John Walker Lindh, the so-called 'American Taliban', is being let out
of federal prison over three years ahead of schedule, and people want
to know why.
Lindh converted to Sunni Islam at age 16 after dropping out of school and becoming obsessed with hip-hop and the movie Malcom X (he pretended to be a black rapper online and criticized others for "acting black"). Shortly after his father left his mother for another man,
the culturally appropriating Lindh began to attend San Francisco Bay
Area mosques.
After a 10-month trip to Yemen in 1998 to study the
Qur'an, Lindh returned home for eight months, only to return to the
Middle East - eventually winding up in Afghanistan to take up arms against Northern Alliance fighters in May, 2001.
He was captured on November 25, 2001 and held at an a makeshift prison
in Afghanistan, where he would participate in an extremely violent
prisoner uprising (the battle of Qala-i-Jangi) that led to the death of
CIA officer Johnny "Mike" Spann and hundreds of foreign fighters. Lindh
was one of 86 prisoners who survived after hiding in a basementwith a group of detainees who shot at Red Cross workers sent in to collect the dead, killing one.
For more than a decade, the United States has been steadily increasing
the scale of its illegal military operations across the Middle East,
resulting in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.
Eighteen years ago, the US invaded Afghanistan under the pretext of
ousting the Taliban who allegedly granted sanctuary to Al-Qaeda.
According to a study released by Brown University, more than 140,000 Afghan militants and civilians have died in the fight.
Since December 2001, the United States has been conducting various
operations in Somali, and even today the Pentagon carries out both air
strikes and ground operations, accompanied by a constant toll of
civilian lives.
Back in 2003, Washington launched Operation Iraq Freedom to strip Saddam
Hussein of WMDs he didn't even have and to convert Iraq into a
«democracy», plunging this country into a state of perpetual chaos
guaranteeing that it will remain a Western bastion in the Arab and
Islamic World for years to come.
Eight years ago, the US succeeded in destabilizing Libya, when US
warplanes attacked the troops of Libya's most successful ruler to date -
Muammar Gaddafi. Back then, Washington took every step to ensure his
government would be ousted and and its key leaders murdered. The Libyan
conflict has since produced tens of thousands of dead. In 2016, Barack
Obama said that Libya was probably the "worst mistake" of his
presidency.
The seven years of war in Syria resulted in a death toll of half a
million Syrian nationals. Here, American troops are stationed illegally
to fight ISIS and "indigenous ground forces." The strange
wording that Washington uses in its official rhetoric is no coincidence,
since more than on one occasion US armed forces have opened fire on
both Syrian government troops and civilians, with no official rationale
ever being given to explain this brutality.
In Yemen, the United States has been backing Saudi Arabia's efforts to
put an end to the Houthi rebellion for three years. Washington carries
on supplying Saudi authorities with high-precision weapons, combat
aircraft and intelligence. This war has already triggered the
largest humanitarian catastrophe of the 21st century, with 20 million
people finding themselves on the brink of starvation.
The late Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar lived near a U.S. base in southern Afghanistan for years, a new book claims. Searching For An Enemy, by Dutch journalist and writer Bette Dam, says the fugitive leader never hid in Pakistan as was believed by U.S. and Afghan officials.
Dam spent five years researching and interviewing Taliban members for
the biography of the one-eyed militant leader, which was published in
Dutch last month. A summary of the findings was published in English by the U.S.-based Zomia think tank.
The Taliban held power in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, when the group
was toppled by a U.S.-led invasion, and has waged an antigovernment
insurgency since then.
A $10 million bounty was put on Omar's head after the September 11,
2001, terror attacks in the United States that killed nearly 3,000
people.
According to Dam, Omar lived in Zabul Province's capital, Qalat,
until 2004, when U.S. troops began building Forward Operating Base
(FOB) Lagman, just a few minutes' walk from his hideout.
There is something seriously wrong with the world: When a country, a government as well as individuals from that country fund, arm and train terrorists who have murdered thousands, tortured them, rounded up women and children and sold them on sex slave markets or used their bodies to harvest organs and yet the king of that same country flies all over the world in a disgusting display of wealth and opulence and gets to ride on golden escalators.
Those who pander to Saudi Arabia, bow and scrap before them and their arrogant princes, accept millions into their private bank accounts and ensure a steady stream of military hardware to this country, are the same people who demand that a duly elected President by the people of that country, not someone who considers himself the ultimate, infallible and unquestionable ruler due to his birth, must go.
Assad throughout the last six years has stood by Syria and the people of Syria in their time of desperate need. Although he is not a Christian he has shown support for Christians and even attended their church services. Unlike Saudi Arabia where Christians are not allowed to set foot in that country. Assad, like everyone else in Syria is fully aware that at anytime he might lose his life. And yet he has not fled to another country and taken his wealth with him as so many so-called world leaders do after they have lined their own pockets and the going has got too rough for them.
