Iraq – praag.org

Ilana Mercer: Iraq Liars & Deniers: We Knew Then What We Know Now

“If we knew what we know today, we would not have gone into Iraq”: This is as good an apology Republicans vying for the highest office are willing to offer, 12 years after launching a war that was immoral and unjust from the inception—as some of us pointed out from the inception—cost trillions in treasure, tens of thousands of lives (American and Iraqi), and flouted America’s national interests.

The big reveal began with Jeb Bush, who told anchor Megyn Kelly that knowing what we know now about Iraq, he would absolutely still have invaded Iraq. Broadcaster Laura Ingraham was having none of it. With the benefit of hindsight, she had arrived at the belated conclusion that the invasion was wrong. Ingraham suggested that Bush III was insane for sticking to his guns about Iraq.

Next to disgrace was Sen. Marco Rubio, also in the running. Six weeks back, Rubio had been unrepentant about the catastrophic invasion. After The Shaming of Jeb, Rubio changed his tune.

The title of Judith Chalabi Miller’s “rehab book tour” is, “If we knew what we now know … .” Over the pages of the New York Times, Miller, the Gray Lady’s prized reporter had shilled for the Iraq war like there was no tomorrow. In her reporting, she channeled Ahmad Chalabi, an Iraqi conman who fed the moronic Miller with misinformation and lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The other conman was Bush II, president at the time. His administration assisted Miller—a woman already prone to seeing faces in the clouds—to tune-out and become turned-on and hot for war (also the title of a January 2003, “Return To Reason” column). No tale was too tall for our Judith; no fabrication too fantastic.

Miller’s “mistakes,” and those of America’s news cartel, are no laughing matter. But it took a Comedy Central icon to deconstruct her national bid for redemption. The fact that others were on board, Republicans and Democrats, is not exculpatory. Idiocy is bipartisan. Not everybody got it wrong. Miller and her ilk chose not to consult those who got it right.

Miller had company. The Fox News war harpies were certainly a dream come true for many American men. Who cared about honest reporting or basic fact-checking when a heaving bosom is yelling from the screen, “Sock it to Saddam, Dubya!”?

In any event, the meme, “If we knew what we know now, we would not have gone to war in Iraq,” is false; a lie. We most certainly knew what we know now as far back as 2002, which was when this column wrote:

Iraq is a secular dictatorship profoundly at odds with Islamic fundamentalism. No less an authority than the former head of the CIA’s counterterrorism office, Vincent Cannistraro, stated categorically that there was no evidence of Iraq’s links to al-Qaeda. Even the putative Prague meeting between Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of Sept. 11, and Iraqi intelligence, turned out to be bogus. … Iraq has been 95-percent disarmed and has no weapons of mass destruction, an assessment backed by many experts in strategic studies.

The column excerpted was published on September 19, 2002, in Canada’s national newspaper. On that day, the flirty notes and the gracious dinner invitations from America’s leading neoconservatives ceased.

Indeed, there were many experts, credible ones, who categorically rejected the contention that there were WMD in Iraq. But they were silenced; shut out by the media—the Hannities, the Millers, the dissidents, their handlers and their followers—none of whom should be allowed to deflect from the intellectual and moral corruption it took to invade a Third World country whose military prowess was a fifth of what it was when hobbled during the Gulf War, which had no navy or air force and was no threat to American national security.

Eleven years ago, “What WMD?”, courtesy of WND, documented the same old verities. No, not everyone was bullish about the Bush administration’s WMD balderdash. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei told the U.N. Security Council before the war: There were no nuclear-designated aluminum tubes in Iraq; no uranium was imported, and no nuclear programs were in existence. Between 1991 and 1998, the IAEA had managed to strip Iraq of its fuel-enriching facilities, tallying inventories to a T. In David Kay’s late-in-the-day assessment, “Iraq’s large-scale capability to produce and fill new chemical weapons (CW) munitions was reduced, if not entirely destroyed, during Operation Desert Storm and Desert Fox and 13 years of U.N. sanctions and U.N. inspections.” Kay was the former top U.S. weapons inspector who endeared himself to the media as an invasion enthusiast.

According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), Congress in 1999 was privy to intelligence reports which similarly attested to a lack of “any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox (1998) to reconstitute its WMD program.” Accounts of this nature had evidently been available to Congress for years. These reiterated, as one report from the Defense Intelligence Agency did, that, “A substantial amount of Iraq’s chemical warfare agents, precursors, munitions, and production equipment were destroyed between 1991 and 1998.”

“Kay’s news ought not to have been new to the blithering boobs in Congress,” I observed in 2004. The CEIP further bears out that in October of 2002, Congress was apprised of a National Intelligence Estimate, a declassified version of which was released only after the war. Apparently, entire intelligence agencies disputed key contentions that the administration—its experts, and its congressional and media backers—seized on and ran with.

While clearly pandering to policy makers, U.S. intelligence reports were still heavily qualified by conjectural expressions such as, “We believe Iraq could, might, possibly, and probably will.” The State Department and the White House, however, cultivated a custom of issuing Top Secret “fact” sheets with definitive statements from which all traces of uncertainty had been expunged.

Having categorically denied she possessed the analytical wherewithal to connect the dazzlingly close dots between terrorism and Arab men practicing their aeronautical take-off skills stateside—Condoleezza Rice was suddenly doing nothing but connecting disparate dots. She, Powell, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush never stopped lying about a reconstituted Iraqi nuclear-weapons program, chemical and biological blights, Scuds and squadrons of unmanned aerial vehicles streaking U.S. skies, and traveling laboratories teeming with twisted scientists. The language they deployed ignored the deep dissent in the intelligence community.

All the above information addressing pre-war knowledge has been culled from WND’s early, Return to Reason columns.

In 2003, “Bush’s 16 Words Miss the Big Picture” beseeched our readers to “see Bush’s sub-intelligent case for war for what it was”:

The administration’s war wasn’t about a few pieces that did not gel in an otherwise coherent framework, it wasn’t about an Iraq that was poised to attack the U.S. with germs and chemicals rather than with nukes—it was about a resigned, hungry, economic pariah that was a sitting duck for the power-hungry American colossus.

