America’s Multinational Ramadan Assault

By Tony Cartalucci
July 02, 2015
New Eastern Outlook, June 30, 2015

 

It is not hard to fathom who on Earth possesses both the resources and the motivation to coordinate multiple, horrific militant attacks, ending scores of lives and provoking both fear and anger on a global scale such as seen during the recent Ramadan attacks that unfolded in France, Tunisia, Kuwait, and reportedly in China’s western Xinjiang region.

Only a few nations on Earth possess the operational capacity to run coordinated, multinational operations such as this. Only one axis among them has the motivation to do so.

The Attacks 

In Tunisia, nearly 30 were killed in a brazen attack targeting British tourists with assault rifles. Tunisia, which had been for years a bastion of stability in an otherwise troubled region, saw street demonstrations and violence during 2011 amid the wider US-engineered “Arab Spring” which sought to overturn regional political orders in favor of those selected by Wall Street and Washington. After briefly ousting Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from power, his allies appear to have made a comeback. With their rise back to power, Al Qaeda and now the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) have conveniently stepped up operations within the country to match.

Tunisia is in close proximity to Libya, a nation destroyed by NATO’s intervention in 2011, and one that has become a hotbed of terrorist activity, particularly in the nation’s eastern most region where the US has been literally running weapons to Al Qaeda militants both in Libya and as far as Syria via NATO-member Turkey. With US-backed terrorists flowing from Libya to as far as Syria, it is clear that this terrorist nexus possesses the necessary logistics to carry out operations in neighboring Tunisia as well.

Another 27 were killed when a Saudi national with a bomb strapped to himself detonated it at a Shia’a mosque in Kuwait. This fits a recent pattern where what little Al Qaeda/ISIS activity that exists in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf autocracies, is aimed not at the ruling regimes – all stalwart, long-standing allies of the United States and Great Britain – but against Shia’a targets in what is a clear escalation of a proxy war targeting Iran and its regional allies.

A bizarre murder unfolded in France as well, with a suspect apparently decapitating his employer and leaving the severed head at a chemical plant he attempted to crash a vehicle into. The suspect had been well known to security agencies for previous terrorist activity, but allowed, perhaps even coaxed to carry out this latest, fatal attack – a familiar pattern that fits nearly all terrorist attacks carried out in Europe and North America, including the most recent attacks proceeding this latest episode in France itself.

And finally, in China’s Xinjiang region, the US State Department’s “Radio Free Asia” reported at least 18 were killed in an attack carried out by Uighur terrorists. As a side note, the US State Department added in a tasteless attempt to justify the terrorism, claiming that:

Turkic-speaking minority Uyghurs have complained about pervasive ethnic discrimination, religious repression, and cultural suppression by Chinese authorities.

Despite this, it is confirmed that Uighur terrorists have joined the ranks of ISIS in Syria, have received training, and are returning home to China to carry out terrorist attacks. The Lowy Institute’s Interpreter magazine in an article titled, “Tough choices for Beijing following execution of Chinese ISIS militants,” admits:

The involvement of Chinese citizens in ISIS is increasingly under scrutiny. Just two weeks ago, Malaysia’s Home Minister confirmed that 300 Chinese militants had used his country as a transit point to join ISIS. Three weeks ago, Chinese authorities arrested 10 Turkish nationals for providing false passports to alleged terrorists from Xinjiang.

And once again, US support can be found throughout the region in which these terrorists are based in western China. The US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) even goes as far as listing China’s Xinjiang region as “East Turkistan,” a fictional name for the client state the US and its terrorists hope to carve out of Chinese territory.

The Motivation 

It is clear that ISIS is not carrying out these attacks in the hopes of “winning” its war, but instead, to seemingly perpetuate it, expand it, and even push it into so-far spared regions of the planet. The attacks in France and Tunisia served only to anger and frighten European populations who will in turn, only support further foreign wars aimed at “fighting ISIS” but conveniently accomplishing all of Wall Street and Washington’s other goals along the way.

The attack in Tunisia in particular, was another stroke aimed at the ruling government. The attacks in Kuwait were aimed directly at the only viable opposition that threatens the US-backed regime in Kuwait City. Similar attacks have been made in Saudi Arabia itself, aimed not at the US-proxy regime, but at its opposition.

In China it is clear that the United States supports Uighur terrorists and their ambitions to carve off a large portion of China to create a client state the US can further strengthen its encirclement strategy versus Beijing. The US State Department openly funds the political wings of these terrorist groups and fully backs their separatist rhetoric.

It appears that only the United States and its hegemonic ambitions stood to gain from the otherwise senseless violence perpetrated this Ramadan. Its enemies have been directly attacked, and its allies given further justification for military adventures abroad. And not coincidentally, it is only the United States and its vast, criminal intelligence community that possess the operational capacity and network of proxies necessary to organize and execute such large scale and conveniently timed attacks.

The Ramadan attacks serve as a warning that modern-day imperialism is alive and well. Its methods of projecting hegemony are both direct and indirect. With terrorism so potent a weapon, it is assured that this modern empire will continue employing it for as long as it is profitable.

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

US To Begin the Invasion of Syria. Washington Policymakers Call for the Division, Destruction and Military Occupation of Syria

By Tony Cartalucci
June 29, 2015
New Eastern Outlook, June 26, 2015

 

Unbeknownst to the general public, their elected politicians do not create the policy that binds their national destiny domestically or within the arena of geopolitics. Instead, corporate-financier funded think tanks do – teams of unelected policymakers which transcend elections, and which produce papers that then become the foundation of legislation rubber stamped by “legislators,” as well as the enumerated talking points repeated ad naseum by the corporate-media.

Such a policy paper has been recently written by the notorious US policy think-tank, the Brookings Institution, titled, “Deconstructing Syria: Towards a regionalized strategy for a confederal country.” The signed and dated open-conspiracy to divide, destroy, then incrementally occupy a sovereign nation thousands of miles from America’s shores serves as a sobering example of how dangerous and enduring modern imperialism is, even in the 21st century.

Pretext ISIS: US Poured Billions Into “Moderates” Who Don’t Exist

The document openly admits that the US has provided billions in arming and training militants fed into the devastating and increasingly regional conflict. It admits that the US maintains – and should expand – operations in Jordan and NATO-member Turkey to provide even more weapons, cash, and fighters to the already catastrophic conflict.

It then recounts the rise of the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS), but fails to account from where its money, cash, and weapons came. It should be obvious to readers that if the United States has committed billions in cash, weapons, and training on multiple fronts to alleged “moderates” who for all intents and purposes do not exist on the battlefield, a state-sponsor of greater magnitude would be required to create and sustain ISIS and Al Qaeda’s Al Nusra Front who Brookings admits dominates the “opposition” uncontested.

In reality, ISIS’ supply lines lead right into US operational zones in Turkey and Jordan, because it was ISIS and Al Qaeda all along that the West planned to use before the 2011 conflict began, and has based its strategy on ever since – including this most recent leg of the campaign.