There is something seriously wrong with the world:
When thousands of people die, their families are broken up and their lives ruined due to heroin addiction and yet Afghanistan which is the world’s largest producer of opium is guarded by American military and uses NATO bases to fly out their very lucrative cargo of illegal narcotics. There is no war on drugs, it is a war for drugs.
The same can be said for the CIA who for many years now has been neck-deep in shipping cocaine out of South American countries and has infested the whole of American society to the point where cocaine usage is now considered the norm as opposed to the exception. Between heroin and cocaine it is no wonder that Western Nations have completely lost their minds, their moral compass and any semblance of integrity and real justice has been replaced by mafia criminal gangs, going by the names of the Federal Reserve Bank, the Council On Foreign Relations, Open Society Foundations, Davos, the Bilderberg Group, the P2 lodge and so many others that now control every sector of society.
A British aid worker who was killed by a grenade in Afghanistan
during a botched rescue attempt by US special forces was actually
working secretly for MI6, according to investigators at the Intercept
website.
Linda Norgrove was captured by Taliban insurgents in eastern
Afghanistan in September 2010 while she was working for the US
contractor agency Development Alternatives Incorporated (DAI).
In November 2010, amid fears she was about to be moved to Pakistan by
her captors, US special forces launched a rescue mission which resulted
in her death by a grenade thrown by her would-be liberators.
In an extensive investigation into the SEALs’ track record –
which compares their heroic public face with suppressed accusations of
war crimes – the Intercept website claims a number of senior military
and intelligence sources say she was working for UK foreign
intelligence.
The following text is a point by point thematic summary of Prof. Michel Chossudovsky‘s presentation at the Science for Peace Conference, Academy of Sciences, Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur, 15-16 August 2016. Introduction Historically, science has supported the development of the weapons industry and the war economy. “Science for Peace” indelibly requires reversing the logic whereby commissioned scientific endeavors are directed towards supporting what President Eisenhower called “The Military Industrial Complex”. What is consequently required is a massive redirection of science and technology towards the pursuit of broad societal objectives. In turn, this requires a major shift in what is euphemistically called “US Foreign Policy”, namely America’s global military agenda. Military Affairs: The Current Global Context The world is at a dangerous crossroads. The United States and its allies have launched a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity. Under a global military agenda, the actions undertaken by the Western military alliance (U.S.-NATO-Israel) in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Palestine, Ukraine, Syria and Iraq are coordinated at the highest levels of the military hierarchy. We are not dealing with piecemeal military and intelligence operations. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Asia Pacific region. The current situation is all the more critical inasmuch as a US-NATO war on Russia, China and Iran is part of the US presidential election debate. It is presented as a political and military option to Western public opinion. The US-NATO military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states. America’s hegemonic project is to destabilize and destroy countries through acts of war, support of terrorist organizations, regime change and economic warfare. U.S. and NATO forces have been deployed in Eastern Europe including Poland and Ukraine. In turn, military maneuvers are being conducted at Russia’s doorstep which could potentially lead to confrontation with the Russian Federation. The U.S. and its allies are also threatening China under President Obama’s “Pivot to Asia”. The U.S. led airstrikes initiated in August 2014 directed against Iraq and Syria under the pretext of going after the Islamic State are part of a scenario of military escalation extending from North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean to Central and South Asia. Read more
While
the US would go on to invade Afghanistan and Iraq predicated on the
9/11 attacks, it should be noted that all of the alleged hijackers were
either Saudis or Persian Gulf citizens, or connected to terrorist
organizations supported by Persian Gulf states.
The Western media has attempted to
downplay the impact of the document’s release, claiming that subsequent
investigations found the “many” of the allegations in the document
“without basis” – even as the US and Saudi Arabia today openly arm and
fund terrorists in Syria.
To Whose Benefit?
Many mistakenly believe on one hand
terrorism is simply an inevitable clash of civilizations between “Islam”
and the West, while others maintain it is the predictable backlash to
flawed or unjust Western foreign policy.
In reality, it is neither.
It is meticulously engineered violence
used as a tool for achieving geopolitical objectives around the world –
from overthrowing governments and justifying military interventions, to
creating paralyzing fear and hysteria at home to garner support for a
growing domestic police state and a large military footprint overseas.
In essence, it is a highly conductive medium through which modern day empire can spread.
This can clearly be seen through the use
of terrorism today. Some 14 years after the September 11, 2001 attacks,
and as memories begin to fade, the US finds itself partnered with Saudi
Arabia once again, arming and funding terrorists to fight their proxy
wars in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and beyond, just as they did in the 1980s
when they jointly created Al Qaeda to begin with.
As the pendulum of geopolitical
necessity swings from needing heavily armed, fanatical proxy forces to
fight abroad, to needing a pretext at home to initiate large-scale
military interventions overseas, these terrorist organizations are
characterized by Western politicians and the media in a similarly
shifting manner. During the 1980s Al Qaeda was portrayed as “freedom
fighters.” In 2001 when the United States sought to use full-scale
military force to rearrange the Middle East, North Africa, and Central
Asia, Al Qaeda was transformed into a villain.
