How the US Helped Create Al Qaeda and ISIS

[conniption]

Empire Exposed
(embedded links)

Saturday, February 21, 2015

The Latest US Blunder: Spreading Terror around the Globe by Selling Killer Drones to ‘US Allies’

Here we go again. The US Empire does what it does best, exporting more death, destruction and terror around the world. On Tuesday the Obama administration disclosed that it plans to export killer drones to its allies from Turkey to Italy to Saudi Arabia. And we already know how that song goes. In recent years the Islamic extremists have managed to invariably get their hands on countless weapons and arms shipments intended for our so called allies. Be it in Iraq or Syria, arms that were supposed to go to the Iraqi army or allied Kurds or moderate rebels in Syria somehow always get delivered to the Islamic State extremists, the latest US-Israeli-Saudi created terrorist monster-on- steroids.

As an example last October an airdrop of weapons that was purported to go to the Kurds in the besieged town of Kobani in Syria to fight the Islamic State forces ended up in the wrong hands. As recently as last month it was discovered and reported that the US was regularly air dropping arms and supplies to the waiting Islamic State on the ground below in Iraq. Obama’s huff and puff rhetoric about hunting down the Islamic State in Syria in reality is merely another effectively deceptive ploy to commit air strikes on Assad’s Syria that he couldn’t get away with the year before right after the false flag chemical weapons attack committed by US backed rebels (that were later renamed ISIS). So now both Israeli and US military air strikes are taking out infrastructure inside Syria that hurts the Syrian people, destroying oil refineries and food storage silos.

Any true military strategist would know that if the United States actually wanted to destroy the so called big bad enemy terrorists, the most modern and lethal killing machine on the planet has the means to accomplish this mission within a month. But the truth is the Islamic State serves the megalomaniacal purpose of the Empire and for that reason alone, they must survive and be allowed to continue killing Western journalists and causing deaths of humanitarian aid workers as well as engaging in ongoing Christian cleansing throughout the Middle East and beyond. Terror strikes deep into the psyche when dumbed down masses are manipulated into a frenzied, frothy hate of Islam worldwide that only serves the Zionist-Empire-NATO unholy alliance all too well.

In between making and placing their beheading videos online, the same enemy found the time to undergo training inside our close ally Turkey’s border. With this latest announcement selling drones to US allies, the world is supposed to feel safer now that our “trusted” friends in Turkey and Saudi Arabia will be receiving Obama’s personal favorite form of state-sponsored terrorism from the sky. Using the same preferred modern warfare method that our president has envisioned killing Americans on US soil, he now plans to let others also use it to kill yet more innocent humans.

A recent study from November 2014 revealed that less than 4% of those killed by drones in Yemen and Pakistan were actually the targeted bad guys while over 96% of the 1,147 dead people killed in this latest sample were innocent civilians. The January 28, 2015 tally by the Journal of Investigative Journalism brings the total number of drone deaths in Pakistan alone to be estimated near 4,000 victims. If the sloppy aim of the most experienced and trained drone pilots on the planet from the CIA and US military can’t efficiently kill the enemy, what makes anyone believe that these other nations with fewer trained pilots will produce any better results? It's another disaster waiting to happen.

All we are doing by spreading terror from the skies in yet more hands around the world is increasing more innocent victims whose family members will justifiably hate the US (and its allies) even more. But then the Empire’s forever war on terror will be just that, with a permanent supply of fresh new jihadist recruits signing up to kill Americans to avenge the loss of their loved ones. And of course because history by design is locked into a forever do-loop pattern repeating itself, our enemies will get a hold of these made in-the-USA drones and be using them in no time on us made-in-the-USA Americans, that is when Obama’s not already using them on us. One can easily see the false flag scenario of a drone attack one day killing Americans in America and then blaming it on the Moslem terrorists who “accidentally on purpose” managed to acquire one of our own “misdirected” killer drones. And the suicidal madness increases exponentially.