By all means, the column implored, “dissect and analyze what, in September 2002, I called the “lattice of lies leveled at Iraq: the uranium from Africa, the aluminum tubes from Timbuktu, the invisible meetings with al-Qaida in Prague, an al-Qaida training camp that existed under Kurdish—not Iraqi—control, as well as the alleged weaponized chemical and biological stockpiles and their attendant delivery systems that inspectors doubted were there and which never materialized.”

“But then assemble the pieces and synthesize the information, will you?”

“Rationalize With Lies,” moreover, dealt a blow to the creative post hoc arguments made to justify the unnecessary war the United States waged on a sovereign nation that had not attacked us, was no threat to us and was certainly no match for us. The argument:

“To say that Saddam may have had WMD is quite different from advocating war based on those assumptions. It’s one thing to assume in error; it’s quite another to launch a war in which tens of thousands would die based on mere assumptions, however widely shared. It was not the anti-war-on-Iraq camp that intended to launch a war based on the sketchy information it had. The crucial difference between the Bush camp and its opponents lies in the actions the former took.”

Second, it matters a great deal when during the last decade someone said Saddam was in possession of impermissible weapons. To have said so in 1991 is not the same as saying so in 2003, by which time Iraq had so obviously been cowed into compliance and was crawling with inspectors.

Naturally, at certain times during Iraq’s belligerent history, opponents of this war would have agreed Hussein had a weapons program. But by 1998, sensible people realized that Operation Desert Storm, followed by seven years of inspections, made the possibility of reconstituting such a program remote. President Jacques Chirac said as much to both Bush and Blair, who pretended not to hear.

To arrive at the correct conclusions about Bush’s undeniable delirium for war, it was necessary to employ facts and reality, Just War Theory developed by great Christian minds like St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine, the libertarian axiom which prohibits aggression against non-aggressors, the natural law and what the Founding Fathers provided:

“A limited, constitutional republican government, by definition, doesn’t, cannot and must never pursue what Bush and his neoconservatives were after: a sort of 21st-century Manifest Destiny.”

Republicans are still fond of presenting their opponents with the following false choice: “But what would you have done about Iraq?” they are in the habit of asking me. The assertion is intended to make you assume incorrectly that something had to be done about Iraq. However, “The burden of proof is on he who proposes the existence of something like WND, not on he who claims that it does not exist.” That line was penned 12 years ago.

In the early days, Iraq had provided “documentary intelligence from Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign minister, that Saddam did not have WMD.” I recall the derision and mockery with which the Bush administration and its hangers-on greeted what turned out to be the only truthful document in the sad saga of Iraq.

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Shale Gas Might Rescue South Africa’s Dying Economy

At this point of time, a barrel of oil costs $60, showing some signs of improvement from its previous value of below $50 back in March. Yet, full recovery of oil seems very unlikely, and people wonder whether fossil fuels will last that much longer as our primary source of power. Research indicates that oil demand will peak at 2030, while others believe another oil crisis could happen again in the future, with permanent damages as a consequence

Slowing rates of consumption have led to the closure of oil and gas rotaries in the United States. But many still see the fossil fuel industry as a lucrative investment as they pour capital into Iraq’s oil-rich fields in Rumaila and spend their funds on exploration programs throughout Africa, particularly in Namibia where around 60 petroleum exploration licenses have already been issued to local and foreign investors. Others have joined the race for renewable energy as the prices of solar and wind power continues to decrease. South Africa have taken a different route to address the slump in commodities, as they believe that shale gas exploration in the Karoo region could help survive the economy.

In the last 12 months, 36 mining rights have been granted with the hope to create around 6,000 jobs, as explained by Mineral Resources Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi. The nation’s budding shale industry may soon have a new program starting up within the next several weeks, should the government approve new regulations on shale exploration in Karoo.

It’s been said that the semi-desert area holds up to 400 trillion cubic feet of shale gas, and passing these new rules will mitigate the current energy shortages. Environmentalists fear that extraction would damage the water supply of surrounding communities, which is why it’s of the utmost importance that extractors conduct all the appropriate assessments and work with local communities to minimize disturbances.

Prior to Western-led sanctions against Iran, South Africa had been the leading importer for Iran’s crude oil and the ninth in the world, which was reported by the Tasnim News Agency earlier this month. If the sanctions are ever lifted, South Africa are prepared to cooperate with Iran once again to boost each other’s economies, given the amount of potential in shale gas.

Second SA teenager wanted to join ISIS

State security services stopped a second Cape Town teenager from absconding to join the Islamic State group, South African State Security Minister David Mahlobo confirmed on Tuesday.

“Yes, we know about that one,” Mahlobo told ANA when asked about the high school girl from Grassy Park.

He said she was apprehended at Cape Town International Airport last month following a tip-off.

“The nice thing is that we are acting before these things happen,” he added.

“There are certain communities that are being targeted.”

It is understood that security services and the Hawks were in part acting on information given by a 15-year-old girl from Kenwyn who admitted that she was planning to join the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (IS) after she was taken off a flight from Cape Town to OR Tambo on Easter Sunday. The girls are believed to be friends, and tried to leave the country within 10 days of each other.

The incident has seen Mahlobo warn repeatedly that parents should monitor their children’s internet usage, as he did again at a media briefing ahead of his ministry’s budget debate in Parliament on Tuesday.

However, intelligence sources said they are also investigating the physical presence of recruiters for the jihadist group in the country.

Mahlobo said security agencies were being highly vigilant on the issue of recruitment by fundamentalist groups and staying in close contact with communities who are considered targets.

Source: ANA

Seattle teacher, Oz doctor recruiting for ISIS

A Twitter account with over 8,000 followers actively engaged in recruiting new people for the Islamic State group and transporting them to Syria may have been operated by a twenty-something girl from Seattle, Channel 4 reported.

The British news network investigated the @_UmmWaqqas account, which had been promoting the cause of the Islamic State (ISIS) until it was shut down on April 17. The woman behind the account is believed to be European.

Some early posts not related to IS or radical Islamism tweeted by @_UmmWaqqas indicated a passion for the Denver Broncos football team and take-out pizzas.

