ISIS – Page 12 – The Burning Platform

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One Party Under Surveillance For Perceived Safety & Security for All.

Republicans & Democrats unite to support fighting the same people we armed last year to fight our perceived enemy last year.

We have become a nation of ignorant, frightened, brain dead pussies.

Most Americans Support Military Action Against ISIS

During a crisis meeting in Paris, the US proved successful in building an international coalition to combat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. 24 countries have pledged to support the US in countering the “global threat” posed by the group, which was recently highlighted once again when Australian police foiled a plot to behead a random member of the public.

Support is also mounting at home – 53 percent of Americans are firmly behind Obama’s plans for military action, according to the Pew Research Center. The president is also enjoying a rare display of bipartisan support – 64 percent of Republicans and 60 percent of Democrats support the military effort against ISIS.

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Events are escalating in Iraq with US fighter aircraft striking ISIS forces south-west of Baghdad earlier this week. US warplanes have attacked ISIS positions, primarily in northern Iraq, 174 times. French President Francois Hollande has just confirmed that France has launched its first air attacks against ISIS targets in Iraq.

Views on Obama’s plan for military action against ISIS in Syria.

You will find more statistics at Statista

OBAMA PISSES AWAY $104 BILLION OF YOUR TAX DOLLARS IN AFGHANISTAN

With Eyes on ISIS, America’s $104B in Afghanistan Is Failing

By Brianna Ehley,
The Fiscal Times
September 15, 2014

While the eyes of the world are on Iraq and President Obama’s plans to defeat ISIS, the chief auditor in charge of overseeing the U.S. reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan has a warning to policy makers: Don’t forget about the other war-torn country that has already cost hundreds of billions of dollars and has serious problems with corruption and sustainability.

So far, the United States has poured more than $104 billion into Afghanistan reconstruction efforts – that’s more than all the money spent on reconstructing Europe after World War II. Much of that money, as auditors have noted, has been lost to waste, fraud and abuse. In 2010, SIGAR accountants told The Fiscal Times they could only account for less than 10 percent of that money.

That’s a shocking sum, especially since Congress has already authorized another $16 billion to spend in Afghanistan in the next few years. Still, despite spending an “unprecedented” amount of money to rebuild this country, it has no strategy to weed out corruption – leaving hundreds of billions of tax dollars vulnerable, John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) told an audience at Georgetown University on Friday.

“This is astonishing, given that Afghanistan is one of the most corrupt countries in the world and a country that the United States is spending billions of dollars in,” the auditor said. He added that “things could get worse with the drawdown” that is scheduled for the end of 2015.

It’s not just corruption that threatens to derail all of the gains the U.S. has made in the country. Afghanistan, as Sopko noted, has a major problem with sustainability.

Right now, the United States and other international donors fund more than 60 percent of Afghanistan’s national budget of around $7.6 billion. Last year, for example, the Afghan government raised $2 billion in revenues; the rest came from foreign aid, mostly from the United States.

Sopko says in the next few years, the Afghan National Security Forces are going to require a force of 374,000 – at a cost of roughly $5 billion a year. “At these levels, if the Afghan government were to dedicate all of its domestic revenue toward sustaining the Afghan army and police, it still could only pay for about a third of the cost. Moreover, all other costs from paying civil servants to maintaining all roads, schools, hospitals and other non-military infrastructure would also have to come from international donors,” Sopko said. “The bottom line is, it appears we’ve created a government that the Afghans simply cannot afford.”

Sopko is known for being extremely critical of the government agencies involved in reconstruction efforts. He told the audience that the U.S. government has failed to address Afghanistan’s corruption and sustainability issues – which threaten to “jeopardize every gain” the U.S. has made. Meanwhile, he said the government’s counter-narcotics effort has also been a failure and if unaddressed could completely derail any progress the U.S. has made.

“The U.S. has already spent nearly $7.6 billion to combat the opium industry. Yet, by every conceivable metric, we’ve failed,” Sopko said.

Sopko and his team frequently churn out scathing reports highlighting the failures of the Defense and the State Departments in Afghanistan – and many of them receive a wide swath of media attention. This has unsurprisingly sparked some tension between the auditors and officials from the departments being audited who routinely have problems with the IG’s findings. They say that responding to IG reports “chews up countless hours, and that the inspector general’s work ultimately undermines the effort to build stronger civilian institutions here by creating the impression that the United States is simply pouring money down the well,” The New York Times reported.

Sopko says, “SIGAR welcomes publicity because publicity gives our reports and work impact in this town and in Kabul and around the world.” He added, “I admit, some ambassadors and generals and nameless, faceless bureaucrats and contractors are unhappy with the fact we get press coverage, even though our two-person press shop pales in comparison to the squadrons of PR people at Embassy Kabul, ISAF, or the Pentagon. But that is the cost of transparency and open government.”
– See more at: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/09/15/Eyes-ISIS-America-s-104B-Afghanistan-Failing#sthash.riTYbKt6.dpuf

McSHITSTAIN ADMITS TO MEETING WITH ISIS

Via Infowars

Angry McCain Admits Meeting With ISIS, Scolds Rand Paul For Not Knowing Terrorists

“Has Rand Paul ever been to Syria? Has he ever met with ISIS?”

by Steve Watson | Infowars.com |

In a weak effort to smear Rand Paul, war hawk Senator John McCain attempted to argue that the Kentucky Senator doesn’t have the authority to disagree with US policies regarding ISIS because he hasn’t met up with members of the terror group, unlike McCain himself.

