Tag Archives: Islamic State

US Sends Troops To Syria: Here Are The Questions The Media Should Be Asking, by Tyler Durden

Posted on October 31, 2015 | Leave a comment

Zero Hedge continues its excellent coverage and analysis of the Middle East. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

On Friday, The White House announced that the US is set to put boots on the ground in Syria.

Predictably, virtually no one in the mainstream media is asking the right questions.

A painful Q&A with Josh Earnest saw the White House Press Secretary attempting to explain to reporters that there’s a distinction between “advise and assist” and “combat.” In short, everyone was keen on documenting the stark contrast between placing spec ops troops in harm’s way and Obama’s 2013 pledge to “not put boots on the ground” inside Syria.

While documenting the purported “shift” in strategy may make for good weekend reading for America’s clueless masses, it completely misses the point. As recently released helmet cam footage clearly demonstrates (assuming it actually depicts what Washington says it depicts) 30 Delta Force commandos were involved in a single operation in Iraq. That is, nearly as many troops as Obama is now set to send to Syria fought just last week in one battle against ISIS. And while that’s Iraq and we’re now talking about Syria, the distinction is to a large extent meaningless – there are American boots on the ground in the region and there have been in one capacity or another for at least 12 years.

The real questions revolve around where these troops are going to be placed, what their objectives are, and ultimately, how the Pentagon plans to do this without putting them in the crosshairs of either the Russians, the Turkish air force, or Hezbollah. Here’s a bit of color from WSJ on what the “plan” is:

Up to 50 U.S. special-operations troops will assist Syrian rebel units spearheading what the Pentagon says would be a new military offensive against the militant group, marking a sharp escalation in the level of direct U.S. involvement on the ground inside Syria. The American forces are to link up with local forces in Kurdish-controlled territory whose mission will be to choke off supply lines to Islamic State militants in their Syrian stronghold of Raqqa.

The first phase of the new campaign is expected to kick off with an operation in northern Syria as early as next week, officials said. U.S. drones and fighter planes will provide the Syrian fighters with air support.

Under Mr. Obama’s new orders, the American commandos will operate in Syria under what the Pentagon calls an advise-and-assist mission, and will not accompany local forces on any of their operations “for the foreseeable future,” a senior U.S. defense official said.

But other defense officials said they couldn’t rule out the possibility that the forces would be pulled into occasional firefights with Islamic State military given their proximity to the confrontation line. The officials cited as an example last week’s raid in Iraq in which a U.S. commando was killed.

To support local forces with their ground campaign, Mr. Obama has authorized the deployment of A-10 Warthog ground-attack planes as well as F-15 fighters to the Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey, administration officials said.

To continue reading: US Sends Troops To Syria

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Washington’s Syria “Strategy” In Complete Disarray As “Ally” Turkey Bombs US-Armed Rebels, by Tyler Durden

Posted on October 28, 2015 | 1 comment

FUBAR is the appropriate acronym for US policy in Syria. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

A little over a week ago in “Full Metal Retard: US Launches ‘Performance-Based’ Ammo Paradrop Program For Make-Believe ‘Syrian Arabs’” we outlined what is perhaps the most hilarious Pentagon scheme designed to arm rebels in Syria to date (and that’s saying something).

Following the comical demise of the latest “train and equip” program, the US is out of options for supporting the opposition in Syria and so Washington decided to go back to Old Faithful: the Kurds.

But that presents a problem.

The US is now flying sorties from Incirlik and Turkish autocrat President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hates the Kurds and has gone out of his way to make it clear that Ankara doesn’t distinguish between the PKK and the YPG. For the uninitiated, here’s the problem broken down in bullet points:

• The US is flying from a Turkish airbase

• Access to that airbase came with NATO’s tacit approval of Erdogan’s move to crack down on the Kurdish PKK operating in Turkey (that crackdown is designed to bolster support for the government ahead of elections next month)

• Both the US and Turkey designate PKK as a “terrorist” group

•BUT while Ankara equates the PKK with the Kurdish rebels battling ISIS in Syria, Washington actually supports those same rebels, setting up a conflict of interest

Now clearly, this is beyond absurd. That is, Turkey only got NATOs support for the politically motivated crackdown on the PKK because Ankara agreed to bundle said crackdown with a military campaign against ISIS. But the Syrian Kurds are the most effective ground force of them all when it comes to combating Islamic State. Because those Syrian Kurds are aligned with the PKK, Turkey is effectively trying to say its army is fighting ISIS, the PKK, and YPG all at once even as both the PKK and the YPG are also fighting ISIS.

