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War against Isis: U.S strategy in tatters as Militants march on

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World View: American-led air attacks are failing. Jihadis are close to taking Kobani, in Syria – and in Iraq western Baghdad is now under serious threat.

Islamic State Kobane

– by Patrick Cockburn, The Independent

America’s plans to fight Islamic State are in ruins as the militant group’s fighters come close to capturing Kobani and have inflicted a heavy defeat on the Iraqi army west of Baghdad.

The US-led air attacks launched against Islamic State (also known as Isis) on 8 August in Iraq and 23 September in Syria have not worked. President Obama’s plan to “degrade and destroy” Islamic State has not even begun to achieve success. In both Syria and Iraq, Isis is expanding its control rather than contracting.

Isis reinforcements have been rushing towards Kobani in the past few days to ensure that they win a decisive victory over the Syrian Kurdish town’s remaining defenders. The group is willing to take heavy casualties in street fighting and from air attacks in order to add to the string of victories it has won in the four months since its forces captured Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq, on 10 June. Part of the strength of the fundamentalist movement is a sense that there is something inevitable and divinely inspired about its victories, whether it is against superior numbers in Mosul or US airpower at Kobani.

In the face of a likely Isis victory at Kobani, senior US officials have been trying to explain away the failure to save the Syrian Kurds in the town, probably Isis’s toughest opponents in Syria. “Our focus in Syria is in degrading the capacity of [Isis] at its core to project power, to command itself, to sustain itself, to resource itself,” said US Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken, in a typical piece of waffle designed to mask defeat. “The tragic reality is that in the course of doing that there are going to be places like Kobani where we may or may not be able to fight effectively.”

Unfortunately for the US, Kobani isn’t the only place air strikes are failing to stop Isis. In an offensive in Iraq launched on 2 October but little reported in the outside world, Isis has captured almost all the cities and towns it did not already hold in Anbar province, a vast area in western Iraq that makes up a quarter of the country. It has captured Hit, Kubaisa and Ramadi, the provincial capital, which it had long fought for. Other cities, towns and bases on or close to the Euphrates River west of Baghdad fell in a few days, often after little resistance by the Iraqi Army which showed itself to be as dysfunctional as in the past, even when backed by US air strikes.

Today, only the city of Haditha and two bases, Al-Assad military base near Hit, and Camp Mazrah outside Fallujah, are still in Iraqi government hands. Joel Wing, in his study –”Iraq’s Security Forces Collapse as The Islamic State Takes Control of Most of Anbar Province” – concludes: “This was a huge victory as it gives the insurgents virtual control over Anbar and poses a serious threat to western Baghdad”.

The battle for Anbar, which was at the heart of the Sunni rebellion against the US occupation after 2003, is almost over and has ended with a decisive victory for Isis. It took large parts of Anbar in January and government counter-attacks failed dismally with some 5,000 casualties in the first six months of the year. About half the province’s 1.5 million population has fled and become refugees. The next Isis target may be the Sunni enclaves in western Baghdad, starting with Abu Ghraib on the outskirts but leading right to the centre of the capital.

The Iraqi government and its foreign allies are drawing comfort, there having been some advances against Isis in the centre and north of the country. But north and north-east of Baghdad the successes have not been won by the Iraqi army but by highly sectarian Shia militias which do not distinguish between Isis and the rest of the Sunni population. They speak openly of getting rid of Sunni in mixed provinces such as Diyala where they have advanced. The result is that Sunni in Iraq have no alternative but to stick with Isis or flee, if they want to survive. The same is true north-west of Mosul on the border with Syria, where Iraqi Kurdish forces, aided by US air attacks, have retaken the important border crossing of Rabia, but only one Sunni Arab remained in the town. Ethnic and sectarian cleansing has become the norm in the war in both Iraq and Syria.

The US’s failure to save Kobani, if it falls, will be a political as well as military disaster. Indeed, the circumstances surrounding the loss of the beleaguered town are even more significant than the inability so far of air strikes to stop Isis taking 40 per cent of it. At the start of the bombing in Syria, President Obama boasted of putting together a coalition of Sunni powers such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to oppose Isis, but these all have different agendas to the US in which destroying IS is not the first priority. The Sunni Arab monarchies may not like Isis, which threatens the political status quo, but, as one Iraqi observer put it, “they like the fact that Isis creates more problems for the Shia than it does for them”.

Of the countries supposedly uniting against Isis, by the far most important is Turkey because it shares a 510-mile border with Syria across which rebels of all sorts, including Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, have previously passed with ease. This year the Turks have tightened border security, but since its successes in the summer Isis no longer needs sanctuary, supplies and volunteers from outside to the degree it once did.