In an appearance on Fox News Monday, McCain was asked to respond to Paul’s comments earlier in the day, when the libertarian leaning Senator told CBS’ This Morning that arming Syrian rebels would only empower ISIS in the long run.

And that’s when things got weird.

“Has Rand Paul ever been to Syria? Has he ever met with ISIS? Has he ever met with any of these people? No, no, no,” McCain said, clearly in reference to his own visit to Syria in 2013, where he was photographed with leaders of the Free Syrian Army, the fighters violently opposed to the Assad regime.

Don’t attempt to look for any logic in McCain’s blathering, because there isn’t any. This is not the first time McCain has attempted to make this idiotic argument. When intelligence emerged that up to 40 percent of the “moderate” rebels are actually extremists, McCain argued that the claims were not true because he has personally met the rebels.

“I know who they are. I was in Syria and I met them.” McCain said at the time. “There’s about 70 percent still who are Free Syrian Army,” he claimed, despite the fact that a study by defense consultancy IHS Jane’s found that only around 30 percent of rebels are fighting for secular values,

McCain, who has long pushed to arm Syrian rebels, declared that it is “patently false” to claim that arms supplied to the so called “moderate” militants have actually wound up with Islamic State in Iraq and Syria terrorists.

“We’re going to have a fight, because it’s patently false. This is the same Rand Paul that said we didn’t want to have anything to do with anything to do in the Middle East, by the way. I don’t want to get in a fight with him at all.” McCain said.

Of course, actual independent evidence and reports of arms winding up in ISIS hands do exist, and it is a real problem, even if McCain chooses to close his eyes and ignore it, or willfully lie about it. His scolding of Rand Paul for referencing such evidence is laughable.

During Monday’s appearance, McCain also claimed that it is “not true” that the moderate Syrian rebels have agreed a nonaggression pact with ISIS, another factor Rand Paul brought up Monday. McCain did not , however, present any evidence to counter media reports based on intelligence shared by UK rights groups indicating this is indeed the case.

McCain also claimed that no other Arab country has declared support for US airstrikes on ISIS, despite a White House announcement claiming it has such support.

It seems that McCain just repeats whatever information it is that he wants to believe, regardless of what the rest of the planet is learning.

Record Beheadings and the Mass Arrest of Christians – Is it ISIS? No it’s Saudi Arabia

Guest Post by Michael Krieger

In the past month, a group of radical Islamic extremists based in the Middle East beheaded at least 23 people and enforced a ban on Christianity by arresting a group of people for practicing the faith in a private home.

No, I’m not talking about ISIS. The real culprit is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, one of the America’s closest global allies.

I have highlighted the inhumanity of the Saudi regime frequently recently in order to demonstrate the incredible hypocrisy of U.S. foreign policy. While America’s phony politicians and useless mainstream media will often hype anti-Chrtistian bigotry and humanitarian issues when it suits the status quo message, the true driver of U.S. foreign policy can be summarized with two words: CORPORATE PROFITS.

Of course, it’s not the average American who benefits from militarty-industrial complex profit margins. No, the American public is offered as a sacrifice on the alter of the cash flows for the 0.01%. The American citizenry is expected to lose its sons and daughters in battle abroad, while surrendering a middle class lifestyle at home, just so the political class and its oligarch masters can add another couple billion to their bank accounts. If American foreign policy actually had an non-economic motive to it, we wouldn’t be close allies with an inhumane feudal kingdom, which was also likely responsible for the attacks of 9/11.

As I have outlined recently:

Saudi Arabia Passes New Law that Declares Atheists “Terrorists”

Meet the U.S. Allies – Saudi Arabia Passes Draconian, Medieval Laws to Crush Dissent

Saudi Man Receives 3 Year Prison Sentence and 450 Lashes for Being Gay

Saudi Human Rights Lawyer and Activist Jailed for 15 Years for Free Speech Under New “Anti-Terror” Law

Two Congressmen Push for Release of 28-Page Document Showing Saudi Involvement in 9/11

While fake “Christian” politicians in D.C. and on television may have no problem ignoring the lack of rights in Saudi Arabia when it comes to atheists and homosexuals, they may have a harder time overlooking the following:

Dozens of Christians arrested at a prayer meeting in Saudi Arabia need America’s help, according to a key lawmaker who is pressing the State Department on their behalf.

Some 28 people were rounded up Friday by hard-line Islamists from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in the home of an Indian national in the eastern Saudi city of Khafji, and their current situation is unknown, according to human rights advocates.

“Saudi Arabia is continuing the religious cleansing that has always been its official policy,” Nina Shea, director of the Washington-based Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, told FoxNews.com. “It is the only nation state in the world with the official policy of banning all churches. This is enforced even though there are over 2 million Christian foreign workers in that country. Those victimized are typically poor, from Asian and African countries with weak governments.”

In Friday’s crackdown, several Bibles were confiscated, according to reports from the Kingdom.