And so, in an unbelievably silly attempt to keep from angering Erdogan, the US effectively created a fictional group of “Syrain Arabs” and then claimed that YPG had formed an alliance with the made-up army. Next, Washington dropped 50 tons of ammo into the desert (literally) and claimed that the “Syrian Arab Coalition” had retrieved it. Of course it was the Kurds who actually picked it up, the Pentagon just needed a cover story to feed to Ankara in case Erdogan lost his mind. Which he did.

As noted above, all of this comes in the context of what is supposed to be a cooperative effort between the US and Turkey to fight ISIS.

To continue reading: Washington’s Syria “Strategy” In Complete Disarray

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Russia Closes Ranks With Syria, Iraq And Jordan—-Supplants Washington’s Phony War On ISIS, by Tyler Durden

Posted on October 24, 2015 | Leave a comment

Do stupid things (a definition of the US’s policies in the Middle East since 9/11) and sooner or later somebody’s going to take advantage of it. In this case, it’s the Russians, who are stitching together quite an alliance. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Once it became clear that Moscow and Tehran had jointly planned the incursion in Syria with Russia promising full air support and Iran pledging ground troops from Hezbollah, its various Shiite militias, and the IRGC, we immediately suggested that Iraq was next on the agenda after the Assad regime is restored.

For those unfamiliar with the situation on the ground, we encourage you to read “Who Really Controls Iraq? Inside Iran’s Powerful Proxy Armies,” in which we outline the extent to which Tehran effectively controls both the Iraqi military and the politicians in Baghdad.

The US allows this because i) there’s really not much Washington can do about it, and ii) even if there was, it would mean first trying to root out Iranian influence on the political process and second attempting to separate the Shiite militias from the Iraqi regulars, which would only serve to weaken the country’s ability to resist Sunni extremists like ISIS. The other important thing to understand about Iran’s proxy armies in Iraq is that they are the very same militias fighting alongside the Russians in Syria (we mean “very same” in the most literal sense possible as they were called over the border by Quds commander Qassem Soleimani himself). This means they are Washington’s allies in Iraq but as soon as they cross the border into Syria, they become the targets of US-supported and supplied rebels battling at Aleppo. Obviously, that makes absolutely no sense and is emblematic of just how schizophrenic Washington’s Mid-East strategy has become. It’s also worth noting that these are the same Shiite militias who, with Tehran’s blessing, attacked US troops in Iraq after George Bush destroyed the US-Iran post-9/11 alliance by putting the country in his infamous “Axis Of Evil” (see here for more).

Here’s a picture that should give you an idea about why Iran’s proxy armies have proven particularly effective at bullying the ISIS bully, so to speak:

Meanwhile, flying missions over Iraq is the logical next step for The Kremlin in Russia’s bid to supplant the US as Mid-East superpower puppet master. One would be hard pressed to come up with a more humiliating scenario for Washington than for the US to be effectively kicked out of the country it “liberated” over a decade ago by Vladimir Putin on the excuse that try as they may (or may “not”, depending on how prone you are to conspiracy theories), the Americans are apparently not very good at fighting terror.

To continue reading: Russia Closes Ranks With Syria, Iraq and Jordan

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When War Hawks Coo Like Doves, by Dan Sanchez

Posted on October 20, 2015 | Leave a comment

Lies, damned lies, and lies that ought to land the liar in jail. From Dan Sanchez at antiwar.com:

Disastrous policies often raise the question of whether the policy makers at fault are stupid or evil. The scales tips toward malevolence whenever the guilty parties evince a basic grasp of the reasons why their schemes are calamitous.

For example, Washington’s Syria policy has been a slow motion train wreck. And the “train engineers” keep barreling down the same collision-course track, full steam ahead. Yet they see quite clearly what they are crashing into and why; they have betrayed as much time and again for years.

