ISIS: Mystery Solved

[Lauren Johnson]

ISIS, ISIL, IS, whatever it is called, is now thoroughly outed for what it is -- a Western intelligence black op. We now have the smoking gun, so to speak, in that Turkey has allowed these militants into Turkey to attack the Kurdish city of Kobani, not to mention the huge supply caravans coming in from Turkey -- a member of NATO! Israel has shown no concern about ISIS and ISIS has been quiet about ISIS. ISIS seems to have a penchant for attacking enemies of Israel. How strange. Until now. Even the "killing" of OBL makes sense. His legend was ended to make way for a new and more terrifying terrorist threat.

Global Research, Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, Nov. 19, 2014

The US led war against the Islamic State is a big lie.

Going after " Islamic terrorists", carrying out a worldwide pre-emptive war to "Protect the American Homeland" are used to justify a military agenda.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is a creation of US intelligence. Washington's "Counter-terrorism Agenda" in Iraq and Syria consists in Supporting the Terrorists.

The incursion of the Islamic State (IS) brigades into Iraq starting in June 2014 was part of a carefully planned military-intelligence operation supported covertly by the US, NATO and Israel.

The counter-terrorism mandate is a fiction. America is the Number One "State Sponsor of Terrorism."

The Islamic State is protected by the US and its allies. If they had wanted to eliminate the Islamic State brigades, they could have "carpet" bombed their convoys of Toyota pickup trucks when they crossed the desert from Syria into Iraq in June.

\

The Syro-Arabian Desert is open territory (see map below). With state of the art jet fighter aircraft (F15, F22 Raptor, CF-18) it would have been -from a military standpoint- a rapid and expedient surgical operation

In this article, we address 26 concepts which refute the big lie. Portrayed by the media as a humanitarian undertaking, this large scale military operation directed against Syria and Iraq has resulted in countless civilian deaths.

It could not have been undertaken without the unbending support of the Western media which has upheld Obama's initiative as a counter-terrorism operation.

THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF AL QAEDA

1. The US has supported Al Qaeda and its affiliated organizations for almost half a century since the heyday of the Soviet Afghan war.

2. CIA training camps were set up in Pakistan. In the ten year period from 1982 to 1992, some 35,000 jihadists from 43 Islamic countries were recruited by the CIA to fight in the Afghan jihad.

"Advertisements, paid for from CIA funds, were placed in newspapers and newsletters around the world offering inducements and motivations to join the Jihad."

3. Since the Reagan Administration, Washington has supported the Islamic terror network.
Ronald Reagan called the terrorists "freedom fighters". The US supplied weapons to the Islamic brigades. It was all for "a good cause": fighting the Soviet Union and regime change, leading to the demise of a secular government in Afghanistan.

Ronald Reagan meets Afghan Mujahideen Commanders at the White House in 1985 (Reagan Archives)

4. Jihadist textbooks were published by the University of Nebraska. ". "The United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings."

5. Osama bin Laden, America's bogyman and founder of Al Qaeda was recruited by the CIA in 1979 at the very outset of the US sponsored jihadist war against Afghanistan . He was 22 years old and was trained in a CIA sponsored guerilla training camp.

Al Qaeda was not behind the 9/11 Attacks. September 11, 2001 provided a justification for waging a war against Afghanistan on the grounds that Afghanistan was a state sponsor of terrorism, supportive of Al Qaeda. The 9/11 attacks were instrumental in the formulation of the "Global War on Terrorism".

THE ISLAMIC STATE (ISIL)

6. The Islamic State (ISIL) was originally an Al Qaeda affiliated entity created by US intelligence with the support of Britain's MI6, Israel's Mossad, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Presidency (GIP), Ri'āsat Al-Istikhbārāt Al-'Āmah ( رئاسة الاستخبارات العامة‎).

7. The ISIL brigades were involved in the US-NATO supported insurgency in Syria directed against the government of Bashar al Assad.

8. NATO and the Turkish High Command were responsible for the recruitment of ISIL and Al Nusrah mercenaries from the outset of the Syrian insurgency in March 2011. According to Israeli intelligence sources, this initiative consisted in:

"a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria. (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011.)

