Topic: DIA Doc: US, Allies Created Islamic State (Read 1657 times)

That document contained a frank admission that:

“THE SALAFIST, THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, AND AQI ARE THE MAJOR FORCES DRIVING THE INSURGENCY IN SYRIA.”

Investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed excellently summarized what the DIA considered to be the goals and likely side-effects of supporting such a Salafist-dominated insurgency:

“In a strikingly prescient prediction, the Pentagon document explicitly forecasts the probable declaration of ‘an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria.’

Nevertheless, ‘Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey are supporting these efforts’ by Syrian ‘opposition forces’ fighting to ‘control the eastern areas (Hasaka and Der Zor), adjacent to Western Iraqi provinces (Mosul and Anbar)’:

‘… there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).’

The secret Pentagon document thus provides extraordinary confirmation that the US-led coalition currently fighting ISIS, had three years ago welcomed the emergence of an extremist ‘Salafist Principality’ in the region as a way to undermine Assad, and block off the strategic expansion of Iran. Crucially, Iraq is labeled as an integral part of this ‘Shia expansion.’

The establishment of such a ‘Salafist Principality’ in eastern Syria, the DIA document asserts, is ‘exactly’ what the ‘supporting powers to the [Syrian] opposition want.’ Earlier on, the document repeatedly describes those ‘supporting powers’ as ‘the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey.’

Further on, the document reveals that Pentagon analysts were acutely aware of the dire risks of this strategy, yet ploughed ahead anyway.

The establishment of such a ‘Salafist Principality’ in eastern Syria, it says, would create ‘the ideal atmosphere for AQI to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi.’ Last summer, ISIS conquered Mosul in Iraq, and just this month has also taken control of Ramadi.

Such a quasi-state entity will provide:

‘… a renewed momentum under the presumption of unifying the jihad among Sunni Iraq and Syria, and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against what it considers one enemy. ISI could also declare an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of territory.’”

The DIA document was too big an anti-Obama scoop for Fox News not to cover at all. Yet they still managed to give the story a pro-interventionist spin. They did so by focusing on Obama’s alleged low estimation of the threat of ISIS and the Libyan jihadists (especially his reference to ISIS as a “Jayvee team”), and how the predictions in the report belie that low estimation. Yet, they completely glossed over the report’s claim that the predicted rise of ISIS was a result of support for the Syrian opposition by the west and its allies.

As incredible as the DIA disclosure is, its basic import has been an open secret for years.

The general US policy of allying with the Gulf states (especially the Saudis) and Turkey in supporting radical Sunni insurgents to counter the“Shia expansion” was reported by Seymour Hersh back in 2007, shortly after that policy (“the Redirection”) was initiated by the Bush administration.

The Obama administration’s support of the Sunni insurgency in Syria against the Shiite-led regime of Bashar al-Assad following the 2011 “Arab Spring” was simply a continuation and intensification of that general policy. The administration claimed to be aiming their support at “moderates” and “secular, liberal reformers” in the opposition. But officials of the highest level in the administration have repeatedly betrayed how little they believe their own lie; especially when defending themselves against criticism for not intervening more.

In 2014, Hillary Clinton trashed her former boss Obama for not supporting the Syrian opposition enough. But in February 2012, while she was still on the team as Secretary ofState and being pressured by corporate media to ramp up intervention, she sang a different tune:

“We know al Qaeda [leader Ayman al-] Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria. Are we supporting al Qaeda in Syria? (…) If you’re a military planner or if you’re a secretary of state and you’re trying to figure out do you have the elements of an opposition that is actually viable, that we don’t see.”

A month later, Obama himself told Jeffrey Goldberg:

“When you have a professional army that is well-armed and sponsored by two large states who have huge stakes in this, and they are fighting against a farmer, a carpenter, an engineer who started out as protesters and suddenly now see themselves in the midst of a civil conflict — the notion that we could have, in a clean way that didn’t commit U.S. military forces, changed the equation on the ground there was never true.”

And in June 2012, Obama repeated the same sentiment:

“When you get farmers, dentists, and folks who have never fought before going up against a ruthless opposition in Assad, the notion that they were in a position to suddenly overturn not only Assad but also ruthless, highly trained jihadists if we just sent a few arms is a fantasy. And I think it’s very important for the American people — but maybe more importantly, Washington and the press corps — to understand that.”

If, as Obama and Clinton both admitted, the “moderate” opposition is not viable and is no match for the jihadists, then their policy of toppling Assad in Syria has been, as they implicitly admit, a policy of empowering the jihadists, even if their support for the opposition was not as extensive as many would have liked.