Hillary Clinton pushed for escalation in Syria as Secretary of State. Yet in February 2012, when a CBS reporter pushed her for not escalating fast enough, she argued:

“We know al Qaeda [leader Ayman al-] Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria. Are we supporting al Qaeda in Syria? (…) If you’re a military planner or if you’re a secretary of state and you’re trying to figure out do you have the elements of an opposition that is actually viable: we don’t see that.”

A month later, President Barack Obama told a neocon who was similarly impatient:

“When you have a professional army that is well-armed and sponsored by two large states who have huge stakes in this, and they are fighting against a farmer, a carpenter, an engineer who started out as protesters and suddenly now see themselves in the midst of a civil conflict —  the notion that we could have, in a clean way that didn’t commit U.S. military forces, changed the equation on the ground there was never true.”

And in June of 2012, Obama scolded yet another hawk at CBS News:

“When you get farmers, dentists, and folks who have never fought before going up against a ruthless opposition in Assad, the notion that they were in a position to suddenly overturn not only Assad but also ruthless, highly trained jihadists if we just sent a few arms is a fantasy. And I think it’s very important for the American people — but maybe more importantly, Washington and the press corps — to understand that.”

Then in September, Obama tried to assure libertarian journalist Ben Swann that:

“We’re not going to just dive in and get involved with a civil war that in fact involves some elements of people who are genuinely trying to get a better life but also involve some folks who would over the long term do the United States harm.”

While dropping these little gems of anti-interventionist wisdom, the actual Syria policy the administration simultaneously pursued flew directly in the face of them. Billions of tax dollars were spent on training, weapons, and materiel for an opposition whose “moderate” component both Obama and Clinton admitted were non-viable. And most of that spending ended up greatly benefiting the “ruthless, highly trained jihadists” “who would over the long term do the United States harm” that both Obama and Clinton warned about.

One group of these jihadists became so strong that, in June of 2014 it added northwestern Iraq to its Syrian conquests and named itself the Islamic State.

To continue reading: When War Hawks Coo Like Doves

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He Said That? 10/7/15

Posted on October 7, 2015 | Leave a comment

From a doctor in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, currently held by the Islamic State:

The issue of doctors leaving the city is almost impossible now or you risk everything—your life, your family, everything. I swear that I, and all those in Mosul from the medical profession, regret the hour that we became doctors.

The Wall Street Journal, “Islamic State Scrambles to Stem Exodus,” 10/7/15

It seems that many doctors, teachers, and other skilled professionals have fled areas that the Islamic State has conquered. It’s not hard to figure out why, but Islamic State is deeply concerned that it is losing the people who actually make any modern society function and is doing all can to stop them from leaving. This is another glance at the on-the-ground situation in Syria and Iraq. For a more extensive account, see “Interview with a Russian-Syrian Soldier.“

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Interview With A Russian-Syrian Soldier

Posted on October 7, 2015 | 2 comments

Here’s a radical idea: read an interview with a Russian-Syrian soldier, even though he is on the “wrong” side of the Syrian embroglio, because he’s actually been in Syria! You will, if you read this rather lengthy interview, look at Syria in a new way, SLL guarantees it. From fortress.blogspot.com via Stucky at theburningplatform:

Sure, this is a long interview. But, useful for the following reasons;

—1) You get a first hand account of what’s going on … and from a guy who is articulate and seems honest.

—2) It shows how a rag-tag force can stand up against even the most powerful militaries around. Good for them, good for us … because some people here think when TSHTF we peon citizens will have no chance against the power of ‘Murika’s police forces and military. That ain’t true.

—3) Doing so will take a lot of sacrifice, courage, and determination. Have you see the pictures of Syria I posted the other day? It appears that about 80% of Syrian infrastructure is destroyed. Yet, the pro-Assad forces still find a way to fight on.

—4) In somewhat of an eye-opener, it shows that not all Muslims are alike (as I posted in an article about Russia & Muslims about a week ago.) There is an enormous difference with Wahhabism and traditional Islam. Also some surprises about Assad and the people.

—5) It’s just a good war story.