The US Invasion of  Syria

After arming and funding a literal region-wide army of Al Qaeda terrorists, the United States now plans to use the resulting chaos to justify what it has sought since the beginning of the conflict when it became clear the Syrian government was not to capitulate or collapse – the establishment of buffer zones now called “safe zones” by Brookings.

These zones once created, will include US armed forces on the ground, literally occupying seized Syrian territory cleared by proxies including Kurdish groups and bands of Al Qaeda fighters in the north, and foreign terrorist militias operating along the Jordanian-Syrian border in the south. Brookings even admits that many of these zones would be created by extremists, but that “ideological purity” wound “no longer be quite as high of a bar.

The US assumes that once this territory is seized and US troops stationed there, the Syrian Arab Army will not dare attack in fear of provoking a direct US military response against Damascus. The Brookings paper states (emphasis added):

The  idea would be to help moderate elements establish reliable safe zones within Syria once they were able. American, as well as Saudi and Turkish and British and Jordanian and other Arab forces would actin support, not only from the air but eventually on the ground via the  presence  of  special  forces  as  well. The  approach would  benefit  from  Syria’s open desert  terrain  which  could  allow  creation  of  buffer  zones  that could  be  monitored  for possible  signs  of  enemy  attack  through  a  combination  of  technologies, patrols,  and other methods that outside special forces could help Syrian local fighters set up.

Were Assad foolish enough to challenge these zones, even if he somehow forced the withdrawal  of  the  outside  special  forces,  he  would  be  likely  to  lose  his  air power  in ensuing  retaliatory  strikes  by  outside  forces,  depriving  his  military  of  one  of its  few advantages over ISIL.Thus, he would be unlikely to do this.

In a single statement, Brookings admits that the government of Syria is not engaged in a war against its own people, but against “ISIL” (ISIS). It is clear that Brookings, politicians, and other strategists across the West are using the threat of ISIS in combination with the threat of direct military intervention as a means of leverage for finally overrunning and seizing Syria entirely.

The Invasion Could Succeed, But Not for US Proxies

The entire plan is predicated on America’s ability to first take and hold these “zones” and subsequently mesh them into functioning autonomous regions. Similar attempts at US “nation building” are currently on display in the ravaged failed state that used to be North Africa’s nation of Libya, Syria’s neighbor to the southeast, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and the list goes on extensively.

The folly of this plan both in attempts to use non-existent credibility and military will to actually implement it, as well as in terms of those foolish enough to place their trust in a nation that has left a swath of global destruction and failed states in its wake stretching from South Vietnam to Libya and back again, can be described only as monumental.

This strategy can almost certainly be used to finally destroy Syria. It cannot however, be used to do any of the things the US will promise in order to get the various players necessary for it to succeed, to cooperate.

Almost certainly there are measures Syria, its allies Iran and Hezbollah, as well as Russia, China, and all other nations facing the threats of Western hegemony can take to ensure that US forces will not be able to take and hold Syrian territory or ultimately succeed in what is essentially an invasion in slow motion. Already the US has used their own ISIS hordes as a pretext to operate militarily within Syrian territory, which as predicted, has led to this next stage in incremental invasion.

An increase in non-NATO peacekeeping forces in Syria could ultimately unhinge Western plans altogether. The presence of Iranian, Lebanese, Yemeni, Afghan, and other forces across Syria, particularly bordering “zone” the US attempts to create, may offer the US the prospect of a multinational confrontation it has neither the political will, nor the resources to undertake.

The ability of Syria and its allies to create a sufficient deterrence against US aggression in Syria, while cutting off the logistical lines the US is using to supply ISIS and other terrorist groups operating in Syria and Iraq will ultimately determine Syria’s survival.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/06/26/us-to-begin-invasion-of-syria/

One year since the fall of Mosul: More US troops headed to Iraq

By Bill Van Auken
June 11, 2015
World Socialist Web Site

 

The White House announced Wednesday that 450 more American troops are being sent to Iraq as “trainers” and “advisers,” bringing the officially acknowledged US force there to over 3,500. The latest escalation of Washington’s renewed military intervention in a country decimated by the war and eight-year-long occupation begun in 2003 comes exactly one year after Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, fell to Islamist fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

In the wake of that stunning debacle for US policy in the region-and, in the first instance, for the Iraqi national army, which the Pentagon had spent nearly a decade and over $20 billion to arm and train—the Obama administration launched its renewed US intervention in Iraq and Syria under the title “Operation Inherent Resolve.”

After nearly 10 months of US-led air strikes combined with the deployment of over 3,000 American troops to train and advise Iraqi government troops, these forces have shown little resolve, inherent or otherwise, melting away last month in the face of an ISIS assault on Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, just as they had in June of last year in Mosul. Once again, massive quantities of US arms, vehicles and equipment fell into the hands of the Islamist guerrillas, effectively making them one of the largest recipients of American weaponry in the entire region.

Earlier this week, President Barack Obama made the startling admission at the G7 summit in Germany that “We don’t yet have a complete strategy,” while indicating that he was waiting for the top brass in the Pentagon and their counterparts in the US intelligence apparatus to tell him what it would be.

The problem with the US strategy is that it is beset with a host of glaring contradictions, not least of which is Washington’s desire to conduct its aggressive policy in the Middle East by means of drone murders, special operations death squads and local proxy forces, while engaging in a “pivot” of its main military might toward confrontation with its major geo-strategic rivals, Russia and China in particular.

While for this reason the Obama administration has been reluctant to deploy larger numbers of US ground troops in Iraq, the logic of events is drawing it into an ever-widening intervention.

In waging its war against ISIS, Washington resembles nothing so much as Dr. Frankenstein seeking to destroy the demon of his own creation. ISIS, which began as Al Qaeda in Iraq, emerged as a direct byproduct of the US invasion and devastation of Iraq, including the sectarian divisions deliberately stoked up between Sunnis and Shiites as part of a divide and rule strategy on the part of the American occupation forces.

Today’s ISIS took shape in the context of the US wars for regime-change launched first in Libya against the late Muammar Gaddafi, in the form of a US-NATO air campaign, and then in Syria, in the form of a proxy war for the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad. In both cases, the US and its allies have relied heavily on the Islamist forces that comprise ISIS and similar Sunni sectarian militias.

Well after Washington was fully aware that the Syrian “rebels” consisted overwhelmingly of ISIS and Al Qaeda-linked elements (as a recently declassified secret US intelligence report from August 2012 makes clear), the CIA continued to coordinate the funneling of arms and funds, including from the Gulf oil monarchies, into their hands.

In promoting the Islamists in Syria, the US aimed to topple Assad as a means of weakening the closest allies of the Damascus regime, Iran and Russia. Now, in Iraq, it has effectively relied on Iranian-backed Shia militias to do the bulk of the fighting against ISIS, even as it verbally deplores their role.