The
2001 terrorist attacks allowed the US to justify over a decade of
global-spanning war that it otherwise would have been unable to wage.
Seddique Mir Mateen, father of Omar Mateen (the individual that killed around fifty gays in Orlando in the name of Isis), worked for the US secret services in Afghanistan during the war against the communist government and its ally, the Soviet Union (1979-89). After that, he migrated to the US where Omar was born.
He is a media presenter for the Afghan diaspora. Currently, he is presenting a program, The Durand Jirga Show [1], on Payam-e-Afghan Satellite TV (based in San Francisco). Descendant of the Pashtun tribe, he lent his support to the Taliban (which succeeded the “Mujahideens of Freedom” that the CIA had organized with the Saudi billionaire, Bin Laden to fight against the Russians). After President Hamid Karzai’s departure in September 2014, he refuses to recognize the agreement between Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah and comes out in favour of the president in exile of Afghanistan [2].
His son, Omar Mateen, was employed by the multinational security firm G4S. He had never been singled out as either politically or religiously radicalized. Although married, he used to visit the gay nightclub where he committed his crimes and engaged in sexual relations with at least one other clubber.
The brothers Djokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnayev, who carried out the attacks at the sidelines of the Boston marathon, on 15 April 2013, were the political nephews of Graham E. Fuller, a former CIA senior official who directed operations, notably in Afghanistan.
Ansor Tsarnayev, the father of the two terrorists, is a Chechen who worked with the CIA in the Soviet Union before migrating to the US. In 2012, one of the two terrorists, Tamerlan, had participated in a seminar of the Georgian association Foundation for Caucasia (Кавказский фонд) [3]. This NGO, established by the Jamestown Foundation, which is in turn established by CIA, used to prepare young people to “destabilize Russia”.
The Tsarnayev brothers had never been singled out as politically or religiously radicalized.
The analyst Webster Tarpley says:
“the pattern is by now familiar: former foreign fighters, who have worked for the CIA or the State Department in conflict zones emigrate to the United States to live the “American Dream”. They stay in close contact with the US intelligence community. Their children, often born in the United States, devote themselves to terrorist operations just like among European nobility, the youngest son was destined for a military career.”
As more and more evidence emerges regarding the mass shooting in an Orlando gay club that resulted in the death of at least 52 people and many more injured, signs are increasingly pointing toward the possibility of a false flag operation.
Already, a number of points lend credence to those who might suggest that intelligence agencies more so than desert-dwelling terrorist organizations are responsible for organizing and directing the attacks. A number of questionable aspects regarding this shooting include:
1.) The FBI knew about the shooter and investigated him prior to the attack.
2.) The shooter had a connection to a known ISIS recruiter.
3.) The shooter’s father was a former “Afghan presidential candidate” who supported the Taliban.
4.) The FBI’s history in creating terrorism.
Omar Mir Seddique Mateen has now been revealed as the gunman in the Orlando club attack. According to mainstream reports, Mateen carried an AR-15 rifle and a handgun into the Pulse club around 2 a.m. and started shooting, killing 50 people and wounding 53. A stand-off ensued which lasted for about 3 hours before a SWAT team crashed into the building with an armored vehicle and killed Mateen.
Mateen had allegedly pledged allegiance to ISIS before the shooting by calling 911 and stating allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi as well as mentioning the Tsarnaev brothers. Mateen was an American citizen born to Afghan parents from Port St. Lucie, Florida, about a 125 miles away from Orlando, a distance which he allegedly drove to commit the attack.
Amaq News, a Syrian news agency with close ties to the Islamic State, says the group is responsible for the attack on an Orlando gay club, which has killed 50 people, and left 53 injured.
"The armed attack that targeted a gay night club in the city of Orlando
in the American state of Florida which left over 100 people dead or
injured was carried out by an Islamic State fighter," Amaq said.
The shooting, which took place in the early hours of Sunday, was carried
out by Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old Muslim US citizen, who was brought up
by a family of first-generation Afghan immigrants.
Earlier, Mateen's father, Mir Seddique, claimed the incident had
"nothing to do with religion," and speculated that it was caused by his
son's dislike of public displays of homosexuality.
But US security sources told various news outlets that Mateen had been investigated in 2013, and 2014, over alleged social media threats, but that no charges had been brought forward, due to lack of evidence.
FBI officials on the scene also said they suspected Mateen of "radical
leanings" but did not rule out any explanation for the murder spree at
this point. Comment: Amaq regularly releases Daesh propaganda. Question: who is behind Amaq? Daesh has rich foreign sponsors, some more overt than others. Remember this: ISIS Twitter Accounts Traced to British Government.
Amaq also claimed, without evidence, that the San Bernardino attacks
were ISIS-inspired. There's nothing to stop them from claiming
responsibility for attacks that were not connected to them in any
substantial way. Also, it's possible for them to claim attacks carried
out with the help of their state sponsors, i.e., intel and security
agencies like the CIA and FBI in the States. Consider the updates about
Mateen's past involvement with the FBI:
FBI first became aware of Mateen in 2013, when he made derogatory and inflammatory comments to his co-workers, alleging possible terrorist ties, an FBI official told journalists during the briefing. The FBI interviewed him twice in 2013 but was unable to verify the substance of his comments.