============================================

Introduction

In the media, we often see stories about people from all around the world joining ISIS, for one reason or another. At the same time, almost nothing is known about those who are fighting this plague.

We talked to Michel Mizah, a 25-year-old citizen of Russia and Syria, who recently returned from Damascus, where he fought in the “Shabiha” pro-government paramilitary units. He told us what the Syrians think about the war, President Bashar Assad, the Islamic state, and the future.

Why did you decide to go to Syria?

My father is from Syria, and there we still have a lot of relatives with whom we talk to on a daily basis, basically living in two countries at once. We are Christians. My second cousin is fighting in the Syrian army, my uncle and aunt, civilians, were killed in 2012 in Kalamun. So, each time I saw the news, I was plagued by vague uneasiness… For three years, I wanted to go there, but something always got in the way – wife, job, etc. Only now, everything came together, and I was able to go.

When the “Arab Spring” had just begun, how did your family react?

At first, my family sympathized with the protesters. But then it became obvious that the hardliners among the secular opposition work in the interests of Turkey and the Arab monarchies. Plus the course for Islamization was visible early on, and that was a concern.

Like pretty much all normal people, my family, my friends and everyone I know in Syria are strongly against Wahhabis and religious extremism in general.

In Syria, the war is not against Assad, but against civilization itself. ISIS literally keeps slaves, crucifies people, introduces medieval taxes for Christians and kills Shiites and Alawites on the spot…

Do you, personally, want to live according to Sharia law, where you would be killed for smoking or alcohol, and beaten with sticks in the town square for wearing narrow jeans? Neither do we!

And we know that would happen, if Damascus falls. In Raqqa, it’s already like that, the locals tell us. There are still buses traveling, so we know the alternative to Assad very well.

In Damascus, I met a girl, she was only 20 years old, and she spent the last three months in ISIS slavery. One of their commanders bought her as a concubine, and when he died, she was “inherited” by his successor … Relatives barely managed to buy her back.

Did you know where you’ll be going to in Damascus, was there someone waiting for you?

Of course. About two months before departure, through a friend of the family, I got in touch with my future unit commander in “Shabiha”. This is the same “Shabiha”, which the UN in 2012, accused of “crimes against humanity”.

In general, over two months, I told him about myself: Who am I, what can I do, why do I want to come, and so on … And he explained what is going on over there, what I would do, and lots more.

I would have joined the army, but my turn for mobilization comes last, since I am the only breadwinner in the family, and you can’t simply go there for a short time. My cousin is there for three years, and he can’t even see his family, because the frontline is constantly very hot.

Your militia, did it include only Syrians, or was it an international team?

People come from Lebanon and Iran, because they understand that if Syria falls, they are next. They send us military advisers and weapons … The whole “Shiite axis of evil” supports us!

As for the rest of the world, I have not seen fighters from there… It seemed to me that the Embassy of Syria in Russia does not approve of such things. Perhaps this is due to the rumors about the so-called “Russian Legion”, which a few years ago was hired by some company in St. Pete to fight for Assad [officially, to guard some pipeline or other – ed.]. But when they arrived in Damascus, the Russian diplomats protested, and the “legionnaires” were sent back home, a few were prosecuted for mercenary activities [- it’s legal by Russian law to fight in a foreign war, but not to make money from it – ed.].

In general, joining the fight for Syria is only possible if one has Syrian citizenship, or there is some agreement between governments. But the Islamists – they flock to attack Syria from all corners of the world.

To continue reading: Interview With A Russian-Syrian Soldier

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Endgame: Putin Plans To Strike ISIS With Or Without The U.S. by Tyler Durden

Posted on September 24, 2015 | Leave a comment

As SLL recently noted: “Vladimir Putin has deftly illuminated the dissembling behind US policy in Syria” (“Lies, Damnable Lies, and Syria,” 9/19/15). Further elaboration on this point from Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

On Sunday, we noted that Washington’s strategy in Syria has now officially unravelled.