Channel 4 says it briefly contacted @_UmmWaqqas in March while working on the story and that the account was accessed from an IP address located in Seattle. But it couldn’t verify that Rawdah was actually writing, considering that several people may have access to the popular account. Her friends said she was no longer living in Seattle and named Saudi Arabia’s Medina or Denver, Colorado, as her possible whereabouts.

In an IS ‘travel guide’ for potential IS recruits who travel to Turkey to cross the border to Syria @_UmmWaqqas is listed as one of primary contacts, the report said.

In addition to advocating traveling to Syria and Iraq and joining the Islamic State, the account justified atrocities committed by the group, such as the execution by burning of a captured Jordanian pilot, saying it was ‘an eye for an eye’ retribution.

A white Australian doctor also appeared in an Islamic State propaganda video calling on medical “brothers and sisters” from around the world to come to Syria to join the “Jihad for Islam” against the West.

“My name is Abu Yusuf. I’m one of the medical team here. I came from Australia to the Islamic State to live under the khalifah,” the blue-eyed man with a distinctive Australian accent states in the YouTube video, which comes complete with a logo for the ‘Islamic State Health Service’.

He says he’s a doctor who traveled to Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqa, about 160km east of Aleppo, to offer his medical services.

According to news.com.au, the young doctor has been identified as former Adelaide University student Tareq Kamleh, believed to be in his late 20s, who completed his medical studies and later moved to Perth.

Australian Medical Association (AMA) Vice-President Stephen Parnis said the most influential membership organization representing registered medical practitioners and medical students of Australia has been outraged by ‘Abu Yusuf’s’ video.

Genocidal ISIS cultists target Christians

Thousands of Christians have fled their historic cities, towns, and monastic communities for safety in other countries outside the rule of the self-proclaimed Islamic “caliphate” of ISIS.

The Middle East’s ancient Christian communities are targeted by Islamic State violence and have suffered more than Syrian and Iraqi Kurds, Shi’a Muslims, Syrian Alawites, moderate Sunni Muslims, and Palestinian refugees.

One of the first Christian communities to the flee from the pseudo-Muslim ISIS blood cult was that of Raqqa, Syria.

Raqqa was the first major city to fall to ISIS after the Israel and the CIA permitted arms allegedly destined for the almost-nonexistent Free Syrian Army to fall into the hands of ISIS and their Jabhat al-Nusra allies.

Although Christians represented only one percent of Raqqa’s 300,000 population, almost all fled or were killed after ISIS burned down and defaced churches and imposed a confiscatory religious tax on Christians of 17 grams of gold from each Christian male.

In all, half a million Syrian Christians have had to flee their country thanks to Saudi, Western, and Israeli support for ISIS advancing in their new Toyotas.

Mosul, in Iraq was the first major Christian population center to fall to ISIS, prompting most of the city’s 80,000 Christians to flee the region. ISIS destroyed churches of the Assyrian Orthodox diocese in Mosul. The Assyrians speak Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has denied that Aramaic was Jesus’s mother tongue, maintaining that Jesus spoke Hebrew, but Christian scholars have proven Bibi wrong.

In July 2014, ISIS leaders proudly proclaimed that Mosul had been cleansed of Christians.

There were three large Assyrian Christian denominations active in Mosul before the city’s fall to the new cultists, and priceless religious artifacts were smashed and burned by the marauders.

There was nary a peep from Israel about the religious cleansing of Mosul even though its propaganda machine conveniently ensures that the Nazi cleansing of Jews from Europe receives front page attention every time Israel faces criticism about the Palestinians.

ISIS terrorists kidnapped 300 Assyrian Christians in Iraq in February – including many children – from their villages along the Khabur River. The kidnapping sent some 1300 additional Assyrians fleeing for their lives.

ISIS then detonated the 4th Century Mar Benham Christian monastery in Bakhdida, near Mosul. The 1600 year-old building was built by Assyrian king Senchareb and was a UNESCO-protected World Heritage Site.

As ISIS approached the outer edges of Baghdad, many of the 100,000 Christians fled. Iraq’s Christians thrived before the US invasion and occupation. Tariq Aziz, Iraq’s foreign minister and deputy prime minister under Saddam Hussein, was a Christian.

The fanatically pro-Saudi CIA director, John Brennan, has, in addition to permitting weapons and financial aid to reach ISIS and allied forces in Syria and Iraq, provided intelligence, materiel, and propaganda support to the Saudi-led coalition battling Houthi and patriotic Yemeni forces in that nation’s multi-sided civil war.

Last month ISIS cemented ties with like-minded cultists in Libya, many of whom were propelled into power by the NATO intervention.

Thanks to the efforts of Israeli-French «philosopher» Bernard-Henry Levy, who shuttled between rebel-held areas of Benghazi and Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem, the most radical Islamist jihadi factions took over power from Qaddafi in and around Benghazi.

These factions ultimately swore allegiance to the Islamic State, which, in February 2015 carried out the mass beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christian oil workers on a Mediterranean beach near Tripoli.

On April 3, 2015, Maundy Thursday, when Christians were celebrating Jesus’s Last Supper, cultists of the ISIS-aligned Al Shabaab group, stormed into the campus of Garissa University in Kenya and massacred 147 Christian students.

The attackers ensured that the Christians were singled out from other students before they were executed.

Pope Francis, in his Good Friday message, warned against the advance of ISIS: “We risk, all of us, the institutions and the people of the Western world, to be Pontius Pilate who wash their hands of such atrocities.”

Israelis, strangely, take pleasure in the fact that ISIS has declared Christianity, not Judaism or Shi’a Islam, to be its “Number 1 enemy”. This is spelled out in the ISIS propaganda booklet titled “Dabiq”.

ISIS says it will soon fly its black flag over Italy, Spain, the Balkans, and Austria.

France, US at odds over Iran

As a March 31 deadline looms in the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, the United States and France, two strong allies, have found themselves increasingly at odds, at times quite publicly.

While the White House has been pushing hard for consensus on the framework for a deal ahead of the deadline, Paris has been pushing back. “Repeating that an agreement has to be reached by the end of March is a bad tactic. Pressure on ourselves to conclude at any price,” Gérard Araud, France’s ambassador in Washington, tweeted on March 20. On Tuesday, François Delattre, France’s ambassador to the United Nations, said that Iran’s progress was “insufficient.”

