Tag Archives: Islamic State

How The Public Get Suckered, by Eric Zuesse

Posted on December 28, 2015 | Leave a comment

From Eric Zuesse at strategic-culture.org:

The US aristocracy’s control over all the mainstream ‘news’ is ironclad – and this includes the political magazines, such as National Review, and The Nation; as well as ‘intellectual’ magazines, such as Harpers and The Atlantic. American ‘news’ media stifle democracy in America; they’re not part of democracy, in America. They’re like poison that’s presented as being ‘medicine’ instead. Suckers don’t just swallow it; they come back for more.

Here was the shocking admission that was made by the US Defense Department’s press-spokesman at his 18 November 2015 presentation, in which he voluntarily acknowledged that the US had not previously destroyed any of the thousands of oil tank-trucks that were transporting ISIS’s stolen oil out from Iraq and from Syria – the stolen-oil sales that bring $2 billion per year into ISIS coffers:

«This is our first strike against tanker trucks, and to minimize risks to civilians, we conducted a leaflet drop prior to the strike. We did a show of force, by – we had aircraft essentially buzz the trucks at low altitude.

So, I do have copy of the leaflet, and I have got some videos, so why don’t you pull the leaflet up. Let me take a look at it so I can talk about it.

As you can see, it’s a fairly simple leaflet, it says, «Get out of your trucks now, and run away from them». A very simple message.

And then, also, «Warning: airstrikes are coming. Oil trucks will be destroyed. Get away from your oil trucks immediately. Do not risk your life».

And so, these are the leaflets that we dropped – about 45 minutes before the airstrikes actually began. Again, we combine these leaflet drops with very low altitude passes of some of our attack aviation, which sends a very powerful message».

So: not only had the US previously avoided destroying ISIS’s main source of income (other than multimillion-dollar donations made by members of the royal families of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, and Kuwait – all of whom are protected by the US), but, when the US now started to bomb those tank-trucks filled with stolen oil, the US warned in advance the drivers, who were also assets to the jihadist cause the US pretended to oppose, and thus were enemies of the public (and were participants in the evils of ISIS). The US Department of Defense (DOD) wanted to protect them – not to kill them. Wow!! And the US totally ignored the need to choke off the financing of ISIS, which pays their fighters etc. Can any hypocrisy exceed this? If the United States were a democracy, its press would have been focusing on this issue for a week. The US protecting ISIS’s financial base, and assets, has mind-boggling implications.

Did any of the major US news media, all of which have reporters attending those press conferences, report the US Government’s open admission there, that the US Government had protected ISIS all along, not bombed any of ISIS’s oil tank-trucks? None of them reported it. None of them conveyed to their audience this astounding information – essentially, that the US was protecting the money-flow to the jihadists in Syria, and was even protecting their truckers.

To continue reading: How the Public Get Suckered

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“Secret” Norwegian Report Details ISIS-Turkey Oil Trade As UN Vows To “Cut Off” Terrorist “Funding Sources, by Tyler Durden

Posted on December 19, 2015 | Leave a comment

From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

“The resolution gives us more flexibility to go after those who are helping Isil [Isis], whether to move funds, to store funds or to earn funds”.

That’s from Adam Szubin, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the US Treasury. Szubin is referencing a Security Council resolution proposed by Washington and Moscow that calls for a crackdown on Islamic State’s access to the international financial system.

As FT reports, the “rare meeting of Security Council member finance ministers also resolved to press other nations to enforce more rigorously existing rules that are designed to limit the flow of revenues, fighters and equipment to the Islamist militant group.”

And here’s a bit of largely meaningless rhetoric from the UN itself:

At its first ever meeting at Finance Ministers’ level, the United Nations Security Council today stepped up its efforts to cut off all sources of funding for the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIL) and other terrorist groups, including ransom payments, no matter by whom.