John Kerry, speaking from London following talks with British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, essentially admitted over the weekend that Russia’s move to bolster the Assad regime at Latakia effectively means that the timing of Assad’s exit is now completely indeterminate. Here’s how we summed up the situation:

Moscow, realizing that instead of undertaking an earnest effort to fight terror in Syria, the US had simply adopted a containment strategy for ISIS while holding the group up to the public as the boogeyman par excellence, publicly invited Washington to join Russia in a once-and-for-all push to wipe Islamic State from the face of the earth. Of course The Kremlin knew the US wanted no such thing until Assad was gone, but by extending the invitation, Putin had literally called Washington’s bluff, forcing The White House to either admit that this isn’t about ISIS at all, or else join Russia in fighting them. The genius of that move is that if Washington does indeed coordinate its efforts to fight ISIS with Moscow, the US will be fighting to stabilize the very regime it sought to oust.

Revelations (which surprised no one but the Pentagon apparently) that Moscow is coordinating its efforts in Syria with Tehran only serve to reinforce the contention that Assad isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and the US will either be forced to aid in the effort to destroy the very same Sunni extremists that it in some cases worked very hard to support, or else admit that countering Russia and supporting Washington’s regional allies in their efforts to remove Assad takes precedence over eliminating ISIS. Because the latter option is untenable for obvious reasons, Washington has a very real problem on its hands – and Vladimir Putin just made it worse.

As Bloomberg reports, The Kremlin is prepared to launch unilateral strikes against ISIS targets if the US is unwilling to cooperate.

To continue reading: Endgame: Putin Plans To Strike ISIS

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Lies, Damnable Lies, and Syria, by Robert Gore

Posted on September 19, 2015 | 15 comments

The photo of the three-year-old Syrian boy, Aylan Kurdi, dead, face down on a Turkish beach, will be remembered not just for its emotional impact, but because once and for all it revealed the grotesque and deadly motives of those who press for, and profit from, the never-ending expansion of Western war-making in the Middle East. In a triumph of opportunistic cynicism over truth, restraint, or good taste, they quickly blamed Kurdi’s death on the failure of the US and European governments to depose Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad (“Abusing Dead Syrian Children,” by Daniel McAdams, SLL, 9/4/15).

What is really going on in Syria? SLL posted a good background report, “Unmasking ISIS,” by Washington’s Blog on September 13. Ostensibly, Assad, an Alawite Shiite, is trying to fend off a revolution led by Sunni ISIS, which now controls a large chunk of land in eastern Syria and western Iraq. Who controls ISIS, how much support is it getting from allies outside Syria, who are those allies, why are they supporting ISIS, who is supporting or opposing Assad, and why are they supporting or opposing him, are questions that, once answered, reveal the duplicity of those stumping for “more Western involvement.”

ISIS is a creature of US involvement in Iraq. After defeating and deposing Sunni Saddam Hussein, the US led coalition inflicted democracy, which in majority-Shiite Iraq meant a Shiite government. Justifiably claiming that they were being persecuted, disaffected Sunnis became the base for the establishment of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which was responsible for much of the guerrilla warfare directed at the Iraqi military and occupying US forces. Significant numbers of both the leadership and rank and file of ISIS come from Al Qaeda in Iraq, many having been radicalized during incarcerations in US prison camps.

The other fountainhead of ISIS has been the Syrian rebellion, which began as protests during the “Arab Spring” of 2011 and morphed into a full-scale civil war. The Sunni Arab regimes—Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and Turkey—have long been hostile to Alawite Shiite Assad. Their hostility goes beyond the sectarian difference. Syria has been allied with the Soviet Union since the 1960s and is now allied with Russia and Shiite Iran, while the Sunni regimes have been in the US orbit. Assad, at the behest of his Russia ally, has blocked construction of a natural gas pipeline from Qatar, through Syria, to Turkey, which would supply Europe and allow it to lessen its dependence on Russian natural gas.

The US has dreamed of regime change in Syria since Assad’s father, Hafez Assad was president and cozied up to the Soviet Union. Father and then son have been on the neoconservative hit list with Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and Iran’s government since the early 1990s. An Arab spring rebellion in 2011 appeared to present the perfect opportunity for the regime changers in the US government. Like it had with other “spontaneous” uprisings against regimes it didn’t like, the US government supported the rebels in their effort to topple Assad.