In the course of the past week it has become clear that Turkey considers the Syrian Kurd political and military organisations, the PYD and YPG, as posing a greater threat to it than the Islamic fundamentalists. Moreover, the PYD is the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been fighting for Kurdish self-rule in Turkey since 1984.

Ever since Syrian government forces withdrew from the Syrian Kurdish enclaves or cantons on the border with Turkey in July 2012, Ankara has feared the impact of self-governing Syrian Kurds on its own 15 million-strong Kurdish population.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would prefer Isis to control Kobani, not the PYD. When five PYD members, who had been fighting Isis at Kobani, were picked up by the Turkish army as they crossed the border last week they were denounced as “separatist terrorists”.

Turkey is demanding a high price from the US for its co-operation in attacking Isis, such as a Turkish-controlled buffer zone inside Syria where Syrian refugees are to live and anti-Assad rebels are to be trained. Mr Erdogan would like a no-fly zone which will also be directed against the government in Damascus since Isis has no air force. If implemented the plan would mean Turkey, backed by the US, would enter the Syrian civil war on the side of the rebels, though the anti-Assad forces are dominated by Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate.

It is worth keeping in mind that Turkey’s actions in Syria since 2011 have been a self-defeating blend of hubris and miscalculation. At the start of the uprising, it could have held the balance between the government and its opponents. Instead, it supported the militarisation of the crisis, backed the jihadis and assumed Assad would soon be defeated. This did not happen and what had been a popular uprising became dominated by sectarian warlords who flourished in conditions created by Turkey. Mr Erdogan is assuming he can disregard the rage of the Turkish Kurds at what they see as his complicity with Isis against the Syrian Kurds. This fury is already deep, with 33 dead, and is likely to get a great deal worse if Kobani falls.

Why doesn’t Ankara worry more about the collapse of the peace process with the PKK that has maintained a ceasefire since 2013? It may believe that the PKK is too heavily involved in fighting Isis in Syria that it cannot go back to war with the government in Turkey. On the other hand, if Turkey does join the civil war in Syria against Assad, a crucial ally of Iran, then Iranian leaders have said that “Turkey will pay a price”. This probably means that Iran will covertly support an armed Kurdish insurgency in Turkey. Saddam Hussein made a somewhat similar mistake to Mr Erdogan when he invaded Iran in 1980, thus leading Iran to reignite the Kurdish rebellion that Baghdad had crushed through an agreement with the Shah in 1975. Turkish military intervention in Syria might not end the war there, but it may well spread the fighting to Turkey.

Key Democrats, led by Hillary Clinton, leave no doubt that endless war is official U.S. doctrine

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Photo: Reuters

Photo: Reuters

– by Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept

Long before Americans were introduced to the new 9/11 era super-villains called ISIS and Khorasan, senior Obama officials were openly and explicitly stating that America’s “war on terror,” already 12 years old, would last at least another decade. At first, they injected these decrees only anonymously; in late 2012, The Washington Post – disclosing the administration’s secret creation of a “disposition matrix” to decide who should be killed, imprisoned without charges, or otherwise “disposed” of – reported these remarkable facts:

Among senior Obama administration officials, there is a broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade. Given the way al-Qaida continues to metastasize, some officials said no clear end is in sight. . . . That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism.”

In May, 2013, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on whether it should revise the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF). A committee member asked a senior Pentagon official, Assistant Secretary Michael Sheehan, how long the war on terror would last; his reply: “At least 10 to 20 years.” At least. A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed afterward “that Sheehan meant the conflict is likely to last 10 to 20 more years from today — atop the 12 years that the conflict has already lasted.” As Spencer Ackerman put it: “Welcome to America’s Thirty Years War,” one which – by the Obama administration’s own reasoning – has “no geographic limit.”

Listening to all this, Maine’s independent Sen. Angus King said: “This is the most astounding and most astoundingly disturbing hearing that I’ve been to since I’ve been here. You guys have essentially rewritten the Constitution today.” Former Bush DOJ lawyer Jack Goldsmith – himself an ardent advocate of broad presidential powers – was at the hearing and noted that nobody even knows against whom this endless war is being waged: “Amazingly, there is a very large question even in the Armed Services Committee about who the United States is at war against and where, and how those determinations are made.”

All of that received remarkably little attention given its obvious significance. But any doubts about whether Endless War – literally – is official American doctrine should be permanently erased by this week’s comments from two leading Democrats, both former top national security officials in the Obama administration, one of whom is likely to be the next American president.