The word from Paris has been equally unsupportive of the U.S. push for a deal. “France wants an agreement, but a robust one that really guarantees that Iran can have access to civilian nuclear power, but not the atomic bomb,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius declared on March 21.

What gives? Is France’s Socialist President François Hollande actually a neoconservative? Has Paris suddenly turned into a hawk among nations?

Not quite. France’s policy is dictated by a set of principles with regard to nonproliferation that have guided administrations on both sides of the political spectrum in the talks with Tehran since 2002. And the tension with Washington is just one expression of a larger disagreement between the two countries over U.S. strategy in the Middle East.

Differences between Washington and Paris have been quietly brewing for months. The French feel that they are being kept out of the loop in critical discussions. The multilateral framework of Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany) has turned into a bilateral discussion between Iran and the United States.

This exclusion has been coupled with increasing pressure from Washington. French diplomats complain (albeit only privately) that their American counterparts are trying to force them to make concessions on issues like the number of centrifuges allowed or sanctions in order to reach an agreement by March 31, a deadline that the French, like many of the White House’s critics back home, see as artificial and counterproductive.

The French do not share the sense of hurry that Washington seems to feel. As France’s ambassador to the United States tweeted on March 3: “We want a deal. They need a deal. The tactics and the result of the negotiation should reflect this asymmetry.”

But the differences between the French and American positions go beyond process and into matters of substance. The lifting of sanctions, the scope of inspections, research and development capacities, the number of centrifuges Iran will be allowed to maintain, and how long the agreement will last are all areas in which Paris and Washington differ. In Lausanne last week, France rejected Iran’s demand to immediately lift United Nations Security Council sanctions linked to proliferation after an agreement, arguing that this can only come progressively, with verifications.

A central concern is “breakout time” (the minimum time needed to make weapons-grade uranium). According to current reports, a deal would ensure that Iranian breakout time would be moved back to one year. French negotiators want to ensure that Iran’s agreed-upon breakout time will last the entire duration of the deal — and after. They also want a deal that lasts as long as possible. “Ten years is short when you talk about nuclear issues,” one diplomat said.“Ten years is short when you talk about nuclear issues,” one diplomat said.

Another diplomat summed it up: “We spent more than 10 years talking, slowly setting an architecture of sanctions, of pressure, defining principles of negotiations. Once we dismantle this, it won’t come back up. So we better get the best possible deal.”

French diplomats insist a political agreement, if reached by March 31, will only be a first step. Tough negotiations will continue. Bruno Tertrais, an expert in nuclear issues who is influential in the French diplomatic community, even suggested recently that a series of temporary deals could be a better alternative to a bad definitive deal.

None of this goes against long-standing French policy, though. France has consistently been the toughest member of the European Union when it comes to Iran, going back to the administration of President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007. Paris has consistently advocated for firmer sanctions and EU sanctions, beyond the scope of United Nations resolutions. In 2012, France was notably responsible for convincing Europeans to ban the import on oil products, despite the objections of many countries.

Nuclear deterrence has been central to France’s foreign policy ever since Charles de Gaulle’s presidency, a pillar that has been largely bipartisan. And just as nuclear doctrine has stayed remarkably stable through the years, so have the officials in charge of conducting French nuclear strategy and proliferation policy, regardless of who is in the Élysée.

In fact, some of the most preeminent positions in the French diplomatic and defense establishments are occupied by career civil servants trained as nuclear strategists who have worked on Iran for over a decade. This close-knit group of diplomats includes, among others, Araud, as well as Jacques Audibert, Hollande’s diplomatic advisor, both of whom previously served as France’s chief nuclear negotiator with Iran.

These diplomats generally share the conviction that Tehran’s enrichment program is aimed at obtaining a nuclear weapon and that a bad deal that allows the Iranians to keep enriching uranium at dangerous levels will lead to a disastrous game of regional proliferation. Araud, Audibert, and their colleagues know the situation well: They have been engaged in 12 years of talks on these issues and at this point they feel they have little reason to trust the Iranians, or to believe that regional arrangements with Iran would decrease Tehran’s desire to acquire nuclear capabilities.

But policymakers in Paris might not trust the Americans much, either — and not just when it comes to the nuclear negotiations. French officials no longer hide their dismay at many of Washington’s policies in the Middle East.

Numerous French diplomats suspect that the United States, now that it is less dependent on Gulf oil, “pivoting” to Asia, and focused on fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, is on the verge of profoundly reshaping its traditional alliance system in the Middle East, moving from a system where Iran replaces Saudi Arabia as the central pillar of regional stability. This especially concerns the French because they have built strong political and defense relationships with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates in recent years.

The nuclear talks, French diplomats suspect, are just one part of a strategic rapprochement with Iran. Washington has practically subcontracted the war against the Islamic State’s forces in Iraq to Iranian special forces and Tehran’s Iraqi militia proxies. The French view this as a potentially counterproductive move, one more part of Washington’s turn away from its Sunni allies and toward Tehran.

French officials are also critical of the American strategy of fighting the Islamic State first in Iraq, then in Syria, disregarding the fact that both theaters are interlinked. Paris would rather see more and better inclusion of Sunnis in both countries, including more concrete support for the moderate Syrian rebel factions.

Meanwhile, the U.S. approach to Syria’s civil war is seen in Paris as hesitant and ambiguous, lacking means and resolve, and indirectly leaving aside the core question of the Assad regime’s fate — thus comforting the dictator in Damascus. This issue has come up publicly recently, such as after Secretary of State John Kerry said on March 15 that negotiating with Assad would be necessary to end the war in Syria. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said a day later that “There will not be a political solution, there will not be a solution for Syria as long as Bashar al-Assad stays, and John Kerry knows it.” Among the concerns for French policymakers is that the temporary survival of Assad endangers Lebanon, a country that remains dear to France.

Relations between Paris and Washington have been tainted with suspicion ever since Syria used chemical weapons in August 2013 and Obama failed to enforce his “red line.” The sudden American about-face was perceived by Hollande as a sign that Obama was dumping his allies. European countries, and France in particular, were ready to attack Syria in September 2013, after two weeks of stepping up pressure and building up their military presence in the Mediterranean.