Then in September 2012, Ben Swann, unlike virtually all of his journalistic colleagues, asked Obama a very tough question when given the chance:

“…you mentioned al-Qaeda in your speech, going after al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, certainly going after them in Yemen as well. And yet there’s some concern about the U.S. funding the Syrian opposition when there are a lot of reports that al-Qaeda is sort of heading up that opposition, how do you justify the two?”

Obama answered:

“Well I share that concern, and so what we’ve done is to say we will provide non-lethal assistance to Syrian opposition leadership that are committed to political transition, committed to an observance of human rights. We’re not going to just dive in and get involved with a civil war that in fact involves some elements of people who are genuinely trying to get a better life but also involve some folks who would over the long term do the United States harm.”



This was doublespeak of Clintonesque proportions. “Assistance,” whether lethal or not, is “getting involved” in the civil war. Helping the allies of al-Qaeda and ISIS predictably helped al-Qaeda and ISIS themselves. Moreover, the assistance had been lethal, if covert and indirect. A year later, the CIA began openly and directly sending lethal aid to the opposition.

And aiding their allies not only aided al-Qaeda and ISIS strategically, but also in terms of military power. As Justin Raimondo recently wrote:

“The policy of the Obama administration, and particularly Hillary Clinton’s State Department, was — and still is — regime change in Syria. This overrode all other considerations. We armed, trained, and “vetted” the Syrian rebels, even as we looked the other way while the Saudis and the Gulf sheikdoms funded groups like al-Nusra and al-Qaeda affiliates who wouldn’t pass muster. And our “moderates” quickly passed into the ranks of the outfront terrorists, complete with the weapons we’d provided.”

In spite of all its admissions concerning the risks and limitations of intervention, the Obama administration, along with the US Congress, still pushed for increasing support for the Syrian opposition in 2013.

In May 2013, the Senate tried to pass a law authorizing the direct arming of the Syrian opposition, leading Rand Paul to point out: “This is an important moment. You will be funding, today, the allies of al Qaeda. It’s an irony you cannot overcome.”

And in the summer and fall of 2013, the administration sought to launch air strikes on the Syrian government, leading Dennis Kucinich to ask: “So what, we’re about to become al-Qaeda’s air force now?” Airstrikes would have overthrown Assad in fairly short order, just as it did with Gaddafi in Libya. Then what? By then, were the “farmers and dentists” Obama had derided so much stronger that they could have taken over? Or would the field have been cleared for al-Qaeda and ISIS to march to the Mediterranean? What else could they have realistically expected but the latter? al-Qaeda’s air force indeed.

It was only after a public backlash against the prospect of another war in the Middle East (and after Russia’s Vladimir Putin offered a face-saving exit) that the administration relented.

In October 2014, after support for the Syrian opposition led to the rise of ISIS in Iraq, even Vice President Joe Biden admitted that the “moderates” were still not viable, and that opposition members who do the actual fighting and end up with foreign-supplied weapons are the jihadists. He also admitted that foreign support of the opposition is what led to the rise of ISIS.

Question: In retrospect do u believe the United States should have acted earlier in Syria, and if not why is now the right moment?

Biden: The answer is ‘no’ for 2 reasons. One, the idea of identifying a moderate middle has been a chase America has been engaged in for a long time. We Americans think in every country in transition there is a Thomas Jefferson hiding beside some rock — or a James Madison beyond one sand dune. The fact of the matter is the ability to identify a moderate middle in Syria was — there was no moderate middle because the moderate middle are made up of shopkeepers, not soldiers — they are made up of people who in fact have ordinary elements of the middle class of that country.(…) And what my constant cry was that our biggest problem is our allies — our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria. The Turks were great friends — and I have the greatest relationship with Erdogan, which I just spent a lot of time with — the Saudis, the Emiratis, etc. What were they doing? They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad except that the people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world. Now you think I’m exaggerating — take a look. Where did all of this go? So now what’s happening? All of a sudden everybody’s awakened because this outfit called ISIL which was al-Qaeda in Iraq, which when they were essentially thrown out of Iraq, found open space in territory in eastern Syria, work with Al Nusra who we declared a terrorist group early on and we could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them.”

As for the anti-Shia motivation for this policy cited in the DIA report, President Obama basically admitted to it himself in another interview with Goldberg back in March 2012.