9.There are Western Special Forces and Western intelligence operatives within the ranks of the ISIL. British Special Forces and MI6 have been involved in training jihadist rebels in Syria.

10. Western military specialists on contract to the Pentagon have trained the terrorists in the use of chemical weapons.

"The United States and some European allies are using defense contractors to train Syrian rebels on how to secure chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria, a senior U.S. official and several senior diplomats told CNN Sunday. ( CNN Report, December 9, 2012)

11. The ISIL's practice of beheadings is part of the US sponsored terrorist training programs implemented in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

12. Recruited by America's ally, a large number of ISIL mercenaries are convicted criminals released from Saudi prisons on condition they join the ISIL. Saudi death row inmates were recruited to join the terror brigades.

13. Israel has supported the ISIL and Al Nusrah brigades out of the Golan Heights.
Jihadist fighters have met Israeli IDF officers as well as Prime Minister Netanyahu. The IDF top brass tacitly acknowledges that "global jihad elements inside Syria" [ISIL and Al Nusrah] are supported by Israel. See image below:

"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Moshe Ya'alon next to a wounded mercenary, Israeli military field hospital at the occupied Golan Heights' border with Syria, 18 February 2014″


SYRIA AND IRAQ

14 The ISIL are the foot soldiers of the Western military alliance. Their unspoken mandate is to wreck havoc and destruction in Syria and Iraq, acting on behalf of their US sponsors.

15. US Senator John McCain has met up with jihadist terrorist leaders in Syria. (see picture right)

16 The Islamic State (IS) militia, which is currently the alleged target of a US-NATO bombing campaign under a "counter-terrorism" mandate, continues to be supported covertly by the US. Washington and its allies continue to provide military aid to the Islamic State.

17. US and allied bombings are not targeting the ISIL, they are bombing the economic infrastructure of Iraq and Syria including factories and oil refineries.

18. The IS caliphate project is part of a longstanding US foreign policy agenda to carve up Iraq and Syria into separate territories: A Sunni Islamist Caliphate, an Arab Shia Republic, a Republic of Kurdistan.

THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERRORISM (GWOT)

19. "The Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT) is presented as a "Clash of Civilizations", a war between competing values and religions, when in reality it is an outright war of conquest, guided by strategic and economic objectives.

20 U.S. sponsored Al Qaeda terror brigades (covertly supported by Western intelligence) have been deployed in Mali, Niger, Nigeria, the Central African Republic, Somalia and Yemen.

These various affiliated Al Qaeda entities in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia are CIA sponsored "intelligence assets". They are used by Washington to wreck havoc, create internal conflicts and destabilize sovereign countries.

21 Boko Haram in Nigeria, Al Shabab in Somalia, the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) (supported by NATO in 2011), Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Jemaah Islamiah (JI) in Indonesia, among other Al Qaeda affiliated groups are supported covertly by Western intelligence.

22. The US is also supporting Al Qaeda affiliated terrorist organizations in the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region of China. The underlying objective is to trigger political instability in Western China.

Chinese jihadists are reported to have received "terrorist training" from the Islamic State "in order to conduct attacks in China". The declared objective of these Chinese-based jihadist entities (which serves the interests of the US) is to establish a Islamic caliphate extending into Western China. (Michel Chossudovsky, America's War on Terrorism, Global Research, Montreal, 2005, Chapter 2).

HOMEGROWN TERRORISTS

23 The Terrorists R Us: While the US is the unspoken architect of the Islamic State, Obama's holy mandate is to protect America against ISIL attacks.

24 The homegrown terrorist threat is a fabrication. It is promoted by Western governments and the media with a view to repealing civil liberties and installing a police state. The terror attacks by alleged jihadists and terror warnings are invariably staged events. They are used to create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.

In turn, the arrests, trials and sentences of "Islamic terrorists" sustain the legitimacy of America's Homeland Security State and law enforcement apparatus, which has become increasingly militarized.

The ultimate objective is to instill in the minds of millions of Americans that the enemy is real and the U.S. Administration will protect the lives of its citizens.