The new deployment announced Wednesday will supposedly concentrate the latest contingent of “trainers” and “advisers” at a sprawling former US base in Anbar province, where they are to train Sunni forces and oversee a campaign to retake Ramadi and the rest of Anbar, which is largely under ISIS control.

This will only increase the drumbeat in Washington for an even more aggressive and direct US military intervention in the region, not only to defeat ISIS in Iraq, but also to complete the overthrow of Assad in Syria.

All of this is being carried out behind the backs of the American people, who are overwhelmingly hostile to war. The US Congress, which has avoided a vote on whether to authorize (after the fact) the use of military force, is directly complicit in an ongoing military intervention that is both unconstitutional and in violation of international law. The media does its part, concealing the far-reaching implications of American militarism while continuously hyping the supposed threat of terrorism in order to justify US military aggression.

The bellicose sentiments of the American ruling class found expression in the testimony delivered to a US Congressional panel last week by longtime Pentagon advisor Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington DC think tank.

“The US needs to act upon a key lesson from Vietnam,” Cordesman told Congress. “Generating or rebuilding forces in the rear is not enough, and is an almost certain recipe for failure. New or weak forces need forward deployed teams of advisors to help them actually fight.”

In other words, Iraqi government troops will fight only if they are led by US “advisors” sent into combat with them. One would think that the larger lesson of Vietnam is that such tactical remedies cannot overcome the underlying problem of getting an indigenous force to fight on behalf of a corrupt puppet regime imposed by US imperialism.

The second prescription provided by Cordesman is that the Pentagon cast off its “restrictions on the use of airpower” and accept the “grim realities of war.”

“The US cannot make avoiding all civilian casualties a strategic objective,” he insisted, adding, “There is nothing humanitarian about saving a small number of civilian lives and opening up whole towns and cities to prolonged occupation by threats” such as ISIS.

Given that reports compiled by independent journalists place the number of Iraqi and Syrian civilians killed in the air strikes conducted by the US and its allies at between 418 and 850, what Cordesman is advocating is a Vietnam-style slaughter from the air. He speaks for influential layers of the ruling establishment and the Pentagon that want a quick resolution of the crisis in Iraq so that they can turn their attention to the preparation of far more catastrophic wars against nuclear-armed Russia and China.

 

Obama hints at escalation of Iraq-Syria war

By Patrick Martin
June 10, 2015
World Socialist Web Site

 

President Obama ended the G7 summit in Bavaria Monday with a press conference where he took several questions on the deepening crisis in the Middle East and North Africa, and dropped hints of an impending US escalation of the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

The summit itself focused largely on the mounting threats by the US and the European Union against Russia over the crisis in eastern Ukraine. But officials of three countries engaged in conflicts with Islamist insurgents—Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi of Iraq, President Caid Essebsi of Tunisia, and President Muhammad Buhari of Nigeria—traveled to the Alpine resort hotel for talks with the G7 leaders.

The official summit communiqué did little more than recycle boilerplate about the need to fight terrorism by curbing the flow of funds and foreign fighters into the Middle East and northern Africa, as well as “implementing the necessary measures to detect and prevent acts of terrorism” within the G7 countries themselves—i.e., step up the assault on the democratic rights of Muslim minorities and of the population as a whole.

The G7 statement welcomed “the continued efforts of the Global Coalition to counter” ISIS in Iraq and Syria, a “coalition” which includes all the G7 participants themselves, as well as the reactionary oil sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf. But it gave no hint of further actions.

This was left to Obama at his press conference, where he was asked about the US response to the debacle suffered by the Iraqi government—and its Washington patron—with the fall of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, captured by ISIS last month.

The American media, in particular, seemed to anticipate a significant escalation of the US military presence in Iraq. One reporter asked, “In today’s bilateral [meeting] with Prime Minister Abadi, you pledged to step up assistance to Iraq. I’m wondering if that includes additional U.S. military personnel.”

Obama indicated that the main focus of US intervention was “accelerating the number of Iraqi forces that are properly trained and equipped and have a focused strategy and good leadership.” He continued: “We don’t yet have a complete strategy because it requires commitments on the part of the Iraqis, as well, about how recruitment takes place, how that training takes place. And so the details of that are not yet worked out.”

This last remark was widely commented on in the American media as an indication of the disarray in US policy in Iraq and Syria. It came on the eve of the first anniversary of the ISIS capture of Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city, an event which shook the US puppet regime in Baghdad, as thousands of Iraqi Army soldiers abandoned their weapons, stripped off their uniforms and fled the attack of a much smaller force of Sunni Islamist insurgents.

The reporter pressed the issue, asking, “Is it fair to say that additional military personnel—U.S. military personnel—are what’s under consideration?”

Obama conceded that this was true, although he tried to present it as limited to training rather than more direct participation in combat operations. “I think what is fair to say is that all the countries in the international coalition are prepared to do more to train Iraqi security forces,” he said.

He acknowledged, however, that there were “places where we’ve got more training capacity than we have recruits.” In other words, because of the opposition of the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, there has been little recruitment of Sunni tribal fighters, let alone the formation of a Sunni-based National Guard force to fight in Anbar and other Sunni-populated provinces.

Obama emphasized the role of the Pentagon in preparing plans to reverse the gains made by ISIS, declaring that, “when a finalized plan is presented to me by the Pentagon, then I will share it with the American people.” This presents, perhaps more bluntly than Obama intended, the real relationship: the military will decide the policy, and then Obama will serve as its political front.

Given the evident inability of the Baghdad regime to counter ISIS, there is little doubt that the US military brass is pushing for a drastic increase both in the number of American troops and in the scope of their deployment, including combat roles such as spotting for air strikes.

As McClatchy News Service noted in an article on the anniversary of the fall of Mosul, which took place June 10, 2014, “The number of people living under Islamic State rule has grown since the U.S. bombing began. Virtually the entire population of the mostly Sunni province of Anbar, Iraq’s largest, is under the group’s control, with the addition in May of Ramadi, the provincial capital, a city of nearly 900,000. In Syria, the city of Palmyra, a famed tourist destination, also fell to the Islamic State in May, and most of the province of Deir el Zour, an important oil producing area, has come under Islamic State control since the onset of the U.S. bombing campaign.”

While US officials claim the bombing campaign has killed 10,000 ISIS fighters since it began, these losses have been more than replaced by an influx of new recruits to the Islamist group. A recent UN report estimated that the number of foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria had risen 70 percent over the past year.

The geographic scope of ISIS actions, or actions by its sympathizers, has continued to expand. On Tuesday three ISIS militants disguised as Iraqi Army soldiers attacked a local government office at Amiryat al-Falluja, on the western edge of the Baghdad metropolis, killing eight people and wounding seventeen. There were also several car bombings in eastern and northern Baghdad, targeting either army patrols or shopping areas in Shiite-populated districts.