GOLDBERG: Can you just talk about Syria as a strategic issue? Talk about it as a humanitarian issue, as well. But it would seem to me that one way to weaken and further isolate Iran is to remove or help remove Iran’s only Arab ally.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Absolutely.
GOLDBERG: And so the question is: What else can this administration be doing?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, look, there’s no doubt that Iran is much weaker now than it was a year ago, two years ago, three years ago. The Arab Spring, as bumpy as it has been, represents a strategic defeat for Iran, because what people in the region have seen is that all the impulses towards freedom and self-determination and free speech and freedom of assembly have been constantly violated by Iran. [The Iranian leadership is] no friend of that movement toward human rights and political freedom. But more directly, it is now engulfing Syria, and Syria is basically their only true ally in the region.
And it is our estimation that [President Bashar al-Assad’s] days are numbered. It’s a matter not of if, but when. Now, can we accelerate that? We’re working with the world community to try to do that. (…)

GOLDBERG: Is there anything you could do to move it faster?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, nothing that I can tell you, because your classified clearance isn’t good enough. (Laughter.)

And in June 2014, Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the US, provided us with an indication of what may be a main driving force behind this policy.

…what I’m going to say is harsh, perhaps a little edgy, but if we have to choose the lesser of evils here, the lesser evil is the Sunnis over the Shiites. … It’s an evil, a terrible evil. Again, they’ve just taken out 1700 former Iraqi soldiers and shot them in a field. But who are they fighting against? They’re fighting against a proxy with Iran that’s complicit in the murder of 160,000 people in Syria [NOTE: Here, he ridiculously blames one side of the conflict for all of its deaths]. You know, do the math. And again, one side is armed with suicide bombers in Iraq and the other side has access to nuclear military capabilities. So from Israel’s perspective, you know, if there has got to be an evil that is going to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail….

The reference to the mass execution makes it clear that Oren is explicitly referring to extremists like ISIS and al-Qaeda as the “Sunni lesser evil.”



Recently, it has been revealed that Israel has also been providing direct aid to al-Qaeda in Syria.

Again, the DIA report is useful confirmation, but the truth about Washington’s Syria policy has long been out there for anyone outside the DC bubble to see.

Now, thanks to ongoing US-led support for the insurgency, the Syrian government is widely thought to be on its last legs; members of the regime are already making arrangements to flee. As it turns out, the march of al-Qaeda and ISIS to the Mediterranean may have merely been postponed a couple years. Pity the “apostates” and “infidels” that will be in their path. And won’t you feel so much safer once these Islamist terrorists have Assad’s seaports and military hardware?

The Syrian regime has never attacked America; neither is any other part of the dreaded “Shia Crescent” a threat to Americans. Syrian al-Qaeda (Jabhat al-Nusra) on the other hand, is (as radio host Scott Horton frequently reminds his listeners) sworn loyal to Ayman al-Zawahiri: the butcher of New York, responsible for 9/11. And yet our government’s bi-partisan alleged strategy for “keeping us safe” has been to topple the former and ally with the latter; even when it knew that doing so would lead to a “Salafist Principality” ruled by bin Ladenites.

If that doesn’t explode the myth that the government serves as our “security force,” I don’t know what can.

Thank you for reading. I work at the Mises Institute where I run the Mises Academy, an e-learning program for Austrian economics and libertarian political philosophy. I am a columnist for Antiwar.com and my essays have appeared at Mises.org, LewRockwell.com, The Ron Paul Institute, and David Stockman’s Contra Corner. I have given lectures and conducted interviews for the Mises Institute and appeared on The Scott Horton Show and The Tom Woods Show. You can find all of my essays, lectures, and interviews at DanSanchez.me, you can follow me via Twitter, Facebook, TinyLetter, and Medium, and you can email me at dan-at-mises.org.

http://original.antiwar.com/Dan_Sanchez/2015/06/08/the-us-governments-not-so-secret-support-for-al-qaeda-and-isis/

The US Government’s Not-So-Secret Support for Al Qaeda and ISIS
The Biggest State Sponsor of Terrorism of Them All

by Dan Sanchez, June 09, 2015



“9/11: Never forget,” the tee-shirts insisted. “Have you forgotten how it felt that day?” the country crooner warbled. “September 11th… global terrorists!” the candidate for President of 9/11, Rudolph Giuliani, endlessly repeated.

To this day we are bombarded with such reminders whenever reductions of the swollen national security state are proposed and need to be fended off with a fresh round of fear-mongering. And proponents of such reductions are smeared as friends of the terrorists.

And because President Obama is deemed not aggressive enough in pursuing the war on the Islamist movement responsible for 9/11, even he is accused by his loonier critics of being a “secret Muslim” and a “terr-symp” (terrorist sympathizer).

