Iraq – Page 2 – praag.org

Mercenaries aid interventionist US policies

Mercenaries are part of a lucrative cycle between corporations profiting from conflict and those in Washington who favor American power and intervention.

The United States uses private defense contractors to serve military first expansionist policies, former marine captain and State Department officer Matthew Hoh told RIA Novosti.

“To continue an interventionist policy in Muslim countries, the United States needs to have forces in place. For domestic political reasons US ground troops are not practical or an option, so security contractors, as they are not ‘troops,’ are usable,” Hoh, who is also a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy (CIP), said Thursday.

Hoh’s comments come a day after a federal jury found four ex-Blackwater contractors guilty of a deadly 2007 mass shooting in Baghdad that killed 17 Iraqi civilians.

“I expect that there will be legislation put in place by Congress to indemnify and protect security contractors in the future,” Hoh said.

Hoh believes there is too much money to be had in fielding private contractors, which has led to a lucrative cycle between corporations profiting from conflict and those in Washington who favor American power and intervention.

The Iraq veteran also pointed out how leveraging contractors have helped the United States in concealing war costs, both in terms of dollars and body count.

“The other aspect of this is that it hides the cost of the war. We simply do not know how many contractors were killed in the Iraq or Afghan wars. The US relies upon claims made to the Department of Labor and Department of Defense, but that number is partial as many of the killed and wounded contractors, particularly TCNs, or Third Country Nationals, don’t ever have claims filed,” Hoh added.

The Blackwater military firm took part in the Iraq war under a contract it signed with the government of the United States. In 2010, Blackwater changed its name to Academi after being implicated in a number of crimes, including shooting civilians and arms smuggling.

‘Obama’s immoral and illegal war in Iraq and Syria’: Ron Paul

Obama’s new wars in Iraq and Syria are totally immoral as well as illegal under US and international law, RPI Chairman Ron Paul told RT’s Abby Martin in September. The idea that US force will solve the problem is also mistaken, he said. “US action will increase the violence,” rather than reduce it, he added.

In a lengthy interview, broadcast on RT’s popular “Breaking the Set” program, Dr. Paul wonders why the countries in the region, feeling the pressure from ISIS, do not get together to solve the problem.

Said Dr. Paul about US involvement in the fight:

Why should someone 6,000 miles away, that has been stirring this pot for so long, be the group that is going to bring everyone together and organize the fight?

The fearmongers who have terrified many Americans into supporting another war in the Middle East are “not concerned with the defense of America,” said Ron Paul. But the weapons manufacturers are making out very well, with the US bombing its own weapons that have fallen into the hands of ISIS. – Daniel McAdams

Watch the whole interview here:

US Senate torture report vanishes

By Philip Giraldi

The crisis involving the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a Godsend to politicians, which is probably why the threat actually posed by the group is being hyped as it is while the White House and Pentagon continue to change the meaning of commonly used English expressions to enable the attacking of just about anyone anywhere. We are told that the United States will have a free hand in bombing Syria, an independent nation with which Washington is not at war. The Administration has warned that if Damascus attempts to defend itself from the air armada there will be consequences in the form of “retaliation,” suggesting that the US would be striking back after being attacked. Oddly enough, my dictionary suggests that it would be the Syrians who would be retaliating, but one supposes that in the Emerald City everything is not as it seems and certain words have little or no meaning.

The welcome distraction afforded by ISIS means that the issue of Gaza, which was recently devastated by the Israelis, has largely disappeared from the mainstream media, enabling Benjamin Netanyahu to steal still more land on the West Bank for new settlements. And remember MH-17? Still a whodunit and nobody cares anymore.

Back here at home, the dispute over the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) torture, a hot button issue earlier this year, has also benefited, largely disappearing from sight. The meticulously researched Senate report, covering 6000 pages and including 35,000 footnotes, apparently concluded that torturing terrorist suspects was not only illegal under the United Nations Convention on Torture, to which Washington is a signatory, it was also ineffective, producing no intelligence that was otherwise unobtainable.