While the position of ISIS appears to be stronger in both Iraq and Syria since the US bombing campaign began, the position of the Assad government in Damascus has significantly deteriorated. In the past few months, key positions in the northeast (Idlib), south (Daraa) and east-central (Palmyra) have fallen to various opposition forces, including the Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda, the al-Nusra Front, and ISIS launched an attack on another provincial capital, Hasakeh in the northeast, last week.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested that the G7 should work “in tandem” with Russia to find a solution to Syria—in other words, to pressure Assad to step down—and she described Moscow as an “important player” in the Middle East.

British Prime Minister David Cameron echoed this sentiment after an hour-long meeting with Obama largely focused on the war with ISIS. His office issued a statement confirming Merkel’s view. “The idea is that it might be possible to work with the Russians on a transition with a different leadership in Syria,” the statement said. “The Prime Minister has spoken to President Putin about this and it was also discussed by the American Secretary of State John Kerry when he visited Russia recently.”

The attempt to court Putin’s support in Syria, while threatening Russia with military exercises on air, sea and land, all along the Russian border with Europe, is another demonstration of the incoherent and contradictory character of imperialist policy in the Middle East. There is only one consistent thread—the imperialist powers are determined to maintain their domination of the oil wealth of the region, and will kill as many people as necessary to do so.

US Intelligence Responds: ”No Comment” To Questions of the US Government “Knowingly” Supporting The Islamic State (ISIS)

By Brandon Turbeville
Global Research, June 10, 2015
Activist Post, June 8, 2015

 

On May 25, I wrote an article entitled “DOD Admits Supporting ISIS, Buffer Zones In Syria,” where I detailed the importance of documents obtained by Judicial Watch via a lawsuit filed by the watchdog organization against the Defense Intelligence Agency revealing that the US government was not only well aware of the fact that al-Qaeda/AQI/ISIS made up the bulk of the so-called “opposition” in Syria but that the US supported these terrorist organizations in their drive to create an “Islamic State” in Syria and Iraq.

These documents were stunning in their open admission that the US government was knowingly supporting al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria and even more so in the admission that the US gov’t was supporting the creation of the Islamic State. But they were only stunning in the fact that they were released without the relevant portions being redacted. They were much less than surprising when one considers the fact that any informed observer was able to deduce the US policy long before the documents were ever released.

After all, every action the US took in terms of its policy toward AQI/ISIS resulted in strengthening the organization. Even more so, when one comes to understand the fact that the ISIS/AQI was entirely created by the United States and NATO to begin with, the story of what is happening in the Middle East becomes that much clearer. In other words, it was the open admission of support for ISIS – in un-redacted official form – was surprising. The actual support for ISIS, unfortunately, was not.

With growing reports in the alternative (but notable silence amongst the mainstream) press, it was almost inevitable that the corporate media or the intelligence apparatus would have to address what they surely deem publicly to be a “conspiracy theory.”

That response finally came on May 26, when Brad Hoff of the Levant Report, one of the reporters who helped break the story of the DIA documents in the alternative and independent media, was contacted by the DIA in order to provide a statement regarding the documents. This was long after Hoff had published his article on the DIA release.

Interestingly enough, the statement from the DIA can be summed up in one word – “Nothing.” This is because the answer to every single question asked by Hoff was essentially met with “no comment.”

In other words, when asked whether or not the United States has actively supported al-Qaeda, ISIS, and/or other terrorist organizations, the DIA answered that it could not confirm that the United States has NOT funded al-Qaeda and ISIS. Obviously, this is because the United States has indeed funded these organizations. It created them.

Still, the very fact that the DIA could not answer such a question with a resounding “NO!” is telling enough. But that it would refuse to answer the question even with a shaky and questionable “no” must lead the reader to believe that the documents and the reports by Hoff, myself, and others clearly contain validity. It also hints that there may be much more blatant and incriminating evidence lying about in regards to the US funding and support of ISIS.

You can read Brad Hoff’s interview entitled “The DIA Gives An Official Response To LevantReport.com Article Alleging The West Backed ‘Islamic State,’” (reposted with permission from the source) and judge for yourself whether or not the DIA’s official explanation for the contents of the documents is sufficient.

The report is as follows:

ON FRIDAY, MAY 22, I contacted the DIA Public Affairs office seeking official response to my May 19 article entitled, 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency document: West will facilitate rise of Islamic State “in order to isolate the Syrian regime”. DIA Public Affairs did not respond at that time.

YESTERDAY (5/26), THE DIA CONTACTED ME via email and requested that I submit my questions. Today, May 27, DIA Public Affairs spokesman James M. Kudla contacted me via telephone at 1:37pm (Eastern Standard Time) and agreed to give an official DIA comment to my questions concerning the declassified 2012 DIA intelligence report released through Freedom of Information Act request to Judicial Watch (14-L-0552/DIA/287-293).

THE BELOW IS A FULL TRANSCRIPT of the phone interview. Permission is given by Levant Report to freely copy and circulate.*

James Kudla [JK]: In response to the questions you submitted through email… As noted in the document itself, it’s an informational report and is not finally evaluated intelligence, and the redacted sections in the document released under FOIA means it is not a complete document.

Brad Hoff [BH]: Does this document forecast in 2012 that the external powers supporting the Syrian opposition would allow an Islamic State in Eastern Syria in order to isolate or put military pressure on the Syrian regime?

JK: I have no comment on the contents of the document, nor on your interpretation of the document in your article. To reiterate, the document is raw information and has not been interpreted or analyzed, so it is not a final intelligence product.

BH: Does this document affirm that the DoD knew that what the document refers to as the West was supporting an opposition insurgency in Syria that had elements of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, or AQI, within in?

JK: I do not speak for the Department of Defense, only for the DIA. For the DoD you would have to call the Pentagon’s Public Affairs desk. I have no comment on the contents of the document.

BH: Can you confirm that this particular document FOIA released, marked 14-L-0552/DIA/287-293, was circulated among the Joint Staff, USCENTCOM, CIA, DHS, Dept. of State, SecDef office, and those agencies listed under the header?

JK: I can’t confirm how it was circulated or who read it, but we can confirm that copies were sent to its addressees listed in the header information.

BH: Are you able to dispel some current headlines that say the West aligned itself with ISIS during 2012 or at any point during the conflict in Syria?

JK: There are a lot of headlines circulating, I cannot evaluate each one. I cannot comment on that.

BH: Would you like to take this opportunity to dispel any accusations currently circulating?

JK: I have no comment on that.

BH: Are you able to at least deny that the DIA’s analysis revealed that the West backed ISIS at some point during the conflict in Syria?

JK: No comment. I have no additional comments for you.

—END INTERVIEW

The above is official comment given to Brad Hoff from:

JAMES M. KUDLA, PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICER, OFFICE OF CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS, DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, DIA HQ N635i

Brandon Turbeville is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University and is the author of six books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 andvolume 2, and The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria. Turbeville has published over 500 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV.  He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com. 