Given all this, you would think right-wing nationalists would be alert to and aghast at abundant reports that their own government has knowingly supported Islamic extremists in Syria (and elsewhere), including al-Qaeda, the very group responsible for 9/11; especially since that support led to the rise of ISIS (formerly al-Qaeda in Iraq, or AQI) and that such a treasonous policy has long occurred under “crypto-Muslim” Barack Hussein Obama. But, oddly enough, they’ve given Obama a pass on this.

Why hasn’t Fox News been blasting alerts like “Obama Backs Muslim Terrorists, Helping to Create the Islamic State” for years? Wouldn’t their xenophobic viewers gobble up such red meat with relish? Couldn’t the Republicans make stacks of political hay with such a talking point?

But, no, apparently bigotry and scaremongering are only to be harnessed to support war, and never to oppose it. The right’s criticism of Obama’s Syria policy has been that he hasn’t supported the al-Qaeda/ISIS-led Syrian opposition enough. Apparently, the lesson of 9/11 is that we must embrace perpetual war, even if it means fighting with the perpetrators of 9/11 in that war.

Washington hawks have deflected such criticism by denying that al-Qaeda and ISIS are that dominant in Syria, or that foreign support of the opposition helped lead to the 2014 rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Such deflections have been made increasingly untenable by mounting evidence, and especially by the recent disclosure of an incredibly damning Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report from August 2012. ....

Saudi Arabia want to take control of the entire Middle East. They have been silently working to overthrow various secular regimes in the region (Assad is the last remaining secular leader in the middle east), and to replace them with Wahabbist dictatorships. So far, everything has gone according to their plan, with the exceptions of Syria and Egypt.   

It is known fact that, ISIS was Jointly created by KSA and U.S, in the favor of Saudis to retaliate against Shia's and also to get the much control in Syria, unfortunately it really went wrong, this tactics terribly went wrong against the innocent people of Syria, Iraq. Still I believe that ISIS is funded by Saudi Arabia strongly and it is an eye wash to the whole world that KSA always sending condemn statements against ISIS.

The United States created the Islamic State, either directly or indirectly. It can't be denied that some of the money and weapons, which were destined to the FSA rebels finally ended up with the ISIS. The American strategy of sponsoring the FSA, to topple the Assad regime was a huge mistake. Most of the rebels simply defected to the ISIS, taking the money and weapons with them.

In a few years some other certifiable fruitcake will admit; Yes, we had this brilliant idea in Iraq and Syria...blah, blah, blah.

------------------------------------------

Hillary Clinton: 'We Created al-Qaeda'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnLvzV9xAHA

cryptocoiner, actually U.S. bombed ISIS fighters that were threatening a Syrian al-Queda held city.

US Strikes ISIS Fighters to Protect al-Qaeda Town in NW Syria
ISIS Fighters Publicly Beheaded in Azaz

http://news.antiwar.com/2015/06/08/us-strikes-isis-fighters-to-protect-al-qaeda-town-in-nw-syria/

Oh, what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive!

---Marmion by Walter Scott

Ex-US Intelligence Officials Confirm: Secret Pentagon Report Proves US Complicity In Creation Of ISIS

Two weeks ago, courtesy of the investigative work of Nafeez Ahmed whose deep dig through a recently declassified and formertly Pentagon documents released earlier by Judicial Watch FOIA, we learned that Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad. In his words: "According to the newly declassified US document, the Pentagon foresaw the likely rise of the ‘Islamic State’ as a direct consequence of the strategy, but described this outcome as a strategic opportunity to “isolate the Syrian regime.”

Now, in a follow up piece to his stunning original investigative report titled "Secret Pentagon report reveals West saw ISIS as strategic asset Anti-ISIS coalition knowingly sponsored violent extremists to ‘isolate’ Assad, rollback ‘Shia expansion", Nafeez Ahmed reveals that according to leading American and British intelligence experts, the previously declassified Pentagon report confirms that the West accelerated support to extremist rebels in Syria, despite knowing full well the strategy would pave the way for the emergence of the ‘Islamic State’ (ISIS).

The experts who have spoken out include renowned government whistleblowers such as the Pentagon’s Daniel Ellsberg, the NSA’s Thomas Drake, and the FBI’s Coleen Rowley, among others.

Their remarks demonstrate the fraudulent nature of claims by two other former officials, the CIA’s Michael Morell and the NSA’s John Schindler, both of whom attempt to absolve the Obama administration of responsibility for the policy failures exposed by the DIA documents.

This is Nafeez Ahmed's follow up story, originally posted in Medium

Ex-intel officials: Pentagon report proves US complicity in ISIS

Renowned government whistleblowers weigh in on debate over controversial declassified documen

Foreseeing ISIS

As I reported on May 22nd, the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document obtained by Judicial Watch under Freedom of Information confirms that the US intelligence community foresaw the rise of ISIS three years ago, as a direct consequence of the support to extremist rebels in Syria.