25. The "counter-terrorism" campaign against the Islamic State has contributed to the demonization of Muslims, who in the eyes of Western public opinion are increasingly associated with the jihadists.

26 Anybody who dares to question the validity of the "Global War on Terrorism" is branded a terrorist and subjected to the anti-terrorist laws.

The ultimate objective of the "Global War on Terrorism" is to subdue the citizens, totally depoliticize social life in America, prevent people from thinking and conceptualizing, from analyzing facts and challenging the legitimacy of the inquisitorial social order which rules America.

The Obama Administration has imposed a diabolical consensus with the support of its allies, not to mention the complicit role of the United Nations Security Council. The Western media has embraced the consensus; it has described the Islamic State as an independent entity, an outside enemy which threatens the Western World.

[Magda Hassan]

Too bloody right Lauren. Article is spot on.

[Lauren Johnson]

The outsourcing of drug trafficking in Afghanistan to ISIS:

Karzai family hands over heroin trafficking to Islamic State.

According to the UN, world heroin production stands at 430-450 tons, of which only 340 tons actually reach the market, the rest being seized or destroyed [1].

Top heroin producing countries are: Afghanistan (at least 380 tonnes), Myanmar and Laos (at least 50 tonnes).

According to John F. Sopko, the US government's special inspector general for Afghanistan, the reconstruction efforts undertaken by Afghanistan have collapsed in the face of the continued expansion of drug cultivation drugs and criminal organizations. Afghan farmers reportedly earned some $ 3 billion in 2013 [2].

Since 2010, the Russian authorities have consistently accused NATO of exporting Afghan heroin to Europe [3].

The switch from using drugs planes run by NATO to those controlled by the Islamic Emirate confirms the links between the two organizations. This came just after President Hamid Karzai left office, September 29, 2014 [4].

The Islamic Emirate uses a cocktails of drugs to condition its fighters according to protocols that appear to have been prescribed by the CIA [5].

According to the Russian Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN), more than half of the heroin consumed in Europe currently comes from Afghanistan via the Islamic State [6]

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[1] "Drug trafficking", United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, website consulted on 29 November 2014.
[2] "Afghan opium and heroin production explodes", Voltaire Network, 11 June 2014.
[3] "Poppy cultivation: Russia lambastes NATO", Voltaire Network, 5 March 2010.
[4] "Afghanistan: Opium, the CIA and the Karzai Administration", by Peter Dale Scott, Voltaire Network, 13 December 2010. "Le partenaire afghan de Monti", by Manlio Dinucci, Translation Marie-Ange Patrizio, Il Manifesto (Italie), Réseau Voltaire, 9 November 2012.
[5] "Comment manipule-t-on des jihadistes ? Qui le fait ?", by Thierry Meyssan, Haïti Liberté (Haïti), Réseau Voltaire, 24 November 2014.
[6] "L'EI fournit 50% de l'héroïne consommée en Europe (FSKN)",Ria Novosti, 26 November 2014.


source

[Magda Hassan]

:: Well fancy that....

[Lauren Johnson]

Nice connecting the dots from from [URL="http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2014/12/isis-bloody-footprints-lead-from-nato.html"]Tony Cartalucci at Land Destroyer
[/URL]
Now just connect this up with Strobe Talbott "surmising" that ISIS might be heading to Chechnya.

December 17, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - It was reported recently that Germany's broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) investigated what turned out to be hundreds of trucks a day carrying billions of dollars in supplies, flowing into Syria and directly into the hands of the so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS).

Turkey, a NATO member since 1952, has played a pivotal role in the destabilization and destruction of neighboring Syria. Since 2011, Turkey has allowed its territory to be used as a transit and staging point for sectarian terrorists flowing from around the world and into Syria in what could be described as a defacto NATO invasion by proxy.

In 2011, after the Libyan conflict drew to an end in favor of NATO, terrorists it had armed and provided air cover for in North Africa were promptly shipped to Turkey where they then slipped into Syria to engage the Syrian government and its military. Since then, an untold number of terrorists have used not only Turkey as a staging ground, but also Lebanon and Jordan.