Paris is in good company, alongside many of Washington’s traditional allies in the region, including the Gulf states, Israel, and Turkey, which have all felt shunted aside in the interest of reconciliation with Iran. Within the nuclear talks, France, which has strong ties with Gulf countries, has voiced these concerns.

Source: AFP

Two major US newspapers openly advocate bombing

The New York Times continues its slide into becoming little more than a neocon propaganda sheet as it followed the Washington Post in publishing an op-ed advocating the unprovoked bombing of Iran, reports Robert Parry

If two major newspapers in, say, Russia published major articles openly advocating the unprovoked bombing of a country, say, Israel, the U.S. government and news media would be aflame with denunciations about “aggression,” “criminality,” “madness,” and “behavior not fitting the Twenty-first Century.”

But when the newspapers are American – the New York Times and the Washington Post – and the target country is Iran, no one in the U.S. government and media bats an eye. These inflammatory articles – these incitements to murder and violation of international law – are considered just normal discussion in the Land of Exceptionalism.

On Thursday, the New York Times printed an op-ed that urged the bombing of Iran as an alternative to reaching a diplomatic agreement that would sharply curtail Iran’s nuclear program and ensure that it was used only for peaceful purposes. The Post published a similar “we-must-bomb-Iran” op-ed two weeks ago.

The Times’ article by John Bolton, a neocon scholar from the American Enterprise Institute, was entitled “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.” It followed the Post’s op-ed by Joshua Muravchik, formerly at AEI and now a fellow at the neocon-dominated School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins.

Both articles called on the United States to mount a sustained bombing campaign against Iran to destroy its nuclear facilities and to promote “regime change” in Tehran. Ironically, these “scholars” rationalized their calls for unprovoked aggression against Iran under the theory that Iran is an aggressive state, although Iran has not invaded another country for centuries.

Bolton, who served as President George W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations, based his call for war on the possibility that if Iran did develop a nuclear bomb – which Iran denies seeking and which the U.S. intelligence community agrees Iran is not building – such a hypothetical event could touch off an arms race in the Middle East.

Curiously, Bolton acknowledged that Israel already has developed an undeclared nuclear weapons arsenal outside international controls, but he didn’t call for bombing Israel. He wrote blithely that “Ironically perhaps, Israel’s nuclear weapons have not triggered an arms race. Other states in the region understood — even if they couldn’t admit it publicly — that Israel’s nukes were intended as a deterrent, not as an offensive measure.”

How Bolton manages to read the minds of Israel’s neighbors who have been at the receiving end of Israeli invasions and other cross-border attacks is not explained. Nor does he address the possibility that Israel’s possession of some 200 nuclear bombs might be at the back of the minds of Iran’s leaders if they do press ahead for a nuclear weapon.

Nor does Bolton explain his assumption that if Iran were to build one or two bombs that it would use them aggressively, rather than hold them as a deterrent. He simply asserts: “Iran is a different story. Extensive progress in uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing reveal its ambitions.”

Pulling Back on Refinement

But is that correct? In its refinement of uranium, Iran has not progressed toward the level required for a nuclear weapon since its 2013 interim agreement with the global powers known as “the p-5 plus one” – for the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. Instead, Iran has dialed back the level of refinement to below 5 percent (what’s needed for generating electricity) from its earlier level of 20 percent (needed for medical research) — compared with the 90-plus percent purity to build a nuclear weapon.

In other words, rather than challenging the “red line” of uranium refinement that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew during a United Nations speech in 2012, the Iranians have gone in the opposite direction – and they have agreed to continue those constraints if a permanent agreement is reached with the p-5-plus-1.

However, instead of supporting such an agreement, American neocons – echoing Israeli hardliners – are demanding war, followed by U.S. subversion of Iran’s government through the financing of an internal opposition for a coup or a “colored revolution.”

Bolton wrote: “An attack need not destroy all of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but by breaking key links in the nuclear-fuel cycle, it could set back its program by three to five years. The United States could do a thorough job of destruction, but Israel alone can do what’s necessary. Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran.”

But one should remember that neocon schemes – drawn up at their think tanks and laid out on op-ed pages – don’t always unfold as planned. Since the 1990s, the neocons have maintained a list of countries considered troublesome for Israel and thus targeted for “regime change,” including Iraq, Syria and Iran. In 2003, the neocons got their chance to invade Iraq, but the easy victory that they predicted didn’t exactly pan out.

Still, the neocons never revise their hit list. They just keep coming up with more plans that, in total, have thrown much of the Middle East, northern Africa and now Ukraine into bloodshed and chaos. In effect, the neocons have joined Israel in its de facto alliance with Saudi Arabia for a Sunni sectarian conflict against the Shiites and their allies. Much like the Saudis, Israeli officials rant against the so-called “Shiite crescent” from Tehran through Baghdad and Damascus to Beirut.

Since Iran is considered the most powerful Shiite nation and is allied with Syria, which is governed by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, both countries have remained in the neocons’ crosshairs. But the neocons don’t actually pull the trigger themselves. Their main role is to provide the emotional and political arguments to get the American people to hand over their tax money and their children to fight these wars.

The neocons are so confident in their skills at manipulating the U.S. decision-making process that some have gone so far as to suggest Americans should side with al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front in Syria or the even more brutal Islamic State, because those groups love killing Shiites and thus are considered the most effective fighters against Iran’s allies.

The New York Times’ star neocon columnist Thomas L. Friedman ventured to the edge of madness as he floated the idea of the U.S. arming the head-chopping Islamic State, writing this month: “Now I despise ISIS as much as anyone, but let me just toss out a different question: Should we be arming ISIS?”

I realize the New York Times and Washington Post are protected by the First Amendment and can theoretically publish whatever they want. But the truth is that the newspapers are extremely restrictive in what they print. Their op-ed pages are not just free-for-alls for all sorts of opinions.

For instance, neither newspaper would publish a story that urged the United States to launch a bombing campaign to destroy Israel’s actual nuclear arsenal as a step toward creating a nuclear-free Middle East. That would be considered outside responsible thought and reasonable debate.