Leon Panetta, the long-time Democratic Party operative who served as Obama’s Defense Secretary and CIA Director, said this week of Obama’s new bombing campaign: “I think we’re looking at kind of a 30-year war.” Only in America are new 30-year wars spoken of so casually, the way other countries speak of weather changes. He added that the war “will have to extend beyond Islamic State to include emerging threats in Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere.” And elsewhere: not just a new decades-long war with no temporal limits, but no geographic ones either. He criticized Obama – who has bombed 7 predominantly Muslim countries plus the Muslim minority in the Phillipines (almost double the number of countries Bush bombed) – for being insufficiently militaristic, despite the fact that Obama officials themselves have already instructed the public to think of The New War “in terms of years.”

Then we have Hillary Clinton (whom Panetta gushed would make a “great” president). At an event in Ottawa yesterday, she proclaimed that the fight against these “militants” will “be a long-term struggle” that should entail an “information war” as “well as an air war.” The new war, she said, is “essential” and the U.S. shies away from fighting it “at our peril.” Like Panetta (and most establishment Republicans), Clinton made clear in her book that virtually all of her disagreements with Obama’s foreign policy were the by-product of her view of Obama as insufficiently hawkish, militaristic and confrontational.

At this point, it is literally inconceivable to imagine the U.S. not at war. It would be shocking if that happened in our lifetime. U.S. officials are now all but openly saying this. “Endless War” is not dramatic rhetorical license but a precise description of America’s foreign policy.

It’s not hard to see why. A state of endless war justifies ever-increasing state power and secrecy and a further erosion of rights. It also entails a massive transfer of public wealth to the “homeland security” and weapons industry (which the US media deceptively calls the “defense sector”).

Just yesterday, Bloomberg reported: “Led by Lockheed Martin Group (LTM), the biggest U.S. defense companies are trading at record prices as shareholders reap rewards from escalating military conflicts around the world.” Particularly exciting is that “investors see rising sales for makers of missiles, drones and other weapons as the U.S. hits Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq”; moreover, “the U.S. also is the biggest foreign military supplier to Israel, which waged a 50-day offensive against the Hamas Islamic movement in the Gaza Strip.” ISIS is using U.S.-made ammunition and weapons, which means U.S. weapons companies get to supply all sides of The New Endless War; can you blame investors for being so giddy?

I vividly recall how, in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s killing, Obama partisans triumphantly declared that this would finally usher in the winding down of the War on Terror. On one superficial level, that view was understandable: it made sense if one assumes that the U.S. has been waging this war for its stated reasons and that it hopes to vanquish The Enemy and end the war.

But that is not, and never was, the purpose of the War on Terror. It was designed from the start to be endless. Both Bush and Obama officials have explicitly said that the war will last at least a generation. The nature of the “war,” and the theories that have accompanied it, is that it has no discernible enemy and no identifiable limits. More significantly, this “war” fuels itself, provides its own inexhaustible purpose, as it is precisely the policies justified in the name of Stopping Terrorism that actually ensure its spread (note how Panetta said the new U.S. war would have to include Libya, presumably to fight against those empowered by the last U.S. war there just 3 years ago).

This war – in all its ever-changing permutations – thus enables an endless supply of power and profit to flow to those political and economic factions that control the government regardless of election outcomes. And that’s all independent of the vicarious sense of joy, purpose and fulfillment which the sociopathic Washington class derives from waging risk-free wars, as Adam Smith so perfectly described in Wealth of Nations 235 years ago:

In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace.They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war. 

The last thing the Washington political class and the economic elites who control it want is for this war to end. Anyone who doubts that should just look at the express statements from these leading Democrats, who wasted no time at all seizing on the latest Bad Guys to justify literally decades more of this profiteering and war-making.

Ex-Pentagon chief predicts 30-year ISIS war

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Panetta says Obama now has an opportunity to 'repair the damage' by showing leadership after having 'lost his way' in the fight against ISIS. (File Photo: AFP)

Panetta says Obama now has an opportunity to ‘repair the damage’ by showing leadership after having ‘lost his way’ in the fight against ISIS. (File Photo: AFP)

– by Al Arabiya News

The war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) could go on for decades because of poor decision-making on the part of the U.S. administration, the former chief of the Pentagon Leon Panetta said in an interview published Monday.

In the interview with USA Today, Panetta also criticized Obama for a deciding not the arm the moderate Syrian rebels in the early stages of the conflict in Syria.

“I think we’re looking at kind of a 30-year war” that could extend to threats in Libya, Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen, Panetta told the newspaper.

