ply the borders of Turkey, Jordan, and even Iraq where these fleets of trucks must have surely passed on their way to Syria – even if other regional actors supplied them. While previous admissions to supplying the vehicles implicates the West directly, that nothing resembling interdiction operations have been set up along any of these borders implicates the West as complicit with other parties also supplying vehicles to terrorists inside of Syria.

What Mystery?

Of course, much of this is not new information. So the question remains – why is the US Treasury just now carrying on with this transparent charade? Perhaps those in Washington believe that if the US government is the one asking this obvious question of how ISIS has managed to field such an impressive mechanized army in the middle of the Syrian desert, no one will suspect they had a role in it.

Of course, the trucks didn’t materialize in Syria. They originated outside of Syria and were brought in, and in great numbers, with the explicit knowledge and/or direct complicity of the US and its regional allies. Asking Toyota where the US State Department’s own trucks came from is another indication of just how lost US foreign policy, legitimacy, and credibility has become.

Russia’s intervention, and what should become a widely supported anti-terror coalition must keep in mind the criminality of the US and its partners when choosing its own partners in efforts to restore security and order across the Middle East and North Africa.

*

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine*“New Eastern Outlook”.

Copyright © Tony Cartalucci, Global Research, 2015

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http://qz.com/522756/john-oliver-calls-toyota-isis-instruments-of-death/




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John Oliver calls Toyota ISIS “instruments of death”
Ashley Rodriguez October 13, 2015

Toyota doesn't discriminate.
On John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight show this past Sunday (Oct. 11), the comedian blasted Toyota and its vehicles for being used by ISIS as “instruments of death.”

“Toyota is famous for making dependable vehicles but this week we learned something surprising about who is depending on them,” said Oliver. He was referring to the Islamic State, which has prominently featured Toyota trucks and SUVs in its propaganda videos.
The Japanese auto maker—the second largest in the world—was put on the spot last week when the US government asked why the terrorist group had so many Toyota vehicles, ABC News first reported.
The company claimed to be “baffled” as to how this could have happened, Oliver said.
And yet, he also pointed out that this isn’t the first time Toyota trucks and SUVs have been co-opted by terrorists. As Quartz reported earlier, the vehicles have been favorites of the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Syrian rebels, and fighters in the Chad-Libya conflict. Oliver also called attention to the brand’s unfortunately-named Isis minivan.
Toyota told ABC News that it’s not aware of any dealerships that have broken its company policy not to sell to terrorist groups.
But Oliver wasn’t convinced. “At this rate,” he joked, “we are just a few months away from ISIS-owned Toyota dealerships.”
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So be it and very soon ISIS will be flying US supplied copters and tanks to fight Russians. US gave lots of weapons to their so call allies, ended up in enemies' hands.



But Iran Contra arms scandal is still THE BEST!


By Cowboy Reagan.



http://time.com/2954148/iran-contra/





25 Years Later: Oliver North and The Iran-Contra Scandal
Salima Koroma @salimakoroma
July 5, 2014 SHARE

Here's a look back on the 25th anniversary of Oliver North's sentencing.

25 years ago, Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North did something really, really bad. He sold weapons to Iran in an effort to help fund rebels fighting Nicaragua’s Socialist government.

It was a war that was already being funded by the small country’s cocaine trade, a fact that prompted Congress to halt the flow of money from the U.S. to Nicaragua.

After a short prison sentence and a successful appeal, North continues to be a polarizing figure and important voice in the conservative sphere.
 

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Toyota has a van model called ISIS:


MW-DV891_toyota_20151007064123_ZH.jpg


http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-to-toyota-how-come-isis-drives-so-many-of-your-trucks-2015-10-07


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U.S. to Toyota: How come ISIS drives so many of your trucks?

Published: Oct 7, 2015 7:34 a.m. ET






Toyota vehicles are ‘almost part of the ISIS brand,’ says former ambassador
Getty Images
Toyota now probably wishes it had picked a different name for this Isis minivan.

By
Victor
Reklaitis
Markets writer

Here comes yet another body-blow for the reeling auto industry. Toyota 7203, +2.05% TM, +1.24% has been put on the spot by the U.S. government, which has asked the Japanese car maker to explain just how Islamic State has got hold of hundreds of its four-wheel-drive vehicles.

The Toyota Hilux pickup — a model similar to the Toyota Tacoma that’s sold in the U.S. — and Toyota Land Cruisers have become fixtures in the terror group’s propaganda videos, according to media reports late Tuesday and early Wednesday.

“Regrettably, the Toyota Land Cruiser and Hilux have effectively become almost part of the ISIS brand,” said one former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Mark Wallace, quoted in an ABC News report.

Wallace is currently chief executive for the Counter Extremism Project, which aims to expose terrorists’ financial networks. “I don’t think Toyota’s trying to intentionally profit from it, but they are on notice now and they should do more,” Wallace added.

Questions about ISIS’s use of the vehicles have circulated for years, with the terror group believed to have repurposed older Toyota trucks as well as acquiring hundreds of new vehicles. In a recent ISIS parade, more than two-thirds of the vehicles were white Toyotas with black emblems, and there also were small numbers of other brands such as Mitsubishi, Hyundai and Isuzu.

The Twitterverse is cracking jokes about the situation, of course. Some have resurfaced a parody ad (“Toyota ISIS: We’re good for jihad!”), produced earlier this year by The Blaze, a conservative news outlet:



Watch this TOYOTA JIHAD Ad:

 

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The Toyota is exposing the fundamental flaw of humvee being a low profile vehicle that does not traction well in wartime. It is susceptible to land mines. Humvee is on the outgoing list for support vehicle.
 

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Will be interesting to hear Leongsam's comment in this thread.
 
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