This isn’t just hyperbole from FoxNews either. Human Rights Watch has been all over this for a while and in its World Report for 2013 noted the following:

Saudi Arabia does not tolerate public worship by adherents of religions other than Islam and systematically discriminates against its Muslim religious minorities, in particular Shia and Ismailis. The chief mufti in March called for the destruction of all churches in the Arabian Peninsula. In 2012, authorities made arrests for expression of religious opinion, including, in February, of Hamza Kashgari, whom Malaysia extradited to the kingdom on blasphemy charges related to his fictitious Twitter dialogue with the Prophet Muhammad.

In June, prosecutors arrested Ra’if Badawi on the charge of operating the Saudi Liberals website, deemed insulting to Islam. By August, all 35 Christian Ethiopian men and women arrested in December for “illicit mingling” during a religious service had been deported.

Saudi Arabia does not allow political or human rights associations. In December 2011, the authorities denied the Justice Center for Human Rights a license, and did not reply to requests for a license by the Saudi Human Rights Monitor, which registered in Canada in May.

Despite all of that Human Rights Watch notes that…

Saudi Arabia is a key ally of the United States and European countries. The US did not publicly criticize any Saudi human rights violations except through annual reports. Some members of the US Congress have expressed skepticism about Saudi’s policy priorities. The US concluded a $60 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia, its largest anywhere to date.

The European Union also failed to publicly criticize human rights abuses in the kingdom, although the Subcommittee on Human Rights of the European Parliament in May held a rare hearing on human rights in Saudi Arabia.

If the above was happening in Iran, there would already be American bombs dropping on Tehran. Our foreign policy is a total joke and the whole world knows it.

But don’t worry serfs, at least defense contractor and former Edward Snowden employer Booz Allen Hamilton is making it rain. As I noted on Twitter:

In case you wondered who benefits from ISIS war. Booze Allen Hamilton upgraded on Wall Street due to ISIS earnings: pic.twitter.com/dGg1sZSXjO

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

The American Public: A Tough Soldier Or A Chicken Hawk Cowering In A Cubicle?

Submitted by Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

You gotta love the American public sometimes. For a mass of people so easily terrified by guys in caves funded and armed by our intelligence services and “allies” in the Persian Gulf, the same public talks with such armchair bravado when it comes to launching bombs from drones and sending other people’s children to die.

Makes you wonder though, which one is it? Is the American public actually the tough guy soldier it pretends to be when cheering overseas military interventions, or is it really a scared, propagandized, coward hiding in one of our nation’s endless cubicle rows? Unfortunately, based on recent opinion polls demonstrating approval for military action against ISIS, it appears to be the latter. The former is merely a front put on by that terrified, economically insecure, silently suffering automaton. I really wish this weren’t the case.

“ISIS as the new enemy” is a meme that has made me very uncomfortable from the start for several reasons, not the least being the fact that this group seemingly emerged out of nowhere just when it seemed corrupt politicians from both parties in Washington D.C. were becoming increasingly frustrated by their inability to launch missiles into Syria back in 2012, following well documented disastrous campaigns in Iraq and Libya. Not only that, it is quite clear that many of our so called “allies” such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait have been the major funders behind ISIS. Moreover, for a public so squeamish and outraged by beheadings, we hear barely a peep about the fact that beheadings hit a record level in Saudi Arabia during August, with nearly one unfortunate soul decapitated per day during the month. Nope, haven’t heard much about that at all.

But of all the inconsistency and irrationality that comes with increased support by the American public for military action against “ISIS,” nothing is more concerning than the fact that this recent approval appears to be based entirely on propagandized falsehoods. As usual, you can thank politicians and mainstream media for the latest assault on the public’s logic.

Trevor Timm encapsulates this perfectly in today’s Guardian op-ed. He writes:

Did you know that the US government’s counterterrorism chief Matthew Olson said last week that there’s no “there’s no credible information” that the Islamic State (Isis) is planning an attack on America and that there’s “no indication at this point of a cell of foreign fighters operating in the United States”? Or that, as the Associated Press reported, “The FBI and Homeland Security Department say there are no specific or credible terror threats to the US homeland from the Islamic State militant group”?

Probably not, because as the nation barrels towards yet another war in the Middle East and President Obama prepares to address that nation on the “offensive phase” of his military plan Wednesday night, mainstream media pundits and the usual uber-hawk politicians are busy trying to out-hyperbole each other over the threat Isis poses to Americans. In the process, they’re all but ignoring any evidence to the contrary and the potential hole of blood and treasure into which they’re ready to drive this country all over again.

The White House declared on Tuesday night that it needn’t bother to ask Congress for war powers, and Congress is more than happy to relieve itself of the responsibility of asking for them – or, you know, voting. Members of both parties have actually been telling the president to ignore the legislative branch entirely – as well as his constitutional and legal requirements. It seems so long ago now that presidential candidate Obama said, “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

“What if it comes over and you can’t pass it?” asked Sen Lindsay Graham, as though he wouldn’t want democracy getting in the way of a nice war. The aforementioned Sen Nelson said he thinks the president should go aheadand strike Isis all he wants, but added that “there are some legal scholars who think otherwise, so let’s just put it to rest”. Those pesky legal scholars with their “laws” and that “Constitution” of theirs, always slowing things down.

Thanks to this wall-to-wall fear mongering, a once war-weary public is now terrified. More than 60% of the public in a recent CNN poll now supports airstrikes against Isis. Two more polls came out on Tuesday, one from the Washington Post and the other from NBC New and the Wall Street Journal, essentially concluding the same thing. Most shocking, 71% think that Isis has terrorist sleeper cells in the United States, against all evidence to the contrary.