Since a “forgive and forget” forward-looking White House has already indicated that no one will ever be punished for illegal actions undertaken in the wake of 9/11, why is the torture issue important beyond the prima facie case that a war crime that was authorized by the highest levels of the federal government? It is important because of its constitutional implications and its impact on rule of law in the United States, which is again being flouted by the Administration in its rush to “destroy” ISIS, which is little more than a terrorist group du jour being exploited to terrify the American public. The constitutional issue, in its simplest terms, is that the CIA works for the president and when it operates without legally mandated oversight by the legislative branch and judiciary it does so in defiance of separation of powers, making the Agency little better than a secret army run by POTUS.

The inability of the Senate Committee to compel the Agency and White House to come up with an acceptable draft of its report and agreement over what parts of it can be made public is also important because it reveals that the best the US Congress can do to oversee the country’s intelligence agencies is not very good at all. The past 22 months of delay in the report’s release have demonstrated that the intel community, with the support of the White House, can stonewall any issue until the cows come home.

The latest account of the head butting between the Agency and Congress reveals a bad working relationship between the Senate and CIA while also suggesting that Langley is again closing ranks against its critics. At a top secret behind closed doors meeting on September 9 th Agency Director John Brennan refused to divulge who at CIA authorized the actual intrusion into the computers being used by Senate staffers to compile their report. Brennan would also not address what the presumed legal authority to do so was. A shouting match with several Senators, all Democrats, ensued with several Senators demanding to know how Brennan could refuse to answer their questions.

The Agency had initially contended in its defense that the computer search was motivated by the alleged accessing and removal of restricted CIA reports by the Senate staffers, but it is no longer making that claim. Brennan reportedly refused to answer the two questions posed by the Senators because he did not want to “compromise” the ongoing investigations by the Justice Department and the CIA Inspector General into the computer hacking, but the committee felt he was stonewalling over questions that invited a relatively simple response. If he did not know the answers he could have said so. It might also be noted in passing that the two investigations are hardly independent, one being conducted in house by CIA and the other by a highly politicized Attorney General who will be inclined to protect the president.

CIA has also been working on its own rebuttal of the Senate report which is intended to demonstrate that torture actually worked and that no one at the Agency broke any laws. It is also reportedly seeking to redact major sections of the sixty page summary, which is the part most likely to see the light of day, an effort, which, if successful, will likely make the end product largely unreadable. It would probably also avoid including any blame or suggestion of “mission failure” which would be damaging to broader Agency political interests.

There also has been some speculation that the CIA would like to drag out the process in hopes that the Republicans will take control of the Senate in November, making any release of any part of the report unlikely. The White House has been brokering the review process between the intelligence community and Senate but has been largely mum about its preferences. It would likely want the report to remain classified or in limbo as its release might increase pressure on President Barack Obama to do something about criminal activity that might be revealed, which would be politically dangerous ground.

CIA has also welcomed back former Director George Tenet to help in crafting its own rebuttal report that it hopes will exonerate it from any blame, or at least point the finger elsewhere. Tenet was in charge of the Agency when the torture took place, so on one hand he would be a logical choice to craft a defense though on the other hand he would be keen to conceal any direct role on the part of himself and his accomplices, if only to preserve what remains of their reputations since there is no chance that any of them will be going to jail.

Let’s review who George Tenet is. He is a Greek American from Queens who never was an actual spy or analyst but made his way upwards in the intelligence community through a series of staff positions in Congress. As senior staffer for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence he got to know many important politicians. George could talk the talk in an affable way with Bill Clinton, who eventually named him Director of Central Intelligence in 1997, and then went on to discuss baseball minutiae with George W Bush, cementing his tenure with the new Republican administration. Tenet also presided over 9/11, which was a bit of an embarrassment for the Agency. He later utterly destroyed his own credibility when he declared that making a case for war with Iraq was a “slam dunk” before misleading both the United Nations and Secretary of State Colin Powell about the threat posed by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Tenet later retired into some well remunerated directorships before writing a book called At the Center of the Storm which reportedly earned him an advance of $4 million while demonstrating clearly that he is a great American hero.