The August 2012 ‘Information Intelligence Report’ (IIR) reveals that the overwhelming core of the Syrian insurgency at that time was dominated by a range of Islamist militant groups, including al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). It warned that the “supporting powers” to the insurgency?—?identified in the document as the West, Gulf states, and Turkey —?wanted to see the emergence of a “Salafist Principality” in eastern Syria to “isolate” the Assad regime.

The document also provided an extraordinarily prescient prediction that such an Islamist quasi-statelet, backed by the region’s Sunni states, would amplify the risk of the declaration of an “Islamic State” across Iraq and Syria. The DIA report even anticipated the fall of Mosul and Ramadi.

Divide and rule

Last week, legendary whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, the former career Pentagon officer and US military analyst who leaked Pentagon papers exposing White House lies about the Vietnam War, described my Insurge report on the DIA document as “a very important story.”



In an extensive podcast interview, he said that the DIA document provided compelling evidence that the West’s Syria strategy created ISIS. The DIA, he said, “in 2012, was asserting that Western powers were supporting extremist Islamic groups in Syria that were opposing Assad…

“They were not only as they claimed supporting moderate groups, who were losing members to the more extremist groups, but that they were directly supporting the extremist groups. And they were predicting that this support would result in an Islamic State organization, an ISIS or ISIL… They were encouraging it, regarding it as a positive development, because it was anti-Assad, Assad being supported by Russia, but also interestingly China… and Iran… So we have China, Russia and Iran backing Assad, and the US, starting out saying Assad must go… What he [Nafeez Ahmed] is talking about, the DIA report, is extremely significant. It fits into a general framework that I’m aware of, and sounds plausible to me.”
Ellsberg also noted that “it’s pretty well known” in the intelligence community that Saudi Arabia sponsors Islamist terrorists to this day:

“It’s kind of a deal that the Saudis will support various Islamic extremists, all around the world, and the deal is that they [extremists] will not try to overthrow the corrupt, alcohol-drinking clique in Saudi Arabia.”
Ellsberg, who was a former senior analyst at RAND Corp, also agreed with the relevance of a 2008 US Army-commissioned RAND report, quoted in my Insurge story, and also examined in-depth for Middle East Eye.

The US Army-funded RAND report advocated a range of policy scenarios for the Middle East, including a “divide and rule” strategy to play off Sunni and Shi’a factions against each other, which Ellsberg describes as “standard imperial policy” for the US.

The RAND report even confirmed (p. 113) that its “divide and rule” strategy was already being executed in Iraq at the time:

“Today in Iraq such a strategy is being used a tactical level, as the United States now forms temporary alliances with nationalist insurgent groups that it had been fighting for four years… providing carrots in the form of weapons and cash. In the past, these nationalists have cooperated with al-Qaeda against US forces.”
The confirmed activation of this divide-and-rule strategy perhaps explains why the self-defeating US approach in Syria is fanning the flames of both sides: simultaneously allying with states like Turkey who have continued to covertly sponsor ISIS, while working with Assad through the Russians to fight ISIS. Ellsberg added:

“As Assad is the main opponent of ISIS, we are covertly coordinating our airstrikes against ISIS with Assad. So are we against Assad, or not? It’s ambivalent… I think that Obama and everybody around him is clear that they do not any longer as they’ve been saying want Assad to leave power. I don’t believe that that is their intention anymore, as they believe anyone who succeeds Assad would be far worse.”
If true, Ellsberg’s analysis exposes the deep-rooted hypocrisy of the previous campaign against Assad, the current campaign against ISIS, and why both appear destined for failure.

Frankenstein script

Coleen Rowley, retired FBI Special Agent described my report on the DIA document as “excellent.”



Rowley, who was selected as TIME ‘Person of the Year’ in 2002 after revealing how pre-9/11 intelligence was ignored by superiors at the FBI, said of the document:

“It’s like the mad power-hungry doctor who created Frankenstein, only to have his monster turn against him. It’s hard to feel sorry when the insane doctor gets his due. But in our case, that script is constantly repeating. The quest for ‘full spectrum dominance’ and blindness of exceptionalism seems to mean we are doomed to keep repeating the ‘Charlie Wilson’s Frankenstein War’ script… The various neocon warmongers and military industrial complex, most of them inept Peter Principles, just don’t care.”
Also commenting on the declassified Pentagon report, former NSA senior executive Thomas Drake?—?the whistleblower who inspired Edward Snowden?—?condemned “the West’s role in ISIS and threat of ‘violent extremists’, justifying surveillance and libercide at home.”


