"We
have now
reached
a turning point
in the
struggle between freedom and terror."
George.
W. Bush
"Washington’s blithe unconcern with the post-Axis world order it helped craft via the UN, which forbids unilateral wars of aggression, led to the quagmire in Iraq. Obama once campaigned on a more lawful and multilateral international policy. It is important not only that the president receive congressional authorization for a war (that is what it is) in Syria but that any action be conducted so as to strengthen, not weaken, international legality. ISIL is lawless and brutal, and can only be countered by its opposite. Joining it in lawlessness and brutality is to surrender to it, not combat it."
Juan Cole
Would a US/ NATO war in Syria be Legal in International Law?
"As for the United States, historians may one day concur with the late Gen. Bill Odom. For the lone superpower to survive that century, the decision to invade and occupy Iraq was the most disastrous blunder in its history."
'George W. Bush held out the promise of a peaceful Mesopotamian democracy as a magnet for all Arab nations. What we produced is a broken land awash in blood, a country severed by tribe and faith: a Kurdish north, Shia south and a Sunni west controlled by the savages of an “Islamic State” even al-Qaida hates and fears.'
[From "To Defeat the Islamic State"
Tuesday - August 26, 2014 at 1:32 am/http://buchanan.org/blog/defeat-islamic-state-6918]
|
NOTE:
Further (or farther?) down are some interesting opinions about what ISIS is. I apologize for the riotous colors.
What
the blue blazes is going on in Iraq?
Maybe Dick Cheney and George W. Bush would like to tell us.
Correction: Only Dick Cheney (without his shotgun), because God only knows what would come out of Bush's mouth.
*
I
blogged and blogged about Iraq, Dick, and Bush way back then when we
weren't supposed to be critical of what they were doing IN &
TO Iraq.
(In fact, I published these Letters in a book called Why Are We In Iraq?-Letters from Mad Plato. I don't think any copies were sold.).
It
was all shucks and golly gee whiz...Shock and Awe...
Wow!
Look at and listen
to those cruise missiles pound down on Baghdad...what a lovely, fiery
orgy!
Our
TVs were entertaining us back then.
Bush
would swagger, spit, and grin...Cheney mostly just grinned.
And,
now, not too much is shown.
Not
enough bombs yet.
Have
to have more bombs before it's good enough for prime time.
We've
got to watch all those singers, dancers, and bachelors frolic, until
War revs up the decibels, drones, and bombs.
Meanwhile,
as if it had been planned on the strategic chessboard all
along***, jihadists and terrorists are now more dangerous to the
world than before:
Listen
as the shiny gold falls into the coffers of the giddy Military-Industrial
Complex.
Yes,
just listen as gold falls into the coffers of the giddy
Military-Industrial Complex...and know that Corporations are
people just like you and me.
Right, Supreme Court?
Stay
tuned.
IT'S
ABOUT RENEWABLE RESOURCES AND OIL!
***
ISIS: Made in USA
The Islamic State in Iraq
and Syria (ISIS) is a creation of the United States and its Persian
Gulf allies, namely Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and recently added to the
list, Kuwait. The Daily Beast in an article titled, “America’s
Allies Are Funding ISIS,” states:
The
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), now threatening Baghdad, was
funded for years by wealthy donors in Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi
Arabia, three U.S. allies that have dual agendas in the war on
terror.
Despite the candor of the
opening sentence, the article would unravel into a myriad of lies
laid to obfuscate America’s role in the creation of ISIS. The
article would claim:
The extremist
group that is threatening the existence of the Iraqi state was built
and grown for years with the help of elite donors from American
supposed allies in the Persian Gulf region. There, the threat of
Iran, Assad, and the Sunni-Shiite sectarian war trumps the U.S. goal
of stability and moderation in the region.
However, the US goal in
the region was never “stability” and surely not “moderation.”
As early as 2007, sources within the Pentagon and across the US
intelligence community revealed a conspiracy to drown the Middle East
in sectarian war, and to do so by arming and funding extremist groups
including the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda itself. Published in
2007 – a full 4 years before the 2011 “Arab Spring” would begin
– Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker
article titled, “”The
Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our
enemies in the war on terrorism?” stated specifically:
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
[The above is from ISIS “Made in USA”. Iraq “Geopolitical Arsonists” Seek to Burn Region by
Global Research, June 18, 2014]
Now
there is a dandy, good chance for Global Terrorism---a
self-fulfilling prophecy---to take off like a rocket (if it hasn't
already).
The
Islamic State or ISIS is not bad like the Taliban or Al-Qaeda.
It
is worse.
It
is more dangerous.
***
“The plan, from the
beginning, was to raise an extremist expeditionary force to
trigger a regional sectarian bloodbath – a bloodbath now
raging across multiple borders and set to expand further if
decisive action is not taken.”
“Despite
an open conspiracy to drown the region in sectarian strife,
the US now poses as a stakeholder in Iraq’s stability.
Having armed, funded, and assisted ISIS into existence and
into northern Iraq itself, the idea of America
“intervening” to stop ISIS is comparable to an arsonist
extinguishing his fire with more gasoline.”
“These
are the worst people on earth. They openly, proudly crucify
enemies, enslave women,
and
murder men en masse. These are not the usual bad guys out for land,
plunder or power. These are primitive cultists who celebrate
slaughter, glory in bloodlust and slit the throats of innocents as
a kind of sacrament.”
[
From “ Stopping
the worst people on Earth” By Charles Krauthammer, The
Washington Post,
August 21, 2014]
The “war on terror”
has failed because it did not target the jihadi movement as a whole
and, above all, was not aimed at Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the two
countries that fostered jihadism as a creed and a movement. The
U.S. did not do so because these countries were important American
allies whom it did not want to offend. Saudi Arabia is an enormous
market for American arms, and the Saudis have cultivated, and on
occasion purchased, influential members of the American political
establishment. Pakistan is a nuclear power with a population of 180
million and a military with close links to the Pentagon.
[From
the first chapter
of Patrick Cockburn’s new book, The
Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising]