So George will be reviewing what George did when he was good ol’ George DCI. When I was with the government I once served in a foreign city where a new United States Consul General’s residence was being built. It was so poorly constructed that there were holes in the ceilings and water running down inside the walls but the State Department Admin officer who was responsible left post before the project was completed. He came back a year later, after complaints, as the inspector to review the project. He determined that everything was just fine. That is sort of like putting George in charge of investigating George, but if the ISIS thing continues to pick up steam everyone in the media and among the public will in any event forget that there was ever a Senate torture report. In intelligence slang, it will “be disappeared.”

US targets Syrian oil field in anti-ISIS air strike

The United States and its partners launched a new round of strikes against Islamic State militants in Syria on Wednesday.

According to Agency France-Presse, strikes involved targeting an oil field in Syria near the towns of Al-Omar and Deir ez-Zor, journalist Zaid Benjamin reported.

“I can confirm that US military and Arab partner forces are undertaking additional strikes today against ISIL terrorists in Syria,” Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said on Wednesday, using the Obama-administration’s preferred language for the group formerly known as ISIS that today identifies as the Islamic State. “These operations are ongoing, so we will not provide additional details at this time. We will do so later as operationally appropriate.”

Later, the Pentagon confirmed that less than a dozen aircraft are involved in the latest attack. US Central Command (CENTCOM), meanwhile, confirmed that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also participated.

The latest round of strikes was acknowledged on Wednesday just shy of 12 a.m. local time in Syria and marks at least the third consecutive wave of attacks launched by the US and allied partners since Monday. Prior to then, the US had only attacked Islamic State militants in neighboring Iraq.

Israel downs Syrian warplane

Israel shot down a Syrian warplane on Tuesday.

The incident coincided with air strikes the United States and client states have mounted on ISIS strongholds in Syria. It has been three decades since Israel downed a Syrian fighter plane.

The aggression, incidentally, was not against ISIS, but Assad’s regime itself, which seems to be what Obama’s latest operation is all about: Regime change in Syria, using ISIS as a pretext.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks violence in the civil war, said the warplane had been bombing areas outside Quneitra, a Syrian town near the Israeli-held side of the frontier, at the time it was shot down. It said the pilot had bailed out. Syria described the downing of the aircraft as an act of aggression.

Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon, commenting on the incident, said Israel “will not allow any element – neither a state nor a terrorist group – to threaten our security and violate our sovereignty”.

Israeli military sources said the plane apparently crossed by accident into Israeli-controlled airspace.

In his statement, Yaalon also seemed to raise that possibility, saying Israel would respond strongly to perceived threats “whether they stemmed from a mistake or were deliberate”.

The incident seemed to be aimed at escalating the conflict.

The German Card

Top intelligence officers rarely reveal secret strings, pulling the nation’s political mechanism. Publication of a book like The German card. The obscure game of secret services, authored by Gerd-Helmut Komossa (Gerd-Helmut Komossa. DIE DEUTSCHE KARTE. Das verdeckte Spiel der geheimen Dienste. Ares-Verlag, Graz 2007. – 230 S.), is an exceptional occurrence. Raising very sensitive issues, the author appeals to the core of German identity that had been deliberately suppressed for decades by the United States and its allies.

The book is focused on contradictions between the United States and Germany, sometimes very strong but not supposed to be discussed in public. It was published in Austria, and its distribution in Germany may encounter certain difficulties today. Still, the very fact of its appearance indicates that the German intelligence community is increasingly dissatisfied with the role of a vassal of the United States (the definition applied to Europe by Zbigniew Brzezinski), imposed on Western Germany after World War II.

Gerd-Helmut Komossa reveals the uncomfortable truth about the post-war conditions, dictated by the US and its allies. The state treaty, dated May 21, 1949 and classified by BND as top secret, suggests restrictions of state sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Germany, introduced for a period until 2099. These restrictions include the provision that the winning coalition exercise complete control over Germany’s mass media and communications; that every Federal Chancellor is to sign the so-called Chancellor Act; that the gold reserve of Germany is kept under arrest.

In fact, all the German Chancellors, including the incumbent Chancellor Angela Merkel, pay their first foreign visit necessarily to the United States. The whole spectrum of German political parties is supervised by a special Washington-based controlling body, while local US-licensed media serve as a more sophisticated means of brainwashing than the Nazi propagandist machine. Meanwhile, Germany’s territory is still occupied by US troops.