...
After the FBI dismissed their 2013 and 2014 interviews with Orlando shooter Omar Mateen as "inconclusive," the Bureau interviewed him again later about his contacts with Moner Mohammad Abusalha, the first US citizen to carry out a suicide bombing in Syria, AFP reported.
"We determined the contact was minimal and did not constitute a substantive relationship or a threat at that time," FBI Special Agent Ronald Hopper told reporters.
...
Omar Mateen was acting alone, an FBI official said during the press briefing, adding that the investigators are not looking for any second suspect.
A more likely scenario: the FBI set him free, knowing he was an easy
mark to be manipulated, like so many other FBI dupes and patsies, after
which they kept close tabs on him, perhaps even pushing him towards
carrying out an attack, which is standard operating procedure for the
FBI. Only this time, they didn't jump in as heroes and "save the day".
Further reading:
Sputnik As the police uncover more information on Orlando mass shooter Omar Mateen, it
has come to light that his father is a rather curious media person. In a
video uploaded to Facebook, he claims to be the President of
Afghanistan.
According to Gawker.com citing the Washington Post, the
shooter's father is Seddique Mateen, known under the alias "Mir
Seddique." He is a man of strong political views and a former host of a
political TV show that, on occasion, praised the Afghan Taliban.
Seddique hosted the "Durand Jirga Show," a political show on channel
Payam-e-Afghan which broadcasts from California. According to videos
found on YouTube and Facebook, Seddique, speaking the Dari language,
occasionally praised the Afghan Taliban while denouncing the current Pakistani government.
WASHINGTON (AP) — After months of debate, the White House has
approved plans to expand the military’s authority to conduct airstrikes
against the Taliban when necessary, as the violence in Afghanistan escalates, senior U.S. and defense officials said Thursday.
Several officials said the decision was made in recent days to expand the authority of U.S. commanders to strike the Taliban
and better support and assist the Afghan forces when needed in critical
operations, using the U.S. troops already in the country. There is a
broad desire across the Obama administration to give the military
greater ability to help the Afghans fight and win the war.
The 9,800 U.S. troops still in Afghanistan, however, would still not be involved in direct combat.
The officials were not authorized to talk publicly about the discussions so spoke on condition of anonymity.
The McClatchy news service scoop that
Labib al-Nahhas, the Syrian foreign affairs director of al-Qaeda’s ally
Ahrar ash-Sham, visited Washington, DC in December 2015 should have
created a huge political stir in a presidential election year.
However, the fact that the Obama administration has been consorting
with terrorist allies of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Syria, Iraq,
Yemen, Libya, and other countries has received little to no coverage in
the American media. More astoundingly, Ahrar ash-Sham, which, along with
the al-Nusra Front massacred 19 Alawite Muslims in the Syrian village of Zara in May, is not designated a terrorist group by the US State Department.
The simple fact is that from CIA director John Brennan to national
security adviser Susan Rice and US Central Command chief General Joseph
Votel to Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Senator John McCain,
the Obama administration and the Republicans who control Congress have
consorted with Islamist terrorists. These groups have included those who
have executed Americans and who help finance and plan terrorist attacks
against civilians around the world. The visit of al-Nahhas to
Washington follows a long tradition of the US government consorting with
Sunni Mujahideen (called the «muj» by their CIA overseers), jihadists,
and Salafists starting with the support for Muslim insurgents in
Afghanistan and continuing with the provision of military training and
weapons to Sunni Arab guerrillas in Iraq.
Votel, who paid a May visit to northern Syria, is not the first US
official who entered Syria for a «get acquainted with» session with
US-armed jihadist rebels, which was disguised as a «fact-finding
mission». In May 2013, Senator McCain entered northern
Syria and met with a man who strongly resembles Islamic State of Iraq
and the Levant (ISIL) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The more McCain’s
staff and his neo-conservative apologists tried to claim the man was not
al-Baghdadi but an unidentified commander of the Northern Storm
Brigade, a group linked to the practically non-existent Free Syrian
Army, the more McCain’s and the neocons’ lies became apparent. Reports
from Damascus, Baghdad, Tehran, and Hezbollah’s media outlets in Beirut
all confirmed that the CIA, along with the Israel Defense Force, were
actively providing weapons, training, and logistics support to ISIL and
allies units in Syria and western Iraq.
Doctors Without Borders released an internal review of what happened
before, during, and after its hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan was bombed
by U.S. military forces on October 3.
The review highlights how the U.S. violated the neutrality of the
facility, which the U.S. had agreed to respect. It also demonstrates
there were no “armed combatants” in the hospital and no fighting in the
“direct vicinity” at the time of the airstrikes. It also significantly
calls into question statements by anonymous officials or military
operatives, which have been made to the press.
