The Covert Origins of ISIS

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The Covert Origins of ISIS

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Sep 02, 2014 3:04 pm

robertpaulsen posted this in this threadbut I think it should have a place of it's own

The Covert Origins of ISIS
28.Aug.2014

Evidence exposing who put ISIS in power, and how it was done.

The Islamic militant group ISIS, formerly known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and recently rebranded as the so called Islamic State, is the stuff of nightmares. They are ruthless, fanatical, killers, on a mission, and that mission is to wipe out anyone and everyone, from any religion or belief system and to impose Shari'ah law. The mass executions, beheadings and even crucifixions that they are committing as they work towards this goal are flaunted like badges of pride, video taped and uploaded for the whole world to see. This is the new face of evil.

Would it interest you to know who helped these psychopaths rise to power? Would it interest you to know who armed them, funded them and trained them? Would it interest you to know why?

This story makes more sense if we start in the middle, so we'll begin with the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The Libyan revolution was Obama's first major foreign intervention. It was portrayed as an extension of the Arab Spring, and NATO involvement was framed in humanitarian terms.

The fact that the CIA was actively working to help the Libyan rebels topple Gaddafi was no secret, nor were the airstrikes that Obama ordered against the Libyan government. However, little was said about the identity or the ideological leanings of these Libyan rebels. Not surprising, considering the fact that the leader of the Libyan rebels later admitted that his fighters included Al-Qaeda linked jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq.

These jihadist militants from Iraq were part of what national security analysts commonly referred to as Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Remember Al-Qaeda in Iraq was ISIS before it was rebranded.

With the assistance of U.S. and NATO intelligence and air support, the Libyan rebels captured Gaddafi and summarily executed him in the street, all the while enthusiastically chanting "Allah Akbar". For many of those who had bought the official line about how these rebels were freedom fighters aiming to establish a liberal democracy in Libya, this was the beginning of the end of their illusions.

Prior to the U.S. and NATO backed intervention, Libya had the highest standard of living of any country in Africa. This according to the U.N.'s Human Development Index rankings for 2010. However in the years following the coup, the country descended into chaos, with extremism and violence running rampant. Libya is now widely regarded as failed state (of course those who were naive enough to buy into the propaganda leading up to the war get defensive when this is said).

Now after Gaddafi was overthrown, the Libyan armories were looted, and massive quantities of weapons were sent by the Libyan rebels to Syria. The weapons, which included anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles were smuggled into Syria through Turkey, a NATO ally. The times of London reported on the arrival of the shipment on September 14th, 2012. (Secondary confirmation in this NYT article) This was just three days after Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed by the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi. Chris Stevens had served as the U.S. government's liaison to the Libyan rebels since April of 2011.

While a great deal media attention has focused on the fact that the State Department did not provide adequate security at the consulate, and was slow to send assistance when the attack started, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh released an article in April of 2014 which exposed a classified agreement between the CIA, Turkey and the Syrian rebels to create what was referred to as a "rat line". The "rat line" was covert network used to channel weapons and ammunition from Libya, through southern turkey and across the Syrian border. Funding was provided by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

With Stevens dead any direct U.S. involvement in that arms shipment was buried, and Washington would continue to claim that they had not sent heavy weaponry into Syria.

It was at this time that jihadist fighters from Libya began flooding into Syria as well. And not just low level militants. Many were experienced commanders who had fought in multiple theaters.

The U.S. and its allies were now fully focused on taking down Assad's government in Syria. As in Libya this regime change was to be framed in terms of human rights, and now overt support began to supplement the backdoor channels. The growing jihadist presence was swept under the rug and covered up.

However as the rebels gained strength, the reports of war crimes and atrocities that they were committing began to create a bit of a public relations problem for Washington. It then became standard policy to insist that U.S. support was only being given to what they referred to as "moderate" rebel forces.

This distinction, however, had no basis in reality.

In an interview given in April of 2014, FSA commander Jamal Maarouf admitted that his fighters regularly conduct joint operations with Al-Nusra. Al-Nusra is the official Al-Qa’ida branch in Syria. This statement is further validated by an interview given in June of 2013 by Colonel Abdel Basset Al-Tawil, commander of the FSA's Northern Front. In this interview he openly discusses his ties with Al-Nusra, and expresses his desire to see Syria ruled by sharia law. (You can verify the identities of these two commanders here in this document from The Institute for the Study of War)



Moderate rebels? Well it's complicated. Not that this should really come as any surprise. Reuters had reported in 2012 that the FSA's command was dominated by Islamic extremists, and the New York Times had reported that same year that the majority of the weapons that Washington were sending into Syria was ending up in the hands Jihadists. For two years the U.S. government knew that this was happening, but they kept doing it.

And the FSA's ties to Al-Nusra are just the beginning. In June of 2014 Al-Nusra merged with ISIS at the border between Iraq and Syria.

So to review, the FSA is working with Al-Nusra, Al-Nusra is working with ISIS, and the U.S. has been sending money and weapons to the FSA even though they've known since 2012 that most of these weapons were ending up in the hands of extremists. You do the math.

In that context, the sarin gas attacks of 2013 which turned out to have been committed by the Syrian rebels, makes a lot more sense doesn't it? If it wasn't enough that U.N. investigators, Russian investigators, and Pulitzer prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh all pinned that crime on Washington's proxies, the rebels themselves threatened the West that they would expose what really happened if they were not given more advanced weaponry within one month.

By the way, this also explains why Washington then decided to target Russia next.

This threat was made on June 10th, 2013. In what can only be described as an amazing coincidence, just nine days later, the rebels received their first official shipment of heavy weapons in Aleppo.

After the second sarin gas fiasco, which was also exposed and therefore failed to garner public support for airstrikes, the U.S. continued to increase its the training and support for the rebels.



In February of 2014, Haaretz reported that the U.S. and its allies in the region, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel, were in the process of helping the Syrian rebels plan and prepare for a massive attack in the south. According to Haaretz Israel had also provided direct assistance in military operations against Assad four months prior (you can access a free cached version of the page here).

Then in May of 2014 PBS ran a report in which they interviewed rebels who were trained by the U.S. in Qatar. According to those rebels they were being trained to finish off soldiers who survived attacks.

"They trained us to ambush regime or enemy vehicles and cut off the road,” said the fighter, who is identified only as "Hussein." "They also trained us on how to attack a vehicle, raid it, retrieve information or weapons and munitions, and how to finish off soldiers still alive after an ambush."

This is a blatant violation of the Geneva conventions. It also runs contrary to conventional military strategy. In conventional military strategy soldiers are better off left wounded, because this ends up costing the enemy more resources. Executing captured enemy soldiers is the kind of tactic used when you want to strike terror in the hearts of the enemy. It also just happens to be standard operating procedure for ISIS.

One month after this report, in June of 2014, ISIS made its dramatic entry, crossing over the Syrian border into Iraq, capturing Mosul, Baiji and almost reaching Baghdad. The internet was suddenly flooded with footage of drive by shootings, large scale death marches, and mass graves. And of course any Iraqi soldier that was captured was executed.

Massive quantities of American military equipment were seized during that operation. ISIS took entire truckloads of humvees, they took helicopters, tanks, and artillery. They photographed and video taped themselves and advertised what they were doing on social media, and yet for some reason Washington didn't even TRY to stop them.

U.S. military doctrine clearly calls for the destruction of military equipment and supplies when friendly forces cannot prevent them from falling into enemy hands, but that didn't happen here. ISIS was allowed to carry this equipment out of Iraq and into Syria unimpeded. The U.S. military had the means to strike these convoys, but they didn't lift a finger, even though they had been launching drone strikes in Pakistan that same week.