Panetta, a respected policymaker who served under Obama, blamed the challenges on decisions the president made over the past three years.

Among those decisions, he cited Obama’s failure to push the Iraqi government hard enough to allow a residual U.S. force to stay in the country after troops withdrew in 2011, saying that created a security “vacuum.”

The former defense secretary also pointed to Obama’s rejection of advice in 2012 from Panetta and then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton to begin arming Syrian rebels fighting against President Bashar al-Assad.

“I do think we would be in a better position to kind of know whether or not there is some moderate element in the rebel forces that are confronting Assad,” Panetta said.

And Panetta said Obama lost credibility when he warned Assad not to use chemical weapons against his own people and then failed to act when the Syrian leader crossed that “red line” last year.

Panetta says Obama now has an opportunity to “repair the damage” by showing leadership after having “lost his way” in the fight against the extremist group that has seized chunks of territory in Iraq and Syria.

The former Pentagon chief was speaking ahead of the release of his new book, “Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace,” set for Tuesday by Penguin Press.

USA Today said that Panetta is explicitly critical Obama in his book, writing that his “most conspicuous weakness” was “a frustrating reticence to engage his opponents and rally support for his cause.”

The president too often “relies on the logic of a law professor rather than the passion of a leader,” the former defense chief added, saying that approach means Obama “avoids the battle, complains and misses opportunities.”

At times, Obama “gets so discouraged by the process” that he sometimes stops fighting, Panetta told USA Today.

But Panetta also expressed hope Obama would change course during his last two years in office and recover from his mistakes.

“My hope is that the president, recognizing that we are at a kind of critical point in his administration, will take the bit in his teeth and will say, ‘We have got to solve these problems,’” Panetta said.

(With AFP)

Black flags over Kobane as Islamic State forces move in

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Islamic State Kobane

– by John Beck, Vice

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday that a ground operation would be needed to stop Kobane falling to the Islamic State (IS) after the jihadists overran parts of the Syrian border town in heavy street to street fighting.

Erdogan warned that the series of air strikes launched by a US-led coalition on IS targets around the city would not be enough to halt the militants’ advance and that Kobane could be seized by IS soon. “The terror will not be over… unless we cooperate for a ground operation,” Erdogan said, speaking at a Syrian refugee camp in Gazientep, according to a translation by AFP. “I am telling the West — dropping bombs from the air will not provide a solution.”

He went on to reiterate calls for a no-fly zone above Syria, introduction of a buffer zone for refugees and for more moderate rebel groups battling the Syrian government to be armed and trained for the fight against IS.

IS moved into Kobane on Monday, seizing one neighborhood, the city’s industrial area and part of the countryside east of the city, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). The group previously took control of Mistenur Hill, which overlooks Kobane from the south-east.

The observatory, which collects information from a network of local activists, reported on Tuesday morning that a relative quiet had fallen over Kobane, also known by its Arabic name of Ayn al- Arab, after heavy fighting forced IS to pull back somewhat. SOHR also said that five huge explosions had been heard east and south-east of the city, and were thought to be caused by airstrikes. US Central Command confirmed that aircraft from the American-led anti-IS coalition had “destroyed two IS fighting positions” south of Kobane on Monday.

Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius also urged action on Tueday to defend Kobane, telling parliament “everything must be done so that the Daesh terrorists are stopped and pushed back,” using the Arabic slang for IS.

Fabius added that he had spoken with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and that French President Francois Hollande would talk with Erdogan on Tuesday.

Turkey has previously said that it would stop Kobane falling to IS and last week, the country’s parliament passed a motion which would allow military action against IS in Iraq and Syria and allow foreign forces to launch missions against the jihadists from Turkish soil. However, no further details have been announced. Ankara is wary of the idea of a powerful Kurdish presence on its doorstep, especially the YPG, which has links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a group that fought for more than 30 years for greater autonomy within Turkey and is considered by authorities to be a terrorist organization.

IS has effectively surrounded Kobane on three sides for well over a year but launched a large-scale offensive more than three weeks ago. It would be a major prize for IS and allow the extremist group to connect territory held in the Syrian province of Aleppo with its stronghold of Raqqa further east. It would also destroy the threat to their rear posed by the Kurds and give the group full control of a large stretch of the Turkish border, aiding the passage of fighters and oil in and out of the country.

Kurdish activists and military officials in Kobane have been warning that it could fall to IS at any moment, but this now looks closer than ever. Nevertheless, the Kurdish YPG fighters defending the city have remained defiant.

Idris Nassan, a senior official in Kobane, insisted to BBC Radio that Kurdish fighters had the advantage over IS in the city.