The Council also called on Member States to promote enhanced vigilance by persons within their jurisdiction to detect any diversion of explosives and raw materials and components that can be used to manufacture improvised explosive devices or unconventional weapons, including chemical components, detonators, detonating cord, or poisons.

“They (the terrorists) are agile and have been far too successful in attaining resources for their heinous acts,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Council at the start of the debate. “As Da’esh (another name for ISIL) and other terrorist groups disseminate their hateful propaganda and ratchet up murderous attacks, we must join forces to prevent them from acquiring and deploying resources to do further harm,” he stressed.

Yes, “we must” keep the terrorists from “acquiring and deploying resources to do further harm.” The reason we call that “meaningless” rheotric is that it’s an insult to anyone who knows anything about the role some UN members play in financing and supplying ISIS.

Take this statement for instance: “The Council also called on Member States to promote enhanced vigilance by persons within their jurisdiction to detect any diversion of explosives and raw materials and components that can be used to manufacture improvised explosive devices or unconventional weapons, including chemical components.”

Well, for starters, we know that ammonium nitrate flows from Akcakale across the border to the Syrian town of Tel Abyad which has fallen into ISIS hands on a number of occasions. From a The New York Times piece published in May:

Ammonium nitrate has been a vital ingredient in some of the world’s most notorious terrorist attacks, including the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995 and the bombings of the United States Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998.

It has also been widely used by militants in Iraq and Afghanistan, and by the Islamic State.

A bomb filled with about 45,000 pounds could damage 16 city blocks, Dr. John Goodpaster, a forensic chemist at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis said, adding that there appeared to be at least 55,000 pounds in the pile of sacks waiting to enter the crossing [between Akcakale and Tel Abyad].

“That is a definite concern,” he said.

Turkish officials failed to explain why the substance was allowed to cross.

To continue reading: “Secret” Norwegian Report Details ISIS-Turkey Oil Trade

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Did Saudi Arabia Just Clear The Way For An Invasion Of Syria And Iraq? by Tyler Durden

Posted on December 16, 2015 | Leave a comment

From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

And now, a further turn for the absurd…

While it’s still far from common knowledge among the Western public that Washington’s closest allies in the Mid-East are funding, arming, and otherwise enabling the Sunni extremists (including ISIS) battling for control of Syria and working to destabilize Iraq, the massacre that unfolded earlier this month in San Bernardino has managed to focus some much needed attention on the role Saudi Arabia plays in promoting extremism.

As we noted in the immediate aftermath of the California mass shooting, the fact that Tashfeen Malik spent 25 years in Saudi Arabia living with a father who, according to family members who spoke to Reuters, adopted an increasingly hardline ideology as time went on, underscores the fact that the puritanical, ultra orthodox belief system promoted by the Saudis is poisonous. That’s not a critique of Islam. It’s a critique of Wahhabism and the effect it has on the minds of those who are inculcated by Saudi culture.

Here’s an excerpt from “Saudi Arabia Is Underwriting Terrorism. Let’s Start Making It Pay,” by Charles Kenny:

For years since 9/11, U.S. and Western officials have mostly looked the other way at all this ideological support for extremism: Saudi oil was just too important to the global economy, even though many of these Saudi petro-dollars were underwriting repression at home and the growth of Salafist fundamentalism abroad.

This support for radicalism abroad should come as little surprise given that Islamic State is an ideological cousin of Saudi Arabia’s own state-sponsored extremist Wahhabi sect—which the country has spent more than $10 billion to promote worldwide through charitable organizations like the World Assembly of Muslim Youth. The country will continue to export extremism as long as it practices the same policies at home.

More, from “Saudi Arabia: An ISIS That Has Made It,” by Kamel Daoud:

Black Daesh, white Daesh. The former slits throats, kills, stones, cuts off hands, destroys humanity’s common heritage and despises archaeology, women and non-Muslims. The latter is better dressed and neater but does the same things. The Islamic State; Saudi Arabia. In its struggle against terrorism, the West wages war on one, but shakes hands with the other. This is a mechanism of denial, and denial has a price: preserving the famous strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia at the risk of forgetting that the kingdom also relies on an alliance with a religious clergy that produces, legitimizes, spreads, preaches and defends Wahhabism, the ultra-puritanical form of Islam that Daesh feeds on.