Why would they do that?

Though Obama plays the role of a weak, indecisive, liberal president, and while pundits from the right have had a lot of fun with that image, this is just a facade. Some presidents, like George W. Bush, rely primarily on overt military aggression. Obama gets the same job done, but he prefers covert means. Not really surprising considering the fact that Zbigniew Brzezinski was his mentor.



Those who know their history will remember that Zbigniew Brzezinski was directly involved in the funding and arming the Islamic extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan in order to weaken the Soviets.



By the way Osama bin Laden was one of these anti-Soviet "freedom fighters" the U.S. was funding and arming.

This operation is no secret at this point, nor are the unintended side effects.



Officially the U.S. government's arming and funding of the Mujahideen was a response to the Soviet invasion in December of 1979, however in his memoir entitled "From the Shadows" Robert Gates, director of the CIA under Ronald Reagan and George Bush Senior, and Secretary of Defense under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, revealed that the U.S. actually began the covert operation 6 months prior, with the express intention of luring the Soviets into a quagmire. (You can preview the relevant text here on google books)

The strategy worked. The Soviets invaded, and the ten years of war that followed are considered by many historians as being one of the primary causes of the fall of the USSR.

This example doesn't just establish precedent, what we're seeing happen in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria right now is actually a continuation of a old story. Al-Nusra and ISIS are ideological and organizational decedents of these extremist elements that the U.S. government made use of thirty years ago.

The U.S. the went on to create a breeding ground for these extremists by invading Iraq in 2003. Had it not been for the vacuum of power left by the removal and execution of Saddam, Al-Qaeda in Iraq, aka ISIS, would not exist. And had it not been for Washington's attempt at toppling Assad by arming, funding and training shadowy militant groups in Syria, there is no way that ISIS would have been capable of storming into Iraq in June of 2014.

On every level, no matter how you cut it, ISIS is a product of U.S. government's twisted and decrepit foreign policy.

Now all of this may seem contradictory to you as you watch the drums of war against ISIS begin to beat louder and the air strikes against them are gradually widened http://www.wjla.com/articles/2014/08/pr ... ossible-...). Why would the U.S. help a terrorist organization get established, only to attack them later?

Well why did the CIA put Saddam Hussein in power in 1963?, Why did the U.S. government back Saddam in 1980 when he launched a war of aggression against Iran, even though they knew that he was using chemical weapons? Why did the U.S. fund and arm Islamic extremists in Afghanistan against the Soviets?

There's a pattern here if you look closely. This is a tried and true geopolitical strategy.

Step 1: Build up a dictator or extremist group which can then be used to wage proxy wars against opponents. During this stage any crimes committed by these proxies are swept under the rug. [Problem]

Step 2: When these nasty characters have outlived their usefulness, that's when it's time to pull out all that dirt from under the rug and start publicizing it 24/7. This obviously works best when the public has no idea how these bad guys came to power.[Reaction]

Step 3: Finally, when the public practically begging for the government to do something, a solution is proposed. Usually the solution involves military intervention, the loss of certain liberties, or both. [Solution]

ISIS is extremely useful. They have essentially done Washington dirty work by weakening Assad. In 2014, while the news cycle has focused almost exclusively on Ukraine and Russia, ISIS made major headway in Syria, and as of August they already controlled 35% of the country.

Since ISIS largely based in Syria, this gives the U.S. a pretext to move into Syria. Sooner or later the U.S. will extend the airstrikes into Assad's backyard, and when they do U.S. officials are already making it clear that both ISIS and the Syrian government will be targeted. That, after all, is the whole point. Washington may allow ISIS to capture a bit more territory first, but the writing is on the wall, and has been for some time now.

The Obama administration has repeatedly insisted that this will never lead to boots on the ground, however, the truth of the matter is that anyone who understands anything about military tactics knows full well that ISIS cannot be defeated by airstrikes alone. In response to airstrikes ISIS will merely disperse and conceal their forces. ISIS isn't an established state power which can be destroyed by knocking out key government buildings and infrastructure. These are guerrilla fighters who cut their teeth in urban warfare.

To significantly weaken them, the war will have to involve ground troops, but even this is a lost cause. U.S. troops could certainly route ISIS in street to street battles for some time, and they might even succeed in fully occupying Syria and Iraq for a number of years, but eventually they will have to leave, and when they do, it should be obvious what will come next.

The puppets that the U.S. government has installed in the various countries that they have brought down in recent years have without exception proven to be utterly incompetent and corrupt. No one that Washington places in power will be capable of maintaining stability in Syria. Period.

Right now, Assad is the last bastion of stability in the region. He is the last chance they have for a moderate non-sectarian government and he is the only hope of anything even remotely resembling democracy for the foreseeable future. If Assad falls, Islamic extremist will take the helm, they will impose shari'ah law, and they will do everything in their power to continue spreading their ideology as far and wide as they can.

If the world truly wants to stop ISIS, there is only one way to do it:

1. First and foremost, the U.S. government and its allies must be heavily pressured to cut all support to the rebels who are attempting to topple Assad. Even if these rebels that the U.S. is arming and funding were moderate, and they're not, the fact that they are forcing Assad to fight a war on multiple fronts, only strengthens ISIS. This is lunacy.

2. The Syrian government should be provided with financial support, equipment, training and intelligence to enable them to turn the tide against ISIS. This is their territory, they should be the ones to reclaim it.

Now obviously this support isn't going to come from the U.S. or any NATO country, but there are a number of nations who have a strategic interest in preventing another regime change and chaotic aftermath. If these countries respond promptly, as in right now, they could preempt a U.S. intervention, and as long this support does not include the presence of foreign troops, doing so will greatly reduce the likelihood of a major confrontation down the road.

3. The U.S. government and its allies should should be aggressively condemned for their failed regime change policies and the individuals behind these decisions should be charged for war crimes. This would have to be done on an nation by nation level since the U.N. has done nothing but enable NATO aggression. While this may not immediately result in these criminals being arrested, it would send a message. This can be done. Malaysia has already proven this by convicting the Bush administration of war crimes in abstentia.

Now you might be thinking: "This all sounds fine and good, but what does this have to do with me? I can't influence this situation."

That perspective is quite common, and for most people, it's paralyzing, but the truth of the matter is that we can influence this. We've done it before, and we can do it again.

I'll be honest with you though, this isn't going to be easy. To succeed we have to start thinking strategically. Like it or not, this is a chess game. If we really want to rock the boat, we have to start reaching out to people in positions of influence. This can mean talking to broadcasters at your local radio station, news paper, or t.v. station, or it can mean contacting influential bloggers, celebrities, business figures or government officials. Reaching out to current serving military and young people who may be considering joining up is also important. But even if it's just your neighbor, or your coworker, every single person we can reach brings us closer to critical mass. The most important step is to start trying.



If you are confused about why this is all happening, watch this video we put out on September 11th, 2012



If this message resonates with you then spread it. If you want to see the BIG picture, and trust me we've got some very interesting reports coming, subscribe to StormCloudsGathering on Youtube, and follow us on Facebook, twitter and Google plus.

BONUS ARTICLE (an interesting tangent): Were the Libyan rebels being led by a CIA plant?