So where to from here? Well, those airstrikes the public have been scared into supporting, which already numbering the hundreds, will reportedly expand fast – not only in Iraq but into Syria. The White House even has shiny new euphemism for such military attacks, as the Wall Street Journal reported: “Mr. Obama could green-light the new ‘sovereignty strikes’ in his address on Wednesday.” George Orwell would be proud.

It’s also strange that we are unquestionably calling the Free Syrian Army (FSA) the “moderate” opposition and putting our faith in their abilities, despite manyactual experts claiming they’re far from moderate and far from a cohesive army.As George Washington University’s Marc Lynch wrote in the Washington Post recently, “The FSA was always more fiction than reality, with a structure on paper masking the reality of highly localized and fragmented fighting groups on the ground.” The New York Times reported two weeks ago that FSA has a penchant for beheading its enemy captives as well, and now the family of Steven Sotloff, the courageous journalist who was barbarically beheaded by Isis, says that someone from the “moderate” opposition sold their son to Isis before he was killed.

So how, exactly, will the administration accomplish “destroying” Isis, when no amount of bombs and soldiers have been able to destroy al-Qaida or the Taliban in nearly 13 years of fighting? The administration openly admits it has no idea how long it will take, only that it won’t be quick. “It may take a year, it may take two years, it may take three years,” John Kerry said.

He didn’t add, “it might take another 13”, but he might as well have.

Or it might take forever. Just say it Kerry, you know you want to.

Even more disturbing, if the American public knew the truth would it even matter? With a middle class lifestyle increasingly a pipe dream, it’s far easier for the public to support dropping bombs from drones halfway across the world than it is to deal with the real economic issues affecting their daily lives.

Meanwhile what ever happened to al-Qaeda? Seems to me their brand as a fear mongering tool has simply lost its effectiveness. So enter ISIS. Never forget the following passage from George Orwell’s 1984:

On the sixth day of Hate Week, after the processions, the speeches, the shouting, the singing, the banners, the posters, the films, the waxworks, the rolling of drums and squealing of trumpets, the tramp of marching feet, the grinding of the caterpillars of tanks, the roar of massed planes, the booming of guns — after six days of this, when the great orgasm was quivering to its climax and the general hatred of Eurasia had boiled up into such delirium that if the crowd could have got their hands on the 2,000 Eurasian war-criminals who were to be publicly hanged on the last day of the proceedings, they would unquestionably have torn them to pieces — at just this moment it had been announced that Oceania was not after all at war with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Eurasia was an ally.

There was, of course, no admission that any change had taken place. Merely it became known, with extreme suddenness and everywhere at once, that Eastasia and not Eurasia was the enemy.

Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.

For some of my previous thoughts on ISIS and related topics, see:

How The Washington Post and The New Yorker Refused to Publish an Article on Obama Admin Syria Lies

Before We Bomb Syria, What’s Happening in Libya?

Why is the U.S. Allied with Al Qaeda in Syria?

America’s Disastrous Foreign Policy – My Thoughts on Iraq

Blockbuster Report from WND – Jordanian Official Claims Americans Trained ISIS

My Latest Interview with Financial Survival Network – Is ISIS a False Flag?

James Foley Worked Under USAID, a Known U.S. Intelligence Front. Was He More Than Just a Journalist?

Here come the sovereignty strikes.

THANK ISIS FOR LOWER GAS PRICES

While Obama takes bows for oil prices dropping from $100 per barrel to $93 per barrel due to our shale oil revolution, maybe we should be thanking those dreaded ISIS terrorists. They are evidently dumping Iraqi and Syrian oil into the market at $40 per barrel. The world oil markets adapt to supply and demand through the mechanism of pricing. If these existential threat terrorists really are dumping oil onto the market at $40 per barrel, then prices would be driven downward. Shouldn’t we be thanking them? The other possibility is that the worldwide economy is contracting and demand is slowing dramatically. That couldn’t be the case. My beloved government tells me we are growing like gangbusters.

I have a few of questions about how a few thousand ignorant terrorist ragheaded camel fuckers can somehow successfully run oil refineries, pipelines and oil wells and sell 80,000 barrels of oil per day.

How do they manage to do this without the U.S. knowing who is buying the oil?

Who is buying this oil?

Are they getting paid in cash?

Are banks involved in these transactions?

Where are they depositing the $97 million per month?

We keep introducing sanctions against Russia, but our Empire can’t stop a bunch of terrorists from selling 80,000 barrels of oil per day?

So, these terrible terrorists are using our military equipment that we gave them to fight our enemies Assad and Iran, and they are lowering our gas prices by selling oil really cheap to our allies (maybe even ourselves), but we need to eliminate them. Now I understand. It’s as logical as Bush telling us to take a 7 year loan and buy a $50,000 GM to defeat the terrorists. Or we have to scrap free market capitalism to save free market capitalism. I’m beginning to understand.

DEMAND COULDN’T BE CONTRACTING. RIGHT?

Barack, We Hardly Knew Ye

Guest Post by David Stockman

With your drums and guns and guns and drums, hurroo, hurroo
With your drums and guns and guns and drums, hurroo, hurroo
With your drums and guns and guns and drums
The enemy nearly slew ye
Oh my darling dear, Ye look so queer
Johnny I hardly knew ye…..