Wedge strategy

Alastair Crooke, a former senior MI6 officer who spent three decades at the agency, said yesterday that the DIA document provides clear corroboration that the US was covertly pursuing a strategy to drive an extremist Salafi “wedge” between Iran and its Arab allies.



The strategy was, Crooke confirms, standard thinking in the Western intelligence establishment for about a decade.

“The idea of breaking up the large Arab states into ethnic or sectarian enclaves is an old Ben Gurion ‘canard,’ and splitting Iraq along sectarian lines has been Vice President Biden’s recipe since the Iraq war,” wrote Crooke, who had coordinated British assistance to the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s. After his long MI6 stint, he became Middle East advisor to the European Union’s foreign policy chief (1997–2003).

“But the idea of driving a Sunni ‘wedge’ into the landline linking Iran to Syria and to Hezbollah in Lebanon became established Western group think in the wake of the 2006 war, in which Israel failed to de-fang Hezbollah,” continued Crooke. “The response to 2006, it seemed to Western powers, was to cut off Hezbollah from its sources of weapons supply from Iran…

“… In short, the DIA assessment indicates that the ‘wedge’ concept was being given new life by the desire to pressure Assad in the wake of the 2011 insurgency launched against the Syrian state. ‘Supporting powers’ effectively wanted to inject hydraulic fracturing fluid into eastern Syria (radical Salafists) in order to fracture the bridge between Iran and its Arab allies, even at the cost of this ‘fracking’ opening fissures right down inside Iraq to Ramadi. (Intelligence assessments purpose is to provide ‘a view’?—?not to describe or prescribe policy. But it is clear that the DIA reports’ ‘warnings’ were widely circulated and would have been meshed into the policy consideration.)
“But this ‘view’ has exactly come about. It is fact. One might conclude then that in the policy debate, the notion of isolating Hezbollah from Iran, and of weakening and pressurizing President Assad, simply trumped the common sense judgment that when you pump highly toxic and dangerous fracturing substances into geological formations, you can never entirely know or control the consequences… So, when the GCC demanded a ‘price’ for any Iran deal (i.e. massing ‘fracking’ forces close to Aleppo), the pass had been already partially been sold by the US by 2012, when it did not object to what the ‘supporting powers’ wanted.”
 

Intel shills

Crooke’s analysis of the DIA report shows that it is irrelevant whether or not “the West” should be included in the “supporting powers” described by the report as specifically wanting a “Salafist Principality” in eastern Syria. Either way, the report groups “the West, Gulf countries and Turkey” as supporting the Syrian insurgency together?—?highlighting that the Gulf states and Turkey operated in alliance with the US, Britain, and other Western powers.

The observations of intelligence experts Ellsberg, Rowley, and Drake add further weight to Crooke’s analysis. They come in addition to comments I had previously received on the DIA document from former MI5 counter-terrorism officer, Annie Machon, and former counter-terrorism intelligence officer, Charles Shoebridge.

The comments undermine the recent claims of disgraced US national security commentator, John Schindler, a retired NSA intelligence officer, to the effect that the August 2012 DIA report is “almost incomprehensible,” “so heavily redacted that its difficult to say much meaningful about it,” “Nothing special here, not one bit,” “routine,” “a single data point,” and so on.

Schindler cites the DIA’s use of ‘Curveball’?—?the Iraqi informant who fabricated claims about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD)?—?as evidence of the agency’s “less than stellar reputation.” But this misrepresents the fact noted by the CIA’s Valerie Plame Wilson that “it was widely known [in the intelligence community] that CURVEBALL was not a credible source and that there were serious problems with his reporting.”

As I’ve documented elsewhere, the WMD threat mythology was not the outcome of an ‘intelligence failure’, as Schindler and his ilk like to claim, but a consequence of the corruption and politicization of intelligence under the influence of dubious vested interests.

Also contrary to Schindler’s misinformation, an IIR provides raw intelligence data from human sources (HUMINT), not simply rumour, gossip or opinion. Before wider distribution, the IIR is vetted to determine whether it is worthy of dissemination to the intelligence community. IIRs then provide a source basis for evaluation, interpretation, analysis and integration with other information.

Far from justifying the dismissal of the relevance of the declassified DIA documents, this shows that urgent questions must be asked:

What happened to this raw intelligence data, described by six US UK intelligence experts as providing damning confirmation of how Western strategy led to the rise of ISIS?

And why did it not lead to a change in policy, despite DIA analysts’ clear warning of the outgrowth of an ISIS-entity from Western allies’ desire to see a ‘Salafist Principality’ in the region?—?a warning which was, in hindsight, quite accurate?