A number of America’s so called allies have rather dubious track records when it comes to aiding and abetting our enemy. On the one hand, Obama in his most fluent doublespeak is quick to regard Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan as our allies in the Empire’s war on terror, yet on the other hand reality has repeatedly proven that these same “friends” regularly supply and support terrorism. For that matter, so does the United States. The bottom line is the US Empire created and has been regularly using our so called enemies al Qaeda/ISIS as our mercenary proxy-war boots on the ground in 1980’s Afghanistan against the Soviets, 1990’s Balkans against the Serbs, 9/11/2001 against our own American people, in 2011-12 Libya against Gaddafi and illegally smuggle arms from Benghazi, 2010 to the present in Syria against Assad and last year against puppet fallen-out-of-favor al-Maliki in Iraq. While Obama has continued claiming al Qaeda and ISIS as the US enemy, at the same time he is treasonously using our taxpayer dollars to train, arm and deploy them on the ground wherever he sees fit. The American people are finally realizing Obama cannot have it both ways any more.

Perhaps that’s why a year ago after the CIA-induced overthrow of the democratically elected government in Ukraine, the US decided it was time to declare a new enemy in cold war, part II. Once Putin reclaimed its Crimean naval base after the Crimean people voted overwhelmingly to become part of Russia again, it's been a propaganda war ever since. Obama and the West have been demonizing Russia once again as the enemy through nonstop lies and false flags. But it’s not working. With far more at stake in making Putin the enemy, Europe is currently attempting to arrive at peace in Eastern Ukraine through diplomacy, much to Obama’s chagrin.

The truth is the United States manufactures allies and enemies according to its fickle, self-serving, propagandizing purpose and has absolutely no moral high ground to stand on in a single aspect of its foreign policy. Whatever suits global hegemony for gaining more power and control while reaping more profit for transnational corporations and the central banking cabal is the common thread behind everything the US government does anywhere and everywhere on earth. That’s why America’s insane, convoluted, chaotic chessboard policy makes allies into enemies and enemies into allies at its fleeting, imperialistic will, amounting to pure schizoid madness. And aside from making more money for the ruling elite, by design its intended purpose is to create conflict and war to destabilize, destroy and impoverish every nation it touches, a la the King Midas-in-reverse effect. And what does this demonic foreign policy have to show for itself? Failed states in Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan along with a faltering, choking, bankrupt US economy on the verge of total collapse. Stay tuned for the fall of the American Empire.



Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. He now concentrates on his writing and has a blog site at http://empireexposed.blogspot.com/.

[conniption]

Here I go being "redundant" again... (sigh)

Counterpunch

March 09, 2015

The Future Gaddafi Foresaw

Libya, ISIS and the Unaffordable Luxury of Hindsight

by AHMAD BARQAWI

Who are you?” the late Muammar Gaddafi once rhetorically asked in a famous speech of his towards the end of his reign; (rightly) questioning the legitimacy of those seeking to over-throw his government at the time, calling them extremists, foreign agents, rats and drug-addicts. He was laughed at, unfairly caricatured, ridiculed and incessantly demonized; a distasteful parody video poking fun at the late Libyan leader even went viral on social media; evidently the maker of the video, an Israeli, thought the Libyan colloquial Arabic word “Zenga” (which means an Alleyway) sounded funny enough that he extracted it from one of Gaddafi’s speeches, looped it on top of a hip-hop backing track and voila… he got himself a hit video which was widely (and shamefully) circulated with a “revolutionary” zeal in the Arab world. We shared, we laughed, he died.

But the bloody joke is on all of us; Gaddafi knew what he was talking about; right from the get-go, he accused the so-called Libyan rebels of being influenced by Al-Qaeda ideology and Ben Laden’s school of thought; no one had taken his word for it of course, not even a little bit. I mean why should we have? After all, wasn’t he a vile, sex-centric dictator hell-bent on massacring half of the Libyan population while subjecting the other half to manic raping sprees with the aid of his trusted army of Viagra-gobbling, sub-Saharan mercenaries? At least that’s what we got from the visual cancer that is Al Jazeera channel and its even more acrid Saudi counterpart Al-Arabiya in their heavily skewed coverage of NATO’s vicious conquest of Libya. Plus Gaddafi did dress funny; why would anyone trust a haggard, weird-looking despot dressed in colorful rags when you have well-groomed Zionists like Bernard Henry Levy, John McCain and Hillary Clinton at your side, smiling and flashing the victory sign in group photo-ops, right?