Consider that, and consider the following headline from Reuters which surely qualifies as the most tragically ironic thing you’ll read all day: “Saudi Arabia announces 34-state Islamic military alliance against terrorism”

That’s right ladies and gentlemen, you no longer have anything to fear from Sunni extremists because the undisputed king of promoting Sunni extremism is on the case. “The countries here mentioned have decided on the formation of a military alliance led by Saudi Arabia to fight terrorism, with a joint operations center based in Riyadh to coordinate and support military operations,” a statement from state-ruun SPA said.

But it gets better. Much better.

To continue reading: Did Saudi Arabia Just Clear The Way For An Invasion Of Syria and Iraq?

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Who Will Fight the Islamic State? by Peter Van Buren

Posted on December 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

Valuable additional insight augmenting With Friends Like These… and Who Needs Enemies? from Peter Van Buren at TomDispatch, via antiwar.com:

In the many strategies proposed to defeat the Islamic State (IS) by presidential candidates, policymakers, and media pundits alike across the American political spectrum, one common element stands out: someone else should really do it. The United States will send in planes, advisers, and special ops guys, but it would be best – and this varies depending on which pseudo-strategist you cite – if the Arabs, Kurds, Turks, Sunnis, and/or Shias would please step in soon and get America off the hook.

The idea of seeing other-than-American boots on the ground, like Washington’s recently deep-sixed scheme to create some “moderate” Syrian rebels out of whole cloth, is attractive on paper. Let someone else fight America’s wars for American goals. Put an Arab face on the conflict, or if not that at least a Kurdish one (since, though they may not be Arabs, they’re close enough in an American calculus). Let the U.S. focus on its “bloodless” use of air power and covert ops. Somebody else, Washington’s top brains repeatedly suggest, should put their feet on the embattled, contested ground of Syria and Iraq. Why, the U.S. might even gift them with nice, new boots as a thank-you.

Is this, however, a realistic strategy for winning America’s war(s) in the Middle East?

The Great Champions of the Grand Strategy

Recently, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton openly called for the U.S. to round up some Arab allies, Kurds, and Iraqi Sunnis to drive the Islamic State’s fighters out of Iraq and Syria. On the same day that Clinton made her proposal, Bernie Sanders called for “destroying” the Islamic State, but suggested that it “must be done primarily by Muslim nations.” It’s doubtful he meant Indonesia or Malaysia.

Among the Republican contenders, Marco Rubio proposed that the U.S. “provide arms directly to Sunni tribal and Kurdish forces.” Ted Cruz threw his support behind arming the Kurds, while Donald Trump appeared to favor more violence in the region by whoever might be willing to jump in.

The Pentagon has long been in favor of arming both the Kurds and whatever Sunni tribal groups it could round up in Iraq or Syria. Various pundits across the political spectrum say much the same.

They may all mean well, but their plans are guaranteed to fail. Here’s why, group by group.

To continue reading: Who Will Fight the Islamic State?

 

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Iraq Seeks To Cancel Security Agreement With US, Will Invite Russia To Fight ISIS, by Tyler Durden

Posted on December 10, 2015 | Leave a comment

From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Most Iraqis, be they civilians, military personnel, or government officials, do not trust Americans.

At a base level, that makes all kinds of sense. After all, the US did launch what amounted to a unilateral invasion of the country just a little over a decade ago, and when it was all said and done, a dictator was deposed but it’s not entirely clear that Iraqis are better off for it.

