A Gulf-based newspaper is reporting that the Islamic State has wasted no time in naming a successor to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, the leaders who were killed last week by the United States military in dramatic precision raids. The man reportedly chosen to pick up the gauntlet is Iraqi-born Abdullah Qardash, who apparently was selected for the role by al-Baghdadi himself. The operation that killed the second-in-command was a joint-operation by the American military and Kurdish intelligence units according to a statement by the commander of the Kurdish forces in Syria. The organization that monitors the Syrian civil war, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that al-Muhajir was killed as he traveled in a convoy. Doubtless coincidentally, the Congressional vote came on Turkey’s National Day.