Gaddafi called them drug-addicted, Islamic fundamentalists; we know them as ISIS… it doesn’t seem much of a joke now, does it? And ISIS is what had been in store for us all along; the “revolutionary” lynching and sodomization of Muammar Gaddafi amid manic chants of “Allahu Akbar”, lauded by many at the time as some sort of a warped triumph of the good of popular will (read: NATO-sponsored mob rule) over the evil of dictatorship (sovereign state), was nothing but a gory precursor for the future of the country and the region; mass lynching of entire populations in Libya, Syria and Iraq and the breakup of key Arab states into feuding mini-statelets. The gruesome video of Colonel Gaddafi’s murder, which puts to shame the majority of ISIS videos in terms of unhinged brutality and gore, did not invoke the merest of condemnations back then, on the contrary; everyone seemed perfectly fine with the grotesque end of the Libyan “tyrant”… except that it was only the beginning of a new and unprecedented reign of terror courtesy of NATO’s foot-soldiers and GCC-backed Islamic insurgents.

The rapid proliferation of trigger-happy terrorist groups and Jihadi factions drenched in petrodollars in Libya was not some sort of an intelligence failure on the part of western governments or a mere by-product of the power vacuum left by a slain Gaddafi; it was a deliberate, calculated policy sought after and implemented by NATO and its allies in the Gulf under the cringe-inducing moniker “Friends of Libya” (currently known as the International Coalition against ISIS) to turn the north-African country into the world’s largest ungovernable dumpster of weapons, al-Qaida militants and illegal oil trading.

So it is safe to say that UNSC resolution 1973, which practically gave free rein for NATO to bomb Libya into smithereens, has finally borne fruit… and it’s rotten to its nucleus, you can call the latest gruesome murder of 21 Egyptian fishermen and workers by the Libyan branch of the Islamic State exhibit “A”, not to mention of course the myriad of daily killings, bombings and mini-civil wars that are now dotting the entire country which, ever since the West engineered its coup-d’etat against the Gaddafi government, have become synonymous with the bleak landscape of lawlessness and death that is “Libya” today. And the gift of NATO liberation is sure to keep on giving for years of instability and chaos to come.

In an interview with the western media misinformation collective that is the BBC, ABC and the Sunday Times in February 2011; the late Muammar Gaddafi told his condescending interviewers; “have you seen the Al Qaeda operatives? Have you heard all these Jihadi broadcasts? It is Al Qaeda that is controlling the cities of Al Baida and Darnah, former Guantanamo inmates and extremists unleashed by America to terrorize the Libyan people…”. Darnah is now the main stronghold for ISIS in Libya.

In a bizarre coincidence (or some sort of cosmic irony); the date on which ISIS chose to release its video of the beheading of Egyptian captives, thereby officially declaring its presence in the war-torn country with three oil fields under its control, (appropriately) marked the 4th anniversary of the start of the so-called Libyan revolution on February 15th, 2011; a more apt “tribute” to commemorate the Western instigated regime-change debacle in Libya could not have been made.

But even long before ISIS became the buzzword, the acrid nature of a “revolutionary” Libya showed in full, sickening splendor almost instantly right after the old regime fell, everything the late Gaddafi was falsely accused of doing was literally perfected to a chilling degree by the so-called rebels; massacres, indiscriminate shelling of residential areas, car-bombings, mass arrests, torture, theft of oil and national resources… the whole lot. In 2013; two British pro-Palestine activists, on their way to Gaza with an aid convoy, got to experience first-hand the rotten fruits of the Libyan chapter of the so-called Arab Spring when they were abducted by a motely crew of Libyan revolutionaries-turned-warlords in the city of Benghazi and gang raped in front of their father.