The aid group followed a “no weapons” policy, which had been
implemented at the hospital, and staff remained in full control of the
medical facility, according to the review. GPS coordinates were also
provided to Kabul and New York, and the U.S. Defense Department and
Afghan Ministry of Interior, as well as the U.S. Army in Kabul, were
made aware of the location of the hospital.
Dr. Joanne Liu, the president of Doctors Without Borders
International or MSF International, said even though the internal review
[PDF]
was an ongoing process, the organization had made the decision to share
details to “counter speculation” and to be “transparent.”
“What we know is that we were running a hospital treating patients,
including wounded combatants from both sides—this was not a ‘Taliban
base,'” Liu declared. “The question remains as to whether our hospital
lost its protected status in the eyes of the military forces engaged in
this attack—and if so, why. The answer does not lie within the MSF
hospital. Those responsible for requesting, ordering and approving the
airstrikes hold these answers.”
The world geological community is warning that today's seismic activity on our planet is nothing compared with what's to come.
Over the past three years, Pakistan, for example, has been hit by dozens of earthquakes. In March 2005, 80,000 people died under the rubble there. On October 30, the last time nature went on the rampage, there were hundreds of victims. Tens of thousands of people drowned during an overwhelming Asian tsunami at the end of 2004. China and Afghanistan have been rocked by quakes again more recently.
These natural disasters, which have swept our planet in recent years, indicate that the world has entered an era not only of a political, but also of climatic instability. Most scientists - biologists and environmentalists - tend to blame the human race for the catastrophic climate change on the Earth. No doubt, the greenhouse effect due to industrial activity plays a considerable role in global warming, but there are other reasons worth considering. The Earth is rotating around its own axis slower. The International Earth Rotation Service has regularly added a second or two to the length of a 24-hour day in recent years.
This is the main reason, according to Igor Kopylov, professor at Moscow Energy Institute, why the planet - a gigantic electrical machine - has had its energy balance upset. He expressed this viewpoint in 2004. Kopylov is convinced that the Earth has entered the first phase of a global change. A weakening of the Earth's magnetic field was first registered early in the 20th century, and a consistent drop in the speed of rotation, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It has been established that when the Earth's rotation slows by one second a year, it releases a tremendous amount of heat, hundreds of times the volume of energy released by human industrial activity.
If we accept that all processes on Earth run according to cosmic cycles, which, in turn, depend on the Solar System's position in our Galaxy, then humankind may be facing another Great Flood.
The Solar System, including the Earth, travels through the Galaxy in spiraling elliptic paths. The cycle time for the larger spiral is 200-210 million years, and for the smaller one, which determines minor galactic cycles, 26,000 years. Correspondingly, half a cycle lasts 130 centuries. This period almost exactly coincides with the date of the last Flood, the occurrence of which was real. The myths and legends of many peoples including that of the Bible recorded the event.
The Flood has been dated rather precisely: at 11,100 BC. If we accept that the civilized society on Earth has been developing for 400,000 years, then this period saw 30 great floods, and we are witnessing the beginnings of the thirty-first flood.
The cosmic cycles are so gigantically long by human standards that they have little impact on the life of people, but the active initial phase of the galactic cycle is of vital importance for the development of civilization. In the view of Russian scientists, the Earth currently finds itself at precisely this point in the cycle.
The transitional process in the electrical machine "planet Earth" can be divided into three phases. During the first - lasting 300 to 500 years - a relatively quick change in the direction of cross current (according to the law of electric machines) will alter the Earth's magnetic field, with the Northern magnetic pole shifting to the eastern part of the Arctic Ocean.
The US led war against the Islamic State is a big lie.
Going after ” Islamic terrorists”, carrying out a worldwide
pre-emptive war to “Protect the American Homeland” are used to justify a
military agenda.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is a creation of US intelligence. Washington’s “Counter-terrorism Agenda” in Iraq and Syria consists in Supporting the Terrorists.
The incursion of the Islamic State (IS) brigades into Iraq
starting in June 2014 was part of a carefully planned
military-intelligence operation supported covertly by the US, NATO and
Israel.
The counter-terrorism mandate is a fiction. America is the Number One “State Sponsor of Terrorism” .
The Islamic State is protected by the US and its allies. If they had wanted to eliminate the Islamic State brigades, they could have “carpet” bombed their convoys of Toyota pickup trucks when they crossed the desert from Syria into Iraq in June.
The Syro-Arabian Desert is open territory (see map below). With
state of the art jet fighter aircraft (F15, F22 Raptor, CF-18) it would
have been -from a military standpoint- a rapid and expedient surgical operation
In this article, we address 26 concepts which refute the big lie. Portrayed by the media as a humanitarian undertaking, this large scale military operation directed against Syria and Iraq has resulted in countless civilian deaths.
It could not have been undertaken without the unbending support
of the Western media which has upheld Obama’s initiative as a
counter-terrorism operation.
“Advertisements, paid for from CIA funds, were placed in
newspapers and newsletters around the world offering inducements and
motivations to join the Jihad.”