US-led Coalition “Against ISIS”: Warplanes “Mistakenly” Strike Iraqi Army Bases in Fallujah, Kill Iraqi Soldiers

By Global Research News
Global Research, June 8, 2015
FARS News Agency, June 6, 2015

 

Fighter jets of the US-led coalition against ISIL once again struck the Iraqi forces’ positions in the province of Anbar, in Western Iraq, on Saturday.

The US-led coalition warplanes hit the bases of Iraqi army’s Hezbollah battalions in Fallujah in Anbar province, killing 6 soldiers and injuring 8 others.

In early May, the anti-ISIL coalition forces struck the position of Iraq’s popular forces near Baghdad, killing a number of volunteer forces.

The US-led coalition warplanes hit an arms production workshop of the popular forces near the Iraqi capital, destroying the workshop and its ammunition completely.

Two members of Iraq’s popular forces were killed in the attack.

The US has repeatedly struck the popular forces’ positions in different parts of Iraq.

On March 29, the US fighter jets struck the positions of Iraq’s popular forces during their fierce clashes with ISIL terrorists near Tikrit, injuring a number of fighters.

The US and coalition forces conducted eight airstrikes near Tikrit, but they hit the popular forces’ positions instead of ISIL.

In February, an Iraqi provincial official lashed out at the western countries and their regional allies for supporting Takfiri terrorists in Iraq, revealing that the US airplanes still continue to airdrop weapons and foodstuff for the ISIL terrorists.

“The US planes have dropped weapons for the ISIL terrorists in the areas under ISIL control and even in those areas that have been recently liberated from the ISIL control to encourage the terrorists to return to those places,” Coordinator of Iraqi popular forces Jafar al-Jaberi told FNA.

He noted that eyewitnesses in Al-Havijeh of Kirkuk province had witnessed the US airplanes dropping several suspicious parcels for ISIL terrorists in the province.

“Two coalition planes were also seen above the town of Al-Khas in Diyala and they carried the Takfiri terrorists to the region that has recently been liberated from the ISIL control,” Al-Jaberi said.

Meantime, Head of Iraqi Parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee Hakem al-Zameli also disclosed that the anti-ISIL coalition’s planes have dropped weapons and foodstuff for the ISIL in Salahuddin, Al-Anbar and Diyala provinces.

In January, al-Zameli underlined that  the coalition is the main cause of ISIL’s survival in Iraq.

“There are proofs and evidence for the US-led coalition’s military aid to ISIL terrorists through air(dropped cargoes),” he told FNA at the time.

Iraq War Propaganda Redux: U.S. Claims Syrian Government Supporting ISIS

By WashingtonsBlog
June 4, 2015
Washington’s Blog

 

West Busted Supporting ISIS … Tries Instead to Point Finger At Syrian Government

America’s closest allies have been busted supporting ISIS in order to topple Syria’s government.  Mainstream U.S. writers are calling for open support of ISIS and Al Qaeda to enact regime change in Syria.

And a newly-declassified government document hints that the West supported the creation of ISIS.

This may sound far-fectched and wild-eyed  … But the following former high-level US and UK intelligence officials and whistleblowers confirm that the document implicates the West in the birth of ISIS:

• Military analyst – and famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower – Daniel Ellsberg

• High-level NSA official Thomas Drake

• Well-known FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley

• Senior MI6 officer Alastair Crooke

• MI5 counter-terrorism officer Annie Machon

• British counter-terrorism officer Charles Shoebridge

In any event, whether or not you believe the West created ISIS, the U.S. is now trying to blame the single most unlikely entity imaginable for ISIS … the Syrian government.

Specifically,  the U.S. Embassy in Syria just accused the Syrian government of supporting ISIS:

This is all kinds of silly … and is Iraq War propaganda redux.

Specifically, the Syrian government and ISIS are mortal enemies.

The Syrian government – which is allied with Shia Muslims – has been battling Sunni jihadis for many years. ISIS are Sunnis … the arch-enemy of Shias and the Syrian government.  The Syrian government is ruled by a sect of Shias called Alawites.

In other words, ISIS and the Syrian government are on opposite sides of the war, and have been ever since ISIS was formed.

Similarly, in the run up to the Iraq War, Bush and the gang said that Saddam was in bed with Al Qaeda.   Only one little problem: Saddam and Al Qaeda hated each other’s guts.

Flashback:  A Bogus Iraq-Qaeda “Connection”

Because the accusations that the Syrian government is supporting ISIS mirror so closely what happened in the run up to the Iraq war, let’s recap …

5 hours after the 9/11 attacks, Donald Rumsfeld said “my interest is to hit Saddam”. He also said “Go massive . . . Sweep it all up. Things related and not.”

And at 2:40 p.m. on September 11th, in a memorandum of discussions between top administration officials, several lines below the statement “judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [that is, Saddam Hussein] at same time”, is the statement “Hard to get a good case.” In other words, top officials knew that there wasn’t a good case that Hussein was behind 9/11, but they wanted to use the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to justify war with Iraq anyway.

Moreover, “Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the [9/11] attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda”.

And a Defense Intelligence Terrorism Summary issued in February 2002 by the United States Defense Intelligence Agency cast significant doubt on the possibility of a Saddam Hussein-al-Qaeda conspiracy.

And yet Bush, Cheney and other top administration officials claimed repeatedly for years that Saddam was behind 9/11. See this analysis. Indeed, Bush administration officials apparently swore in a lawsuit that Saddam was behind 9/11.

Moreover, President Bush’s March 18, 2003 letter to Congress authorizing the use of force against Iraq, includes the following paragraph:

(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Therefore, the Bush administration expressly justified the Iraq war to Congress by representing that Iraq planned, authorized, committed, or aided the 9/11 attacks.

Indeed, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind reports that the White House ordered the CIA to forge and backdate a document falsely linking Iraq with Muslim terrorists and 9/11 … and that the CIA complied with those instructions and in fact created the forgery, which was then used to justify war against Iraq. And see this.

Suskind also revealed that “Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official ‘that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.’ ”

Cheney made the false linkage between Iraq and 9/11 on many occasions.

For example, according to Raw Story, Cheney was still alleging a connection between Iraq and the alleged lead 9/11 hijacker in September 2003 – a year after it had been widely debunked. When NBC’s Tim Russert asked him about a poll showing that 69% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein had been involved in 9/11, Cheney replied:

It’s not surprising that people make that connection.

And even after the 9/11 Commission debunked any connection, Cheney said that the evidence is “overwhelming” that al Qaeda had a relationship with Saddam Hussein’s regime , that Cheney “probably” had information unavailable to the Commission, and that the media was not ‘doing their homework’ in reporting such ties.

Again, the Bush administration expressly justified the Iraq war by representing that Iraq planned, authorized, committed, or aided the 9/11 attacks. See this, this, this.