Proponents of Humanitarian Interventions must be patting themselves on the back these days; now that Libya has completed its democratic makeover from a country with the highest standard of living in Africa under Gaddafi’s rule into a textbook definition of a failed state; a godless wasteland of religious fanaticism, internal bloodletting and wholesale head-chopping, in fact Libya became so “democratic” that there are now two parliaments and two (warring) governments; each with its own (criminal) army and supported with money and caches of weapons from competing foreign powers, not to mention the myriad of secessionist movements and militias which the illegal coup against Gaddafi has spawned all over the country while free health care, education and electricity, which the Libyans took for granted under Gaddafi’s regime, are all now but relics of the past; that’s the “Odyssey Dawn” the Libyans were promised; a sanitized version of Iraq sans the public outrage, neatly re-packaged in a “responsibility to protect” caveat and delivered via aerial bombing campaigns where even the West’s overzealous Gulf Co-conspirators Club (GCC), driven by nothing beyond petty personal vendettas against Gaddafi, got to test the lethality of its rusted, American-made military aircrafts alongside NATO on the people of Tripoli and Sirte.

This is what Gaddafi had predicted right from the get-go and then some; the ephemeral euphoria of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions was just too potent and too exhilarating for us to read the fine print; was it a conspiracy or a true revolutionary spirit gone awry? It doesn’t really matter now that ISIS has become the true legacy of Tahrir Square; “they will turn Libya into another Afghanistan, another Somalia, another Iraq… your women won’t be allowed out, they will transform Libya into an Islamic Emirate and America will bomb the country under the pretext of fighting terrorism”, the late Libyan leader had said in a televised speech on February 22nd, 2011, and more prophetic words were never spoken.

America’s “clean war” Libyan prototype proved to be such a success that it was replicated with a wanton abandon in Syria; Paul Bremer’s “Blackwater” death squads of old, which reigned terror all over Iraq, are back… with an Islamic twist; bearded, clad in black and explosives from head to toe and mounting convoys of Toyota Land Cruiser trucks with an ever-expanding, seemingly borderless Islamic Caliphate (that somehow leaves the Zionist regime unencumbered in its occupation of Palestine) set in their sights.

Everyday the Arab World is awakened to a new-videotaped atrocity; steeped in gore and maniacal terror courtesy of ISIS (or IS or ISIL), and countless of other “youtubeless”, albeit more heinous crimes courtesy of America’s very own ever-grinding, one-sided drone warfare; the entire region seesaws between machete beheadings and hellfire missile incinerations. Death from above… as well as below; the War on Terror rears its ugly head once again; to bring in line those nasty terrorists that the West itself funded and sponsored in the name of democracy to destabilize “unsavory” regimes; an unrelenting Groundhog Day that starts with the Responsibility to Protect and ends with the War on Terror, with thousands of innocent lives, typically chalked up to collateral damage, crushed in the process.

This is exactly what Gaddafi foresaw; a Libya mired in utter chaos, civil conflict and western diktats; a breeding ground for Jihadi fundamentalism and extremists… too bad we just laughed his warnings off to an Israeli-made parody tune.

Ahmad Barqawi, freelance columnist and writer.

[conniption]

RT
(embedded links)

How Iran and the US intersect in “Syraq”

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia.

Published time: March 11, 2015


Aleppo, Syria (Reuters / Jalal Al-Mamo)

A cliffhanger debate will take place this Wednesday at the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Picture Secretary of State John Kerry, new Pentagon supremo Ashton Carter, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey all testifying in the same room.

The meat of the matter: the House of Cards, sorry, US Congress mulling over what's the real deal behind the Obama administration’s proposal to use “military force” in Syria, and whether to impose a no-fly zone to protect Syrian “rebels”.

Obama actually has a “special presidential envoy” for the Orwellian-style Global Coalition to Counter ISIL; he’s retired Marine Gen. John Allen.

Allen swears the US “will protect” Syrian “rebels” trained and weaponized by Washington; and he’s all in favor of a no-fly zone over northern Syria.

The envoy is essentially parroting ‘His Master’s Voice’, whose self-described “Don’t Do Stupid Shit” administration is confident the draft authorization to use military force in Syria will survive scrutiny at the House of Cards, sorry, US Congress.

The no-fly zone is exactly what the government of the Sultan of Constantinople, sorry, Turkey President Tayyip Erdogan, has advocated since forever. ‘Sultan’ Erdogan’s master plan is to solidify a base for the weaponized Syrian opposition to fight not only ISIS/ISIL/Daesh but most of all the Syrian Armed Forces under Bashar al-Assad.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has been on the record insisting Syrian “rebels” should do exactly that. But Ankara, we have a problem.