Until recently, Khalifa Hifter — who's leading the anti-Gadhafi forces — lived five miles from CIA headquarters in Virginia. Coincidence? By The Week Staff | March 31, 2011
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LIbyan rebels ride a tank in the eastern part of the country: The anti-Gadhafi forces are led by a former Gadhafi army commander... and possible CIA plant.
LIbyan rebels ride a tank in the eastern part of the country: The anti-Gadhafi forces are led by a former Gadhafi army commander... and possible CIA plant. CC BY: BRQ Network
Now leading Libya's ragtag army of rebels, Khalifa Hifter has a mysterious past that's raising provocative questions. Once a top commander in Moammar Gadhafi's own army, he left its ranks after a disastrous campaign in Chad, then moved to a home five miles from CIA headquarters in northern Virginia, where he lived from the early 1990s until mid-March, 2011. What happened during those 20 years in the U.S.? Hifter's lifelong friend Abdel Salam Badr reports only that Hifter somehow supported a large family. With the CIA mingling among the rebels, some commentators are wondering: Is Hifter a CIA plant?

Hifter is pretty clearly CIA: So a former top chief in Gadhafi's army is allowed to settle in the U.S., soon after the Lockerbie bombing, says Patrick Martin in Axis of Logic, then spends 20 years "about five miles from CIA headquarters in Langley," with no apparent job? "To those who can read between the lines," that's enough to conclude that Hifter is a CIA operative. Need more proof? "Even a cursory Internet search" ties Hifter to the CIA as far back as 1987.
"A CIA commander for the Libyan rebels"

We shouldn't be using covert operatives: There's no need for the U.S. to play games, says John Gizzi in Human Events. As Paul Wolfowitz told me, the CIA shouldn't be involved, simply because "we should be right out in the open" in our dealings with the rebels. Let's not "reinforce the notion in the Middle East that the CIA is behind everything the Americans do."
"Burning Libya question: Exactly who are Gaddafi's opponents?"

The bigger issue: Can Hifter win? He cuts something of an odd figure for a military commander, wearing "a pinstripe suit and a black turtleneck sweater" instead of battle fatigues, say Alexander Marquardt and Mark Mooney in ABC News. And he incorrectly predicted that Gadhafi's hometown of Sirte "would fall easily". Despite Hifter's status as "self-proclaimed commander of the Free Libyan Army," it isn't clear that he's actually commanding the fleeing rebel forces. The only certainty is that somebody needs to "whip his army into shape."
"Libyan rebel commander is from Fairfax, Virginia"


Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Covert Origins of ISIS

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Tue Sep 02, 2014 6:38 pm

Thanks slad, adding the Libyan-CIA piece was good. Not sure how reliable Eric Draitser is, but I found this corroborating piece interesting.

Libyan Army General Khalifa Haftar a CIA operative: Analyst

The Central Intelligence Agency was behind the overthrow of Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi and Libyan Army General Khalifa Belqasim Haftar is a CIA agent, an American political commentator says.

“The US intelligence, and specifically the CIA, has been intimately involved in the operation in Libya from the beginning; and in fact the starting point would be many years earlier during the Reagan administration because as we know that the Reagan administration using the CIA attempted a number of times to overthrow the regime of Libyan leader Mummer Gaddafi, failing of course on multiple points in the 1980s,” Eric Draitser, the founder of StopImperialism.com, said on Monday during a phone interview with Press TV.

“And it was from those covert operations that the CIA established a network of contacts, a network of agents and operatives that it would use and employ at various times to destabilize and ultimately to overthrow the government of Gaddafi, and one of those principal agents was a former general under Gaddafi named General Haftar, who is now commanding the Libyan National Army, as it is called, in the city of Benghazi,” Draitser said.

Haftar, who had been an army chief-of-staff under Gaddafi, spent nearly two decades in the United States and is a US citizen.

“He came back to Libya in 2011 during the destabilization and overthrow of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya government led by Gaddafi. So, the CIA imported their man, their general into Libya right at the moment when the US and NATO were bombing the country, and were destroying the country, and overthrowing the government,” Draitser stated.

Gaddafi was deposed in August 2011after ruling the country for more than four decades. He was slain on October 20 of the same year.

Since 2011, Benghazi has been the scene of numerous attacks and political assassinations amidst increasing power struggle among several militias who fought against Gaddafi during the uprising.

On September 11, 2012, the US mission in Benghazi came under an attack that resulted in the death of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other US diplomats.

According to CNN, up to 35 CIA operatives were working in Benghazi during the attack.

“There are also very close links between the CIA and some of the so-called terrorist organizations operating in Benghazi, specifically one of them back on September 11, 2012 attack on the so-called ambassador’s residence in Benghazi, which is really an annex of the CIA… where so-called Ambassador Christopher Stevens was organizing payments and weapons and fighters to send to Syria to continue the war against Bashar al-Assad. So, the CIA was not only involved in the overthrow [of Gaddafi] they were themselves attacked,” Draitser stated.
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Re: The Covert Origins of ISIS

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 03, 2014 8:06 am

on Sept 12 2001 the national security state entered the cockpit of to modernize a phrase the plane of state, hijacked it, and steered it directly for the Bermuda Triangle — and here was the strangest thing of all: no one even noticed - Tom Engelhardt


and NO one is noticing this....even considering this....on the TV I have been watching....we are living in the Bermuda Triangle





Tomgram: Engelhardt, The Escalation Follies
Posted by Tom Engelhardt at 6:49am, September 2, 2014.

How America Made ISIS
Their Videos and Ours, Their “Caliphate” and Ours
By Tom Engelhardt

Whatever your politics, you’re not likely to feel great about America right now. After all, there’s Ferguson (the whole world was watching!), an increasingly unpopular president, a Congress whose approval ratings make the president look like a rock star, rising poverty, weakening wages, and a growing inequality gap just to start what could be a long list. Abroad, from Libya and Ukraine to Iraq and the South China Sea, nothing has been coming up roses for the U.S. Polls reflect a general American gloom, with 71% of the public claiming the country is “on the wrong track.” We have the look of a superpower down on our luck.

What Americans have needed is a little pick-me-up to make us feel better, to make us, in fact, feel distinctly good. Certainly, what official Washington has needed in tough times is a bona fide enemy so darn evil, so brutal, so barbaric, so inhuman that, by contrast, we might know just how exceptional, how truly necessary to this planet we really are.

In the nick of time, riding to the rescue comes something new under the sun: the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), recently renamed Islamic State (IS). It’s a group so extreme that even al-Qaeda rejected it, so brutal that it’s brought back crucifixion, beheading, waterboarding, and amputation, so fanatical that it’s ready to persecute any religious group within range of its weapons, so grimly beyond morality that it’s made the beheading of an innocent American a global propaganda phenomenon. If you’ve got a label that’s really, really bad like genocide or ethnic cleansing, you can probably apply it to ISIS's actions.

It has also proven so effective that its relatively modest band of warrior jihadis has routed the Syrian and Iraqi armies, as well as the Kurdish pesh merga militia, taking control of a territory larger than Great Britain in the heart of the Middle East. Today, it rules over at least four million people, controls its own functioning oil fields and refineries (and so their revenues as well as infusions of money from looted banks, kidnapping ransoms, and Gulf state patrons). Despite opposition, it still seems to be expanding and claims it has established a caliphate.

