The Briefing Room
General Category => World News => Topic started by: EC on October 07, 2015, 12:40:44 pm
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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.
PHOTO: ISIS militants race through Raqqa in a propaganda training film released online in September 2014.Obtained by ABC News
ISIS militants race through Raqqa in a propaganda training film released online in September 2014.
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.”
Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/International/us-officials-isis-toyota-trucks/story?id=34266539
Hell - I'd buy one. Damn things are indestructible.
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Hilux.....sweet truck. The ones asking these questions should go directly to the source of these trucks. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. D.C.
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Why should they buy them when the Iraqi military leaves it behind?
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Obama is just angry they aren't using Government Motors trucks.
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Because the Toyota Hilux is one of the most popular trucks sold in the world, especially the middle east as fleet vehicles for oil companies because of their durability so naturally they would have more of what is more available. Sadly not for sale in the US.
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U.S. presses Toyota over how Islamic State got its truck fleet
AP, Kyodo
Oct 8, 2015
Article history
NEW YORK – Toyota has spoken with U.S. officials about the prominent use of its vehicles by militants in Syria, Iraq and Libya.
“We are supporting the U.S. Treasury Department’s broader inquiry into international supply chains and the flow of capital and goods in the Middle East,” Toyota spokeswoman Amanda Rice told Kyodo News.
Toyota trucks are conspicuous in extremist propaganda and are often what carry Islamic State group fighters to war, some with large caliber weapons affixed to truck beds.
The company says it prohibits sales to anyone who might modify them for paramilitary or terrorist activities.
There are procedures in place to prevent vehicles from being diverted for unauthorized military use, but Toyota says it is impossible to control channels through which vehicles may be misappropriated or resold by third parties.
The Treasury Department’s Terrorism and Financial Intelligence wing monitors monetary transfers and the flow of goods that could aid militants, but the department declined comment on any ongoing inquiry Wednesday.
The militant group’s propaganda videos show the terrorists driving a combination of older and newer models and the U.S. believes the Islamic State has recently obtained “hundreds of brand new” Toyota vehicles, U.S. broadcaster ABC News said.
The company’s sales operations in Syria ceased in 2012 and regional Toyota distributors do not know how the Islamic State acquired the vehicles, according to the network.
Vehicles from other automakers have been featured in the videos, such as those from Hyundai Motor Co. and Isuzu Motors Ltd., the report said, but the Toyota models have become “fixtures” for the Islamic State.
When the Islamic State paraded through the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, more than two-thirds of the vehicles in the convoy appeared to be from Toyota, the broadcaster reported.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mark Wallace, who currently heads an organization that studies the financial networks of terrorists, told ABC News that the vehicles “have effectively become almost part of the ISIS brand.”
Wallace told the network that the Toyota vehicles are seen in almost every Islamic State propaganda video and that his group urged the company earlier this year to do more in tracking how terrorists acquire their vehicles.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/10/08/business/u-s-treasury-looks-into-terrorists-prominent-use-of-toyota-trucks/#.VhZoXivbDvT
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(https://gevajournal.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/toyota-pic.jpg)
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US Officials Ask How ISIS Got So Many Toyota Trucks
Really? There is a market, and Toyota supplies it.
It's called free market capitalism.
The question should be: How does ISIS pay for the trucks?
Or does some sugar daddy pay and deliver?
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The question should be: How does ISIS pay for the trucks?
Or does some sugar daddy pay and deliver?
Most likely they ransacked some businesses and took fleet vehicles.
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Most likely they ransacked some businesses and took fleet vehicles.
mmmm...... lots and lots and lots of ransacked businesses then
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I don't think there's any question as to how they could afford them.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/06/14/extortion-bank-robbery-fuel-isis-bloody-drive-to-establish-sharia-caliphate/
Published June 14, 2014FoxNews.com
Long before it looted the Iraqi central bank in Mosul of $429 million, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant/Syria (ISIS) was well-funded in its quest to establish a Shariah caliphate, thanks to a raging criminal enterprise of extortion, bank robbery and petty theft, as well as donations from well-heeled sponsors throughout the Arab world, according to experts.
The latest payday — gained when the jihadist group led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi overran Iraq's second largest city and emptied the vaults of cash and gold bullion — swelled already healthy coffers and made ISIS, by some estimations, the world's richest terrorist organization. The group also seized U.S.-made tanks, Blackhawk helicopters, cargo planes and an unknown quantity of guns, all part of a $14 billion arsenal the U.S. sold or donated to the beleaguered Iraqi security forces.
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I don't think there's any question as to how they could afford them.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/06/14/extortion-bank-robbery-fuel-isis-bloody-drive-to-establish-sharia-caliphate/
Published June 14, 2014FoxNews.com
And our CIC stepped out of the way, didn't he.
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And our CIC stepped out of the way, didn't he.
Yep.
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If we know so much about all of these trucks, why not bomb them all to smithereens?
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If we know so much about all of these trucks, why not bomb them all to smithereens?
Logic 101 is a start
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If we know so much about all of these trucks, why not bomb them all to smithereens?
Good question!
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If we know so much about all of these trucks, why not bomb them all to smithereens?
Yep.....you know WH had satellite Intel showing them in real time driving down the road.
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"Cash for Clunkers"?
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mmmm...... lots and lots and lots of ransacked businesses then
It is the most popular truck there. It is like if they ransacked across the US taking trucks from fleets, you would see an overwhelming number of Ford F150s.
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We already know how they got Hummers and tank.... right Obama...
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Hell - I'd buy one. Damn things are indestructible.
Yeah, but still not like the grand daddy of them all, the Land Rover. Not today's prissy model, the real deal from back in the day.
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Yeah, but still not like the grand daddy of them all, the Land Rover. Not today's prissy model, the real deal from back in the day.
With the exception of the old Series III and defenders, the electronics in the old ones are rubbish.
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What!!!
Nothing wrong at all with Lucas electronics!!!
:tongue2:
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Does anybody recall that the State Department cannot account for $6 BILLION dollars? :whistle:
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Of course they can! All the receipts were emailed to the Sec of State for approval, so just ask her.