ISIS controls key cities including the Mosul, the country’s second largest, and security is a daily concern for the populace. The Americans are still seen – rightly – as occupiers, and Washington’s unwillingness inability to effectively counter ISIS has created a culture of suspicion in which most Iraqis believe the US is in cahoots with the militants for what WaPo described as “a variety of pernicious reasons that have to do with asserting U.S. control over Iraq, the wider Middle East and, perhaps, its oil.”

Some of the distrust, the US contends, is fostered by Iran. Tehran wields considerable influence both within the Iraqi military and in political circles in Baghdad. When Ash Carter announced that the US was set to send an “expeditionary targeting force” to the country to assist in raids on Islamic State targets, PM Haider al-Abadi flatly rejected the proposal, saying that “Iraq does not need foreign ground combat forces on Iraqi land.” Abadi rejected a similar Pentagon trial balloon involving Apaches helicopters last month.

To continue reading: Iraq Seeks To Cancel Security Agreement With US

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US Lawmaker Sees “Ample Evidence Of Turkey’s Complicity In ISIS’s Murderous Rampage” by Tyler Durden

Posted on December 4, 2015 | Leave a comment

From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

At this point, it’s abundantly clear that the US is on the wrong side in the Mid-East.

Washington has always resorted to covert operations and support for unsavory characters on the way to bringing about regime change in countries whose governments aren’t deemed conducive to American interests. That’s nothing new.

Usually, however, there’s at least a semi-plausible argument to be made for why Washington feels the need to support one side over the other.

In Syria, there’s no such argument.

The idea that the Russians and Iranians represent a bigger to the world than ISIS doesn’t even make sense to the most clueless members of the American electorate and indeed, the very idea Putin that is more dangerous than Baghdadi isn’t consistent with Washington’s contention that Islamic State represents the greatest threat to mankind since the Reich. Furthermore, more and more Westerners are starting to understand that the Saudis and their brand of puritanical Islam are really no different from ISIS – the only real distinction between the two is in how many barrels of oil they pump each day. The implication of that rather sobering assessment is that perhaps Washington should be supporting Tehran rather than Riyadh when it comes to picking a Mid-East power broker ally.

And then there’s Turkey, where NATO stood aside and watched as Erdogan started a civil war in order to nullify a democratic election outcome. Now, he’s shooting down Russian planes and trafficking ISIS crude.

In short: this makes absolutely no sense. The US should be aligned with Russia and Iran in Syria, not with Turkey, not with Saudi Arabia, not with Qatar (all of whom fund Sunni extremism) and most certainly not with the FSA, al-Nusra, and/or ISIS.

Well, thankfully, US lawmakers are beginning to wake up to what’s going on as evidenced by Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s campaign to stop what she calls the “illegal war” against Assad. In the latest example of lawmaker revolt against Washington’s Syria strategy, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats recently issued a statement on everything the US is doing wrong. It’s presented below without further comment.

* * *

To continue reading: US Lawmaker Sees “Ample Evidence Of Turkey’s Complicity In ISIS”s Murderous Rampage”

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Epic Foreign Policy Fail – Most Iraqis Think the U.S. Government Supports ISIS, by Michael Krieger

Posted on December 3, 2015 | Leave a comment

From Michael Krieger at libertyblitzkrieg.com:

My belief is, we will, in fact be greeted as liberators.

– Dick Cheney on NBC’s Meet the Press, March 16, 2003

The fighters there insist there have been no strikes by the Americans at all. “We’d be better off without them,” said 1st Lt. Murtada Fadl, who is serving with the Iraqi elite forces in Baiji. He said that the only air support had come from the Iraqi air force and that he wishes the government would ask the Russians to replace the Americans.

“The image of the U.S. was damaged in the region, so they created Daesh in order to fight them and restore their image,” said Mohammed Abdul Khaleq, a journalist for a local TV station who was drinking coffee in a cafe favored by writers, most of whom said they agreed.

– From the Washington Post article: Iraqis Think the U.S. is in Cahoots With the Islamic State, and it is Hurting the War

The Iraq War will go down as the single greatest foreign policy blunder in U.S. history. It is simply the unmitigated disaster that keeps on giving.