On December 16, 2005, Bush admitted “There was no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the attack of 9/11″ (and see this video).  However, Bush and Cheney continued to frequently invoke 9/11 as justification for the Iraq war.  And see this. (Cheney finally admitted in 2009 that there was no link.)

A bipartisan Senate Report from 2006 found that Bush misled the press on Iraq link to Al-Qaeda.

The administration’s false claims about Saddam and 9/11 helped convince a large portion of the American public to support the invasion of Iraq. While the focus now may be on false WMD claims, it is important to remember that, at the time, the alleged link between Iraq and 9/11 was at least as important in many people’s mind as a reason to invade Iraq.

Top Bush administration officials not only knowingly lied about a non-existent connection between Al Qaida and Iraq, but they pushed and insisted that interrogators use special torture methods aimed at extracting false confessions in an attempt to create such a false linkage.

McClatchy reported in 2009:

Former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration…

For most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there.”

***

When people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people to push harder,” he continued.”Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn’t any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam . . .

A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under “pressure” to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.

“While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq,” Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. “The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.”

“I think it’s obvious that the administration was scrambling then to try to find a connection, a link (between al Qaida and Iraq),” [Senator] Levin said in a conference call with reporters. “They made out links where they didn’t exist.”

Levin recalled Cheney’s assertions that a senior Iraqi intelligence officer had met Mohammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, in the Czech Republic capital of Prague just months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The FBI and CIA found that no such meeting occurred.

In other words, top Bush administration officials not only knowingly lied about a non-existent connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq, but they pushed and insisted that interrogators use special torture methods aimed at extracting false confessions to attempt to create such a false linkage.

The Washington Post reported the same year:

Despite what you’ve seen on TV, torture is really only good at one thing: eliciting false confessions. Indeed, Bush-era torture techniques, we now know, were cold-bloodedly modeled after methods used by Chinese Communists to extract confessions from captured U.S. servicemen that they could then use for propaganda during the Korean War.

So as shocking as the latest revelation in a new Senate Armed Services Committee report may be, it actually makes sense — in a nauseating way. The White House started pushing the use of torture not when faced with a “ticking time bomb” scenario from terrorists, but when officials in 2002 were desperately casting about for ways to tie Iraq to the 9/11 attacks — in order to strengthen their public case for invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 at all.

***

Gordon Trowbridge writes for the Detroit News: “Senior Bush administration officials pushed for the use of abusive interrogations of terrorism detainees in part to seek evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq, according to newly declassified information discovered in a congressional probe.

Colin Powell’s former chief of staff (Colonel Larry Wilkerson) also wrote in 2009 that the Bush administration’s “principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qaeda.”

Here We Go Again …

Of course, truth is the first casualty of war, and so the fact that the Syrian government and ISIS are mortal enemies or that Saddam and Al Qaeda hated each other makes no difference in the middle of a tidal wave of propaganda.

The U.S. has decided on regime change (again!) in Syria, just like it committed to regime change (again!) in Iraq.

And America will say and do anything to get its war on.

The US arming of ISIS

By Bill Van Auken
June 3, 2015
World Socialist Web Site

 

Ministers from 20 countries assembled in Paris June 2 in what was billed as a meeting of the coalition to combat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). This alliance, cobbled together by Washington, consists largely of NATO allies together with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf oil monarchies.

Notably absent from the proceedings were three countries that have been heavily involved in the fight against ISIS: Syria, Iran and Russia. This was by US design.

At the outset of the Paris meeting, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi accused the world of having “failed” Iraq, calling attention to the recent advances of ISIS in both Iraq and Syria as well as the uninterrupted flow of Islamist foreign fighters into both countries.

For his part, US Deputy Under Secretary of State Anthony Blinken insisted that Washington and its allies are pursuing a “winning strategy,” and that it would succeed “if we remain united, determined and focused.”

Over the past several weeks, this “winning strategy” has seen ISIS capture Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s Anbar province, as well as the historic city of Palmyra in Syria. In the past few days, ISIS forces have advanced into Aleppo province in Syria, overrunning rival Islamist militias and Syrian government troops as well. This offensive has proceeded without any interference from US and allied warplanes supposedly waging an air war against ISIS.

“Focused” is scarcely a word that any objective observer would use to describe US policy in the region. While claiming to be committed to a war against ISIS, Washington and its regional allies have time and again proven themselves to be its principal sources of strength.

This movement did not exist until the US launched its criminal war of aggression against Iraq in 2003, killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and stoking sectarian tensions as part of a strategy of divide-and-conquer that deliberately pitted Shiites and Sunnis against each other.

It grew stronger based on the US-NATO war for regime change in Libya, which utilized Al Qaeda-linked militias—now affiliated with ISIS—as ground troops in overthrowing and murdering Muammar Gaddafi and plunging the country into a state of chaos that continues to this day. It was further strengthened by the US-backed war for regime change in Syria, in which ISIS emerged as the most powerful faction in the bloody sectarian war to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad.

The latest ISIS offensive has been made possible by a massive infusion of US weapons. Prime Minister Abadi admitted Monday that the Islamists captured some 2,300 armored Humvees—worth over one billion dollars—when it routed Iraqi security forces in Mosul nearly a year ago.

In a Reuters column Tuesday, Peter Van Buren, a former US State Department official in Iraq, reported that, in addition, at least 40 M1A2 main battle tanks as well as vast quantities of “small arms and ammunition, including 74,000 machine guns, and as many as 52 M198 howitzer moil gun systems” fell into the hands of the Islamist militia.

There is an inherent logic in the flow of US arms to ISIS, which, while officially branded as America’s most dangerous terrorist threat, is at the same time the most powerful military opponent of the Assad government in Syria.

It would not be the first time that American weapons were funneled to an ostensible enemy in order to further the counterrevolutionary aims of US imperialism. Thirty years ago, a similar scenario played out in what became known as the Iran-Contra affair, with a secret network in the White House organizing the sale of arms to Iran—then labeled by Washington as a terrorist nation—to fight against Iraq and, most crucially, to obtain money to secretly and illegally finance and arm the so-called contras in a CIA-orchestrated terrorist war against Nicaragua.

Whether or not similar behind-the-scenes machinations underlie the massive rearmament of ISIS, it would appear that different factions within the US government and its gargantuan military and intelligence apparatus are waging different wars in Iraq and Syria.

For a sizable faction within the US ruling establishment, the overthrow of Assad and with it the isolation, weakening and ultimate destruction of the governments of both Iran and Russia remain the overriding strategic aims. In the absence of the so-called moderate rebels that US imperialism and its pseudo-left apologists have tirelessly attempted to conjure up, they are prepared to utilize ISIS, the Al Nusra Front and similar Al Qaeda-linked elements to further these ends.

These strategic aims far outweigh any concern over terrorism, which they believe has its own uses as a means of terrorizing the American people into accepting war and police state measures.