A Force So Evil You’ve Got to Do Something

Facing such pure evil, you may feel a chill of fear, even if you’re a top military or national security official, but in a way you’ve gotta feel good, too. It’s not everyday that you have an enemy your president can term a “cancer”; that your secretary of state can call the “face” of “ugly, savage, inexplicable, nihilistic, and valueless evil” which “must be destroyed”; that your secretary of defense can denounce as “barbaric” and lacking a “standard of decency, of responsible human behavior... an imminent threat to every interest we have, whether it's in Iraq or anywhere else”; that your chairman of the joint chiefs of staff can describe as “an organization that has an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision and which will eventually have to be defeated”; and that a retired general and former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan can brand a “scourge... beyond the pale of humanity [that]... must be eradicated.”

Talk about a feel-good feel-bad situation for the leadership of a superpower that’s seen better days! Such threatening evil calls for only one thing, of course: for the United States to step in. It calls for the Obama administration to dispatch the bombers and drones in a slowly expanding air war in Iraq and, sooner or later, possibly Syria. It falls on Washington’s shoulders to organize a new “coalition of the willing” from among various backers and opponents of the Assad regime in Syria, from among those who have armed and funded the extremist rebels in that country, from the ethnic/religious factions in the former Iraq, and from various NATO countries. It calls for Washington to transform Iraq’s leadership (a process no longer termed “regime change”) and elevate a new man capable of reuniting the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds, now at each other’s throats, into one nation capable of turning back the extremist tide. If not American “boots on the ground,” it calls for proxy ones of various sorts that the U.S. military will naturally have a hand in training, arming, funding, and advising. Facing such evil, what other options could there be?

If all of this sounds strangely familiar, it should. Minus a couple of invasions, the steps being considered or already in effect to deal with “the threat of ISIS” are a reasonable summary of the last 13 years of what was once called the Global War on Terror and now has no name at all. New as ISIS may be, a little history is in order, since that group is, at least in part, America’s legacy in the Middle East.

Give Osama bin Laden some credit. After all, he helped set us on the path to ISIS. He and his ragged band had no way of creating the caliphate they dreamed of or much of anything else. But he did grasp that goading Washington into something that looked like a crusader’s war with the Muslim world might be an effective way of heading in that direction.

In other words, before Washington brings its military power fully to bear on the new "caliphate," a modest review of the post-9/11 years might be appropriate. Let’s start at the moment when those towers in New York had just come down, thanks to a small group of mostly Saudi hijackers, and almost 3,000 people were dead in the rubble. At that time, it wasn’t hard to convince Americans that there could be nothing worse, in terms of pure evil, than Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Establishing an American Caliphate

Facing such unmatchable evil, the United States officially went to war as it might have against an enemy military power. Under the rubric of the Global War on Terror, the Bush administration launched the unmatchable power of the U.S. military and its paramilitarized intelligence agencies against... well, what? Despite those dramatic videos of al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, that organization had no military force worth the name, and despite what you’ve seen on “Homeland,” no sleeper cells in the U.S. either; nor did it have the ability to mount follow-up operations any time soon.

In other words, while the Bush administration talked about “draining the swamp” of terror groups in up to 60 countries, the U.S. military was dispatched against what were essentially will-o’-the-wisps, largely representing Washington’s own conjured fears and fantasies. It was, that is, initially sent against bands of largely inconsequential Islamic extremists, scattered in tiny numbers in the tribal backlands of Afghanistan or Pakistan and, of course, the rudimentary armies of the Taliban.

It was, to use a word that George W. Bush let slip only once, something like a "crusade," something close to a religious war, if not against Islam itself -- American officials piously and repeatedly made that clear -- then against the idea of a Muslim enemy, as well as against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and later Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. In each case, Washington mustered a coalition of the willing, ranging from Arab and South or Central Asian states to European ones, sent in air power followed twice by full-scale invasions and occupations, mustered local politicians of our choice in major “nation-building” operations amid much self-promotional talk about democracy, and built up vast new military and security apparatuses, supplying them with billions of dollars in training and arms.

Looking back, it’s hard not to think of all of this as a kind of American jihadism, as well as an attempt to establish what might have been considered an American caliphate in the region (though Washington had far kinder descriptive terms for it). In the process, the U.S. effectively dismantled and destroyed state power in each of the three main countries in which it intervened, while ensuring the destabilization of neighboring countries and finally the region itself.

In that largely Muslim part of the world, the U.S. left a grim record that we in this country generally tend to discount or forget when we decry the barbarism of others. We are now focused in horror on ISIS’s video of the murder of journalist James Foley, a propaganda document clearly designed to drive Washington over the edge and into more active opposition to that group.

We, however, ignore the virtual library of videos and other imagery the U.S. generated, images widely viewed (or heard about and discussed) with no less horror in the Muslim world than ISIS’s imagery is in ours. As a start, there were the infamous “screen saver” images straight out of the Marquis de Sade from Abu Ghraib prison. There, Americans tortured and abused Iraqi prisoners, while creating their own iconic version of crucifixion imagery. Then there were the videos that no one (other than insiders) saw, but that everyone heard about. These, the CIA took of the repeated torture and abuse of al-Qaeda suspects in its “black sites.” In 2005, they were destroyed by an official of that agency, lest they be screened in an American court someday. There was also the Apache helicopter video released by WikiLeaks in which American pilots gunned down Iraqi civilians on the streets of Baghdad (including two Reuters correspondents), while on the sound track the crew are heard wisecracking. There was the video of U.S. troops urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. There were the trophy photos of body parts brought home by U.S. soldiers. There were the snuff films of the victims of Washington’s drone assassination campaigns in the tribal backlands of the planet (or “bug splat,” as the drone pilots came to call the dead from those attacks) and similar footage from helicopter gunships. There was the bin Laden snuff film video from the raid on Abbottabad, Pakistan, of which President Obama reportedly watched a live feed. And that’s only to begin to account for some of the imagery produced by the U.S. since September 2001 from its various adventures in the Greater Middle East.

All in all, the invasions, the occupations, the drone campaigns in several lands, the deaths that ran into the hundreds of thousands, the uprooting of millions of people sent into external or internal exile, the expending of trillions of dollars added up to a bin Laden dreamscape. They would prove jihadist recruitment tools par excellence.

When the U.S. was done, when it had set off the process that led to insurgencies, civil wars, the growth of extremist militias, and the collapse of state structures, it had also guaranteed the rise of something new on Planet Earth: ISIS -- as well as of other extremist outfits ranging from the Pakistani Taliban, now challenging the state in certain areas of that country, to Ansar al-Sharia in Libya and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen.

Though the militants of ISIS would undoubtedly be horrified to think so, they are the spawn of Washington. Thirteen years of regional war, occupation, and intervention played a major role in clearing the ground for them. They may be our worst nightmare (thus far), but they are also our legacy -- and not just because so many of their leaders came from the Iraqi army we disbanded, had their beliefs and skills honed in the prisons we set up (Camp Bucca seems to have been the West Point of Iraqi extremism), and gained experience facing U.S. counterterror operations in the “surge” years of the occupation. In fact, just about everything done in the war on terror has facilitated their rise. After all, we dismantled the Iraqi army and rebuilt one that would flee at the first signs of ISIS’s fighters, abandoning vast stores of Washington's weaponry to them. We essentially destroyed the Iraqi state, while fostering a Shia leader who would oppress enough Sunnis in enough ways to create a situation in which ISIS would be welcomed or tolerated throughout significant areas of the country.

The Escalation Follies

When you think about it, from the moment the first bombs began falling on Afghanistan in October 2001 to the present, not a single U.S. military intervention has had anything like its intended effect. Each one has, in time, proven a disaster in its own special way, providing breeding grounds for extremism and producing yet another set of recruitment posters for yet another set of jihadist movements. Looked at in a clear-eyed way, this is what any American military intervention seems to offer such extremist outfits -- and ISIS knows it.