To recap, the people who the U.S. government supposedly “liberated,” now hate Americans so much that most of them are convinced the U.S. is in cahoots with ISIS. Not that you could blame them for coming to this conclusion, considering the indisputable role the U.S. government played in the creation of ISIS.

From the post: Additional Details Emerge on How U.S. Government Policy Created, Armed, Supported and Funded ISIS

Telling Hasan that he had read the document himself, Flynn said that it was among a range of intelligence being circulated throughout the US intelligence community that had led him to attempt to dissuade the White House from supporting these groups, albeit without success.

Despite this, Flynn’s account shows that the US commitment to supporting the Syrian insurgency against Bashir al-Assad led the US to deliberately support the very al-Qaeda affiliated forces it had previously fought in Iraq.
The US anti-Assad strategy in Syria, in other words, bolstered the very al-Qaeda factions the US had fought in Iraq, by using the Gulf states and Turkey to finance the same groups in Syria. As a direct consequence, the secular and moderate elements of the Free Syrian Army were increasingly supplanted by virulent Islamist extremists backed by US allies.

It should be noted that precisely at this time, the West, the Gulf states and Turkey, according to the DIA’s internal intelligence reports, were supporting AQI and other Islamist factions in Syria to “isolate” the Assad regime. By Flynn’s account, despite his warnings to the White House that an ISIS attack on Iraq was imminent, and could lead to the destabilization of the region, senior Obama officials deliberately continued the covert support to these factions.

To continue reading: Epic Foreign Policy Fail

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Russia Presents Detailed Evidence Of ISIS-Turkey Oil Trade, by Tyler Durden

Posted on December 3, 2015 | 1 comment

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he will resign if anyone produced proof that Turkey was involved with smuggling oil from ISIS. Judge for yourself, but it appears Russia has done just that (not that the Russians are completely trusthworthy in such matters). As of 11:24 A.M., MST, there has been no announcement of Erdogan’s resignation. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

On Monday, Turkey’s sultan President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said something funny. In the wake of Vladimir Putin’s contention that Russia has additional proof of Turkey’s participation in Islamic State’s illicit crude trade, Erdogan said he would resign if anyone could prove the accusations.

Now obviously, conclusive evidence that Ankara is knowingly facilitating the sale of ISIS crude will probably be hard to come by, at least in the short-term, but the silly thing about Erdogan’s pronouncement is that we’re talking about a man who was willing to plunge his country into civil war over a few lost seats in Parliament. The idea that he would ever “step down” is patently absurd.

But that’s not what’s important. What’s critical is that the world gets the truth about who’s financing and facilitating “Raqqa’s Rockefellers.” If a NATO member is supporting this, and if the US has refrained from bombing ISIS oil trucks for 14 months as part of an understanding with Erdogan, well then we have a problem. For those who need a review, see the following four pieces [CLICK LINK TO ORIGINAL STORY FOR LINKS]:

• The Most Important Question About ISIS That Nobody Is Asking
• Meet The Man Who Funds ISIS: Bilal Erdogan, The Son Of Turkey’s President
• How Turkey Exports ISIS Oil To The World: The Scientific Evidence
• ISIS Oil Trade Full Frontal: “Raqqa’s Rockefellers”, Bilal Erdogan, KRG Crude, And The Israel Connection

Unfortunately for Ankara, The Kremlin is on a mission to blow this story wide open now that Turkey has apparently decided it’s ok to shoot down Russian fighter jets. On Wednesday, we get the latest from Russia, where the Defense Ministry has just finished a briefing on the Islamic State oil trade. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Turkey may be in trouble.