However, when it comes to advocating a bombing campaign against Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, the two newspapers are quite happy to publish such advocacy. The Times doesn’t even blush when one of its most celebrated columnists mulls over the idea of sending weapons to the terrorists in ISIS – all presumably because Israel has identified “the Shiite crescent” as its current chief enemy and the Islamic State is on the other side.

But beyond the hypocrisy and, arguably, the criminality of these propaganda pieces, there is also the neocon record of miscalculation. Remember how the invasion of Iraq was supposed to end with Iraqis tossing rose petals at the American soldiers instead of planting “improvised explosive devices” – and how the new Iraq was to become a model pluralistic democracy?

Well, why does one assume that the same geniuses who were so wrong about Iraq will end up being right about Iran? What if the bombing and the subversion don’t lead to nirvana in Iran? Isn’t it just as likely, if not more so, that Iran would react to this aggression by deciding that it needed nuclear bombs to deter further aggression and to protect its sovereignty and its people?

In other words, might the scheming by Bolton and Muravchik — as published by the New York Times and the Washington Post — produce exactly the result that they say they want to prevent? But don’t worry. If the neocons’ new schemes don’t pan out, they’ll just come up with more.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative.

Source: Consortium News

How Imam Obama Apostatizes Against Islam

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) is not Islamic, announced Barack Obama, during a White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism (with an emphasis on violence inspired by the Judeo-Christian tradition). “They [ISIS] are not religious leaders, they are terrorists,” he asserted—an assertion that begs the question, as it assumes that a terrorist cannot be a religious leader as well.

President Obama further ventured that when we call them “Islamic,” we grant ISIS the “legitimacy” for which they thirst. For they are “desperate to portray themselves as religious leaders, holy warriors in defense of Islam.” Yet another non sequitur: Christening the group Islamic or not is unlikely to change that its members and a good many Muslims across the Ummah regard ISIS as thoroughbred Islamic.

What else did Imam Obama—who professes Christianity—proclaim in the name of the ISIS Islamic eschatology? Obama claimed that ISIS has “perverted the religion [of Islam]” and that it is peddling a “twisted ideology used to incite others to violence.”

“Weighing in on matters of Islamic theological debate,” warns Graeme Wood, editor at The Atlantic, is something Western officials would probably do best to avoid. “When he claim[s] that the Islamic State [is] ‘not Islamic,’” Obama, in fact, has “drifted into takfiri waters,” explains Wood. For “non-Muslims cannot tell Muslims how to practice their religion properly.”

“In Islam, the practice of takfir, or excommunication, is theologically perilous,” cautions Wood, in a seminal exposé on the Islamic State entitled “What ISIS Really Wants.” “‘If a man says to his brother, ‘You are an infidel,’ the Prophet said, ‘then one of them is right.’ If the accuser is wrong, he himself has committed apostasy by making a false accusation. The punishment for apostasy is death.”

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His theologically and existentially perilous practice of takfir, notwithstanding, Obama lies about ISIS being antagonistic to Islam. Wood portrays “the group [that] seized Mosul, Iraq, last June, and already rules an area larger than the United Kingdom,” as Islamic as the Prophet Muhammad of the later, Medina period. He decries as “dishonest” the “campaign to deny the Islamic State’s medieval religious nature” and that it is indeed following “specific traditions and texts of early Islam.” “The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. … the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.”

Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, ‘the Prophetic methodology,’ which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail.

“We can gather that [the caliphate state] rejects peace as a matter of principle; that it hungers for genocide; that its religious views make it constitutionally incapable of certain types of change, even if that change might ensure its survival; and that it considers itself a harbinger of—and headline player in—the imminent end of the world.”

And he has it on good authority. While Obama was offering up nostrums to the nation, Graeme Wood was speaking to leading authorities, among them “Bernard Haykel, the foremost secular authority on the Islamic State’s ideology.” This Princeton scholar “regards the claim that the Islamic State has distorted the texts of Islam as preposterous, sustainable only through willful ignorance.”

“People want to absolve Islam,” he told Wood. “It’s this ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ mantra. As if there is such a thing as ‘Islam’! It’s what Muslims do, and how they interpret their texts.’ Those texts are shared by all Sunni Muslims, not just the Islamic State. ‘And these guys have just as much legitimacy as anyone else.”

Wood explains:

In Haykel’s estimation, the fighters of the Islamic State are authentic throwbacks to early Islam and are faithfully reproducing its norms of war. This behavior includes a number of practices that modern Muslims tend to prefer not to acknowledge as integral to their sacred texts. ‘Slavery, crucifixion, and beheadings are not something that freakish [jihadists] are cherry-picking from the medieval tradition,’ Haykel said. Islamic State fighters ‘are smack in the middle of the medieval tradition and are bringing it wholesale into the present day.’ … Muslims who call the Islamic State un-Islamic are typically … ‘embarrassed and politically correct, with a cotton-candy view of their own religion’ that neglects ‘what their religion has historically and legally required.’ Many denials of the Islamic State’s religious nature, [says Haykel], are rooted in an “interfaith-Christian-nonsense tradition.”

Widely quoted in Wood’s ISIS exposé, Haykel takes a position not dissimilar to that of “the greatest theologian alive,” my appellation for Pope Benedict XVI. It is this: “The only principled ground that the Islamic State’s opponents could take” to justify their belief that ISIS is un-Islamic “is to say that certain core texts and traditional teachings of Islam are no longer valid. [And] That really would be an act of apostasy.”

Which is precisely what Obama persists in doing.

Until the Islamic reformation is codified, those in the know—know-nothing Obama is not among them—will look upon the Islamic State as a religious, literalist, millenarian, apocalyptic group that is as Islamic as the Prophet and his band of belligerents during the Medina years.

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American, Israeli military advisors aiding ISIS terrorists in Iraq

American and Israeli military advisors were arrested while aiding Islamic State terrorists in Iraq.

Iraqi counter-terrorism forces arrested four foreign military advisors from the United States and Israel who were aiding the Islamic State, Iranian Tasnim News Agency reports.