3. Since the Reagan Administration, Washington has supported the Islamic terror network.
Ronald Reagan called the terrorists “freedom
fighters”. The US supplied weapons to the Islamic brigades. It was all
for “a good cause”: fighting the Soviet Union and regime change, leading
to the demise of a secular government in Afghanistan.
Ronald Reagan meets Afghan Mujahideen Commanders at the
5. Osama bin Laden, America’s bogyman and founder of Al Qaedawas recruited by the CIA in 1979
at the very outset of the US sponsored jihadist war against Afghanistan
. He was 22 years old and was trained in a CIA sponsored guerilla
training camp.
Al Qaeda was not behind the 9/11 Attacks. September
11, 2001 provided a justification for waging a war against Afghanistan
on the grounds that Afghanistan was a state sponsor of terrorism,
supportive of Al Qaeda. The 9/11 attacks were instrumental in the
formulation of the “Global War on Terrorism”.
THE ISLAMIC STATE (ISIL)
6. The Islamic State (ISIL) was originally an Al Qaeda affiliated entity created by US intelligence with
the support of Britain’s MI6, Israel’s Mossad, Pakistan’s
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Saudi Arabia’s General
Intelligence Presidency (GIP), Ri’āsat Al-Istikhbārāt Al-’Āmah ( رئاسة
الاستخبارات العامة).
7. The ISIL brigades were involved in the US-NATO supported
insurgency in Syria directed against the government of Bashar al Assad.
8. NATO and the Turkish High Command were responsible for the recruitment of ISIL and Al Nusrah mercenaries
from the outset of the Syrian insurgency in March 2011. According to
Israeli intelligence sources, this initiative consisted in:
“a campaign to enlist thousands
of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to
fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these
volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria. (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011.)
9.There are Western Special Forces and Western intelligence operatives within the ranks of the ISIL. British Special Forces and MI6 have been involved in training jihadist rebels in Syria.
10. Western military specialists on contract to the Pentagon have trained the terrorists in the use of chemical weapons.
“The United States and some European allies are using
defense contractors to train Syrian rebels on how to secure chemical
weapons stockpiles in Syria, a senior U.S. official and several senior
diplomats told CNN Sunday. ( CNN Report, December 9, 2012)
11. The ISIL’s practice of beheadings is part of the US sponsored terrorist training programs implemented in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Jihadist fighters have met Israeli IDF officers as well as Prime Minister Netanyahu. The IDF top brass tacitly acknowledges that “global jihad elements inside Syria” [ISIL and Al Nusrah] are supported by Israel. See image below:
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon next to a wounded mercenary, Israeli military field hospital at the occupied Golan Heights’ border with Syria, 18 February 2014″
SYRIA AND IRAQ
14 The ISIL are the foot soldiers of the Western military
alliance. Their unspoken mandate is to wreck havoc and destruction in
Syria and Iraq, acting on behalf of their US sponsors. 15. US Senator John McCain has met up with jihadist terrorist leaders in Syria. (see picture right)
16. The Islamic State (IS) militia, which is currently
the alleged target of a US-NATO bombing campaign under a
“counter-terrorism” mandate, continues to be supported covertly by the
US. Washington and its allies continue to provide military aid to the Islamic State.
17. US and allied bombings are not targeting the ISIL, they are bombing the economic infrastructure of Iraq and Syria including factories and oil refineries.
18. The IS caliphate project is part of a longstanding US foreign policy agenda
to carve up Iraq and Syria into separate territories: A Sunni Islamist
Caliphate, an Arab Shia Republic, a Republic of Kurdistan.
THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERRORISM (GWOT)
19. “The Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) is presented as a “Clash of
Civilizations”, a war between competing values and religions, when in
reality it is an outright war of conquest, guided by strategic and
economic objectives.
20 U.S. sponsored Al Qaeda terror brigades (covertly supported by
Western intelligence) have been deployed in Mali, Niger, Nigeria, the
Central African Republic, Somalia and Yemen.
These various affiliated Al Qaeda entities in the Middle East,
sub-Saharan Africa and Asia are CIA sponsored “intelligence assets”. They are used by Washington to wreck havoc, create internal conflicts and destabilize sovereign countries.
22. The US is also supporting Al Qaeda affiliated terrorist organizations in the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region of China. The underlying objective is to trigger political instability in Western China.
Chinese jihadists are reported to have received “terrorist training” from the Islamic State
“in order to conduct attacks in China”. The declared objective of these
Chinese-based jihadist entities (which serves the interests of the US)
is to establish a Islamic caliphate extending into Western China.
23 The Terrorists R Us: While the US is the unspoken architect of the Islamic State, Obama’s holy mandate is to protect America against ISIL attacks.
24 The homegrown terrorist threat is a fabrication.
It is promoted by Western governments and the media with a view to
repealing civil liberties and installing a police state. The terror
attacks by alleged jihadists and terror warnings are invariably staged
events. They are used to create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.