This astonishing picture is not a fancy concoction of a political leftist. It is drawn by a military man whose mind has accumulated the experience of several crucial stages of development of the European civilization and Germany in particular. Gen. (Ret.) Gerd-Helmut Komossa took part in World War II and later in the Cold War. Possessing huge amounts of information, he analyzes the existing mechanisms of global policy with strong criticism.

Joining the Wehrmacht in 1943 as a volunteer, Komossa served at the Eastern front. Between May 1945 and April 1949, he was a prisoner of war. In the USSR, he got acquainted with many Russians who appeared to be quite different from the image imposed by the official Nazi propaganda.

Since 1956, he served in the German Bundeswehr, re-established under certain conditions. The abovementioned secret treaty admitted that the German sovereignty is sufficient for the right to build up military forces. According to the Constitution, the troops of the Federal Republic of Germany are carrying out exceptionally defensive functions. However, the Western coalition was pursuing different goals. It needed an army in new uniforms but with the same skills as the Nazi soldiers, perfectly fighting on land, on sea and in the air, and irrecusably abiding orders. Such a type of soldier was essential not only for the occasion of possible military collision with the Soviet bloc but also for fulfilling global missions. The coalition required at least 500,000 German soldiers. In addition, the newly-built army was supposed to purchase weapons and materiel solely from the United States.

During the last two decades, Washington has been trying to force Germany into military partnership in globalistic control. However, the massive effort to get Germany involved in US operations in Somalia and Bosnia, as well as in campaigns in Serbia, Iraq and Afghanistan, has brought about a reverse result, sparking a shift in approach in German strategic circles. The implicit discontent with American policy and essential difference in views on the role of the German people in current history eventually reached a critical dimension.

Since mid-1990s, the attitude of many German military to the United States, and significantly also towards NATO, has essentially changed. Though most of the German officers were not originally inclined against America, a lot of them being educated in the United States, they are now experiencing disappointment and even disgust with Washington’s policies. These officers realize that the hegemonistic policy is destined for destruction of socioeconomic systems of particular nations and whole regions, while the so-called order Washington is trying to impose is just a synonym for chaos.

Gerd-Helmut Komossa, in his former capacity of MAD (Military Counterintelligence) Director, was frequently called “a soldier with political thinking”. Today, he openly denounces the Bundeswehr’s involvement in foreign interventions, referring to the army’s constitutional duties.

Meanwhile, Washington urges Germans to go fighting. Conceding to the pressure, Berlin deployed a contingent of troops to Afghanistan. But even this was not sufficient for NATO bosses. Recently, NATO General Secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer accused the Bundeswehr of idleness in military operations in the region, and insisted that Germany “increase flexibility” and expand its military mission to the southern regions of Afghanistan.

In his book, Komossa inquires whether the state of affairs when young Germans are recruited in the national army for fulfilling overseas goals for other nations, could be acceptable. The map of operations, supposed to involve German troops, far exceeds the European continent, and has nothing to do with German national interests. “Do Germans expect this from the Bundeswehr? Would they like their soldiers to be called assassins again?” he asks.

However, the United States and its allies don’t care much for moral problems. As the secret treaty is valid until 2099, Germans are supposed to go and fight where they are told to.

The German audience will require certain time to digest the shocking information disclosed by General Komossa. But eventually, the nation with a great cultural and historical tradition will hardly agree to continue tolerating the American loop on its throat for decades more.

The publication of Komossa’s “German Card” is one more proof of the world’s transformation into a multipolar system. It indicates that Germany is likely to achieve complete sovereignty without waiting for eighty years.

Anna Voronova

Lavrov: Syria and Iran are natural allies in fight against ISIS

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Iraq and Syria are natural allies in the fight against ISIS.

Lavrov spoke at the International Conference on Peace and Security in Iraq, in Paris on 15 September 2014.

The foreign minister warned that “aggressive actions by the terrorist organization” threaten the future of Iraq as well as neighboring Syria.

“The achievements of the “Islamic State” and many other terrorist groups in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere would have been impossible without financial and material support from outside, including supply of weapons and purchase of oil from fields controlled by terrorists. Shutting down all the channels of such support must become a matter of priority.”

