VT | 16 May 2015 Dodging Turkish army units inside Syria and their advanced air defense systems, a US Special Forces unit killed an ISIS “oil minister” while an identical Syria operation took out another “oil minister,” both Saudi nationals. Turkish air defenses downed a Syrian surveillance drone but no US planes or helicopters were…
Counterpunch | 8-10 May 2015 “Iraq’s fate was sealed from the moment we invaded: it has no future as a unitary state … Iraq is fated to split apart into at least three separate states…This was the War Party’s real if unexpressed goal from the very beginning: the atomization of Iraq, and indeed the entire Middle East.…
Washington Post | 4 April 2015 CONFRONTING THE ‘CALIPHATE’| This is part of an occasional series about the militant group Islamic State and its violent collision with the United States and others intent on halting the group’s rapid rise. SANLIURFA, Turkey — When Abu Hamza, a former Syrian rebel, agreed to join the Islamic State,…
ICH | 18 Dec 2003 Are the ideas of the conservative political philosopher Leo Strauss a shaping influence on the Bush administration’s world outlook? Danny Postel interviews Shadia Drury – a leading scholarly critic of Strauss – and asks her about the connection between Plato’s dialogues, secrets and lies, and the United States-led war in…
Robert Parry | 30 March 2015 Few Americans seem to comprehend what is unfolding in the Middle East – with the latest conflict involving Saudi airstrikes against the Houthi rebels who now control Yemen’s capital of Sanaa. In this swirl of regional wars, it’s often not clear where the U.S. government stands and how American…
The Ron Paul Institute | 26 March 2015 This month, the Physicians for Social Responsibility released a report on the number of Afghanis, Iraqis, and Pakistanis killed in the ten year US “war on terror.” Titled “Body Count” the report from the Nobel Peace Prize winning organization has found that what was supposed to make…
Counter Currents | 23 March 2015 Those with consciences recently marked the 12th anniversary on 19 March 2015 of the illegal and war criminal US, UK and Australian invasion of Iraq in 2003 that was based on false assertions of Iraqi possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction, was conducted in the absence of UN sanction…
Jason Leopold | Vice News | 20 March 2015 Thirteen years ago, the intelligence community concluded in a 93-page classified document used to justify the invasion of Iraq that it lacked “specific information” on “many key aspects” of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs. But that’s not what top Bush administration officials said during…
Voice of America | 14 March 2015 The Kurdish regional government in Iraq says it has evidence that Islamic State militants used a chemical weapon against Kurdish peshmerga forces. The Kurdistan Region Security Council released a statement Saturday alleging that chlorine was used in a January suicide bombing in northern Iraq. The statement said a…
ABC News | March 11 [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DirWpcpmAjc?feature=player_detailpage&w=640&h=360] U.S.-trained and armed Iraqi military units, the key to the American strategy against ISIS, are under investigation for committing some of the same atrocities as the terror group, American and Iraqi officials told ABC News. Some Iraqi units have already been cut off from U.S. assistance over “credible”…