He said: “Kobane is not going to fall. Kobane resists and the resisting will be for a long time.

“They know the geography, they know how to fight in the streets and even tanks and other heavy weapons will not work in the small and narrow streets of Kobane,” Nassan said.

However Cahit Storm, a computer engineer who left Kobane for the Turkish border five days ago but remains in close contact with those left behind, said the city was about to fall. He said Turkey needed to allow access to Kobane in order to get provisions such as water, food and ammunition to the Kurdish fighters.

“Now that the city is completely locked by IS in the south and the Turks to the north it’s probably already lost,” he told the BBC. “Kobane right now is about to fall in one, maybe two days. Nothing more.”

Kurdish forces have arguably been the most effective force facing off against IS on the ground. However, the jihadists have modern weapons and armor, much of it looted from the Iraqi army during a shock advance in June. As a result they are hard to stop, especially for the YPG, which is mainly armed with elderly Soviet guns and RPGs and unable to access heavier ordnance.

Security forces in border regions have clashed with Turkish Kurds and refugees who believe that Turkey is backing IS and are infuriated that it has closed the border to those wishing to join the YPG in defending Kobane.

One man was killed and at least two others were reportedly injured during protests on Tuesday. Hakan Buksur, 25, was shot with live ammunition as police moved on demonstrators in the eastern Mu? Province, the English language Hurriyet Daily reported. Authorities declared a curfew at 5 pm in southeastern Mardin and eastern Van.

The fighting in Kobane has been clearly visible from the Turkish border and in some cases even spilled over. Five people were wounded when a mortar round hit a house in Turkey on Sunday, prompting authorities to evacuate part of the area.

Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz said on Monday that NATO had prepared a strategy to defend Turkey, a NATO member, if it is attacked along its border with Syria.

The Anglo-American Empire’s war of conquest. The war on the Islamic State (ISIL) is a lie

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There is no reasoning with an empire waging a world war of deception

cameron_obama

– by Larry Chin

On September 24, 2014, the United Nations passed a resolution paving the way to open-ended “anti-terror” warfare against the Islamic State (IS), the “network of death”, promising a war that will “last for years”.  

The “war on the Islamic State” is a lie. It is the same fetid Big Lie that is the “war on terrorism”, reheated and updated with new, bloodier special effects, new propaganda, a familiar but revised cast of demonic villains and a new military attack calendar.  

Three thousand lives were sacrificed on 9/11 for the fabricated “war on terrorism” against “Al-Qaeda” and Osama bin Laden.  Now, thirteen years of continuous imperial onslaught and tens of thousands of deaths and atrocities later,  the “Islamic State” escalation will topple Syria, Iran, transform Iraq, and provide yet another pretext to wreak havoc anywhere else the empire wishes.

But it is the same lie, built on the same propaganda cornerstones: the myth of the “outside enemy”, the threat of “Islamic terror”, eternal pretexts to galvanize public opinion behind an Anglo-American agenda of conquest and war that will never end.

It is the same lie, founded upon the idea that “Islamic terrorists” are enemies of the West, when, in amply documented fact, these terrorists are the West’s finest foot soldiers and military-intelligence assets.

The Islamic State, like Al-Qaeda and all entities that comprise the “Islamic Jihad” is a creation of the CIA and Anglo-American intelligence (Pakistan’s ISI, Saudi intelligence, British MI6, the Israeli Mossad, etc.). The various jihadist militias and military-intelligence assets and fronts—IS, Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusrah, etc. are  “American made”,  openly supported and utilized by the United States and its allies, as they have been continuously from the Cold War to this very second. These forces are carefully manipulated and guided weapons for US-NATO. Terrorists are instrumental to the ongoing US-led covert and overt operations in Syria.  Terrorists run by the US and CIA destabilized and toppled Libya, are integral to coming regime changes.  Under both direct and indirect orders of US-NATO sponsors and handlers, these “demon hordes” are, and will continue to be, the leading military-intelligence assets behind every major geostrategic action in the region.

The IS joins Al-Qaeda as today’s favorite “boogeyman” target. The war masks the true intent, which is the toppling of Syria and Iran, and onward.

The “terrorists” are depicted in propaganda as either villains or “freedom fighters”, depending on the day and the military theater. The horrific acts of the death squads, including beheadings and other atrocities, are standard operating procedure in CIA black operations, terror techniques going back to the Vietnam War and the Phoenix Program, and are done upon orders of US and US-allied military-intelligence. Decapitations of Syrian civilians have been ongoing for years, to media silence. The recent spate of beheadings of Americans and British have been selectively carried out (and in some cases staged) for propaganda purposes. Political theater designed to galvanize the dimwitted, ignorant masses to support massive retaliatory war.