Don’t consider its taunting video of James Foley's execution the irrational act of madmen blindly calling down the destructive force of the planet’s last superpower on themselves. Quite the opposite. Behind it lay rational calculation. ISIS’s leaders surely understood that American air power would hurt them, but they knew as well that, as in an Asian martial art in which the force of an assailant is used against him, Washington’s full-scale involvement would also infuse their movement with greater power. (This was Osama bin Laden’s most original insight.)

It would give ISIS the ultimate enemy, which means the ultimate street cred in its world. It would bring with it the memories of all those past interventions, all those snuff videos and horrifying images. It would help inflame and so attract more members and fighters. It would give the ultimate raison d'être to a minority religious movement that might otherwise prove less than cohesive and, in the long run, quite vulnerable. It would give that movement global bragging rights into the distant future.

ISIS’s urge was undoubtedly to bait the Obama administration into a significant intervention. And in that, it may prove successful. We are now, after all, watching a familiar version of the escalation follies at work in Washington. Obama and his top officials are clearly on the up escalator. In the Oval Office is a visibly reluctant president, who undoubtedly desires neither to intervene in a major way in Iraq (from which he proudly withdrew American troops in 2011 with their “heads held high”), nor in Syria (a place where he avoided sending in the bombers and missiles back in 2013).

Unlike the previous president and his top officials, who were all confidence and overarching plans for creating a Pax Americana across the Greater Middle East, this one and his foreign policy team came into office intent on managing an inherited global situation. President Obama’s only plan, such as it was, was to get out of the Iraq War (along lines already established by the Bush administration). It was perhaps a telltale sign then that, in order to do so, he felt he had to “surge” American troops into Afghanistan. Five and a half years later, he and his key officials still seem essentially plan-less, a set of now-desperate managers engaged in a seat-of-the-pants struggle over a destabilizing Greater Middle East (and increasingly Africa and the borderlands of Europe as well).

Five and a half years later, the president is once again under pressure and being criticized by assorted neocons, McCainites, and this time, it seems, the military high command evidently eager to be set loose yet one more time to take out barbarism globally -- that is, to up the ante on a losing hand. As in 2009, so today, he’s slowly but surely giving ground. By now, the process of “mission creep” -- a term strongly rejected by the Obama administration -- is well underway.

It started slowly with the collapse of the U.S.-trained and U.S.-supplied Iraqi army in Mosul and other northern Iraqi cities in the face of attacks by ISIS. In mid-June, the aircraft carrier USS H.W. Bush with more than 100 planes was dispatched to the Persian Gulf and the president sent in hundreds of troops, including Special Forces advisers (though officially no “boots" were to be "on the ground”). He also agreed to drone and other air surveillance of the regions ISIS had taken, clearly preparation for future bombing campaigns. All of this was happening before the fate of the Yazidis -- a small religious sect whose communities in northern Iraq were brutally destroyed by ISIS fighters -- officially triggered the commencement of a limited bombing campaign suitable to a “humanitarian crisis.”

When ISIS, bolstered by U.S. heavy weaponry captured from the Iraqi military, began to crush the Kurdish pesh merga militia, threatening the capital of the Kurdish region of Iraq and taking the enormous Mosul Dam, the bombing widened. More troops and advisers were sent in, and weaponry began to flow to the Kurds, with promises of all of the above further south once a new unity government was formed in Baghdad. The president explained this bombing expansion by citing the threat of ISIS blowing up the Mosul Dam and flooding downriver communities, thus supposedly endangering the U.S. Embassy in distant Baghdad. (This was a lame cover story because ISIS would have had to flood parts of its own “caliphate” in the process.)

The beheading video then provided the pretext for the possible bombing of Syria to be put on the agenda. And once again a reluctant president, slowly giving way, has authorized drone surveillance flights over parts of Syria in preparation for possible bombing strikes that may not be long in coming.

The Incrementalism of the Reluctant

Consider this the incrementalism of the reluctant under the usual pressures of a militarized Washington eager to let loose the dogs of war. One place all of this is heading is into a morass of bizarre contradictions involving Syrian politics. Any bombing of that country will necessarily involve implicit, if not explicit, support for the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad, as well as for the barely existing “moderate” rebels who oppose his regime and to whom Washington may now ship more arms. This, in turn, could mean indirectly delivering yet more weaponry to ISIS. Add everything up and at the moment Washington seems to be on the path that ISIS has laid out for it.

Americans prefer to believe that all problems have solutions. There may, however, be no obvious or at least immediate solution when it comes to ISIS, an organization based on exclusivity and divisiveness in a region that couldn’t be more divided. On the other hand, as a minority movement that has already alienated so many in the region, left to itself it might with time simply burn out or implode. We don’t know. We can’t know. But we do have reasonable evidence from the past 13 years of what an escalating American military intervention is likely to do: not whatever it is that Washington wants it to do.

And keep one thing in mind: if the U.S. were truly capable of destroying or crushing ISIS, as our secretary of state and others are urging, that might prove to be anything but a boon. After all, it was easy enough to think, as Americans did after 9/11, that al-Qaeda was the worst the world of Islamic extremism had to offer. Osama bin Laden's killing was presented to us as an ultimate triumph over Islamic terror. But ISIS lives and breathes and grows, and across the Greater Middle East Islamic extremist organizations are gaining membership and traction in ways that should illuminate just what the war on terror has really delivered. The fact that we can’t now imagine what might be worse than ISIS means nothing, given that no one in our world could imagine ISIS before it sprang into being.

The American record in these last 13 years is a shameful one. Do it again should not be an option.
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Re: The Covert Origins of ISIS

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Sep 03, 2014 4:14 pm

MSM Bombshell! US Trained ISIS! Now We Know, They Want Us All Dead!
Wednesday, September 3, 2014 7:57

With EVEN the MSM now admitting that the US trained and armed ISIS, The Resident and RT America tell us exactly how OUR OWN GOVT has just completed training and arming our enemies to destroy us. Even this Washington Post story called “The terrorists fighting us now? We just finished training them” out the US government for funding and arming the people who want to kill us all. In the 2nd video, retired Lt. General Thomas McInerney also admits that the U.S. helped build ISIS!!!


What will it take for this government to finally admit to the American people that they are striving towards ‘depopulating’ Americans? Why would the US government fund and arm a group that wants Americans heads rolling in the streets? How can the American people finally put an end to this madness, a government that clearly wants us all dead?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnU6P2T5Yr4


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8kKCCnOm1Y

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Re: The Covert Origins of ISIS

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Sep 03, 2014 7:07 pm

Council on Foreign Relations: Syrian Rebels Need Al-Qaeda Now

Aaron Nelson (The Anti-Media)
September 3, 2014

An article published in 2012 by Ed Husain, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), promoted Al Qaeda as the solution needed to improve morale and bring discipline to the Syrian rebels.

“The Syrian rebels would be immeasurably weaker today without al-Qaeda in their ranks. By and large, Free Syrian Army (FSA) battalions are tired, divided, chaotic, and ineffective. Feeling abandoned by the West, rebel forces are increasingly demoralized as they square off with the Assad regime’s superior weaponry and professional army. Al-Qaeda fighters, however, may help improve morale. The influx of jihadis brings discipline, religious fervor, battle experience from Iraq, funding from Sunni sympathizers in the Gulf, and most importantly, deadly results. In short, the FSA needs al-Qaeda now.” - Ed Husain, Council on Foreign Relations


Comprehending the significance of this “recommendation” by the CFR may not be possible without first understanding two things:

1) The history of the Council on Foreign Relations.