The Pentagon is now spinning, via spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby, that “the Syria component of this campaign is an anti-[IS] component. That's the focus, not about the Assad regime. Nothing has changed about … the policy that there's not going to be a US military solution to Assad.”

So either this is a disinformation charade, or Erdogan is living in La-La Land. In fact, this may be yet another case of good cop, bad cop.

And staying in the bad cop department, nothing equals “our” bastards from the Persian Gulf monarchies.

Qatar intel operatives have met none other than the leader of Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria, Abu Mohamad al-Golani, with the proverbial offer he can’t refuse; you dump your direct link to al-Qaeda, and we shower you with a tsunami of cash.

It doesn't matter that al-Nusra is considered an evil terrorist organization by the US State Dept. Qatar, after all, never wavered from its “Assad must go” obsession, unlike the Obama administration. So the end once again justifies the means.

Meanwhile, the ‘Empire of Chaos’ keeps alive the ambivalent cover story of a Global Coalition fighting ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, with the hidden agenda of weakening Assad on the backburner.

In Syria, its Iranian military advisers who are coordinating the Syrian Arab Army with experienced Hezbollah fighters and Shi’ite militias from Iraq.

As there is no “moderate Syrian opposition” anymore – everyone migrated to the fake Caliphate - the ‘Empire of Chaos’s’ not so hidden agenda under the “authorization to use military force” would be to keep a bunch of CIA-screened weaponized “rebels” just to maintain pressure over Damascus. By now it’s plain obvious that it’s not the ‘Empire of Chaos’ but the alliance of the Syrian Arab Army, Hezbollah fighters and Iran-supervised Shi’ite militias that will prevail over the fake Caliphate.

That Iranian rock star

Something similar is happening in the Iraqi theater. Iraqi Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi swears Baghdad is quite “comfortable” with the help it’s getting from Tehran to really fight ISIS/ISIL/Daesh on the ground.

And that brings us to the real meat of the matter - the complex interlocking ballet between Washington and Tehran in “Syraq”. The power that is actually corralling and subduing the fake Caliphate on the ground in Iraq is not the hyper-power, but Iran, which is offering tactical, strategic and air support to Baghdad.

As the US-trained Iraqi army is a mess, the ones doing the heavy lifting are militias. There are at least 100,000 Iraqi militia fighters fully mobilized by powerful Shi’ite clerics to advance a counter-jihad against the fake Caliphate, which brands Shi’ites as apostates whose only appropriate destiny is six feet under.

Their top commander is none other than a real rock star in Iran, Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the head of the elite Quds Force. Soleimani is all over the place on both Iranian and Iraqi TV. His latest high-profile photo op was in Samarra, actively encouraging both militias and Iraqi troops to fight Caliph Ibrahim’s goons.

Behind Soleimani, we find two essential characters - Hadi al Ameri and Abu Mahdi Mohandes.

Ameri is a former transportation minister under former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki; now he is the head of Iraq’s number one militia, the Badr Brigade.

Mohandes, a former, Iran-exiled member of the opposition to Saddam, is also a former member of Parliament. He’s a sort of right-hand man to Soleimani – and also responsible for overseeing the return of Sunnis to Iraqi cities re-conquered from ISIS/ISIL/Daesh.

So these are the men and forces which are about to take Tikrit, the former privileged lair of the Saddam Hussein clan, only 80 miles north of Baghdad. Once Tikrit is taken, it’s just a shot away towards Mosul, population 1.5 million, which could be liberated by late spring.

The key bottom line: the ‘Empire of Chaos’ is doing absolutely nothing to eradicate ISIS/ISIL/Daesh from Iraq – apart from Gen. Martin Dempsey asking the government in Baghdad to “reconcile” with Sunnis and “explain” its relations with Tehran.

How about explaining that they are actually helping us to get rid of a cancer you allowed to fester, and you just keep talking nonsense?


Aleppo, Syria (Reuters / Jalal Al-Mamo)

The self-described “Don’t Do Stupid Stuff” Obama administration, with its rambling foreign policy, is driving the real Masters of the Universe who control the current world system absolutely crazy.