This memorable stanza from the classic anti-war song could not be more apt with respect to Barack Obama. He became President because he campaigned across the land draped in the garlands of peace. Yet he has now promised to spend his final three years in the White House smearing his face with war paint and strutting around the imperial city marshalling his “drums and guns and guns and drums”.

And let’s be clear. The President’s so-called “counter-terrorism” campaign—-that special kind of violent eruption which isn’t a “war”—-is not really about punishing some barbarians who have beheaded two innocent Americans and who have also recruited perhaps a dozen not so innocent Americans to join their blood-thirsty ranks. Civilized adults just do not start a war on the other side of the world on account of such thin gruel, as horrific as the actions involved might be.

Indeed, based on his stated reasons for war—beheadings and venomous rhetoric—Obama is on the same slippery slope that Woodrow Wilson stood on when he sent two million American GIs into the senseless slaughterhouse of northern France. It was to vindicate the freedom of Americans to sail into war zones, even on armed belligerent ships, he said.

In the cold light of history, Wilson’s misbegotten crusade in behalf of an utterly untenable principle accomplished nothing more than to prolong a war which was already over in the spring of 1917 due to the mutual exhaustion and bankruptcy of both sides; and in so doing, he spawned the Bolshevik tyranny in Russia, the punitive peace treaty of Versailles, the revanchist evil of Nazi Germany and the world wars and cold wars which followed.

That was “blowback” writ large—a chain of repercussions that shaped the very warp and woof of the entire next century. Yet in 1917, the safety and security of citizens in Lincoln NE or Spokane WA could not have been enhanced in the slightest by plunging into a pointless war in Europe to secure “freedom of the seas” during its final hours of carnage. Likewise, in 2014 the case for a war on the ancient battlegrounds of the Shiite/Sunni divide and numerous related tribal and ethnic enmities to avenge the murder of journalists who knowingly ventured into a zone of vicious civil war, anarchy and barbarism is no more compelling or rational.

No, what Obama’s war is really about is the capacity of the American Warfare State to co-opt any and all dissenting views and to transform cruel doings from virtually anywhere on the planet into a casus belli.

Accordingly, last night’s patter from the oval office about a plan to “degrade” and “ultimately destroy” ISIS is just so much beltway pettifoggery; its the kind of verbal smokescreen that the chattering politicians temporarily bivouacked along Pennsylvania Avenue are pleased to deploy as they go about implementing—unwittingly or otherwise— the agenda of Washington’s permanent imperial machinery.

Here’s the thing. Washington either means to eradicate the Islamic State root and branch in a Normandy style invasion and occupation of the Sunni-Euphrates valley or its just inviting vengeance and blowback that will pale into insignificance that which has occurred to date. Dropping bombs from high altitude aircraft, or launching Tomahawk missiles from distant ships or dispatching drone payloads via video counsels in Nevada may kill a few ISIS warriors and leaders along with thousands of innocent Sunni civilians in the territories they now occupy. But in the end it will amount to jabbing a hornets nest with a short stick.

Does ISIS’ menacing oratory and graphic videos really constitute a clear and present danger to the American homeland that can’t be handled with increased domestic vigilance and police protections? Does what little we actually know about a regime that has materialized almost overnight provide sufficient cause for launching hell-fire from the skies on a territory bigger than the state of New Jersey and occupied by roughly 8 million Sunni Arabs who in the main are not at all fond of the “indispensable nation” that has appointed itself to rescue them from their new rulers?

After all, just hours before the President delivered up his 13 minutes of vaporous rhetoric, double-talk and self-contradiction, the Homeland Security Department had testified on capitol hill that it had no evidence that ISIS was planning an attack on US territory or had the capacity to accomplish one. The closest it could come to identifying a tangible ISIS threat was chatter on Twitter.

Puleeese!

Likewise, isn’t it breathtaking that in the blood-soaked wreckage of the non-nation of Syria, which was scribbled on a map by dandies in the British and French foreign offices in 1916, we are now attempting to eliminate two regimes at the same time? Never mind that the Assad-Alawites in the southwest and the ISIS-Sunni in the north and east between them control 90 percent of Syrian territory.

So instead of boots on the ground to secure the dusty villages, bleak desert expanses and other pointless redoubts which will be bombed back into the stone age by Obama’s aerial campaign, we will arm and train the Free Syrian Army to do the job of killing off the stragglers. That is, mop-up the fanatical ISIS fighters before they can regroup and launch furious campaigns of revenge throughout the region or even at the American homeland.

That’s right. The silly, naïve man in the oval office has signed up to a bombing campaign which will enrage the hordes of medieval butchers encamped in the Islamic State, hoping that a rag-tag bunch of buccaneers that mostly issue press releases from Turkey, and which recently sold one of the beheaded Americans to ISIS for $50,000 according to the public testimony of his best friend and confidant, will keep them contained and finish off the job.

In a sane world, this would be considered an impeachable madness. In today’s Washington, however, Obama’s ludicrous “no boots, all air” strategy amounts to a three week placeholder. It will be soon engulfed in escalation as Admiral McCain and the rest of the war party demands stepped-up retribution for the next string of beheadings and grizzly media stunts by ISIS in response to the bombings.