 

Are intel critics traitors?

Schindler previously characterized NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as a traitor and “pawn… of America’s adversaries.”

He now declares that those who cite the DIA report as proof the intelligence community “knew more about the rise of the Islamic State than they let on” are at best “fools; at worst, they’re deceivers who have lied to the American people.”

On the contrary, six decorated former senior US and British intelligence officials, many with direct experience of IIRs and their function, agree that the DIA report provides significant insight into the kind of intelligence available to the US intelligence community at the time.

Yet for Schindler, it seems, Ellsberg, Drake, Rowley, Crooke, Machon and Shoebridge are all, effectively, traitors simply for lending their expertise to public understanding of the newly declassified documents.

As Marcy Wheeler points out in Salon, the large corpus of secret DIA documents obtained by Judicial Watch demonstrates, at the least, that:

“The Intelligence Community (IC) knew that AQI had ties to the rebels in Syria; they knew our Gulf and Turkish allies were happy to strengthen Islamic extremists in a bid to oust Assad; and CIA officers in Benghazi (at a minimum) watched as our allies armed rebels using weapons from Libya. And the IC knew that a surging AQI might lead to the collapse of Iraq. That’s not the same thing as creating ISIS. But it does amount to doing little or nothing while our allies had a hand in creating ISIS. All of which ought to raise real questions about why we’re still allied with countries willfully empowering terrorist groups then, and how seriously they plan to fight those terrorist groups now. Because while the CIA may not have deliberately created ISIS, it sure seems to have watched impassively as our allies helped to do so.”
However, Wheeler overlooks that the reliance on foreign allies is a standard proxy war strategy?—?as Ellsberg explained in his interview?—?used by the covert operations arm of the US government to guarantee ‘plausible deniability.’

As I noted in my Middle East Eye analysis of the DIA document, there is extensive evidence against which to contextualize the DIA report’s assertions. This evidence shows that the CIA did not merely watch “impassively” as the Gulf states and Turkey supported violent extremists in Syria, but actively supervised, facilitated and accelerated this policy.

The August 2012 DIA document further corroborates this by repeatedly pointing out that the support to the Syrian insurgency from its allies was itself backed by “the West”?—?despite awareness of their intent to establish an extremist Salafi political entity.

While the DIA document was, indeed, just one data-point, analyzing it in context with the other DIA reports along with incontrovertible facts in the public record, establishes that the Pentagon was complicit in its allies’ support of Islamist terrorists, despite recognizing this could create an “Islamic State” in Iraq and Syria.

These revelations show that the real traitors are not the courageous whistleblowers who sacrifice everything to speak out on behalf of the public interest, but shameless shills like Schindler and Morell who willfully sanitize a dysfunctional and dangerous ‘national security’ system from legitimate public scrutiny.
 

Dr Nafeez Ahmed is an investigative journalist, bestselling author and international security scholar. A former Guardian writer, he writes the ‘System Shift’ column for VICE’s Motherboard, and is also a columnist for Middle East Eye. He is the winner of a 2015 Project Censored Award, known as the ‘Alternative Pulitzer Prize’, for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for his Guardian work, and was selected in the Evening Standard’s ‘Power 1,000’ most globally influential Londoners.


Nafeez has also written for The Independent, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Scotsman, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, Prospect, New Statesman, Le Monde diplomatique, New Internationalist, Counterpunch, Truthout, among others. He is the author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It (2010), and the scifi thriller novel ZERO POINT, among other books. His work on the root causes and covert operations linked to international terrorism officially contributed to the 9/11 Commission and the 7/7 Coroner’s Inquest.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-08/ex-us-intelligence-officials-confirm-secret-pentagon-report-proves-us-complicity-cre

DIA Gives an Official Response to LevantReport.com Article Alleging the West Backed ‘Islamic State’


Brad Hoff, May 27, 2015

On Friday, May 22, I contacted the DIA Public Affairs office seeking official response to my May 19 article entitled, 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency document: West will facilitate rise of Islamic State “in order to isolate the Syrian regime”. DIA Public Affairs did not respond at that time.

YESTERDAY (5/26), THE DIA CONTACTED ME via email and requested that I submit my questions. Today, May 27, DIA Public Affairs spokesman James M. Kudla contacted me via telephone at 1:37pm (Eastern Standard Time) and agreed to give an official DIA comment to my questions concerning the declassified 2012 DIA intelligence report released through Freedom of Information Act request to Judicial Watch (14-L-0552/DIA/287-293).