In addition to literal terrorists being harbored in NATO territory, security agencies of NATO members including the US and UK, have been active along the Turkish-Syrian border arming, funding. and equipping what they call "moderate rebels." These moderate rebels have recently been revealed as affiliates of or organized directly organized beneath both Al Qaeda and ISIS.

DW's report does not implicate merely Turkey in aiding and abetting ISIS, but exposes the fact that ISIS' supply lines lead from within NATO itself - in other words, ISIS is a creation, perpetuation, and agent of NATO.

Contrary to Western propaganda, Al Qaeda was intentionally organized and directed by the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel to engage in a regional confrontation aimed at Iran and its powerful arc of influence. Exposed by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his 2007 article, "The Redirection: Is the Administration's new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?" it was stated explicitly that (emphasis added):

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.

Clearly, ISIS is the verbatim fulfillment of Hersh's 2007 warning.

And while some may question what took place between 2007 and the current disposition of ISIS today, those documenting the ongoing conflict in Syria starting in 2011 have noted substantial and continued state sponsorship of militants fighting in the Syrian conflict, many of which are now confirmed to be operating under the banner of ISIS.

Headlines over the past 3-4 years including, "C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition," "First Syria rebels armed and trained by CIA 'on way to battlefield'," "Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A.," and "Official says CIA-funded weapons have begun to reach Syrian rebels; rebels deny receipt," reveal ongoing Western support, bridging the gap between the conspiracy exposed by Hersh in 2007 and the current torrent of supplies flowing to ISIS via NATO territory.

It is clear that the ISIS threat was NATO all along, the culmination of a conspiracy spanning at least two US Presidential administrations, and resulting in a regional conflict marked by some of the most horrific barbarism documented in modern history.

With NATO feeding the ISIS threat directly, no serious attempt to destroy ISIS in either Syria or Iraq can be attempted without first cutting its supply lines leading from NATO territory. Clearly the United States, NATO, or regional partners like Israel, Qatar, or Saudi Arabia have any intention of doing so. As indicated by DW's report, Kurds operating on both sides of the Turkish-Syrian border are attempting to seal off the flow of supplies leading from NATO territory.

The Syrian Arab Army, the Iranian forces supporting anti-ISIS fighters in Syrian territory, and the allies of both countries must insist that strict resolutions are passed to secure the border and stem the flow of ISIS' lifeline. A clearly worded resolution, if voted down by the likes of the US and its NATO accomplices, will expose further the true nature ISIS and the misanthropic agenda of the West it is a manifestation of.

If the West capitulates and the resolution is passed, further steps toward arming and aiding the Syrian and Iranian governments and their various allies in the securing of the Turkish-Syrian border can be made. From there, the proxy war engineered and executed by the West which has engulfed the region for years, may finally be brought to an end.


Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine "New Eastern Outlook".

[Magda Hassan]

Yes. If they were serious about stopping ISIS NATO could just lose the border. But that's the last thing they want.

[Magda Hassan]

The US Embassy in Baghdad "is Running Islamic State (ISIL) Operations", US Weapons Airdrops for the Terrorists, Iran General

By Fars News Agency
Global Research, January 07, 2015
FARS News

Region: Middle East & North Africa
Theme: US NATO War Agenda





TEHRAN (FNA)- Commander of Iran's Basij (volunteer) Force Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi said the US embassy in Baghdad is the command center for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) Takfiri terrorists.
"The US directly supports the ISIL in Iraq and the US planes drop the needed aids and weapons for ISIL in Iraq …," General Naqdi said, addressing a group of Basij forces in Tehran on Monday.
He added that the Iraqi forces have even retrieved some of the aids dropped by the US planes for the ISIL terrorists.
Last week, Iraqi Parliamentary Security and Defense Commission MP disclosed that a US plane supplied the ISIL terrorist organization with arms and ammunition in Salahuddin province.
MP Majid al-Gharawi stated that the available information pointed out that US planes are supplying ISIL organization, not only in Salahuddin province, but also other provinces, Iraq TradeLink reported.
He added that the US and the international coalition are "not serious in fighting against the ISIL organization, because they have the technological power to determine the presence of ISIL gunmen and destroy them in one month".
Gharawi added that "the US is trying to expand the time of the war against the ISIL to get guarantees from the Iraqi government to have its bases in Mosul and Anbar provinces."
Salahuddin security commission also disclosed that "unknown planes threw arms and ammunition to the ISIL gunmen Southeast of Tikrit city".
In Late December, a senior Iraqi lawmaker raised doubts about the seriousness of the anti-ISIL coalition led by the US, and said that the terrorist group still received aids dropped by unidentified aircraft.