Earlier, President Obama declared that he would bomb the forces of ISIS in Syria without Syrian participation, but Vladimir Putin has warned that any such unilateral action in Syria would be clearly seen as “an act of aggression”.

Meanwhile Syria has asked Washington to engage in military and intelligence collaboration to defeat their mutual enemy, inviting US congressmen and senators to visit Damascus to discuss joint action against the jihadis.

Lavrov urged countries in the counterterrorist coalition to “demonstrate genuine unity, not allowing disputes between them on other issues to hamper the efficiency of joint counter-terrorist efforts”.

“The extremists will try to make use of any differences in our positions to undermine the united front against them. A truly collective approach should be developed through putting our minds and potentials together. No one can pretend that he knows better than others what kind of strategy we’ll need to help the region. And of course, we must build our common action on a solid foundation of United Nations Charter and UN counter-terrorist instruments and mechanisms. We face the same enemies in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, and there is no room for double standards,” Lavrov told the conference.

He said it made no sense to try and distinguish between “bad” and “good” terrorists and that such reckless policies had lead to terrible consequences in Libya and Mali.

SA Muslims reject ISIS

The Islamic Unity Convention (IUC) has joined several South African Muslim bodies in condemning the actions of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis).

It said on Wednesday that core tenets of Islam included love, peace and unity and justice and that these values were not reserved only for Muslims. “It is therefore with abhorrence that the Islamic Unity Convention witnesses the crimes of the so-called ‘Islamic State’,” it said.

“How can a group claiming to act in the name of Islam … build a caliphate on mass murders and human rights abuses?”

Last week the Muslim Judicial Council (MJC) urged the United Nations to put an end to atrocities in the region. The MJC is a faith-based organisation, which was established in 1945. It is one of the oldest religious organisations in South Africa.

“The Muslim Judicial Council unequivocally condemns the group … for the mass murder and destruction committed against innocent civilians, religious minorities, scholars and places of worship,” it said.

“We reject this murderous group, which seeks legitimacy among Muslims by claiming the noble title of the caliphate while it violates Islamic sharia [law] and brings disrepute to the noble legacy of the house of Islam.”

In August, the scholarly body Jamiatul Ulama SA, a body comprising more than 900 Islamic scholars and guides and represents the majority of SA’s Muslims, condemned Isis.

“Warfare does not absolve the members of any Islamic caliphate, state or entity from the responsibility of observance of human rights and the rules of engagement where women, children and the elderly as well as all civilian non-combatants, their lives and property, are never targeted but safeguarded,” it said.

“It therefore comes strange to us that an Islamic state would be founded on atrocities, massacres and extrajudicial punishments that include summary executions of individuals suspected of crimes.”

Source: M&G

ISIS a disgrace to true fundamentalism

The problem with terrorist fundamentalists is not that we consider them inferior to us, but, rather, that they themselves secretly consider themselves inferior

By Slavoj Žižek.

It has become a commonplace in recent months to observe that the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, is the latest chapter in the long story of the anticolonial awakening — the arbitrary borders drawn after World War I by the great powers being redrawn — and simultaneously a chapter in the struggle against the way global capital undermines the power of nation states. But what causes such fear and consternation is another feature of the ISIS regime: The public statements of the ISIS authorities make it clear that the principal task of state power is not the regulation of the welfare of the state’s population (health, the fight against hunger) — what really matters is religious life and the concern that all public life obey religious laws.

This is why ISIS remains more or less indifferent toward humanitarian catastrophes within its domain — its motto is roughly “take care of religion and welfare will take care of itself.” Therein resides the gap that separates the notion of power practiced by ISIS from the modern Western notion of what Michel Foucault called “biopower,” which regulates life in order to guarantee general welfare: the ISIS caliphate totally rejects the notion of biopower.

Does this make ISIS premodern? Instead of seeing in ISIS a case of extreme resistance to modernization, one should rather conceive of it as a case of perverted modernization and locate it into the series of conservative modernizations which began with the Meiji restoration in 19th-century Japan (rapid industrial modernization assumed the ideological form of “restoration,” or the return to the full authority of the emperor).