Three of the arrested military advisors are dual citizens of the United States and Israel, while the fourth advisor is from a Persian Gulf country, Iraq’s Sarma News Agency said.

The foreign military advisors were captured in a headquarters, from where the Islamic State organized its military operations in Iraq’s Northern Province of Nineveh.

The arrests were made during the Operation, codenamed “The Sting of a Scorpion”. A number of other Islamic State fighters have been killed during the assault. The detained foreign advisors have now been transferred to Baghdad.

Source: sputniknews.com

War does not love British PM back

UK Prime Minister David Cameron certainly loves war.

But events in Iran, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine, show that war does not love Cameron back, making him look rather like a dull schoolyard bully, oblivious to how he has actively contributed to global chaos.

Cameron actively supported the 2011 military operation in Libya. Back in 2011, Cameron visited Tripoli with France’s then-President Nicolas Sarkozy to declare victory over Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in what turned out to be premature celebrations with the “rebels”, now known as ISIS.

In a recent interview however, he declared that Libya shouldn’t become a “safe haven for terrorists”, something that Libya clearly has now achieved with Britain’s meddling.

Cameron was left rather red-faced after ISIS attacks killed Coptic Christians in Libya last week.

In Syria, Cameron also supported arming “rebels” in order to attempt to oust President Bashar Assad.

Cameron, while advocating British attacks against the Syrian government, admitted he was not “100 percent certain” that Assad was behind a recent chemical attack, but that it was “highly likely.”

“This is not like Iraq, what we are seeing in Syria is fundamentally different … We are not invading a country,” he insisted. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found in Iraq.

Cameron had been calling for an international rubberstamp from the UN to aid the Syrian “rebels” – aka ISIS – from the early stages of the conflict.

“Every effort should be made to secure a [UN] Security Council Resolution backing military action before any such action is taken,” Cameron said in the speech to the House of Commons in 2013.

But his attempts proved futile, as British MPs effectively ruled out direct involvement in a military campaign in Syria. The Libyan fiasco was apparently still fresh in everyone’s mind.

“Throughout this coalition government, the Conservatives have adopted a less forthright approach to the Middle East conflict, in a way which I believe risks decreasing British influence in the region,” Liberal-Dem coalition partner Nick Clegg then lamented.

Back in 2010, Cameron stated that Iran has a “nuclear weapon,” when asked about why he was backing Turkey’s bid to join the EU. The Mossad, no less, has publicly denied intelligence proving the existence of such a weapon.

Cameron then attempted to pressure the American Congress over sanctions on Iran right ahead of his visit to the US, but Republicans called it an unproductive move.

He responded that Turkey’s accession could “help solve the world’s problems, like the Middle East peace process, like the fact that Iran has got a nuclear weapon.” Perhaps no one had sent him the memo.

With an ugly conflict brewing in Ukraine, Cameron has announced that UK troops will support Kiev with tactical intelligence, training and logistics. The UK will also “be developing infantry program with Ukraine to improve the pure ability of the forces.”

The PM’s most recent warmongering comments come after the Minsk peace talks, in which a ceasefire was agreed upon by the leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine.

On top of that, Cameron hawkishly called for more sanctions against Russia, in addition to those implemented during the past year.

He is said to be upset by French and German leaders Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel, who are trying to push for a peaceful and diplomatic solution to the conflict.

“We should keep up the pressure [on Russia],” Cameron said, noting that “in this respect the interests of the United Kingdom and democracy do go together.” Vladimir Putin, the most popular president Russia has had in more than a century, was democratically elected, but perhaps Cameron believes “democracy” has several meanings not included in most dictionaries.

Tony Blair could face war crimes charges

Tony Blair could face war crimes charges as a result of the Iraq war inquiry report, the House of Lords has been told.

Lord Dykes of Harrow Weald, a Liberal Democrat peer, claimed that the publication of the inquiry by Sir John Chilcot was being delayed “to prolong the agony” of the former Labour Prime Minister.

Lord Hurd – who as Douglas Hurd was Conservative foreign secretary from 1989 to 1995 – said the delay was now “becoming a scandal”.

Lord Wallace of Saltaire, a Government minister, disclosed for the first time that talks over the publication of the gist of conversations between Mr Blair and George W Bush, the former US president, were now completed.

These talks have held up the publication of the report. But he said that if the report is not published by the end of February, it will be delayed until after the general election.

Speaking in the House of Lords, Lord Dykes – who as Hugh Dykes was a Tory MP from 1979 to 1997 – asked: “Is not this continuing delay an utter and total disgrace and so much time has elapsed.

“Is my noble friend aware that more and more people think it is some kind of attempt to prolong the agony of Mr Blair facing possible war crimes charges?”

Lord Hurd added: “This has dragged on beyond the questions of mere negligence and forgiveable delay – it is becoming a scandal.

“This is not something which is of trivial importance, it is something which a large number of people in this country look anxiously for truth.”

Source: The Telegraph

Armed Sydney attacker hoists black Islamic flag

A police operation is underway at a café in central Sydney, where up to 40 hostages are being held by an armed attacker and a black flag with Arabic inscriptions can be seen. Australia is contributing to the US-led operation against the Islamic State.

As the siege was about to enter its sixth hour, at least five people apparently escaped from the building. Live footage showed heavily-armed police regrouping near the cafe’s door, but not entering it.

A senior Lindt Australia official said that 10 staff and up to 30 customers could be held inside the Lindt Chocolate Café in Martin Place. There were “probably 30 customers” at the time of the attack, Sky Business quoted Lindt Chief Executive Steve Loane as saying.

There was no immediate confirmation of the exact number of assailants.

Live TV footage showed people standing inside the café with their hands pressed against the windows. At least one attacker was caught on camera wearing a traditional Islamic cap.

The hostages were forced to hold a black flag with an Arabic inscription, prompting fears that ruthless Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) militants were behind the attack.

The flag – which appeared different from the one typically used by the IS – was identified as the shahada, or the statement of Islamic faith. The shahada itself only contains the religious inscription “There is no god but the God, Mohammed is the messenger of the God.”

The armed Islamist gunman reportedly contacted a local radio station saying that four bombs were planted and demanding negotiations with Australian PM Tony Abbott.