According to recent polls, four out of five registered American voters overwhelmingly support military attacks against the Islamic State. The acquiescent, ignorant American masses, still irretrievably pacified by the propaganda “shock and fear” effect of 9/11, enthusiastically back any “retaliation” against “bad guys who cut off heads” and “threaten America”, and have no problem sending American youth to the front lines to be cannon fodder. They are “defending freedom”. The American sheeple believe—even love to believe—the Big Lie.  Whereas the citizens of Hong Kong and in other countries take passionately to the streets to fight for their democracy,  the average American has long abdicated his and her duty as an informed, vigilant citizen.  Far too busy shooting nude selfies on handheld gadgets—their brains addled by inane entertainment, and Hollywood celebrations of the national security apparatus—to care.

So-called liberals and progressives also back action against the Islamic State. The few who have any inkling that Islamic terror is a product of the US war machine wind up wringing their sweaty hands over the red herring of “blowback”: the tired idea that the US created but lost control of a Jihadist force that it now must contain. It is bogus. These militias are the American empire’s key foot soldiers and operatives, the leading force behind plans to topple Syria, just as they were in Libya. This is not blowback, but a well orchestrated military-intelligence operation, cloaked beneath a criminal conspiracy that is maintained by an ironclad elite consensus.

Islamic terrorism “stops” the minute that its sponsors at CIA, MI, ISI, etc. stop using it. The war itself stops when the elites who have planned this Final Solution to seize control of the last remaining oil supplies on the planet—the very life blood of the Anglo-American empire—stop, and give up their war of conquest and greed.  The entire apparatus collapses. But this will not happen in this lifetime. Not even in the event of planetary calamity.

To threaten humanity, to pretend to wage war against boogeyman that they themselves created, and continue to support and use: only those of world class evil could conceive of and carry out this horror.

The American network of death goose-steps to the abyss

With each passing day, more of the Anglo-American empire’s veneer falls away, revealing the violence at its core.

Leading the charge in front of the United Nations, the mendacious President Barack Obama thundered:

“No God condones this terror. There can be no reasoning—no negotiation—with this brand of evil. The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force.”

Here was a performance directly out of the playbook of the Third Reich and Bush/Cheney, brimming with threats, false morality, pseudo-religious claptrap, and invective directed against the perceived enemies. Here was Obama being who he really is, a war criminal.  The ghost of Hitler has to be envious.

No God condones deceit. No God condones the terror of the Anglo-American empire’s war of conquest. No God condones the extermination of tens of thousands of lives in more than a decade of imperial conquest for oil.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation—with the criminal leadership of an empire that will thrash and kill to the brink of extinction. There is no reasoning—no negotiation—warmongers who have wiped out entire swaths of humanity.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation— with an empire so desperate and out of answers that gangsterism replaces the rule of law, and false flag operations constitute foreign policy.There is no reasoning with those who could, in the span of just a few months, set off false flag destabilizations in Syria, false flag operations in support of a neo-Nazi cabal in Ukraine, plan and cover up the false flag shootdown of Flight MH-17 (blamed on Russia), support the bombing and conquest of Gaza by Israel (blamed on Hamas, in the wake of the murder of Israeli teenagers by ISIL terrorists), and set off the “sudden” rise of the Islamic State.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation— with an empire that must and will stop at nothing to control every inch of the Eurasian subcontinent, and destroy all opposition along the way, including potential nuclear confrontations with Russia and China.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation— with the functionaries and enablers of this empire—in governments, in media, everywhere. There is also no reasoning—no negotiation— with the cognitively impaired sheeple.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation— with the killers, the world planning orchestrators speaking the “language of force”; these “great men and women” who hold humanity in contempt.

There is, indeed, no reasoning—no negotiation—with this brand of evil.

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Britain deploys more war planes to strike IS in Iraq

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Britain-IS-Iraq

London: Two more British Royal Air Force (RAF) war planes will join the military operation to tackle the Islamic State (IS) threat in Iraq, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced Friday.

The new deployment of two additional RAF Tornados came as Cameron visited RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, where he also met British military personnel, Downing Street said in a statement.

“Royal Air Force Tornado GR4 aircraft have been in action over Iraq” as part of international operations against IS, also known as ISIL, the statement added.

On Thursday, the first two Tornados sent by Britain had conducted a precision bomb attack on an armed IS pick-up truck in Iraq, British Ministry of Defense (MoD) said.