This orientation likewise has a long history, going back to the US backing of Islamist elements in Afghanistan with the aim of giving the Soviet Union what was then described as its “own Vietnam.” That venture produced the Al Qaeda movement, which is officially blamed for the attacks of 9/11.

On the superficial level of media analysis, it becomes increasingly difficult to make any sense of American foreign policy. The apparent pursuit of inherently contradictory policies is bound up with the unavoidable difficulties that arise from attempting to exert control over the entire planet. Inevitably, this quest produces one catastrophe after another, from Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Libya, Syria and beyond.

Behind the apparent incoherence of American policy lie objectives that, at their deepest level, are wholly irrational. That is, the attempt to prop up by military means a position of global political hegemony that is already in advanced and irretrievable decline.

The bid by Washington to overcome by means of armed violence powerful objective tendencies rooted in the historic crisis of US and world capitalism yields a succession of utterly reckless and destructive interventions that together drive inexorably toward a Third World War.

 

 

US State Department sponsored Training of ISIS Terrorists, Report

By Press TV
June 1, 2015
Press TV

 

The US State Department has confirmed that an ISIL militant who calls for terrorist attacks against the United States in a new online video was trained on American soil by Blackwater. 

Officials told CNN on Saturday that Colonel Gulmurod Khalimov, a former head of Tajikistan’s special forces, took part in counterterrorism courses as part of a program sponsored by the State Department.

ISIL militant Colonel Gulmurod Khalimov was trained on American soil by Blackwater.

Blackwater Worldwide, which is now known as Academi and is based in McLean, Virginia, is the most notorious private security firm that had operated in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In his online video, Khalimov appears in black ISIL clothing with a sniper rifle and a bandolier of ammunition, claiming that he attended programs on American soil three times.

State Department spokeswoman Pooja Jhunjhunwala confirmed his claims.

“From 2003-2014 Colonel Khalimov participated in five counterterrorism training courses in the United States and in Tajikistan, through the Department of State’s Diplomatic Security/Anti-Terrorism Assistance program,” said Jhunjhunwala.

The program trains candidates from participating countries in the counterterrorism techniques, so they can fight terrorists.

The militant was trained in crisis response, tactical management of special events, tactical leadership training and other related issues, according to a State Department official.

Khalimov says in the video that what he witnessed during his training in the US turned him against Washington.

“Listen, you American pigs: I’ve been to America three times. I saw how you train soldiers to kill Muslims,” he says in Russian. “You taught your soldiers how to surround and attack, in order to exterminate Islam and Muslims.”

The ISIL terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, now control large parts of Iraq and Syria.

Since last year, the US and some of its allies have been carrying out airstrikes against ISIL inside Iraq and Syria.

On February 19, the United States and Turkey inked an agreement to train and arm what they call “moderate” militants in Syria.

The Pentagon has deployed hundreds of Special Forces to the Middle East to train “moderate” militants to fight ISIL terrorists.

Obama’s Gun-Running Operation: Weapons and Support for “Islamic Terrorists” in Syria and Iraq. “Create Constructive Chaos” and “Redraw the Map of the Middle East”

By Julie Lévesque
May 29, 2015
Global Research

 

Newly disclosed Pentagon documents prove what we’ve known for a while now: the Obama administration knew as early as 2012 that weapons were being sent from Benghazi, Libya, to rebels in Syria.

The U.S. government also knew at the time that:

“the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and [Al Qaeda in Iraq were] the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.”

But did they just “know” or was it part of the plan?

These official documents of the Obama administration add to the large  amount of evidence proving that the actual chaos and havoc wreaked by extremist groups in the Middle East was deliberately created by the U.S. and its allies and is not the result of a “failed foreign policy”.

Judicial Watch recently revealed:

The DoD documents also contain the first official documentation that the Obama administration knew that weapons were being shipped from the Port of Benghazi to rebel troops in Syria. An October 2012 report confirms:

Weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the Port of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The weapons shipped during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s, and 125 mm and 155mm howitzers missiles.

During the immediate aftermath of, and following the uncertainty caused by, the downfall of the ((Qaddafi)) regime in October 2011 and up until early September of 2012, weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The Syrian ports were chosen due to the small amount of cargo traffic transiting these two ports. The ships used to transport the weapons were medium-sized and able to hold 10 or less shipping containers of cargo.

…

The heavily redacted document does not disclose who was shipping the weapons. (Benghazi Scandal: Obama Administration Knew Weapons Were Being Sent to Al-Qaeda in Syria, New Documents Show, Judicial Watch 18 May 2015)

Although the documents do not reveal who was responsible for sending weapons to Syria, it is quite obvious from the language used in the documents that it was a US initiative and the CIA presence in Benghazi at the time suggests that US intelligence was behind this gun-running operation.

Libyan Terrorists in Syria

On September 11, 2012, the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was attacked. Four people were killed, including the U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and two CIA officers.

In August 2013, Business Insider reported :

The Agency, for its part, doesn’t want anyone knowing what it was doing in the Libyan port city.

On Thursday Drew Griffin and Kathleen Johnston of CNN reported that the CIA “is going to great lengths to make sure whatever it was doing, remains a secret.”

Sources told CNN that 35 Americans were in Benghazi that night — 21 of whom were working out of the annex — and that several were wounded, some seriously.

One source said: “You have no idea the amount of pressure being brought to bear on anyone with knowledge of this operation.”

Among the questions are whether CIA missteps contributed to the security failure in Benghazi and, more importantly, whether the Agency’s Benghazi operation had anything to do with reported heavy weapons shipments from the local port to Syrian rebels.

In short, the CIA operation is the most intriguing thing about Benghazi. (Michael B. Kelley and Geoffrey Ingersoll, Intrigue Surrounding The Secret CIA Operation In Benghazi Is Not Going Away, Business Insider, August 3, 2013)

Last January, the Citizens Commission on Benghazi concluded that the “Obama White House and the State Department under the management of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ‘changed sides in the war on terror’ in 2011 by implementing a policy of facilitating the delivery of weapons to the al-Qaida-dominated rebel militias in Libya attempting to oust Moammar Gadhafi from power”, WND reported.

WND added that

“several members of the commission have disclosed their finding that the mission of Christopher Stevens, prior to the fall of Gadhafi and during Stevens’ time as U.S. ambassador, was the management of a secret gun-running program operated out of the Benghazi compound.” (Jerome R. Corsi,Libya: U.S. Generals Conclude Obama Backed Al-Qaida and Operated a Secret Gun-Running Program in Benghazi, WND, January 20, 2015)

We’ve also known for several years that Western special operations forces were on the ground training rebels to fight against Assad.

In January 2012, Michel Chossudovsky reported:

Several articles in the British media confirm that British Special Forces are training Syrian rebels.

The underlying pattern is similar to that of Libya where British SAS were on the ground prior to the launching of NATO’s military intervention.