Indeed, just consider the stunning emptiness of Obama’s four-point strategy. Most grating was his claim that he could now act more aggressively because Iraq has formed a new government. Now that’s a whopper if there every was one. Their new leader is a life-long Shiite militant who spent his adult life in London passing out anti-Sunni pamphlets, and who has not yet assembled a cabinet or demonstrated that his government will last until even year-end.

The reason that their will be no Iraqi government and war-capable Iraqi Army is that there is no Iraqi nation—–just the Sykes-Picot borders. Yet the latter were long ago irreparably shattered by the Bush war of shock and awe against the last dictator who corralled the Sunni, Shiite and Kurds into a temporary polity at the end of a sword.

The truth is, the brief and vanished nation of Iraq is already partitioned. The Kurds have already created a de facto Kurdistan in the northeast and will play governance games in Baghdad only to buy time to consolidate their regime and make the political and economic deals with Turkey and others needed to insure viability of their new state.

Likewise, the Shiite south is already a de facto province of Iran. So be it. The greater Shiite polity on the north and east of the Persian Gulf is a more certain barrier to ISIS expansion than any imaginary coalition of the unwilling that Washington might concoct.

But here’s the giant flaw in Obama’s incendiary strategy. The Peshmerga can be counted upon to ferociously defend Kurdistan against ISIS encroachment, and the Shiite militias will doubtless accomplish the same in their own territories. But no one with a modicum of historical knowledge would think it sane to send them up into the Sunni lands of the Euphrates valley to mop-up after the American bombs, missiles and drones.

In short, once Washington is in full bombs away mode there will be no Free Syrian Army or reconstituted Iraqi army to finish the job. And the idea of meaningful boots on the ground from a regional coalition amongst the enmity ridden nation’s of Turkey, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE is too preposterous to even merit discussion.

So what Obama actually launched last evening was Operation Blowback—Washington stupidest military campaign yet from among a long list that stretches back through two previous wars in Iraq, countless cold-war coups and interventions and grand disasters like Vietnam.

Needless to say, there is a better way. The best safeguard and only real protection against the theoretical threat of the Islamic State is vigilance and enhanced public security at home. And coupled with it, an end to pointless bombing campaigns in Muslim lands that mainly succeeds in destroying American tanks, artillery pieces and other equipment left behind in earlier delusional campaigns.

And, yes, let ISIS try to govern 8 million people in the dusty villages and impoverished desert expanse of the Euphrates Valley by means of the sword and medieval precepts of Sharia law. The resulting “blowback” from the bestirred people of the ISIS occupied lands will do more for the safety and security of the American people than all the drones and bombers that Washington could send to forge puppet nations within the Syrian and Iraqi “borders” that have already been deposited in the dustbin of history.

The peace candidate of 2008 might have seen the sensibility of that course of action. But after six years at the throne of power in the imperial capital, Barack, as we listened last night, we hardly knew ye.

GOTUS TO LEAD THE SHEEP INTO 3RD IRAQ WAR

The chief Golfer of the United States is taking time out from night putting with Reggie Love to address the nation tonight. It’s funny, but I don’t know anyone who favors going to war again in Iraq to defeat some terrorist group created by the CIA and armed by the U.S. in our other war in Syria. But our beloved corporate media propaganda machine has conveniently published a poll that shows Americans overwhelmingly want us to go to war with a group who didn’t exist six months ago, but are now an existential threat to our freedoms and very existence as a nation. McCain and the rest of the Fox News Neo-Cons assure us that ISIS is pouring over our southern borders to blow us all up.

If you ever needed more proof that One Party runs this country, this bullshit episode of fear mongering takes the cake. You know this poll was manufactured on the eve of Obama’s war speech to give the sheep confidence this is the right thing to do. The military industrial complex was in danger of seeing falling profits. They need a new enemy. Everything Obama touches turns to shit domestically. He needs a wag the dog war to distract the sheep from his immigration debacle, his Obamacare clusterfuck, his $1 trillion deficits that have destroyed the middle class, his jobless jobs recovery, his housing recovery without home buyers, and a myriad of other fuckups.

Make no mistake about it, Obama is proposing war in Iraq. If you shoot missiles and use aircraft to blow shit up, you are at war. According to the Constitution, only Congress can declare war. But Obama and the feckless politicians in Washington DC piss on the Constitution. President Executive Order will do as he wishes. Everyone in Washington DC loves war. They love creating non-existent threats. When did the JV team become so dangerous? Why did we arm these same Muslims in Syria when trying to depose Assad for the Saudi/Qatar pipeline to Europe? Where did ISIS get all their money to get all that military equipment? Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Israel, U.S????

So Obama is going to propose that we spend billions blowing up the billions in military equipment that we shipped over to Iraq in the last ten years. Who benefits from this circular clusterfuck? Arms dealers and debt peddlers. Who runs this country? Wall Street and the military industrial complex, that includes the millions of government workers and the politicians in the pockets of the banks and corporations.

Does anyone actually believe the results of this poll? Are the sheep in this country really that stupid? Are they really that fearful of a bunch of ragheaded camel jockeys in a country 10,000 miles from our shores? What do they think we will achieve by blowing up this faction of radical Muslims? Another faction of radical Muslims will just appear in another six months. Is this exactly what TPTB want? Obama doing this on the eve of 9/11 is a disgusting display of playing upon the fears of the ignorant masses. I truly despise the man.