"The international coalition is not serious about air strikes on ISIL terrorists and is even seeking to take out the popular Basij (voluntary) forces from the battlefield against the Takfiris so that the problem with ISIL remains unsolved in the near future," Nahlah al-Hababi told FNA.
"The ISIL terrorists are still receiving aids from unidentified fighter jets in Iraq and Syria," she added.

Hababi said that the coalition's precise airstrikes are launched only in those areas where the Kurdish Pishmarga forces are present, while military strikes in other regions are not so much precise.
In late December, the US-led coalition dropped aids to the Takfiri militants in an area North of Baghdad.
Field sources in Iraq told al-Manar that the international coalition airplanes dropped aids to the terrorist militants in Balad, an area which lies in Salahuddin province North of Baghdad.
In October, a high-ranking Iranian commander also slammed the US for providing aid supplies to ISIL, adding that the US claims that the weapons were mistakenly airdropped to ISIL were untrue.

"The US and the so-called anti-ISIL coalition claim that they have launched a campaign against this terrorist and criminal group while supplying them with weapons, food and medicine in Jalawla region (a town in Diyala Governorate, Iraq). This explicitly displays the falsity of the coalition's and the US' claims," Deputy Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri said.

The US claimed that it had airdropped weapons and medical aid to Kurdish fighters confronting the ISIL in Kobani, near the Turkish border in Northern Syria.
The US Defense Department said that it had airdropped 28 bundles of weapons and supplies, but one of them did not make it into the hands of the Kurdish fighters.

Video footage later showed that some of the weapons that the US airdropped were taken by ISIL militants.
The Iranian commander insisted that the US had the necessary intelligence about ISIL's deployment in the region and that their claims to have mistakenly airdropped weapons to them are as unlikely as they are untrue.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-us-emba...al/5423230

[David Guyatt]

Gharawi added that "the US is trying to expand the time of the war against the ISIL to get guarantees from the Iraqi government to have its bases in Mosul and Anbar provinces."

This makes complete sense to me as a reason for continued ISIL activities inside Iraq.

The PNAC document "Project For A New American Century" and the 2001 "Energy Security" report commissioned by Dick Cheney published by the CFR - who for me remain the driving force behind US foreign policy - showed that the US invasion of Iraq was all about controlling its oil output for the future, as Iraq was seen to be the future "swing producer", and to halt the "easternization" of oil output to China and India making them stronger both economically and politically. And it was felt that Saddam was becoming volatile in his choices about who to supply Iraqi oil to. If he chose to supply China and India it would harm US economic stability (although the bankers achieved that anyway).

For this long term oil plan to work, it seems that permanent US bases inside Iraq are essential.

Iraq invasion was about oil




Maximising Persian Gulf oil flows to avert a potential global energy crisis motivated Iraq War planners - not WMD or democracy








Tony Blair leaves the Iraq war inquiry. Photograph: Carl Court/AFP/Getty ImagesNafeez Ahmed
Thursday 20 March 2014 15.23 GMT