2) The origin of ISIS.

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THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

What is the CFR?
In 1917 Woodrow Wilson created the Committee on Public Information (CPI) as a propaganda agency designed to build support for wars. Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, was the one of the most influential member of the CPI.

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.” - Edward Bernays, 1928


Bernays studied the group psychology and mindset of the American people. It was he who heavily promoted the idea that war was needed to “make the world safe for democracy“.

In other words, he created propaganda to convince the public that it was in America’s best interest to send American soldiers to Europe to fight in WWI.

The success of the “make the world safe for democracy” slogan during the war led to a breakthrough in group psychology tactics.

It was so contagious Bernays began developing a scientific method of managing group behavior during times of peace.

“Karl von Wiegand, foreign correspondent of the Hearst newspapers, an old hand at interpreting Europe and just returned from Germany, was telling us about Goebbels and his propaganda plans to consolidate Nazi power. Goebbels had shown Wiegand his propaganda library, the best Wiegand had ever seen. Goebbels, said Wiegand, was using my book Crystallizing Public Opinion as a basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me. Obviously the attack on the Jews of Germany was no emotional outburst of the Nazis, but a deliberate, planned campaign.” – Edward Bernays, “Biography of an Idea“, page 652


The word “propaganda” obtained a negative meaning from the war, so Bernays invented a new one:

“Public Relations“.



After the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, several British diplomats discussed plans to form a permanent international institution on public relations.

After this group merged with a network of high-ranking officials from banking, finance companies, trading, and manufacturing companies led by Elihu Root, a former United States Secretary of War, they filed a certification of incorporation on July 29th, 1921. This was the official formation of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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The CFR went on to build an international partnership with the most powerful people in the world. Including:

JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Exxon, Chevron, BP Oil, Shell, General Electric, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Bloomberg, and Dyncorp International.

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This is really just scratching the surface. Here is the official list of corporate members on the CFR’s own website.



Who is a member of the CFR?

The Secretary of State under president Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles, is one of the founding members of the CFR. Dulles convinced President Eisenhower to topple the democratically elected prime minister of Iran in 1953 by using the CIA. He was also behind the 1954 CIA coup in Guatemala.

Edward Bernays actually ran the propaganda campaign for that entire operation.

McGeorge Bundy, National Security adviser under Kennedy and then under Lyndon B. Johnson, was a member of the CFR. Many remember Bundy as the man responsible for encouraging the escalation of the Vietnam War.

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Henry Kissinger, President Nixon’s National Security Adviser, is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Kissinger was behind the CIA coup which overthrew the democratically elected president of Chile Salvador Allende. A Wall Street Journal piece by Kissinger on the Assembly of a New World Order was published last week.

In 2009 Kissinger told CNBC that, Obama’s main task will be to develop a New World Order.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security adviser, is another member of the CFR. Brzezinski is responsible for the funding and arming of mujahideen in Afghanistan and Pakistan.



These are the same Islamic militants many have come to know as the Taliban… Brzezinski is Obama’s mentor!

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Ronald Reagan’s National Security Advisers Richard V. Allen and Robert C. McFarlane are also members of the CFR. So was his Secretary of State, George P. Shultz.

Reagan and Shultz were arming and training the Contras as they murdered hundreds of civilians who sympathized with the Sandinista government. Ever heard of the Iran Contra scandal?



George H. W. Bush was a director of the CFR, and his former Secretary of State James Baker is also a current member.

Bill Clinton is a member of the CFR. Madeline Albright, Clinton’s Secretary of State, is currently serving on the CFR Board of Directors.



Colin Powell, is also currently on the CFR board of directors.

George W. Bush’s National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, his Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and are also members of the CFR.

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Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense under both Bush and Obama, is another CFR member.

Obama’s first National Security Adviser James L. Jones, second National Security adviser Tom Donilon, and third National Security adviser Susan Rice, are all CFR members.

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Chuck Hagel, Janet Napolitano, John Kerry, Diane Feinstein, John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Tom Brokaw, Christopher Dodd, Janet Yellen, Fareed Zakaria… The list goes on and on.

Which brings us back to the CFR article published in 2012 promoting Al-Qaeda as the solution in Syria.



Why would a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York want Al Qaeda to provide discipline, improve morality and supply military experience to the Free Syrian Army?

How could a foreign policy “expert” possibly believe this would be a wise move?

THE ISLAMIC STATE (ISIS)

Obama’s first major military intervention was during the Libyan revolution in 2011. The corporate media displayed it as an extension of the Arab Spring, framed as a humanitarian “war for peace“.

It’s not exactly common knowledge in America, but the U.N.’s Human Development Index ranked Libya as the highest standard of living of any country in Africa before the violent coup.

Gaddafi was named chairman of the 53-nation African Union in 2009.



It’s openly admitted that the CIA was covertly working with the Libyan rebels to topple Gaddafi. This is no secret. Still, the airstrikes on the Libyan government ordered by President Obama were celebrated by NATO and much of the American public.

Who were these rebels?



The leader of the Libyan rebels has admitted some of his militants included Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists from Iraq. This is the same group the corporate media called “Al-Qaeda in Iraq“. Yes, the same group which evolved into the Islamic State (ISIS). It’s worth noting that Al-Qaeda did not exist in Iraq before the U.S. invasion in 2003.

With the U.S. military and NATO forces on their side, the Libyan rebels brutally executed Gaddafi in broad daylight for the world to see. These were McCain’s beloved “freedom fighters“?

Since the coup, the country has spun out of control and is stuck in a constant state of chaos. Libya is now regarded as a failed state.



After Gaddafi was killed, large amounts of weapons were sent to Syria after Libyan armories were looted by militants. Three days after anti-aircraft missiles were smuggled into Syria through Turkey, Ambassador Chris Stevens was murdered by Al-Qaeda-linked militants in the infamous September 11th, 2012 attack on a U.S. embassy in Benghazi. Since April 2011, Stevens had served as the U.S. government’s lone liaison to the Libyan rebels.

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Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh released an article in April 2014 exposing the agreement between the CIA, Turkey and the Syrian rebels to covertly create a network used to funnel weapons from Libya across the Syrian border through southern Turkey. According to this information, the funding was provided by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Several thousand jihadist fighters from Libya crossed into the Syrian rebel ranks to fight alongside other militants in a proxy war to topple the Syrian government.



The U.S. government began targeting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government, using the exact same tactics the CIA used in Libya to topple Gaddafi.

Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander Jamal Maarouf has admitted that his fighters conduct joint operations with Al-Nusra frequently, the official Al-Qaeda branch in Syria. In June 2013 Colonel Abdel Basset Al-Tawil, commander of the FSA’s Northern Front, expressed his desire to see Syria ruled by sharia law. In 2012, Reuters reported that the FSA’s command was dominated by Islamic extremists. The New York Times reported that the majority of the weapons Washington was sending into Syria ended up in the hands of jihadists.

In May 2014, PBS interviewed Syrian rebels who were trained by the U.S. in Qatar.

“They trained us to ambush regime or enemy vehicles and cut off the road,” said the fighter, who is identified only as “Hussein.” “They also trained us on how to attack a vehicle, raid it, retrieve information or weapons and munitions, and how to finish off soldiers still alive after an ambush.”