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The Caliph and his flashy wristwatch, as seen by Carlos Latuff

The well-known photo of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS leader, with an exquisite Swiss watch on his arm, is here emblematic: ISIS is well organized in web propaganda as well as financial dealings, although these ultra-modern practices are used to propagate and enforce an ideologico-political vision that is not so much conservative as a desperate move to fix clear hierarchic delimitations. However, we should not forget that even this image of a strictly disciplined and regulated fundamentalist organization is not without its ambiguities: is religious oppression not (more than) supplemented by the way local ISIS military units seem to function? While the official ISIS ideology rails against Western permissiveness, the daily practice of the ISIS gangs includes full-scale grotesque orgies, including robberies, gang rapes, torture and murder of infidels.

Upon a closer look, the apparent heroic readiness of ISIS to risk everything also appears more ambiguous. Long ago Friedrich Nietzsche perceived how Western civilization was moving in the direction of the Last Man, an apathetic creature with no great passion or commitment. Unable to dream, tired of life, he takes no risks, seeking only comfort and security: “A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. And much poison at the end, for a pleasant death. They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health. ‘We have discovered happiness,’ say the Last Men, and they blink.”

It may appear that the split between the permissive First World and the fundamentalist reaction to it runs more and more along the lines of the opposition between leading a long satisfying life full of material and cultural wealth and dedicating one’s life to some transcendent cause. Is this antagonism not the one between what Nietzsche called “passive” and “active” nihilism? We in the West are the Nietzschean Last Men, immersed in stupid daily pleasures, while the Muslim radicals are ready to risk everything, engaged in the struggle up to their self-destruction. William Butler Yeats’ “Second Coming” seems perfectly to render our present predicament: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” This is an excellent description of the current split between anemic liberals and impassioned fundamentalists. “The best” are no longer able fully to engage, while “the worst” engage in racist, religious, sexist fanaticism.

But are the terrorist fundamentalists really fundamentalists in the authentic sense of the term? Do they really believe? What they lack is a feature that is easy to discern in all authentic fundamentalists, from Tibetan Buddhists to the Amish in the United States — the absence of resentment and envy, the deep indifference towards the nonbelievers’ way of life. If today’s so-called fundamentalists really believe they have found their way to Truth, why should they feel threatened by nonbelievers. Why should they envy them? When a Buddhist encounters a Western hedonist, he hardly condemns. He just benevolently notes that the hedonist’s search for happiness is self-defeating. In contrast to true fundamentalists, the terrorist pseudo-fundamentalists are deeply bothered, intrigued and fascinated by the sinful life of the nonbelievers. One can feel that, in fighting the sinful other, they are fighting their own temptation. This is why the so-called fundamentalists of ISIS are a disgrace to true fundamentalism.

It is here that Yeats’ diagnosis falls short of the present predicament: The passionate intensity of a mob bears witness to a lack of true conviction. Deep in themselves, terrorist fundamentalists also lack true conviction — their violent outbursts are a proof of it. How fragile the belief of a Muslim must be if he feels threatened by a stupid caricature in a low-circulation Danish newspaper. The fundamentalist Islamic terror is not grounded in the terrorists’ conviction of their superiority and in their desire to safeguard their cultural-religious identity from the onslaught of global consumerist civilization.

The problem with terrorist fundamentalists is not that we consider them inferior to us, but, rather, that they themselves secretly consider themselves inferior. This is why our condescending, politically correct assurances that we feel no superiority toward them only makes them more furious and feeds their resentment. The problem is not cultural difference (their effort to preserve their identity), but the opposite fact that they already like us, that, secretly, they have already internalized our standards and measure themselves by them. Paradoxically, what the fundamentalists of ISIS and those like them really lack is precisely a dose of that true conviction of one’s own superiority.

Source: Tlaxcala

NATO, an idea whose time has gone

By Craig Murray.

In the past dozen years, the armed forces of NATO countries, whether operating under the NATO banner or in related ad-hoc coalitions, have killed many hundreds of thousands of people. Of those hundreds of thousands of people, only a few hundred at most ever had any connection to any attack on a NATO country.

Whatever modern NATO has become, a defensive alliance it is not; that fact is beyond rational dispute.