In turn, the arrests, trials and sentences of “Islamic terrorists”
sustain the legitimacy of America’s Homeland Security State and law
enforcement apparatus, which has become increasingly militarized.
The ultimate objective is to instill in the minds of millions of
Americans that the enemy is real and the U.S. Administration will
protect the lives of its citizens.
25. The “counter-terrorism” campaign against the Islamic State has contributed to the demonization of Muslims, who in the eyes of Western public opinion are increasingly associated with the jihadists.
26 Anybody who dares to question the validity of the “Global War on Terrorism” is branded a terrorist and subjected to the anti-terrorist laws.
The ultimate objective of
the “Global War on Terrorism” is to subdue the citizens, totally
depoliticize social life in America, prevent people from thinking and
conceptualizing, from analyzing facts and challenging the legitimacy of
the inquisitorial social order which rules America.
The Obama Administration has imposed a diabolical consensus with the
support of its allies, not to mention the complicit role of the United
Nations Security Council. The Western media has embraced the consensus;
it has described the Islamic State as an independent entity, an outside
enemy which threatens the Western World.
The Big Lie has become the Truth.
Say no to the “Big Lie”. Spread the message.
The truth is ultimately a powerful weapon.
Please help us continue. We rely on the support of our readers.
With the outcome of Afghanistan's controversial presidential election still in doubt, and uncertainty over Afghan forces' ability to stand against the Taliban after most US forces withdraw, it's hard to say with certainty what the US-led war there has accomplished, or failed to accomplish.
The country is today the world's largest supplier of opium, the
purified latex sap from the Papaver somniferum poppy species that is
usually then converted into heroin. It accounts for about three-quarters
of the global recreational supply, and surging Afghan production is one
reason why street heroin prices have been falling across the globe.
The Western media in chorus have described the unfolding conflict in Iraq as a “civil war” opposing the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham against the Armed forces of the Al-Maliki government. (Also referred to as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS))
The conflict is casually described as “sectarian warfare” between Radical Sunni and Shia without addressing “who is behind the various factions”. What is at stake is a carefully staged US military-intelligence agenda.
Known and documented, Al Qaeda affiliated entities have been used by
US-NATO in numerous conflicts as “intelligence assets” since the heyday
of the Soviet-Afghan war. In Syria, the Al Nusrah and ISIS rebels are
the foot-soldiers of the Western military alliance, which oversees and
controls the recruitment and training of paramilitary forces.
The
Al Qaeda affiliated Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) re-emerged in April
2013 with a different name and acronym, commonly referred to as the
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The formation of a terrorist
entity encompassing both Iraq and Syria was part of a US intelligence
agenda. It responded to geopolitical objectives. It also coincided with
the advances of Syrian government forces against the US sponsored
insurgency in Syria and the failures of both the Free Syrian Army (FSA)
and its various “opposition” terror brigades.
The decision was taken by Washington to channel its support
(covertly) in favor of a terrorist entity which operates in both Syria
and Iraq and which has logistical bases in both countries. The Islamic
State of Iraq and al-Sham’s Sunni caliphate project coincides with a
longstanding US agenda to carve up both Iraq and Syria into three
separate territories: A Sunni Islamist Caliphate, an Arab Shia Republic,
and a Republic of Kurdistan.
Whereas the (US proxy) government in Baghdad purchases advanced
weapons systems from the US including F16 fighter jets from Lockheed
Martin, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham –which is fighting Iraqi
government forces– is supported covertly by Western intelligence. The
objective is to engineer a civil war in Iraq, in which both sides are
controlled indirectly by US-NATO.
The scenario is to arm and equip them, on both sides, finance them with advanced weapons systems and then “let them fight”.
The debate over America’s Middle East policy has reached a new level of surreality.
In the wake of President Obama’s West Point commencement address last month – in
which he pledged to “ramp up” U.S. support for Syrian rebels seeking to overthrow
President Bashar al-Assad – Washington elites are exhorting the Obama administration
to do much more. Former U.S. ambassador to Syria Robert Ford urges
intensified training and more advanced weapons for “moderate” opposition fighters;
others arguefor
direct U.S. military involvement. At the same time, Washington has been stunned
by the success of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has seized
Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and several other strategic targets, and
is drawing close to Baghdad.
Washington elites are effectively compartmentalizing these stories – but, in
fact, they are intimately related, and policymakers need to understand the connection
to avoid another disaster in the heart of the Middle East.
In Iraq, the resurgence of sectarian violence stems not from the 2011 American
withdrawal. It is, rather, the fruit of America’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, the
subsequent U.S. occupation, and the much vaunted “surge” of 2007-2008. The U.S.
invasion and occupation destroyed the Iraqi state and ignited tensions among
Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic communities. The surge sought to empower certain
Sunni militias while paying them (temporarily) not to kill American soldiers;
this ended up giving Sunni militants the means to press their grievances through
escalating violence once U.S. forces were no longer around.