A Responsibility to Protect (R2P) NATO intervention modelled on Libya is contemplated… The reports confirm that British military and  intelligence operatives are already on the ground inside Syria. (Michel Chossudovsky, SYRIA: British Special Forces, CIA and MI6 Supporting Armed Insurgency. NATO Intervention Contemplated, Global Research, January 7, 2012)

Even CNN reported back in 2012 that rebels were being trained by defense contractors to handle chemical weapons:

The US and some of its European allies “are using defense contractors to train Syrian rebels on how to secure chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria,” according to “a senior US official and several senior diplomats,” CNN reports.

The US-funded training is going on inside Syria, as well as in neighboring Turkey and Jordan and “involves how to monitor and secure stockpiles and handle weapons sites and materials,” according to CNN. US Defense Contractors Training Syrian Rebels to Handle Chemical Weapons

Bashar Al-Assad Is The Target

The deadly chemical weapons were later used against Syrian soldiers and civilians. The U.S. government and the Western mainstream media tried to blame President Assad, but a UN investigation later concluded that it was  the rebels who had used the chemical weapons.

Another official document from 2012 revealed by Judicial Watch indicates that the “growing sectarian direction of the war was predicted to have dire consequences for Iraq, which included the “grave danger” of the rise of ISIS:

This creates the ideal atmosphere for AQI [al Qaeda Iraq] to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi, and will provide a renewed momentum under the presumption of unifying the jihad among Sunni Iraq and Syria, and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against what it considers one enemy, the dissenters. ISI could also declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory. (Judicial Watch, op., cit.)

The U.S. did exactly what was needed to create “the ideal atmosphere” for Mosul and Ramadi to fall and for ISIS to declare an “Islamic state”.

With the fall of Mosul last June, the recent fall of Ramadi in Iraq and numerous reports about the U.S. delivering weapons and ammunition to ISIS, the recently disclosed official documents show once more that the U.S. gun-running operation created “the ideal atmosphere” for Al Qaeda Iraq and “the rise of ISIS” in the region. The war against the so-called Islamic State can thus only be a flatout lie.

The following articles pertain to the U.S. delivery of weapons to ISIS while it was supposedly fighting it:

U.S. Airdrops Weapons to ISIS as Iraqi Army Makes Gains

Delivery of US Weapons and Ammunition to ISIS: Iraqi Commander Wiretaps ISIS Communications with US Military

Terrorists Supported by America: U.S. Helicopter Delivering Weapons to the Islamic State (ISIS), Shot Down by Iraqi “Popular Forces”

Iraqi Army Allegedly Downs A US Helicopter For Providing Weapons To ISIS: Report

As a solution to the problem they created, with full knowledge of the consequences, the U.S. and its allies offered a military intervention with the stated intent of fighting the enemy they had created while covertly supporting it in order to sustain the war, for the greatest benefit of defense contractors and Israel, which has the a lot to gain in the dismantlement of neighboring states.

The purpose of this “constructive chaos” is nothing less than to redraw the map of the region and create a “New Middle East.”

As Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya explained back in 2006:

The term “New Middle East” was introduced to the world in June 2006 in Tel Aviv by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who was credited by the Western media for coining the term) in replacement of the older and more imposing term, the “Greater Middle East.”

This shift in foreign policy phraseology coincided with the inauguration of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Oil Terminal in the Eastern Mediterranean. The term and conceptualization of the “New Middle East,” was subsequently heralded by the U.S. Secretary of State and the Israeli Prime Minister at the height of  the Anglo-American sponsored Israeli siege of Lebanon. Prime Minister Olmert and Secretary Rice had informed the international media that a project for a “New Middle East” was being launched from Lebanon.

This announcement was a confirmation of an Anglo-American-Israeli “military roadmap” in the Middle East. This project, which has been in the planning stages for several years, consists in creating an arc of instability, chaos, and violence extending from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria to Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Iran, and the borders of NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan.

The “New Middle East” project was introduced publicly by Washington and Tel Aviv with the expectation that Lebanon would be the pressure point for realigning the whole Middle East and thereby unleashing the forces of “constructive chaos.” This “constructive chaos” –which generates conditions of violence and warfare throughout the region– would in turn be used so that the United States, Britain, and Israel could redraw the map of the Middle East in accordance with their geo-strategic needs and objectives. (Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Plans for Redrawing the Middle East: The Project for a “New Middle East”, Global Research, November 2006)

Note: The above map was prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. It was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006, Peters is a retired colonel of the U.S. National War Academy. (Map Copyright Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters 2006). Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO’s Defense College for senior military officers. This map, as well as other similar maps, has most probably been used at the National War Academy as well as in military planning circles (Mahdi D. Nazemroaya).

All the evidence is there to prove ISIS and their ilks are instruments of  U.S.-NATO-Israel foreign policy.

How long can the Western mainstream media ignore this overwhelming evidence that the U.S. and its allies are supporting the entities they claim to be be fighting in the Middle East without totally losing the very little credibility it has left?

Looking at the situation, Joachim Hagopian argues that the war on ISIS is just for show since its “enemy” is only gaining territory:

The US led coalition air strikes in Syria and Iraq have failed to stop the Islamic State’s expansion. Four months ago it was noted that since the US air campaign began last August, the Islamic State has doubled its space in Syria, controlling more than one third of the country’s territory. In the same way that the US predator drone warfare policy has only caused more hatred against America in the nations it’s been deployed against in Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, the same reverse effect is occurring in Syria where residents are increasingly sympathetic to Islamic State. Additionally, Syrian opposition groups bitterly complain that the US led coalition forces fail to coordinate dropping bombs with the rebels, thus not permitting them any tactical advantage in driving IS back. It’s as if the air strikes are more for show than to actually neutralize the enemy. (Joachim Hagopian,The US-Islamic State Dance: One Step Forward and Two Steps Back – By Design, Global Research, May 19, 2015)

This war on ISIS is just another disastrous endeavor for populations in the Middle East, another military intervention under a false pretext, another lie to divide and conquer. And once more, the Western mainstream media has failed to report the truth.

Below is a selection of articles on this topic.

SELECTED ARTICLES

U.S. General: “We Helped Build ISIS” – Islamic State Obtained Weapons from U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, Paul Joseph Watson, September 03, 2014

U.S. Efforts to Arm Jihadis in Syria: The Scandal Behind the Benghazi Undercover CIA Facility, Washington’s Blog, April 15, 2014

CIA Gun-running, Qatar-Libya-Syria, Phil Greaves, August 09, 2013

Benghazi, US-NATO Sponsored Base of Operations for Al Qaeda, Tony Cartalucci, October 21, 2012

Resurgence of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Fuelled by Saudi Arabia, Zayd Alisa, 3 March 2014

More Evidence of Israel’s Dirty Role in the Syrian Proxy War, Steven MacMillan, May 18, 2015