First, here’s the bullet point summary via Reuters:

RUSSIA’S DEFENCE MINISTRY SAYS RUSSIA’S AIR STRIKES IN SYRIA HELPED TO ALMOST HALVE ILLEGAL OIL TURNOVER

RUSSIA’S DEFENCE MINISTRY SAYS TURKISH PRESIDENT AND FAMILY INVOLVED IN BUSINESS WITH ISLAMIC STATE OIL

RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTRY SAYS WILL CONTINUE STRIKES IN SYRIA ON ISLAMIC STATE OIL INFRASTRUCTURE

RUSSIA’S DEFENCE MINISTRY SAYS KNOWS OF THREE ROUTES BY WHICH ISLAMIC STATE OIL IS DIRECTED TO TURKEY

RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTRY SAYS TO PRESENT NEXT WEEK INFORMATION SHOWING TURKEY HELPING ISLAMIC STATE

That’s the Cliff’s Notes version and the full statement from Deputy Minister of Defence Anatoly Antonov is below. Let us be the first to tell you, Antonov did not hold back.

In the opening address, the Deputy says the ISIS oil trade reaches the highest levels of Turkey’s government. He also says Erdogan wouldn’t resign if his face was smeared with stolen Syrian oil. Antonov then blasts Ankara for arresting journalists and mocks Erdogan’s “lovely family oil business.” Antonov even calls on the journalists of the world to “get involved” and help Russia “expose and destroy the sources of terrorist financing.”

“Today, we are presenting only some of the facts that confirm that a whole team of bandits and Turkish elites stealing oil from their neighbors is operating in the region,” Antonov continues, setting up a lengthy presentation in which the MoD shows photos of oil trucks, videos of airstrikes and maps detailing the trafficking of stolen oil. The clip is presented here with an English voice-over. Enjoy.

To continue reading: Russia Presents Detailed Evidence of ISIS-Turkey Oil Trade

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The Phony War on ISIS, by Justin Raimondo

Posted on November 30, 2015 | Leave a comment

From Justin Raimondo at antiwar.org:

The downing of a Russian warplane by the Turks raises several questions, which can all be rolled into one big one: In the war against ISIS, which side is Turkey – and NATO – on, anyway?

Now let’s list the subordinate issues that cause us to question what’s really going on in Syria:

• How can the Turks claim they didn’t know it was a Russian plane they were shooting down?
• If the incident was an error on Turkey’s part, why are they refusing to apologize?
• Even if we accept the Turkish version of events – that the Russian plane drifted into Turkish airspace for a grand total of nineteen seconds – how does this justify their action?
• Did the Turks act alone, or did they get the green light from NATO?
• Are the Turks buying oil from ISIS?

To begin with, the very idea that the whole thing was a big mistake, and that the Turks didn’t know it was a Russian pilot flying that plane, is too ridiculous to take seriously. For the Turks to make such a claim should cause us to automatically disregard whatever else they say about this incident. Putin claims the plane was clearly marked, but even if that’s not quite the truth – and it may not be – the Russians agreed to coordinate the flight paths of their war planes with the Americans, so as not to create just such as incident as this one. As Putin put it:

“The American side, which leads the coalition that Turkey belongs to, knew about the location and time of our planes’ flights, and we were hit exactly there and at that time. Why did we pass this information to the Americans? Either they were not controlling what their allies were doing, or they are leaking this information all over the place.”

And it just so happens that the former Vice Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, Admiral James Winnefeld, was paying a visit to Ankara when the Russian plane went down. A coincidence, of course….

In short: the Americans had the exact flight path of the Russian plane. They knew where and when it would be flying: are we supposed to believe they didn’t communicate this to the Turks, their NATO allies? That this was an orchestrated event – orchestrated by Washington – seems almost beyond dispute.

This is why the Turks refuse to apologize, and instead warn the Russians that they are “playing with fire.” They were simply following orders – and that those orders were coming from Washington is implied by President Obama’s defense of the Turkish actions. “Turkey,” he declared, “like every country, has a right to defend its territory and airspace.” While this is certainly true, the question of how it may do so and under what circumstances it’s okay to shoot down a plane that may have intruded on its airspace is not quite as cut-and-dried as he would have us believe.