There was one problem with the plan: the groups that were spearheading the rebellion were al Qaeda and allied offshoots, including the embryonic ISIS branch in Syria. It would have been a bit unseemly if the US teamed up with the al Qaeda, responsible for the 9/11 tragedy and number one on the terrorist organization most wanted list. Lacking an ally that would pass muster in the US, the neoconservatives and their allies in the Obama administration simply made one up: moderate Syrians who despised both Assad and Islamic extremists! The Free Syrian Army (FSA), led by a group of Syrian Army defectors, would take down Assad, set up a US-backed democracy, and keep the radical Islamic groups at bay. Senator John McCain showed up in Syria and got his picture taken with members of the FSA, our guys.

The US directly supplied these “moderate” rebel groups with weapons, training, intelligence, and other forms of support. In Iraq, ISIS had commandeered weaponry left by the US, and as it expanded into Syria, it ended up with much of the weaponry ostensibly meant for those imaginary rebels. Out of fear, opportunism, or ideological affinity, most of those upon whom US hopes rested joined ISIS and brought their US-supplied weapons with them. Senator McCain’s photo-op mates signed up with ISIS!

After a three-year, half-a-billion dollar effort to find, vet (recruits had to swear on a stack of Korans that they were good, US-friendly, Muslims, not those barbaric, US-hating Muslims) and train a moderate force that was to number 5,000, the US managed to muster 54 approved Syrian moderates to fight the forces of Assad and ISIS. By the end of this summer they had all been captured or killed, or had deserted. Even McCain has admitted that this fiasco is “a bad, bad sick joke” (“The Pentagon’s Syria debacle,” by Phillip Ewing and Austin Wright, SLL, 9/12/15).

An effective, moderate Syrian fighting force was nothing more than a neoconservative fantasy. Now, they’re boxed in by reality. As it has been since it started, the real fight there is between Shiite Assad’s Syrian government and the Sunni extremists led by ISIS. The primary aim of US allies in the region—the Sunni states and Israel—is to depose Assad (Israel does not like Assad because he supports Hezbollah in Lebanon). The Sunni states have provided funding, weapons, and other support for ISIS, but they swear they’ll go after them once Assad is taken out. Under the pretext of fighting ISIS, Turkey, long plagued by Kurdish separatists, is bombing Syrian and Iraqi Kurds, who are, with Assad’s Syrian army, the only effective fighting forces against ISIS.

Vladimir Putin has deftly illuminated the dissembling behind US policy in Syria. He is sending military advisers and weaponry to help Assad fight ISIS, and he has offered to work with the US. It would be sensible to make common cause with Russia against ISIS (“Putin: Friend or Foe in Syria?” by Patrick Buchanan, SLL, 9/18/15), but such an alliance would severely diminish the likelihood of realizing the neoconservative dream: deposing Assad, installing a puppet more to the liking of the US, the Sunni states, and Israel, and loosening Russia’s grip on Europe’s natural gas supply with the Qatari pipeline through Syria. So the neocons are left muttering about Russia’s dark designs in the Middle East, although Russia, unlike the US, learned its lesson in Afghanistan and has shown no desire to get stuck on the Middle East tar baby. Further mutterings about the dark designs of Assad ally Iran are thrown in for good measure, usually in the same breath as condemnation of the nuclear agreement.

The neoconservatives ultimate goal—US garrisons in Shiite Iran, Iraq, and Syria, puppet governments, and a Middle East made safe for oil interests, Israel, and the repressive Sunni states—would require World War III. To stump for such a war would not play well with a US public grown weary and disgusted after fourteen years of maladroit US adventures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.

Aylan Kurdi will only take you so far. The public has no more enthusiasm for war in Syria now than it did when Assad supposedly crossed President Obama’s red line, and wider conflict is out of the question. So presidential candidates make hay condemning Obama’s irresolution and lost opportunities in the Middle East, but do not specify what they would do there, other than be “tougher” on Assad, ISIS, Iran, Russia, terrorists, and anybody else who doesn’t like the US. Fourteen years of such toughness has killed millions, cost trillions, and prompted a refugee wave that threatens to overwhelm Europe. The looming danger is that one of these tough guys or gals, upon election, puts up rather than shuts up, for putting up could lead to world war. Then there would be no winners and a lot more dead three-year-olds.