No wonder, they have no clue what they really want to achieve in “Syraq”.

The RAND Corporation has tried to make it very clear what the objectives are.

Then the Council on Foreign Relations, indirectly, really lost their marbles. The only way out would be to regiment a bunch of wise men - Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and James Baker – to put the imperial house in order.

Well, that was thoroughly debunked by Andrew Bacevich.

So what’s really going on? The Obama administration’s new National Security Strategy is deliberately vague. It extols the merits of the Global Coalition – in fact the ‘Empire of Chaos’ allied with “our” bastards in the Persian Gulf – to fight ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, sort of; not kill it for good, but let it fester somewhat to perpetually weaken Damascus.

Other factions in Washington though would rather have the fake Caliphate “contained and destroyed” first in Iraq and then in Syria; that assumes Washington covertly supporting Iran’s work.

Pentagon supremo Ashton Carter may be entertaining his own screenplay. He has been hitting Beltway “experts” and Middle East hands such as former US ambassador to Syria and notorious “Assad must go” enabler Robert Ford, who’s now working for – what else - AIPAC. It’s important to remember that AIPAC sees Iran, Syria under Assad and Hezbollah as worse than the black plague, and does not see ISIS/ISIL/Daesh as a threat to Israel.

The Global Coalition meanwhile keeps alive the fiction it is bombing the fake Caliphate into oblivion. But it’s really Iran-coordinated forces which are winning the battle in “Syraq” on the ground.

It’s naïve to imagine that by following this course the ‘Empire of Chaos’ will necessarily de-accelerate the interlocked demonization of Syria, Iran and Russia.

“Assad must go” will never completely vanish from the road map. A real détente with Iran depends on whether a nuclear deal is arrived at this summer – and Obama has been ratcheting up the pressure with demand after demand. The demonization of Russia is bound only to get more vociferous.

What’s quite intriguing is that even star Pentagon generals are burying Rumsfeldian non sequiturs such as the “Revolution in Military Affairs” (RMA), according to which a tech-savvy Pentagon would handily defeat any enemy.

Well, RMA was soundly defeated, on the ground, by Afghans and by Iraqis. And there’s nothing it can do against the “irregulars” of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. So much for Full Spectrum Dominance when the only disaster you can accomplish is to destroy Libya with a mix of NATO bombs and a bunch of demented jihadis.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

[8bitagent]

Still don't get how the war hawkish Republicans are so hellbent against Iran, if Iran is allegedly single handedly routing ISIS out of Iraq?

[Occult Means Hidden]

Single handedly does not mean what you think it means. I think the 6,000 estimated killed in coalition air strikes, Kurdish offensives and Syrian and Iraqi counteroffensives sort of play a part too.

[Nordic]

Still don't get how the war hawkish Republicans are so hellbent against Iran, if Iran is allegedly single handedly routing ISIS out of Iraq?

Uh ... because they don't WANT anyone to route ISIS out of Iraq.

ISIS is serving a purpose for the US.

Really, why are you going back to the default US bullshit position on this?

[Occult Means Hidden]

For what purpose? To weaken an already weakened Iraq? To alienate a fairly friendly Kurdish populace? If the U.S. wanted that it would have deliberately split the country by giving Sunnis more power during the country's occupation and then staging a Vietnam-like withdraw. Perhaps the U.S. wants ISIL to succeed in Iraq to perpetuate the war machine of the industrial military complex?

When you have two contrary positions you are forced to side with the position that is most visible because a claim to the alternate by means of obfuscation, occult and trickery is itself a dialectic non-starter. That is, 50 percent chance one way, 50 percent chance the other.

In summary two views:
ISIL to succeed in Iraq
- 50 percent probably with no data points.
- however data suggests visible international military action led by the U.S. against ISIL.
ISIL to fail in Iraq
- 50 percent probably with no data points.
- data suggests visible international military action led by the U.S. against ISIL.