This country already adds $2 billion per day to the national debt. We already have $200 trillion of unfunded promises on the books. We already spend $1 trillion per year on the military. And the majority of Americans want to ramp up our intervention in the affairs of other countries? Is it because we have been so successful in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Ukraine, Yemen and Iran? This is beyond the comprehension of any rational thinking human being. Living in the midst of morons, criminals, liars, propagandists, and greedy fucks during the decline of this warfare/welfare state is surreal and infuriating. I just want to scream when I think of the idiocy playing out across this world.

WSJ/NBC Poll: Almost Two-Thirds of Americans Back Attacking Militants

President Barack Obama will lay out plans on Wednesday to combat the militant group Islamic State to an American public that has grown increasingly hawkish.

Almost two-thirds of participants in a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll believe it is in the nation’s interest to confront the group, known as ISIS and as ISIL, which has swept through Syria and northern Iraq and recently beheaded two U.S. journalists. Only 13% saw no national interest in acting.

In addition, some 40% in those polled said any U.S. military action against ISIS should be limited to airstrikes, and an additional 34% backed both airstrikes and committing U.S. ground troops to the battle–a remarkable mood swing for an electorate that just a year ago recoiled at Mr. Obama’s proposal to launch airstrikes against Syria.

Obama Lays Out Broad Strategy for Years of War Against ISIS

White House Denies ‘Mission Creep’ as War Expands

by Jason Ditz, September 09, 2014

All of the specifics won’t be available until Wednesday night, but those who were given a “preview” of President Obama’s strategy for the ISIS war say he is laying out a massive undertaking to wipe out the militant group worldwide.

Brookings President Strobe Talbott says that the administration presented ISIS as a “unique danger, not just for the region, but for the world,” and one that the US could only respond to by exterminating it.

What started out as an “emergency” humanitarian campaign to save people trapped on Mount Sinjar, most of whom weren’t trapped there to begin with, has escalated in a matter of weeks into an open-ended war with ISIS that even the most optimistic Pentagon planners say is going to take years.

While he publicly hasn’t confirmed the plans yet, expanding the war from Iraq into neighboring Syria also seems a foregone conclusion at some point, as officials have been downplaying the idea that they could stop ISIS in one country without stopping them planet-wide.

A global war with no strategy for victory and no end in sight certainly wasn’t what the American public were presented with when the campaign began, but White House officials continue to deny that “mission creep” is occurring.

Mission creep has long been a very slow process of escalating the goals of a war, but the administration still hasn’t made it clear that what they’ve set out so far is the totality of the war’s goals, and perhaps more disconcertingly, it’s escalated at a pace far beyond any reasonable definition of “creep.”

The White House tried to pass off the expansion of the war into Anbar as protecting the Baghdad Airport, on the notion that if the Haditha Dam was destroyed it might conceivably threaten the airport, just under 200 miles downstream and not actually built along the shoreline.

But wiping out ISIS in multiple countries and putting something more pro-US in its place is a far broader goal than “keeping the embassy safe” or some other platitude about why the new war was launched, and the scariest part is we aren’t even sure that’s where it’ll finish off, with officials tacking new goals on seemingly every couple of days. Obama’s Wednesday speech will in no way resemble his start of the war speech, and his speech a few weeks down the road will probably be starkly more bellicose, as the war keeps expanding.

Via Anti-War.com

Obama Has No Middle East Strategy? Good!

Via Ron Paul Institute for Peace

Written by Ron Paul

Last week President Obama admitted that his administration has not worked out a strategy on how to deal with the emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as a dominant force in the Middle East. However, as ISIS continues its march through Syria and Iraq, many in the US administration believe it is, in the words of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, a threat “beyond anything we have ever seen.”

Predictably, the neocons attacked the president’s speech. They believe the solution to any problem is more bombs and troops on the ground, so they cannot understand the president’s hesitation.

Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Buck McKeon made it clear that fighting ISIS is going to cost a lot more money and will bring US forces back to Iraq for the third time. The post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan peace dividend disintegrates.

Mr. McKeon said last week:

ISIS is an urgent threat and a minimalist approach, that depends solely on FY15 funding or pinprick strikes that leave fragile forces in Iraq and Syria to do the hard fighting, is insufficient to protect our interests and guarantee our safety in time.

What does this mean in practice? If the neocons have their way, the Federal Reserve will “print” more money to finance another massive US intervention in the Middle East. In reality this means further devaluation of the US dollar, which is a tax on all Americans that will hit the poorest hardest.

A new US military incursion will not end ISIS; it will provide them with the recruiting tool they most crave, while draining the US treasury. Just what Osama bin Laden wanted!

McKeon and the other hawks act as if they had only recently become aware of the ISIS. Or if they noticed it, they pretend US policy had nothing to do with its rise.

McKeon also said last week, “ISIS threat was allowed to build and fester over a period of time.”

In fact, US regime change policy in Syria was directly responsible for the rise of ISIS over these past three years. As journalist Eric Margolis observed recently, the emergence of ISIS is the “mother of all blowback.” The neocons who want us to get tougher on ISIS, including a US attack on Syria, are the same ones who not long ago demanded that we support groups like ISIS to overthrow the Assad government in Syria. US-trained and funded “moderates” from the Free Syrian Army joined the Islamist militias including ISIS, taking US weapons and training with them.