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50 Defense Dept. Whistleblowers Slam “Stalinist” Pentagon Officials For Lying About ISIS, by Carey Wedler

Posted on September 14, 2015 | Leave a comment

From Carey Wedler at theantimedia.org:

The Pentagon has erupted in “revolt” amid claims from 50 intelligence analysts that senior defense officials manipulated intelligence reports to downplay the severity of the Islamic State’s increasing upper-hand in the Middle East. According to allegations made in an official complaint with the Department of Defense Inspector General, the officers in question doctored reports — among other things — in order to maintain the Pentagon and president’s narrative that the war against the Islamic State, as well as Al Qaeda in Syria, is succeeding. To the contrary, the dissenting analysts — now effectively whistleblowers — have repeatedly attempted to warn that the situation is far more dismal than what authorities are revealing to the public.

“The cancer was within the senior level of the intelligence command,” one defense official told the Daily Beast, which broke the story late Wednesday. Two senior analysts at CENTCOM — the U.S. military’s central command Middle East and Central Asia — filed the formal complaint with the Defense Department’s Inspector General in July (the analysts are formally employed by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s dedicated spy wing).

Other analysts are willing to back up allegations with “concrete examples.” 11 of 50 intelligence analysts spoke anonymously with the Daily Beast, detailing various methods senior defense officials have used to downplay the terrorist groups’ influence and power. This is particularly concerning considering the story told to the public is already pitiful, portraying grave threats to the United States.

In some cases, analysts allege reports that portrayed the war in too negative a light were simply prevented from moving higher up the chain of command. In other cases, they were sent back down to analysts, prompting many to self-censor their reports out of fear of rejection or punitive action.

To continue reading: 50 Defense Dept. Whistleblowers Slam “Stalinist” Pentagon

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A Refugee Crisis Made in America, by Philip Giraldi

Posted on September 13, 2015 | 1 comment

If you read the previous post, “Unmasking ISIS,” then nothing in this article will come as any surprise. What is surprising is where the article was published, on a site called The American Conservative, from the American Ideas Institute. For those of us who have come to equate conservative with neoconservative, this piece is a breath of fresh air. From Philip Giraldi at theamericanconservative.com:

On April 29th, 2008 I had a Saul on the Road to Damascus moment. I had flipped open the Washington Post and there, on the front page, was a color photo of a two year old Iraqi boy named Ali Hussein being pulled from the rubble of a house that had been destroyed by American missiles. The little boy was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and had on his feet flip-flops. His head was hanging back at an angle that told the viewer immediately that he was dead.

Four days later on May 3rd a letter by a Dunn Loring Virginia woman named Valerie Murphy was printed by the Post. Murphy complained that the Iraqi child victim photo should not have been run in the paper because it would “stir up opposition to the war and feed anti-US sentiment.” I suppose the newspaper thought it was being impartial in printing the woman’s letter, though I couldn’t help but remember that the neocon-dominated Post had generally been unwilling to cover anything antiwar, even ignoring a gathering of 300,000 protesters in Washington in 2005. Rereading the woman’s complaint and also a comment on a website suggesting that the photo of the dead little boy had been staged, I thought to myself, “What kind of monsters have we become.” And in truth we had become monsters. Bipartisan monsters wrapped in the American flag. Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once said that killing 500,000 Iraqi children through sanctions was “worth it.” She is now a respected elder statesman close to the Hillary Clinton campaign.

I had another epiphany last week when I saw the photo of the little Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach like a bit of flotsam. He was wearing a red t-shirt and black sneakers. I thought to myself that many Americans will shake their heads when looking at the photo before moving on, more concerned about Stephen Colbert’s debut on the Late Show and the start of the NFL season.

The little boy is one of hundreds of thousands of refugees trying to get to Europe. The world media is following the crisis by focusing primarily on the inability of unprepared local governments to deal with the numbers of migrants, asking why someone somewhere can’t just “do something.” This means that somehow, as a result, the vast human tragedy has been reduced to a statistic and, inevitably, a political football.

To continue reading: A Refugee Crisis Made in America

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