Yesterday was the 11th anniversary of the 2003 Iraq War - yet to this day, few media reflections on the conflict accurately explore the extent to which opening up Persian Gulf energy resources to the world economy was a prime driver behind the Anglo-American invasion.
The overwhelming narrative has been one of incompetence and failure in an otherwise noble, if ill-conceived and badly managed endeavour to free Iraqis from tyranny. To be sure, the conduct of the war was indeed replete with incompetence at a colossal scale - but this doesn't erase the very real mendacity of the cold, strategic logic that motivated the war's US and British planners in the first place.
According to the infamous Project for a New American Century (PNAC) document endorsed by senior Bush administration officials as far back as 1997, "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification" for the US "to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security," "the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
So Saddam's WMD was not really the issue - and neither was Saddam himself.
The real issue is candidly described in a 2001 report on "energy security" - commissioned by then US Vice-President Dick Cheney - published by the Council on Foreign Relations and the James Baker Institute for Public Policy. It warned of an impending global energy crisis that would increase "US and global vulnerability to disruption", and leave the US facing "unprecedented energy price volatility."
The main source of disruption, the report observed, is "Middle East tension", in particular, the threat posed by Iraq. Critically, the documented illustrated that US officials had lost all faith in Saddam due his erratic and unpredictable energy export policies. In 2000, Iraq had "effectively become a swing producer, turning its taps on and off when it has felt such action was in its strategic interest to do so." There is a "possibility that Saddam Hussein may remove Iraqi oil from the market for an extended period of time" in order to damage prices:

"Iraq remains a destabilising influence to... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export programme to manipulate oil markets. This would display his personal power, enhance his image as a pan-Arab leader... and pressure others for a lifting of economic sanctions against his regime. The United States should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments. The United States should then develop an integrated strategy with key allies in Europe and Asia, and with key countries in the Middle East, to restate goals with respect to Iraqi policy and to restore a cohesive coalition of key allies."

The Iraq War was only partly, however, about big profits for Anglo-American oil conglomerates - that would be a bonus (one which in the end has failed to materialise to the degree hoped for - not for want of trying though).
The real goal - as Greg Muttitt documented in his book Fuel on the Fire citing declassified Foreign Office files from 2003 onwards - was stabilising global energy supplies as a whole by ensuring the free flow of Iraqi oil to world markets - benefits to US and UK companies constituted an important but secondary goal:

"The most important strategic interest lay in expanding global energy supplies, through foreign investment, in some of the world's largest oil reserves in particular Iraq. This meshed neatly with the secondary aim of securing contracts for their companies. Note that the strategy documents released here tend to refer to 'British and global energy supplies.' British energy security is to be obtained by there being ample global supplies it is not about the specific flow."

To this end, as Whitehall documents obtained by the Independent show, the US and British sought to privatise Iraqi oil production with a view to allow foreign companies to takeover. Minutes of a meeting held on 12 May 2003 said:

"The future shape of the Iraqi industry will affect oil markets, and the functioning of Opec, in both of which we have a vital interest."

A "desirable" outcome for Iraqi's crippled oil industry, officials concluded, is:

"... an oil sector open and attractive to foreign investment, with appropriate arrangements for the exploitation of new fields."

The documents added that "foreign companies' involvement seems to be the only possible solution" to make Iraq a reliable oil exporter. This, however, would be "politically sensitive", and would "require careful handling to avoid the impression that we are trying to push the Iraqis down one particular path."

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Media analyses claiming lazily that there was no planning for the aftermath of the Iraq War should look closer at the public record. The reality is that extensive plans for postwar reconstruction were pursued, but they did not consider humanitarian and societal issues of any significance, focusing instead on maintaining the authoritarian structures of Saddam's brutal regime after his removal, while upgrading Iraq's oil infrastructure to benefit foreign investors.
A series of news reports, for instance, confirmed how the State Department had set up 17 separate working groups to work out this post-war plan. Iraq would be "governed by a senior US military officer... with a civilian administrator", which would "initially impose martial law", while Iraqis would be relegated to the sidelines as "advisers" to the US administration. The US envisaged "a broad and protracted American role in managing the reconstruction of the country... with a continued role for thousands of US troops there for years to come", in "defence of the country's oil fields", which would eventually be "privatised" along with "other supporting industries."
The centrality of concerns about energy to Iraq War planning was most candidly confirmed eight years ago by a former senior British Army official in Iraq, James Ellery, currently director of British security firm and US defence contractor, Aegis.
Brigadier-General James Ellery CBE, the Foreign Office's Senior Adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad since 2003, had confirmed the critical role of Iraqi oil reserves in alleviating a "world shortage" of conventional oil. The Iraq War has helped to head off what Ellery described as "the tide of Easternisation" a shift in global political and economic power toward China and India, to whom goes "two thirds of the Middle East's oil." His remarks were made as part of a presentation at the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), University of London, sponsored by the Iraqi Youth Foundation, on 22nd April 2008:

"The reason that oil reached $117 a barrel last week was less to do with security of supply… than World shortage."