Executing captured soldiers? Sounds a lot like ISIS, doesn’t it? That’s because this is a “terror tactic“.

In June 2014, Al-Nusra merged with ISIS at the border between Iraq and Syria.

As recent as June 26th, 2014, Obama proposed another $500 million dollars to train and equip the Syrian rebels. In other words, the FSA is working with Al-Nusra, Al-Nusra is working with ISIS, and the U.S. has been sending money and weapons to the FSA. For two years the U.S. has adopted this strategy (and still do) while they had known most of these weapons were ending up in the hands of Al-Qaeda-linked militants.

June 2014 was when ISIS obtained international celebrity by crossing over the Syria border into Iraq. In the process of capturing Mosul and Baiji, ISIS obtained entire truckloads of humvees, artillery, tanks, and helicopters.

George W. Bush used out in the open military aggression to “make the world safe for democracy“. Barack Obama uses covert tactics through the CIA. What else would you expect considering Zbigniew Brzezinski was Obama’s mentor?



Why would Obama fund and arm Islamic extremists in Syria to attack them later?

Why did the CIA put Saddam Hussein in power in 1963?

Why would the U.S. arm and fund Islamic extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 1979, including Osama bin Laden?



Now are you beginning to see how the Islamic State can be useful for United States foreign policy? Even Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney recently stated on the corporate media, We helped build ISIS.”

Problem, reaction, solution… The U.S. and ISIS share common ground. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has already resigned as both sides desired, but Assad is the main target.

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The U.S. created an Al-Qaeda breeding ground in Iraq after their invasion in 2003. They continued creating an Al-Qaeda breeding ground in 2012, 2013, and 2014 by funding and arming jihadists battling the Syrian government. ISIS would not exist without the twisted foreign policy of the United States.

Is this twisted logic coming from the Council on Foreign Relations?

THE DRUMS OF WAR BEAT LOUDER



Within the last hour, President Obama announced the deployment of 350 ground troops to Iraq. It’s only a matter of time until the U.S. attempts to extend airstrikes into Syria, with troops surely following…

The only way to stop the inevitable from happening is to have the U.S. government cut all support to the Syrian rebels who are attempting to topple Assad. Even the most moderate rebels (if they exist) are only strengthening ISIS by forcing Assad, an enemy of ISIS, to fight a war on multiple fronts. We already know the majority of weapons and cash are ending up in the hands of “bad guys“.

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Iraq has proven “bombing for peace” does not work to combat terrorism. What kind of impact exactly does Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations think a failed state in Syria (like Libya and Iraq) would have on the region? Wouldn’t that create the largest breeding ground we’ve seen yet for anti-American terrorists?



When you take a step back and look at Bush’s toppling of Saddam, which created the Islamic State of Iraq, and Obama’s arming of the Syrian rebels, who share a common enemy with ISIS in Assad… The question needs to be asked: Did U.S. foreign policy, heavily influenced by the CFR, create the situation we see today with ISIS by invading Iraq and arming Syrian rebels?

Repeating the same actions over and over expecting different results is crazy.

If you love your country, stop listening to these sociopaths.

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Re: The Covert Origins of ISIS

Postby 82_28 » Wed Sep 03, 2014 8:23 pm

Reminds me of "Moscow on the Hudson" with our dearly departed. There would be no way these dangerous, extremist villagers could just roll into America without being westernized and funded by the country in question. Where do they manufacture their ammunition? Somebody could pay for my plane ticket and I would go over there to shake hands and learn. Yet, somehow and some way we are made to fear this bullshit. Off the cuff, I bet they are planning of the nuking of a major western city or something along those lines. Any bets on which city it would be? It will have to be soon as the grand NFL and school seasons are ramping into gear.

If not. Great!

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Re: The Covert Origins of ISIS

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 03, 2014 9:32 pm

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Wednesday, September 03, 2014
Kill Bill and Everyone Else: Spoofing ISIS
byAbby Zimet, staff writer


Arguing that "belittlement is your enemy's greatest fear," several Muslim activists have taken on the risky strategy of using satire as a weapon against the supremely unfunny atrocities of ISIS. Taking to the same social media platforms that ISIS uses to recruit and propaganidize, their campaigns range from mock ISIS Movies - The Hills Have Alis, ISIS Doubtfire, My Best Friend's 11-Year-Old Daughter's Wedding, Crouching Caliph Hidden Sheikh, Monsters Inc, No Country for Old Men, Or Young Men, Or Women and Children - and TV shows - Everybody loves Abu Bakr Baghdadi, How I Behead Your Mother - to ads, videos and entire Onion-like news stories. In one, the invasion of Beirut is delayed by ISIS (Idiot Sycophants of Islamist Saboteurs) due “crazy traffic, bro” and their inability to "figure out how to oust non-existent state institutions from power" while respecting "communal coexistence" among the country's three presidents, prominent political parties, neo-feudal leaders, religious zealots, local bosses, garden-variety thugs, foreign participants and pop-up NGOs. “We do not yet understand the Logic of Lebanon," they complain. “Who the fuck do we overthrow around here?”

Libyan writer Yahia Mahfoudh, responding to criticism of her campaign on the grounds that you can't make ISIS funny: "This group is cutting the heads off Muslims and playing soccer with them. We are in deep crisis mode here. I will mock and criticize their evil in every form in takes."
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Re: The Covert Origins of ISIS

Postby justdrew » Wed Sep 03, 2014 11:05 pm

I would be most curious about possible connections between the Muslim Brotherhood and "ISIS"
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Re: The Covert Origins of ISIS

Postby 82_28 » Wed Sep 03, 2014 11:13 pm

Hey now! I wear a rather long beard without a moustache.
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Re: The Covert Origins of ISIS

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Sep 04, 2014 8:33 am

so ..just who is responsible for this "Ethnic Cleansing"....just who is responsible for ISIS....Mr. Lobe?

ISIS Carrying Out Ethnic Cleansing on “Historic Scale”

by Jim Lobe

While the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama ponders broader actions against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Amnesty International Tuesday accused the group of carrying out ethnic cleansing in Iraq on a “historic scale.”


The 26-page report, which was based on on-site investigations and interviews with victims and witnesses of mass executions and abductions, the London-based rights group said the threats to ethnic minorities in the areas under ISIS’s control “demand a swift and robust response … to ensure the protection of vulnerable communities who risk being wiped off the map of Iraq.”

“The group that calls itself the Islamic State (IS) has carried out ethnic cleansing on a historic scale in northern Iraq,”the report said. “Amnesty International has found that the IS has systematically targeted non-Arab and non-Sunni Muslim communities, killing or abducting hundreds, possibly thousands, and forcing more than 830,000 others to flee the areas it has captured since 10 June 2014.”

Amnesty’s report was released as another major international rights organization, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), charged ISIS with executing between 560 and 770 men — all or most of them Iraqi army soldiers — in Tikrit after it took control of that city on June 11 as part of its stunning drive across northern and central Iraq. The following day, ISIS itself claimed to have executed 1,700 “Shi’a members of the army.”

The new HRW estimate, which was based on testimony from a survivor and analyses of videos and satellite imagery, was triple the death toll HRW had reported at the end of June. The group said the imagery confirmed the existence of three more mass execution sites in and around Tikrit in addition to the two it had reported earlier.

“Another piece of this gruesome puzzle has come into place, with many more executions now confirmed,” said Peter Bouckaert, HRW’s emergencies director. “The barbarity of the Islamic State violates the law and grossly offends the conscience.”