It is also the case that the situation in countries where NATO has been most active in killing people, including Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Pakistan, has deteriorated. It has deteriorated politically, economically, militarily and socially. The notion that NATO member states could bomb the world into good was only ever believed by crazed and fanatical people like Tony Blair and Jim Murphy of the Henry Jackson Society. It really should not have needed empirical investigation to prove it was wrong, but it has been tried, and has been proved wrong.

The NATO states as a group have also embarked on remarkably similar reductions in the civil liberties of their own populations during this period. NATO to me is symbolised by the fact that its Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, as Danish Prime Minister blatantly lied to the Danish parliament about Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction. When Major Frank Grevil released material that proved Rasmussen was lying, it was Grevil who was jailed for three years.

NATO’s attempt to be global arbiter and enforcer has been disastrous at all levels. Its plan to redeem itself by bombing the Caliphate in Iraq and Syria is a further sign of madness. Except of course that it will guarantee some blowback against Western targets, and that will “justify” further bombings, and yet more profit for the arms manufacturers. On that level, it is very clever and cynical. NATO provides power to the elite and money to the wealthy.

NATO is by far the largest danger to world peace. It should be dissolved as a matter of urgency.

Craig Murray was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and Rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. – http://www.craigmurray.org.uk

White House says beheading video authentic

The White House confirmed on Wednesday that a video showing the beheading of US journalist Steven Sotloff by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants was authentic.

“The US Intelligence Community has analyzed the recently released video showing US citizen Steven Sotloff and has reached the judgment that it is authentic,” National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said.

The video showing Sotloff’s beheading was released on Tuesday, just two weeks after the ISIS militants released a video showing the murder of another American journalist, James Foley.

Sotloff, 31, went missing in Syria a year ago.

Source: Itar TASS

Isis is Islam

“ISIL” is how President Barack Obama refers to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). He pronounces it as one would the last syllable in “Moishel,” giving it the ring of a Yiddish diminutive. Yiddish adds an “-l or –ele” suffix to signify affection. “ISIL,” the more expansive appellation preferred by the president, stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Obama was set to tee off on the golf course, when the outfit released footage of its latest bloodletting in Iraq: a video clip depicting the handsome head of American photojournalist James Foley being sawed off by a masked man with a British accent – yes, the West either admits these Muhammadans through mass immigration, or grows them at home in hothouses of multiculturalism.

The life of another journalist, Steven Sotloff, now hangs by a thread.

Unlike our Israeli and European allies, the U.S. government does not haggle for the lives of its countrymen. In fairness, Obama had at least made attempts to rescue poor Mr. Foley. His predecessor, Genghis Bush, sat bone idle, never lifting a bloodstained finger to spare Paul Johnson, Nick Berg, Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong, of blessed memory, who also met the most ghastly fate imaginable: beheading.

Even before these men were headless, they were faceless to Bush and his followers.

From Martha’s Vineyard, Obama addressed the media. His response to the beheading of Mr. Foley exhilarated the groupies at CNN. “The entire world is appalled,” the president intoned solemnly. It shocks the conscience of the world. Foley was a good man who stood for “hope and civility.” The killers are craven cowards. They have no ideology, only an “empty vision.” They offer their neighbors nothing but “nihilistic” horror.

“ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim. No faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just God would stand for what they did yesterday and what they do every single day,” asserted Obama, before scampering back to his game.

Don’t be too harsh on the White House’s current occupant for symbolically severing the ISIS snake head from its Islamic body and tail. His predecessor was as devoted to promoting the Religion of Peace pie-in-the-sky. When it comes to anodyne assurances about Islam’s compatibility with diversity and democracy, Bush was every bit the delusional dhimmi Obama is.

As Paul Sperry documented in “Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington,” Bush inaugurated the practice of always mentioning the nation’s churches and synagogues in tandem with its mosques. As did he promise Muslim leaders never to pair “Islam” with “terrorism,” a promise he kept. And never did Bush utter a peep about “Islamic terrorism,” emphasizing only equal-opportunity terrorism.