Unfortunately, Washington seems determined to compound its appalling policy
choices in Iraq with equally grievous choices regarding Syria. For over three
years, America has provided Syrian oppositionists with “nonlethal”
aid,
trainedoppositionfighters,
coordinated
with others openly providing lethal aid for U.S.-vetted recipients, and
extended high-level political backing to the anti-Assad campaign – including serially
reiterated public demands from Obama that Assad “must go.” Yet, from the conflict’s
start it has been clear that opposition fighters would not dislodge Assad, no
matter how much external help they received – because, from the beginning, the
constituencies supporting Assad and his government have added up to well over
half of Syrian society.
Objective measures of public opinion in Syria are not as robust as any serious
analyst would like.
Nevertheless, for over three years, every piece of relevant
data – including multiplepolls,
participation in the
February 2012 constitutional referendum and the May 2012 parliamentary elections,
participation in this month’s presidential election (including by thousands
of refugees), and otherevidence – indicates that
a majority of Syrians continues to back Assad. Conversely, there is not a scrap
of objective evidence suggesting that anywhere close to a majority of Syrians
wants Assad replaced by some part of the opposition.
These realities were readily observable in spring 2011; we have been writing
and speaking about them for over three years. Yet the Obama administration decided,
within weeks after the outbreak unrest in parts of Syria in March 2011, to support
oppositionists seeking to overthrow Assad. It did so – as
administration officials told the New York Times in April 2011 – because
it calculated that destabilizing Assad’s government would undermine Iran’s regional
position.
This was a colossally irresponsible exercise in policymaking-by-wishful-thinking,
for two reasons. First, outside support for opposition fighters – a sizable percentage
of whom are not even Syrian – has taken what began as small-scale, indigenously
generated protests over particular grievances and turned them into a heavily
militarized insurgency that could sustain high levels of violence but could
not actually win. The Obama administration prides itself on overthrowing Libya’s
Muammar al-Qadhafi in 2011 without putting U.S. boots on the ground (though
the results are comparable to those in Iraq: the destruction of a functioning
state and the arming of militias that kill with impunity – including the U.S.
ambassador in 2012). Assad is a vastly tougher target. Stepped up support for
anti-Assad fighters will not accomplish anything positive strategically; it
will, however, perpetuate conditions in which even more Syrians die.
Second, it was utterly foreseeable that backing an armed challenge to Assad
would worsen the threat of jihadi militancy – in Syria, in neighboring
countries like Iraq, and beyond. Well before March 2011, it was evident that,
among Syria’s Sunni Islamist constituencies, the Muslim Brotherhood – whose Syrian
branch was historically more radical than most Brotherhood cells – was being displaced
by more extreme, al Qaeda-like groups. External support for anti-Assad forces
after March 2011 accelerated the trend and reinforced it with an infusion of
foreign fighters, including organ-eating
extremists. Many of these jihadis, according
to the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, are now working not just
to bring down Assad but also to mount attacks against the United States.
The Obama administration’s transformation of Syria into a magnet-cum-training
ground for transnational jihadi fighters has directly fed the resurgence of
jihadi extremism we are witnessing in Iraq. Three years ago, at the beginning
of the Syrian conflict, the Islamic State of Iraq – formed in 2006 from Abu Musab
Az-Zarqawi’s “Al-Qaeda in Iraq” movement – was on the ropes.
Reinvigorated through
the creation of an externally supported insurgency in Syria by the United States
and America’s European and regional partners, it rebranded itself in 2013 as
the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and, like the Taliban in Afghanistan before
9/11, has taken over swaths of both Syria and Iraq with lightning speed.
Washington has only itself and its collaborators in the anti-Assad crusade
to blame for such an outcome. As ISIS captures more cities and territory in
Iraq, it is also capturing stockpiles of weapons and military equipment that
America supplied to the post-Saddam government – weapons and equipment that will
enable further gains by ISIS fighters. Against this backdrop, calls to increase
the flow of weapons into neighboring Syria are a case study in Einstein’s (apocryphal)
definition of insanity – “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting
a different result.” Calls for the United States to “go
back” to Iraq, to undo the horrific damage it has already done there, are
equally delusional.
The Syrian conflict will ultimately end with negotiated power-sharing between
the Syrian government, still headed by President Assad, and those elements of
the opposition with some popular base inside Syria. This can happen relatively
sooner, if America begins basing its Syria policy in on-the-ground reality.
Or the process can be protracted by open-ended external backing for opposition
fighters with no meaningful popular base. Neither the interests of ordinary
Syrians and Iraqis nor the interests of ordinary Americans will be served by
Washington doubling down on its ill-considered arming of brutal and unrepresentative
militias.
Flynt Leverett is professor of international affairs at
Pennsylvania State University’s School of International Affairs. Hillary
Mann Leverett teaches U.S. foreign policy at American University and is
CEO of STRATEGA, a political risk consultancy. They are both retired
national security professionals, Flynt of the CIA, State Department and
National Security Council; Hillary of the State Department, National
Security Council and U.S. mission to the United Nations. They are
co-authors of Going to Tehran: Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Visit their website.