The precision attack on the truck, conducted overnight with a Paveway IV guided bomb, was successful, according to the MoD.

On Wednesday, the first two Tornados on patrol over northwest Iraq were tasked to assist Kurdish ground forces.

The aircraft pinpointed the location from which IS militants were “directing heavy fire” on the Kurdish troops and conducted a precision strike with Paveway IV guided bombs.

Britain’s first bombing strikes on an IS heavy weapon position, conducted by RAF in Iraq on Tuesday, were also successful, according to the assessment announced by the MoD.

Last week, Britain’s House of Commons voted in favor of a government motion on air strikes in Iraq against IS after nearly seven hours of debate, which ended up with a vote of 524 to 43.

Despite an overwhelming parliamentary support for military action against IS militants, the motion ruled out deploying British troops in ground combat operations.

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Canada to join fight against Islamic State militants for 6 months

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Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper outlines his government's plan to participate in a military campaign against Islamic State militants, in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa October 3, 2014. REUTERS/CHRIS WATTIE

Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper outlines his government’s plan to participate in a military campaign against Islamic State militants, in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa October 3, 2014. REUTERS/CHRIS WATTIE

Ottawa: Canadian fighter jets will take part in U.S.-led air strikes against Islamic State militants operating in Iraq for up to six months, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Friday.

Harper told the House of Commons that Canada also planned to send an air-to-air refueling aircraft and two surveillance planes to the region. He did not say how many jets would take part in the campaign.

Harper said Canada would not deploy ground troops against the Islamic State group, which is also known as ISIL. The plan is subject to a vote in Parliament next week but is bound to be approved, since the ruling Conservatives have a majority.

“We intend to significantly degrade the capabilities of ISIL, specifically, its ability either to engage in military movements of scale or to operate bases in the open,” Harper said.

The United States has been bombing Islamic State and other groups in Syria for almost two weeks with the help of Arab allies, and hitting targets in neighboring Iraq since August. European countries have joined the campaign in Iraq but not in Syria.

Canada’s two main opposition parties signaled on Thursday that they might oppose the deployment, saying Harper had not given enough details of the proposed mission and could mire Canada in a long war.

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Saudi and UAE join raids on Islamic State

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A pair of U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles fly over northern Iraq

Washington: Aircraft from Saudi Arabia and the UAE joined US warplanes in a new wave of bombing raids yesterday against Islamic State jihadists in Syria, the US military said.

Coalition fighter jets and robotic drone planes conducted six strikes in Syria, hitting militant tanks, oil refineries and a training camp.

American aircraft also conducted three air raids in Iraq over the past 24 hours, including two in northeast of Fallujah.

Centcom offered no further details on the precise role of the allied aircraft in the latest strikes.

US and coalition aircraft have flown more than 4,000 sorties in an air campaign that began in Iraq on August 8 and was extended to Syria on September 23.

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White House exempts Syria airstrikes from tight standards on civilian deaths

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Amid reports of women and children killed in U.S. air offensive, official says the ‘near certainty’ policy doesn’t apply

Residents inspect damaged buildings in what activists say was a U.S. strike in Kafr Daryan, in Syria's Idlib Province, on Sept. 23, 2014. (REUTERS/Abdalghne Karoof)

Residents inspect damaged buildings in what activists say was a U.S. strike in Kafr Daryan, in Syria’s Idlib Province, on Sept. 23, 2014. (REUTERS/Abdalghne Karoof)

– by Michael Isikoff, Yahoo News

The White House has acknowledgedfor the first timethat strict standards President Obama imposed last year to prevent civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes will not apply to U.S. military operations in Syria and Iraq.

A White House statement to Yahoo News confirming the looser policy came in response to questions about reports that as many as a dozen civilians, including women and young children, were killed when a Tomahawk missile struck the village of Kafr Daryan in Syria’s Idlib province on the morning of Sept. 23.

The village has been described by Syrian rebel commanders as a reported stronghold of the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front where U.S officials believed members of the so-called Khorasan group were plotting attacks against international aircraft.

But at a briefing for members and staffers of the House Foreign Affairs Committee late last week, Syrian rebel commanders described women and children being hauled from the rubble after an errant cruise missile destroyed a home for displaced civilians. Images of badly injured children also appeared on YouTube, helping to fuel anti-U.S. protests in a number of Syrian villages last week.

“They were carrying bodies out of the rubble. … I saw seven or eight ambulances coming out of there,” said Abu Abdo Salabman, a political member of one of the Free Syria Army factions, who attended the briefing for Foreign Affairs Committee members and staff. “We believe this was a big mistake.”