The attack, which took place in Sydney’s central business district, forced nearby buildings in Martin Place – including the Reserve Bank of Australia – into lockdown.

The US has evacuated its Sydney consulate, which is close to the Lindt Cafe, Reuters quoted a spokeswoman as saying.

Reports on the ground suggest that young women being held hostage in the cafe are being used as a shield.

Earlier, Australian 2GB radio host Ray Hadley said that the captor had demanded to speak with Prime Minister Tony Abbott live on the radio.

Hadley added that hostages inside the cafe contacted him, but he declined to air their conversation due to safety concerns of those inside the building.

Another report claimed that gunmen have explosive suicide belts.

Meanwhile, NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said that no direct contact was made with the captor(s).

Dozens of police, including a SWAT team, were dispatched to the scene, and a couple hundred people were held back by cordons amid the evacuation of nearby buildings.

Media speculations connecting the attack to the Islamic State have sprung up, as Australia has been supporting the US-led anti-IS coalition in Syria and Iraq. Back in September, Canberra contributed 600 troops and up to 10 military aircraft to the campaign.

In October, Australia launched its first fighter jet mission in Iraq against the IS. “The Super Hornet aircraft conducted an air interdiction and close air support mission over northern Iraq overnight,” the Australian Defence Force said in a statement.

ABC News live video showed that at least three people escaped through the emergency exit. A Sydney police representative confirmed that the hostages who had managed to escape were safe.

Iraq, the remake

Obama’s latest comments drew an emerging parallel to past US military strategy in Iraq.

After having lost the Senate to Republicans, American foreign policy is heading towards a repeat of George W Bush’s presidency.

The latest US troop surge in Iraq will allow an offensive campaign against Islamic militants, president Barack Obama claimed on Sunday, as political talk shows featuring the president and his predecessor, George W Bush, underscored the growing echoes of the past in current American military strategy.

In his first public comments since doubling the number of US ground troops in Iraq to 3,000, Obama said the decision did not represent a failure of his administration’s early reliance on air strikes in Iraq and Syria.

“Now we need some ground troops, Iraqi ground troops, to start pushing back.”

The new strategy has echoes of previous US attempts to train Iraqi forces. The former president George W Bush also appeared on CBS on Sunday to defend his original decision to invade Iraq, denying it was just to “finish the job my father started”.

“I went in there as a result of a very changed environment because of September 11 and the danger we were concerned about was that the weapons would be put into hands of terrorist groups that were going to come and [make] the attacks of 9-11 pale in comparison,” he said.

Obama insisted that this Iraqi campaign would be different from past campaigns by the US in the middle-eastern country.

America promises endless war

Surprisingly, despite the apparent failure of Iraq and Afghanistan and “strong fiscal constraints,” Washington is still expanding its war plans

The US should get ready for a new era of endless wars, stated Pentagon’s chief Chuck Hagel, noting that “tyranny,” “terrorism,” national security challenges and climate change pose a substantial threat to the US and its allies.

Although the Pentagon’s chief urges to prepare for an endless war, the question remains open if ordinary Americans will support the new doctrine.

More than half of American respondents said that the US had not achieved its goals in both Iraq and Afghanistan, expressing their discontent with US foreign policy, according to the Pew Research poll conducted in the beginning of the 2014. Although 57 percent of US citizens approved the US campaign against Islamic State according to the October poll, 55 percent strongly oppose sending US ground troops to Iraq and Syria.

“I think we are living through one of these historic, defining times. We are seeing a new world order—post-World War II, post-Soviet Union implosion—being built. There are many questions, foremost among the American people: What’s the role of America in this new world that is evolving? Should we have a role? What is appropriate?” said Chuck Hagel, as cited by the Atlantic.

The US Secretary of Defense claims that as the global leader, the US will “continue to grapple with overseas threat for the foreseeable future,” containing international terrorism and tyrannical regimes. “Hagel didn’t seem especially sanguine that it would end anytime soon. In other words: Get used to endless war,” stressed the Atlantic, characterizing the Pentagon’s new doctrine.

Remarkably, practically none of the previous US overseas military campaigns has proved effective. “US soldiers have been laboring under sad paradox: even though the United States enjoys unprecedented global military dominance that should cow enemies mightily, it has found itself in constant combat for longer than ever before in its history, and without much to show for it,” writes Richard K. Betts, the Arnold Saltzman Professor of War and Peace Studies in the Department of Political Science, in his article “Ending America’s Era of Permanent War” published in Foreign Affairs. The professor points out that of the US military actions in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, “only the first can be counted a success.”

Surprisingly, despite the apparent failure of the US military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan and “strong fiscal constraints,” Washington is still expanding its war plans. According to the expert, the White House should not cut back its overseas military operations, but prepare for “more action.”

“Frightening challenges in three critical regions are demanding yet more action: Islamic extremists have seized large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria, Russia has intervened in Ukraine, and China is flexing its muscles in East Asia,” stressed Richard K. Betts.

The idea of the US “moral obligation” to meddle into domestic affairs of other countries in order “to set them right” is a “mythological concept,” aimed at justification of American interventionism, contended Justin Raimondo, the editorial director of Antiwar.com and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute.

“The idea that the United States must exercise “global leadership” is rationalized by our interventionists as a necessary prerequisite for maintaining some type of “world order,” Mr. Raimondo underscores in his article “Putin’s Complaint: Is Washington a Revisionist Power?”
However, the Pentagon’s “endless war,” cannot last forever, as it is the American taxpayers who pay for the extortionately expensive military operations. For instance, the Afghanistan campaign cost the US “roughly $45 billion a year from 2001 to 2013,” while Iraq cost “about $100 billion a year from 2003 to 2011,” Kenneth M. Pollack, a Senior Fellow at the Brooking Institution and former CIA analyst, noted in his article “An Army to Defeat Assad.”

It should be also noted that the December poll in 2013 carried out by the Pew Research indicated that 52 percent thought the United States “should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own.” The researchers underscore that the tendency demonstrated by the poll reflects a gradual and longstanding decline. According to the October 2014 poll, most Americans consider inequality more dangerous than nuclear weapons, or sectarian religious threats.