He went on to emphasise the strategic significance of Iraqi petroleum fields in relation to the danger of production peaks being breached in major oil reserves around the world:

"Russia's production has peaked at 10 million barrels per day; Africa has proved slow to yield affordable extra supplies from Sudan and Angola for example. Thus the only near-term potential increase will be from Iraq."

Whether Iraq began "favouring East or West" could therefore be "de-stabilising" not only "within the region but to nations far beyond which have an interest."
"Iraq holds the key to stability in the region", Ellery continued, due to its "relatively large, consuming population," its being home to "the second largest reserve of oil under exploited", and finally its geostrategic location "on the routes between Asia, Europe, Arabia and North Africa - hence the Silk Road."
Despite escalating instability and internal terrorism, Iraq is now swiftly reclaiming its rank as one of the world's fastest-growing exporters, cushioning the impact of supply outages elsewhere and thus welcomed by OPEC. Back in 2008, Ellery had confirmed Allied ambitions to "raise Iraqi's oil production from 2.5 million bpd today to 3 million by next year and maybe ultimately 6 million barrels per day."
Thus, the primary motive of the war - mobilising Iraqi oil production to sustain global oil flows and moderate global oil prices - has, so far, been fairly successful according to the International Energy Agency.
Eleven years on, there should be no doubt that the 2003 Iraq War was among the first major resource wars of the 21st century. It is unlikely to be the last.
Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter @nafeezahmed

From The Guardian

The link for the energy policy report in the above Guardian article no longer work. An outline of this energy report can be found on Wiki HERE. The full report is available as a downloadable .pdf HERE.

[Michael Barwell]

Interesting line on Going Underground on RT last night/this morning (it was a repeat of an old show, so no link to it I'm afraid), but a fella on there paraphrased a sentiment by Charles Shoebridge, that in relation to ISIL, the "foreign policies [of western nations] are both hijacked and compromised by alliances with the same countries who're supporting & funding ISIL", Saudi, Jordan etc. This article - http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/26/h...cupy-iraq/ - follows that line & quotes Shoebridge:
The elephant in the room is foreign policy
According to security analyst Charles Shoebridge, a former British Army and Metropolitan Police counter terrorism intelligence officer, the crisis across Iraq and Syria cannot be resolved without first addressing the extent to which western policies created the crisis in the first place.
"The US, UK and France contributed to the collapse of governance [in Syria]… by funding, training and equipping moderate' rebels with little realistic consideration of with whom such funds, trained fighters and non lethal' aid (such as armoured vehicles, body armour, secure military radios and weapon sights) would end up," said Shoebridge. "Similarly, the West did nothing to discourage vast flows of funds and arms from their allies Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others towards rebel groups irrespective of, or perhaps because of, their extreme interpretations of Sunni Islam."
Shoebridge pointed out that the US and UK in particular, "through the covert work of MI6 and the CIA," appear to have "played a key role in facilitating the flow of arms and jihadist fighters to Syria from such places as Libya, the Caucuses and Balkans, with the aim of militarily boosting those fighting Assad."