Three years of supporting any force that might overthrow the secular government of President Assad has produced a new monster in the Middle East that neocons insist the US must slay.

Why can’t they just admit they were wrong? Why can’t the interventionists just admit that their support for regime change in Syria was a terrible and tragic mistake?

If ISIS is as big a threat as they claim, why can’t they simply ask Assad to help out? Assad has never threatened the United States; ISIS has. Assad has been fighting ISIS and similar Islamist extremist groups for three years.

Why does the US government insist on aligning with theocracies in the Middle East? If there is anything that contradicts the US Constitution and American values it is a theocratic government. I do not believe that a majority in the Middle East wants to live under such a system, so why do we keep pushing it on them? Is that what they call promoting democracy?

A lack of strategy is a glimmer of hope. Perhaps the president will finally stop listening to the neocons and interventionists whose recommendations have gotten us into this mess in the first place! Here’s a strategy: just come home.

US vs ISIS vs Assad: My enemy’s enemy is my frenemy

The hypocrisy of U.S. foreign policy is breathtaking to behold. TPTB must be so thankful for public school education, as the sheep don’t even notice or care.

How U.S. Interventionists Abetted the Rise of ISIS

Guest Post by Rand Paul

As the murderous, terrorist Islamic State continues to threaten Iraq, the region and potentially the United States, it is vitally important that we examine how this problem arose. Any actions we take today must be informed by what we’ve already done in the past, and how effective our actions have been.

Shooting first and asking questions later has never been a good foreign policy. The past year has been a perfect example.

In September President Obama and many in Washington were eager for a U.S. intervention in Syria to assist the rebel groups fighting President Bashar Assad’s government. Arguing against military strikes, I wrote that “Bashar Assad is clearly not an American ally. But does his ouster encourage stability in the Middle East, or would his ouster actually encourage instability?”

The administration’s goal has been to degrade Assad’s power, forcing him to negotiate with the rebels. But degrading Assad’s military capacity also degrades his ability to fend off the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. Assad’s government recently bombed the self-proclaimed capital of ISIS in Raqqa, Syria.

To interventionists like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, we would caution that arming the Islamic rebels in Syria created a haven for the Islamic State. We are lucky Mrs. Clinton didn’t get her way and the Obama administration did not bring about regime change in Syria. That new regime might well be ISIS.

This is not to say the U.S. should ally with Assad. But we should recognize how regime change in Syria could have helped and emboldened the Islamic State, and recognize that those now calling for war against ISIS are still calling for arms to factions allied with ISIS in the Syrian civil war. We should realize that the interventionists are calling for Islamic rebels to win in Syria and for the same Islamic rebels to lose in Iraq. While no one in the West supports Assad, replacing him with ISIS would be a disaster.

Our Middle Eastern policy is unhinged, flailing about to see who to act against next, with little thought to the consequences. This is not a foreign policy.

Those who say we should have done more to arm the Syrian rebel groups have it backward. Mrs. Clinton was also eager to shoot first in Syria before asking some important questions. Her successor John Kerry was no better, calling the failure to strike Syria a “Munich moment.”

Some now speculate Mr. Kerry and the administration might have to walk back or at least mute their critiques of Assad in the interest of defeating the Islamic State.

A reasonable degree of foresight should be a prerequisite for holding high office. So should basic hindsight. This administration has neither.

But the same is true of hawkish members of my own party. Some said it would be “catastrophic” if we failed to strike Syria. What they were advocating for then—striking down Assad’s regime—would have made our current situation even worse, as it would have eliminated the only regional counterweight to the ISIS threat.

Our so-called foreign policy experts are failing us miserably. The Obama administration’s feckless veering is making it worse. It seems the only thing both sides of this flawed debate agree on is that “something” must be done. It is the only thing they ever agree on.

But the problem is, we did do something. We aided those who’ve contributed to the rise of the Islamic State. The CIA delivered arms and other equipment to Syrian rebels, strengthening the side of the ISIS jihadists. Some even traveled to Syria from America to give moral and material support to these rebels even though there had been multiple reports some were allied with al Qaeda.

Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for the London newspaper, the Independent, recently reported something disturbing about these rebel groups in Syria. In his new book, “The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising,” Mr. Cockburn writes that he traveled to southeast Turkey earlier in the year where “a source told me that ‘without exception’ they all expressed enthusiasm for the 9/11 attacks and hoped the same thing would happen in Europe as well as the U.S.” It’s safe to say these rebels are probably not friends of the United States.

“If American interests are at stake,” I said in September, “then it is incumbent upon those advocating for military action to convince Congress and the American people of that threat. Too often, the debate begins and ends with an assertion that our national interest is at stake without any evidence of that assertion. The burden of proof lies with those who wish to engage in war.”

Those wanting a U.S. war in Syria could not clearly show a U.S. national interest then, and they have been proven foolish now. A more realistic foreign policy would recognize that there are evil people and tyrannical regimes in this world, but also that America cannot police or solve every problem across the globe. Only after recognizing the practical limits of our foreign policy can we pursue policies that are in the best interest of the U.S.

The Islamic State represents a threat that should be taken seriously. But we should also recall how recent foreign-policy decisions have helped these extremists so that we don’t make the same mistake of potentially aiding our enemies again.