Article 51 of the United Nations charter says military action against an intruder is justified only in case of an “armed attack.” Yet the Turks are claiming no such thing: therefore, the act of shooting down the Russian plane was clearly a violation of international law. Period.

While NATO’s commander is standing “in solidarity” with Ankara, the Turks violated NATO’s own rules of engagement. Article 5 of the NATO treaty limns the UN Charter, triggering military action as a consequence of an “armed attack.”

Furthermore, there is the question of the machine-gunning of the ejected Russian pilots by the US-supported “Free Syrian Army,” which resulted in the death of one of them. As retired Maj. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., puts it:

“It is extraordinarily well-settled that the law of war prohibits making anyone parachuting from a distressed aircraft the object of attack, and that doing so is a war crime. There is no real dispute among experts as to this reading of the law.”

Not that this would be the first war crime the Turks have committed.

Finally, there is the question at the base of all this: in the war against ISIS, which side are the Turks on, anyway?

To continue reading: The Phony War on ISIS

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Former CIA Deputy Director Gives A Stunning Reason Why Obama Has Not Attacked ISIS’ Oil Infrastructure, by Tyler Durden

Posted on November 30, 2015 | 1 comment

From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com

As we pointed out a week ago, even before the downing of the Russian jet by a Turkish F-16, the most important question that nobody had asked about ISIS is where is the funding for the terrorist organization coming from, and more importantly, since everyone tacitly knows where said funding is coming from (as we have revealed in an ongoing series of posts “Meet The Man Who Funds ISIS: Bilal Erdogan, The Son Of Turkey’s President”, “How Turkey Exports ISIS Oil To The World: The Scientific Evidence” and “ISIS Oil Trade Full Frontal: “Raqqa’s Rockefellers”, Bilal Erdogan, KRG Crude, And The Israel Connection”) [click to original article for links] few on the US-led Western Alliance have done anything to stop the hundreds of millions in oil sale proceeds from funding the world’s best organized terrorist group.

We concluded by asking “how long until someone finally asks the all important question regarding the Islamic State: who is the commodity trader breaching every known law of funding terrorism when buying ISIS crude, almost certainly with the tacit approval by various “western alliance” governments, and why is it that these governments have allowed said middleman to continue funding ISIS for as long as it has?”

To be sure, the only party that actually did something to halt ISIS’ oil infrastructure was Russia, whose bombing raids of Islamic State oil routes may not only have contributed to the fatal attack by Turkey of the Russian Su-24 (as the curtailment of ISIS’ oil flows led to a big hit in the funds collected by the biggest middleman in the region, Turkey, its president and his son, Bilal not to mention Israel which may have been actively buying ISIS oil over the past year) but prompted questions why the bombing campaign by the US-led alliance had been so woefully incapable of hitting ISIS where it truly hurts: its funding.

This past week, someone finally came up with a “reason” why the Obama administration had been so impotent at denting the Islamic State’s well-greased oil machine. In an interview on PBS’ Charlie Rose on Tuesday, Rose pointed out that before the terrorist attacks in Paris, the U.S. had not bombed ISIS-controlled oil tankers, to which the former CIA deputy director Michael Morell responded that Barack Obama didn’t order the bombing of ISIS’s oil transportation infrastructure until recently because he was concerned about environmental damage.

Yes, he really said that:

We didn’t go after oil wells, actually hitting oil wells that ISIS controls, because we didn’t want to do environmental damage, and we didn’t want to destroy that infrastructure.

In other words, one can blame such recent outbreaks of deadly terrorist activity as the Paris bombings and the explosion of the Russian passenger airplane over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on Obama’s hard line stance to not pollute the atmosphere with the toxic aftermath of destroyed ISIS infrastructure.

Brilliant.

To continue reading: Why Obama Has Not Attacked ISIS Oil

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