Bush hosted regular iftaar fast breakers and had selected as his “expert” on Islam a dabbler – a law professor called David Forte who doubled up as a “religious pluralist.” Forte crafted one of the Bush administration’s central stupidities: the notion that the essential Islam has been hijacked by a few bad-a–ed Arabs. Bush was forever offering incantations about Islam’s compatibility with liberty and tolerance; a faith based on love, not hate, ad nauseam.

As the ideologues that purport to be saving us from the scourge of Islamic terrorism see it, the Religion of Peace was doing what it does best – inspire peace and prosperity – when, out of nowhere, radicals materialized and derailed it. This is contradicted by history as well as an important primary source: the Quran.

The first attests that the sword has always been integral to Islam, and that conversion has invariably meant conquest and carnage. The second proves that Islam’s alleged “hijackers” have done no more than heed their scriptures. The soldiers of ISIS or ISIL are obedient Muslim. They’ve obeyed the Quran. “The Call to Jihad” instructs Muslims: “When you meet those who disbelieve smite at their necks till you have killed and wounded many of them.”

“Holy war, which is demanded in Islamic law, is not defensive war as the Western students of Islam would like to tell us,” cautions Serge Trifkovic, author of “The Sword of the Prophet.” Even apologists for Islam à la John Esposito admit that murderous missionizing is a filament of the Islamic faith: “Jihad means to fight to spread Islam, not just to defend it, and to wage war against [Jews and Christians] who refuse Muslim rule.”

What can the aspiring dhimmi anticipate? Peace has its place in Islam, promises Sperry, who has mined the Quran, but “only after the entire world is conquered in the name of Allah.” And even then, peace is the province of Muslims, mainly, while others are subdued and must pay for protection.

The Quran’s ruthless particularism runs counter to the universal concepts of justice and love of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. The tenet of religious literalism, moreover, explains why Islam has changed little over 1,400 years. Unlike the Jewish (and no doubt Christian) holy texts that have been reinterpreted by the sages over the centuries, the Quran has not – its decrees are not debatable and are to be taken literally.

Before being hushed, the greatest theologian alive – no, he’s not Pope Francis I – worried out loud that Islam was a closed and irrational system, impermeable to reform. Pope Benedict XVI was threatened, in 2006, for marshaling yet more primary sources to show that Islam does not brook reason or reformation and is commanded to will the world to its ways.

You might say that the term “radical Islam” is something of a redundancy. Islam is radical, and by extension, so are its true believers. Some, like ISIS or ISIL, are simply more devoted than others.

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British man called John beheaded American journalist Foley

The jihadist who beheaded the American journalist James Foley is believed to be British born militant from London who calls himself John, it can be revealed.

John spoke English with an accent identified as southern British by a linguistic expert, interviewed by The Guardian.

Intelligence agents in the UK and United States are urgently looking into reports that the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) fighter, whose brutal actions shocked the world, is the ringleader of group of British jihadists who have specialised in hostage taking.

Based in the Isil stronghold of Raqqa in Syria, ‘John’, is described as a well-educated, intelligent, but highly committed member of the extremist terror group.

Operating closely with two other British born militants, the group have been dubbed ‘The Beatles’, by fellow jihadists because of their nationality.

Some have boasted on Twitter and Facebook about their involvement, and the security services were last night examining pictures of known fighters as part of the process of identifying Mr Foley’s killer. They include boys and girls as young as 16, a medical student and a Primark shop assistant.

Source: The Telegraph

Christians face genocide in Iraq

Virginia Republican Rep. Frank Wolf says there is a genocide being perpetrated against the Christians of Iraq and the White House hasn’t said a word about it, much less acted to stop it.

The terrorist group the Islamic State, an al Qaida off shoot that has taken over large swaths of Iraq in recent months, told Christians in the Iraqi city of Mosul they had to convert to Islam by July 18 or they would be killed, according to the Economist. The only other option they were given was to leave Mosul, a city which has had a Christian presence for nearly two millennia. So thousands of Christians have now fled the city in fear for their lives.

“It is genocide. It meets the test of genocide,” Wolf said Friday on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, which this writer guest hosted. “The definition of genocide was put together by the UN by a guy named Raphael Lemkin. But it is the eradication of a group of people – race, culture, ethnicity, religion. So this meets the official test of genocide.”

Source: Foxnews