To prove U.S. wants ISIL to succeed would suggest intelligence work, classified data and under handed deals. The probability of this is 50/50 because we simply do not know for sure that this is occurring to a relevant extant, and if it is, if it's for this purpose. The argument becomes fractured. Therefore the U.S. "powers that be" want:

ISIL to succeed in Iraq
- less than 50 percent probably
ISIL to fail in Iraq
- greater than 50 percent probably

To make statements that ISIL is supported by the U.S. in the absolute is, like most social science statements in the absolute, illogical.

Also for christsake, stop calling them ISIS. That is a thing of feminine and divine beauty since before the founding of western civilization. I won't let the "powers that be" fuck with every beautiful thing in this world and neither should you.

[8bitagent]

"Also for christsake, stop calling them ISIS. That is a thing of feminine and divine beauty since before the founding of western civilization. I won't let the "powers that be" fuck with every beautiful thing in this world and neither should you."

But that is the point. Many of us pointed out a year ago about this "ISIS" phenomenon, that we felt there was no coincidence. Like the US using the 'MOAB' bomb in Iraq or the Crowleyan numbers used in the 9/11 attack planes, I don't believe any of it is by coincidence. Or conscious coincidence. "ISIL" is just a word from President Barry and his down trodden peeps...but the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. Aint no coincidence.

All part of this ghastly wink n' nod game

[Nordic]

http://m.bbc.com/news/uk-31879682

Syria girls: Video appears to show missing British trio
13 March 2015

The new footage appears to show the girls near the border between Turkey and Syria

New video footage appearing to show three missing London schoolgirls preparing to enter Syria has emerged.

The footage, broadcast by Turkish network A-Haber, seems to show a man helping Amira Abase, Shamima Begum and Kadiza Sultana into a car near Turkey's border with Syria.

It is believed to have been shot by the man later arrested for allegedly helping the trio cross the border.

Turkey's foreign minister has said the man was an intelligence worker.

He worked for the intelligence agency of an unspecified country that is part of the coalition against IS, according to Mevlut Cavusoglu.

.

[AlicetheKurious]

Turkey's foreign minister has said the man was an intelligence worker.

He worked for the intelligence agency of an unspecified country that is part of the coalition against IS, according to Mevlut Cavusoglu.

Canada. Working out of the Canadian Embassy in Jordan. Check the other thread. (What is the purpose of this thread?)

[conniption]

...
Canada. Working out of the Canadian Embassy in Jordan. Check the other thread. (What is the purpose of this thread?)

What? It's not like the board has become inundated with threads on ISIS.

When 8bit started his thread, "Your Take On The ISIS Phenomenon " (a month after I started this one) it didn't bother me. Maybe he didn't resonate with the title "How the US Helped Create Al Qaeda and ISIS". No worries.

I haven't contributed to his thread because he specifically asks for my take on the ISIS phenomenon, and what I have to offer is a collection of articles by others. Not me. besides, 8bit doesn't like me.

Anyway Alice, it's mighty fine to have you back. I'm one of your biggest fans, you know. It's nearly impossible to find anyone who has something positive to say about what went down in Egypt. I've passed up several articles on color revolutions, in respect for you and your views, because when the authors write about Egypt, it's as if it's the poster child of how terribly wrong things can go. They say Egypt is now a military dictatorship, which may be the ultimate goal of said color revolutions according to some.

[seemslikeadream]

if RI can and is instructed to do so handle at least 3 if not 4 or 5 anti-semitic/fascists OP's on the front page of GD constantly for over 6 years now...we should not question the purpose of this thread

[seemslikeadream]

CIA money from secret fund ended up in hands of al-Qaida – report
Money used to pay a ransom for an Afghan diplomat reached al-Qaida in 2010, according to Afghan and Western officials, but CIA declined comment
Osama bin Laden
According to the New York Times, al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden feared the CIA tainted the money with poison, radiation or a tracking device. Photograph: Getty Images North America
Reuters in Washington
Saturday 14 March 2015 14.38 EDT Last modified on Saturday 14 March 2015 15.14 EDT
About $1m provided by the CIA to a secret Afghan government fund ended up in the hands of al-Qaida in 2010 when it was used to pay a ransom for an Afghan diplomat, the New York Times reported on Saturday.

Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden had at first been concerned about the payment, fearing the CIA knew about the money and had tainted it with poison, radiation or a tracking device, the Times said, and suggested it be converted to another currency.