Asked about the strike at Kafr Daryan, a U.S. Central Command spokesman said Tuesday that U.S. military “did target a Khorasan group compound near this location. However, we have seen no evidence at this time to corroborate claims of civilian casualties.” But Caitlin Hayden, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, told Yahoo News that Pentagon officials “take all credible allegations seriously and will investigate” the reports.

At the same time, however, Hayden said that a much-publicized White House policy that President Obama announced last year barring U.S. drone strikes unless there is a “near certainty” there will be no civilian casualties — “the highest standard we can meet,” he said at the time — does not cover the current U.S. airstrikes in Syria and Iraq.

The “near certainty” standard was intended to apply “only when we take direct action ‘outside areas of active hostilities,’ as we noted at the time,” Hayden said in an email. “That description — outside areas of active hostilities — simply does not fit what we are seeing on the ground in Iraq and Syria right now.”

Hayden added that U.S. military operations against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) in Syria, “like all U.S. military operations, are being conducted consistently with the laws of armed conflict, proportionality and distinction.”

The laws of armed conflict prohibit the deliberate targeting of civilian areas and require armed forces to take precautions to prevent inadvertent civilian deaths as much as possible.

But one former Obama administration official said the new White House statement raises questions about how the U.S. intends to proceed in the conflict in Syria and Iraq, and under what legal authorities.

“They seem to be creating this grey zone” for the conflict, said Harold Koh, who served as the State Department’s top lawyer during President Obama’s first term. “If we’re not applying the strict rules [to prevent civilian casualties] to Syria and Iraq, then they are of relatively limited value.”

Questions about civilian deaths from U.S. counterterrorism operations have confronted the Obama administration from the outset, after the president sharply ramped up drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, resulting in sometimes heated internal policy debates.  

Addressing the subject last year in a speech at the National Defense University, Obama acknowledged for the first time that U.S. strikes have resulted in civilian casualties, adding: “For me and those in my chain of command, those deaths will haunt us as long as we live.”

Sources familiar with the new “near certainty” standard Obama announced at the time said that, as a practical matter, it meant that every drone strike had to be signed off on by the White House — first by Lisa Monaco, Obama’s chief homeland security adviser, and ultimately by the president himself. The policy, one source said, caused some Pentagon officials to chafe at the new restrictions — and led to a noticeable reduction in such strikes by the military and the CIA.

While the White House has said little about the standards it is using for strikes in Syria and Iraq, one former official who has been briefed on the matter said the looser policy gives more discretion to theater commanders at the U.S. Central Command to select targets without the same level of White House oversight.

The issue arose during last week’s briefing for two House Foreign Affairs Committee members and two staffers when rebel leaders associated with factions of the Free Syria Army, including Abu Abdo Salabman, complained about the civilian deaths — and the fact that the targets were in territory controlled by the Nusra Front, a sometimes ally of the U.S.-backed rebels in its war with the Islamic State and the Syrian regime.

But at least one of the House members present, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who supports stronger U.S. action in Syria, said he was not overly concerned. “I did hear them say there were civilian casualties, but I didn’t get details,” Kinzinger said in an interview with Yahoo News. “But nothing is perfect,” and whatever civilian deaths resulted from the U.S. strikes are “much less than the brutality of the Assad regime.”

More than 230 killed in Syria since U.S. led attacks launch

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A still from a video from a plane camera shows smoke rising after an air strike near Kobani. Photograph: Reuters

A still from a video from a plane camera shows smoke rising after an air strike near Kobani. Photograph: Reuters

– by Latin American Herald Tribune

Beirut: At least 233 people have died in Syria since the start of airstrikes launched by the U.S.-led international coalition against positions of the Islamic State (IS), the manager of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), Rami Abderrahman, told Efe on Tuesday.

Abderrahman said during the phone conversation that at least 211 jihadists had died since September 23 when the coalition started its bombardments in Syria.

The activist added that this figure includes at least 60 members of al- Nusra Front, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.

Twenty-two civilians have also been killed by the coalition.

The attacks have targeted positions and bases of the IS in the northern Syrian provinces of Raqaa, Deir al-Zur, al-Hasakah, Aleppo, and Idleb, along with oil fields which had been seized by the radical jihadists.

According to U.S. officials, the target of the first airstrikes in Syria were members of the Khorasan group which includes veteran al-Qaeda fighters and is seen as a major threat by the United States.

The United States and its coalition allies began airstrikes last week on the IS in Syria, adding targets there to its weeks-old air campaign against the jihadists in Iraq.

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