[Magda Hassan]

The Mystery of ISIS' Toyota Army Solved

Column: Politics
Region: Middle East
Country: Syria

The US Treasury has recently opened an inquiry about the so-called "Islamic State's" (ISIS/ISIL) use of large numbers of brand-new Toyota trucks. The issue has arisen in the wake of Russia's air operations over Syria and growing global suspicion that the US itself has played a key role in arming, funding, and intentionally perpetuating the terrorist army across Syria and Iraq. ABC News in their article, "US Officials Ask How ISIS Got So Many Toyota Trucks," reports:

U.S. counter-terror officials have asked Toyota, the world's second largest auto maker, to help them determine how ISIS has managed to acquire the large number of Toyota pick-up trucks and SUVs seen prominently in the terror group's propaganda videos in Iraq, Syria and Libya, ABC News has learned. Toyota says it does not know how ISIS obtained the vehicles and is "supporting" the inquiry led by the Terror Financing unit of the Treasury Department part of a broad U.S. effort to prevent Western-made goods from ending up in the hands of the terror group.

The report went on to cite Iraqi Ambassador to the US, Lukman Faily:

"This is a question we've been asking our neighbors," Faily said. "How could these brand new trucks… these four wheel drives, hundreds of them where are they coming from?"

Not surprisingly, it appears the US Treasury is asking the wrong party. Instead of Toyota, the US Treasury's inquiry should have started next door at the US State Department.

Mystery Solved

Just last year it was reported that the US State Department had been sending in fleets of specifically Toyota-brand trucks into Syria to whom they claimed was the "Free Syrian Army." US foundation-funded Public Radio International (PRI) reported in a 2014 article titled, "This one Toyota pickup truck is at the top of the shopping list for the Free Syrian Army and the Taliban," that:

Recently, when the US State Department resumed sending non-lethal aid to Syrian rebels, the delivery list included 43 Toyota trucks. Hiluxes were on the Free Syrian Army's wish list. Oubai Shahbander, a Washington-based advisor to the Syrian National Coalition, is a fan of the truck.

"Specific equipment like the Toyota Hiluxes are what we refer to as force enablers for the moderate opposition forces on the ground," he adds. Shahbander says the US-supplied pickups will be delivering troops and supplies into battle. Some of the fleet will even become battlefield weapons..

The British government has also admittedly supplied a number of vehicles to terrorists fighting inside of Syria. The British Independent's 2013 article titled, "Revealed: What the West has given Syria's rebels," reported that (emphasis added):

So far the UK has sent around £8m of "non-lethal" aid, according to official papers seen by The Independent, comprising five 4×4 vehicles with ballistic protection; 20 sets of body armour; four trucks (three 25 tonne, one 20 tonne); six 4×4 SUVs; five non-armoured pick-ups; one recovery vehicle; four fork-lifts; three advanced "resilience kits" for region hubs, designed to rescue people in emergencies; 130 solar powered batteries; around 400 radios; water purification and rubbish collection kits; laptops; VSATs (small satellite systems for data communications) and printers.

It's fair to say that whatever pipeline the US State Department and the British government used to supply terrorists in Syria with these trucks was likely used to send additional vehicles before and after these reports were made public. The mystery of how hundreds of identical, brand-new ISIS-owned Toyota trucks have made it into Syria is solved. Not only has the US and British government admitted in the past to supplying them, their military forces and intelligence agencies ply the borders of Turkey, Jordan, and even Iraq where these fleets of trucks must have surely passed on their way to Syria even if other regional actors supplied them. While previous admissions to supplying the vehicles implicates the West directly, that nothing resembling interdiction operations have been set up along any of these borders implicates the West as complicit with other parties also supplying vehicles to terrorists inside of Syria.

What Mystery?

Of course, much of this is not new information. So the question remains why is the US Treasury just now carrying on with this transparent charade? Perhaps those in Washington believe that if the US government is the one asking this obvious question of how ISIS has managed to field such an impressive mechanized army in the middle of the Syrian desert, no one will suspect they had a role in it. Of course, the trucks didn't materialize in Syria. They originated outside of Syria and were brought in, and in great numbers, with the explicit knowledge and/or direct complicity of the US and its regional allies. Asking Toyota where the US State Department's own trucks came from is another indication of just how lost US foreign policy, legitimacy, and credibility has become. Russia's intervention, and what should become a widely supported anti-terror coalition must keep in mind the criminality of the US and its partners when choosing its own partners in efforts to restore security and order across the Middle East and North Africa. Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine "New Eastern Outlook".
First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/10/09/the-my...my-solved/