The newspaper said letters about the ransom payment were found in the 2011 raid by US navy Seals, who killed bin Laden at his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The communications were submitted as evidence in the trial of Abid Naseer, who was convicted this month in New York of supporting terrorism and plotting to bomb a shopping center in Manchester, England.

The Times said Abdul Khaliq Farahi was the Afghan consul general in Peshawar, Pakistan, when he was kidnapped in 2008 and handed over to al-Qaida. He was released two years later after Afghanistan paid al-Qaida $5m, a fifth of which was CIA money that came from an Afghan government fund that received monthly cash deliveries from the agency, the Times said.

The newspaper said an al-Qaida member wrote bin Laden that the ransom money would be used for weapons, operational needs and payments to families of al-Qaida fighters held in Afghanistan.

The Times said the cash the CIA delivered to the Afghan presidential palace under President Hamid Karzai was used to buy the support of warlords, legislators and others, as well as to cover expenses for clandestine diplomatic trips and housing for senior officials. Afghan officials told the newspaper the payments have slowed since Ashraf Ghani became president in September.

In addition to the al-Qaida correspondence, the Times story was based on conversations with Afghan and Western officials, the newspaper said, noting that the CIA declined to comment.

[seemslikeadream]

ISIS created Guantanamo for prisoners: ex-hostage


MADRID: ISIS extremists staged mock executions of Western captives held in a Syrian compound intended to be the jihadi answer to Guantanamo, former hostage Javier Espinosa revealed Sunday.

Writing in El Mundo newspaper, the Spanish journalist who was kidnapped on Sept. 16, 2013, and freed on March 29, 2014, also detailed for the first time the execution of Russian hostage Sergei Gorbunov, who went missing in October 2013.

Espinosa said ISIS grouped as many as 23 hostages from 11 Western countries in a villa north of Aleppo, where his captors wanted to replicate the U.S. prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, used to detain enemy jihadi combatants.

Quoting information he had been told by American journalist James Foley, who was decapitated by ISIS in 2014, Espinosa wrote: “They had this project for a long time. The [head guard] told us at the beginning they wanted to intern Westerners in a high-security prison with cameras and lots of guards.”

“They told us that we would be here for a very long time, because we were the first ones they captured,” Foley confided to Espinosa.

He said the group of 22 European, American and Latin-American journalists and humanitarian workers held in the compound were submitted to repeated mock executions by a trio of particularly brutal guards that prisoners nicknamed “The Beatles.”

Other times, hostages were forced to view images from the execution of Russian engineer Gorbunov, who was assassinated by what captors told the prisoners was an exploding bullet fired to his head.

“You may wind up like him,” Espinosa recalls a guard taunting him. “Or maybe we will make you unearth him and dig another grave so you can sleep with him.”

Espinosa says he waited nearly a year after being freed to reveal details of his detention because ISIS captors had warned they would execute remaining hostages if he spoke about his ordeal “before everything has been finished.”

Espinosa wrote that time has now come, with 15 of his group of 23 prisoners having been released, six executed, and American humanitarian worker Kayla Mueller killed in a U.S. bombing of ISIS positions last month.

The fate of another fellow detainee, British photographer John Cantlie, is unknown after a recently released ISIS video showed him still alive.

[justdrew]

Anonymous released 9,200 ISIS supporter Twitter account names to apply pressure on Twitter to suspend them

“How is it that the US government, capable of coordinating a complex air campaign from nearly 6,000 miles away, remains virtually powerless against the Islamic State’s online messaging and distribution network?
(and having spent billions developing the capabilities we know all too well to 'tap' the damn near entire internet)

“If the United States is struggling to counter the Islamic State’s dispersed, rapidly regenerative online presence, why not turn to groups native to this digital habitat? Why not embrace the efforts of third-party hackers like Anonymous to dismantle the Islamic State – and even give them the resources to do so?”

I'm afraid the unanswered question from paragraph one answers paragraph two.

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meanwhile... (from the washington times no less. lol)

‘Jihadi John’ still has access to British bank account: ‘Incomprehensible’

amazing init? They be workin SO HARD ta p'tect us huh?