The United Nations Human Rights Council voted Monday to send a fact-finding team to Iraq to investigate possible war crimes by ISIS.

“The reports we have received reveal acts of inhumanity on an unimaginable scale,” Flavia Pansieri, the deputy high commissioner for human rights, told the Council.

The Amnesty and HRW reports came as ISIS posted a video purporting to show its beheading of a U.S. reporter, Steven Sotloff, who had been kidnapped in August 2013 while he was covering the civil war in Syria for Time magazine and the Christian Science Monitor, among other publications.’

The grisly video, which is certain to add pressure on the Obama administration to expand recent U.S. airstrikes against ISIS to include targets in Syria, as well as in Iraq, followed the release of a video of the beheading by ISIS two weeks ago of another U.S. reporter, James Foley. It also came after an emotional videotaped appeal aired last week by Sotloff’s mother to ISIS’ leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, to spare her son.

Sotloff had appeared in the Foley video, with the purported executioner, who is believed to be a British national, warning that Sotloff would be next to be killed unless Obama ceased conducting air strikes against ISIS positions around Mt. Zinjar and convoys approaching Erbil, the capital of Kurdistan.

Obama, however, has since broadened the U.S. target list. Dozens of air strikes have been carried out in coordination with ground attacks by Iraqi special forces, Shi’a militias, and Kurdish peshmerga fighters in a counteroffensive that initially recaptured the giant Mosul dam from ISIS forces and, more recently, reportedly broke the group’s siege of the largely Shi’a Turkomen town of Amerli.

“I’m back, Obama,” the same masked executioner said on the latest video. “I’m back because of your arrogant foreign policy toward the Islamic State, because of your insistence on continuing your bombings.”

“We take this opportunity to warn those governments that enter this evil alliance of America against the Islamic State to back off and leave our people alone,” he added, while standing over yet another unidentified captive who is believed to be a British citizen.

For its part, the White House released a statement noting that it had seen the video and that the intelligence community was working to determine its authenticity. “If genuine, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent American journalist and we express our deepest condolences to his family and friends.”

Obama, who left Tuesday for the NATO summit in Wales later this week, is expected to urge other members of the alliance to adopt a coordinated strategy of diplomatic, economic, and military pressure against ISIS, which spread from its base in eastern Syria into Iraq’s Al-Anbar province in early 2014 before its sweep down the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys into northern and central Iraq beginning in June.

Among other measures, Washington wants its European allies to adhere to U.S. and British policies against ransom payments to free citizens who are captured by ISIS — a practice that has reportedly become a major source of income for the group.

Secretary of State John Kerry and Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel are also scheduled to visit key allies in the Middle East next week, especially in the Sunni-led Gulf states, to persuade them to crack down harder against their citizens who fund or otherwise support ISIS, offer greater support to a new government in Baghdad, and possibly contribute direct support for expanded international military efforts against the group.

Like the administration itself, U.S. lawmakers, who return here from their summer recess next week, are divided on how aggressively Washington should take military action against ISIS.

While many Republicans are urging Obama to conduct air strikes — and even deploy ground forces — against the group in Syria, as well as Iraq, many Democrats are concerned that such an escalation could well lead to Washington’s becoming bogged down in yet more Middle Eastern conflicts.

Some key Democrats, however, are becoming more hawkish, a process that is likely to strengthen as a result of Sotloff’s execution.

“Let there be no doubt we must go after ISIS right away because the U.S. is the only one that can put together a coalition to stop this group that’s intent on barbaric cruelty,” said Florida Sen. Bill Nelson Tuesday in announcing legislation that would give Obama legal authority to strike ISIS in Syria.

In its report, Amnesty detailed mass killings last month by ISIS forces of hundreds of non-Sunni Muslim men and boys as young as 12 in the predominantly Yazidi regions in Nineveh Province, as well as the mass abductions of women and children, many of whom, according to the report, are being held in Mosul, Tal ‘Afar, and Bi’aj under pressure to convert to Sunni Islam. Many others remain unaccounted for.

“The Islamic State is carrying out despicable crimes and has transformed rural areas of Sinjar into blood-soaked killing fields in its brutal campaign to obliterate all trade of non-Arabs and non-Sunni Muslims,” said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty’s senior crisis response adviser currently based in northern Iraq.

In addition to Yezidis, targeted groups include Assyrian Christians, Turkmen Shi’a, Shabak Shi’a, Kakai and Sabean Manaeans, as well as many Arabs and Sunni Muslims who are believed to oppose ISIS, according to the report which also called for Iraq’s government to disband Shi’a militias, some of which are believed to have targeted Sunni communities in the region.

“Instead of aggravating the fighting by either turning a blind eye to sectarian militias or arming Shi’a militias against the Islamic State as the authorities have done so far, Iraq’s government should focus on protecting all civilians regardless of their ethnicity or religion,” according to Rovera.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Covert Origins of ISIS

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Mon Sep 08, 2014 5:32 pm

I've been thinking about this guy ever since I put this image here...
Image
...wondering what he's been plotting.

Now I have a better idea.

Henry Kissinger: Iran 'A Bigger Problem Than ISIS'
The Huffington Post | By Alana Horowitz

Image

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said that Iran "is a bigger problem than ISIS."

In an interview with NPR that was released on Saturday, Kissinger explained that because Iran has a stronger footing in the Middle East, it has a greater opportunity to create an empire.

"The borders of the settlement of 1919-'20 are essentially collapsing," he said. "That gives Iran a very powerful level from a strategic point of view. I consider Iran a bigger problem than ISIS. ISIS is a group of adventurers with a very aggressive ideology. But they have to conquer more and more territory before they can became a strategic, permanent reality. I think a conflict with ISIS — important as it is — is more manageable than a confrontation with Iran.

The Kissinger interview comes just a day after the BBC reported that Iran's Supreme Leader had ordered his military to cooperate with the U.S. in the fight against ISIS forces. CNN had a similar report.

Kissinger's warning about Iran is unsurprising given his past skepticism about its nuclear program. On Friday, nuclear talks went south after Iran failed to provide key information on its past nuclear work by an agreed-upon deadline.

Earlier this week, ISIS drew international fury when it released a video allegedly showing the beheading of an American journalist. Kissinger told NPR that he would "strongly favor a strong attack on ISIS" in response.

Read more of the ex-Secretary of State's interview here.


"US and Iranian military cooperating?! Can't have that! Must come up with a plan to thwart this..."
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
-Jim Garrison 1967
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Re: The Covert Origins of ISIS

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Sep 08, 2014 5:43 pm

don't you worry your pretty head Henry we're getting there....but of course you already know that don't you Mr. Kissinger ...got a couple of pesky little countries to finish off first
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Covert Origins of ISIS

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Fri Oct 16, 2015 4:40 pm

"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
-Jim Garrison 1967
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Re: The Covert Origins of ISIS

Postby semper occultus » Fri Oct 16, 2015 5:55 pm

Henry Kissinger: Iran 'A Bigger Problem Than ISIS'


ISIS : K ISSI NGER


......funny....


Syrian president Assad poses bigger threat than Isis, warns thinktank

Western allies flee from hard choices in Syria and fail to realise extent of threat posed by Assad regime, says International Institute for Strategic Studies

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/15/syrian-president-bashar-al-assad-bigger-threat-than-isis


ISIS : IISS


.......Obama / Osama...lets call the whole thing off....
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Re: The Covert Origins of ISIS

Postby zangtang » Fri Oct 16, 2015 6:34 pm

is simply institutionalised slaughter...............
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