THE BELOW IS A FULL TRANSCRIPT of the phone interview. Permission is given by Levant Report to freely copy and circulate.*

James Kudla [JK]: In response to the questions you submitted through email… As noted in the document itself, it’s an informational report and is not finally evaluated intelligence, and the redacted sections in the document released under FOIA means it is not a complete document.

Brad Hoff [BH]: Does this document forecast in 2012 that the external powers supporting the Syrian opposition would allow an Islamic State in Eastern Syria in order to isolate or put military pressure on the Syrian regime?

JK: I have no comment on the contents of the document, nor on your interpretation of the document in your article. To reiterate, the document is raw information and has not been interpreted or analyzed, so it is not a final intelligence product.

BH:Does this document affirm that the DoD knew that what the document refers to as the West was supporting an opposition insurgency in Syria that had elements of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, or AQI, within in?

JK: I do not speak for the Department of Defense, only for the DIA. For the DoD you would have to call the Pentagon’s Public Affairs desk. I have no comment on the contents of the document.

BH: Can you confirm that this particular document FOIA released, marked 14-L-0552/DIA/287-293, was circulated among the Joint Staff, USCENTCOM, CIA, DHS, Dept. of State, SecDef office, and those agencies listed under the header?

JK: I can’t confirm how it was circulated or who read it, but we can confirm that copies were sent to its addressees listed in the header information.

BH: Are you able to dispel some current headlines that say the West aligned itself with ISIS during 2012 or at any point during the conflict in Syria?

JK: There are a lot of headlines circulating, I cannot evaluate each one. I cannot comment on that.

BH:Would you like to take this opportunity to dispel any accusations currently circulating?

JK: I have no comment on that.

BH:Are you able to at least deny that the DIA’s analysis revealed that the West backed ISIS at some point during the conflict in Syria?

JK: No comment. I have no additional comments for you.

— END INTERVIEW

The above is official comment given to Brad Hoff from:

JAMES M. KUDLA, PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICER, OFFICE OF CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS, DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, DIA HQ N635i

http://antiwar.com/blog/2015/05/27/dia-gives-an-official-response-to-levantreport-com-article-alleging-the-west-backed-islamic-state/

Show me where it says what you claim. 
I'm not sure what you think I'm in denial about? You have not shown anything to support your assertion. Please read the document. 

Yeah yeah, another moron in denial. What else is new. When the next terror Hollywoodshow hits it´ll be just another foregone conclusion a self-fulfilled prophecy.

The short version of this is that it does not say anything like the US created daesh. It is one of the hundreds of reports about what is happening in Syria. It speculates on what might happen, including the possibility of militants forming an "Islamic state".
This is what real intelligence looks like. Now that this is dated material it is no longer classified and anyone can read it.

However, in this case, their calculations went horribly wrong. They were hoping that the ISIS will be limiting its operations to Syria. But they expanded their operations to Iraq, causing great discomfort to the US-puppet government there. Also, the activity of the ISIS in Iraq has strengthened the influence of Iran in Baghdad.

ISIS: An Inside Job?
You could say that

by Justin Raimondo, May 27, 2015

When Ivy Ziedrich, a nineteen-year-old college student, approached Jeb Bush on the campaign trail and zinged him with “Your brother created ISIS!” the media ate it up and the video went viral. Ms. Ziedrich, a member of the College Democrats, talks very fast, and she managed to utter the following diatribe before Jeb could get in a word edgewise:

“You stated that ISIS was created because we don’t have enough presence and we’ve been pulling out of the Middle East. However, the threat of ISIS was created by the Iraqi coalition authority, which ousted the entire government of Iraq. It was when 30,000 individuals who are part of the Iraqi military were forced out. They had no employment, they had no income, yet they were left with access to all the same arms and weapons. Your brother created ISIS!”

Poor Jeb! Being even less informed than his ambusher, he could only “respectfully disagree” and reiterate the neocon party line: if only we’d kept more troops in longer ISIS wouldn’t have coalesced. “You can rewrite history all you want,” he said, with a sigh, “but the simple fact is we’re in a much more unstable place because America pulled back.”

The media homed in on this incident because they’re still blaming Bush and the Republicans for the Iraq war, while ignoring the key role played by Democrats – Hillary Clinton and her husband come to mind – in ginning up that disaster. So in that sense Jeb is correct when he says they’re rewriting history, albeit not quite in the way he imagines.

Ms. Diedrich is wrong about ISIS: the idea that its foot soldiers are mostly former members of the Iraqi military is unlikely, although there are some former officers in the higher echelons. The vast majority of its fighters have been recruited from throughout the Middle East (and Europe) from the ranks of radical Islamists. More importantly, the Islamic State metastasized in Syria, not Iraq, and this is the key in assigning responsibility.

While the Bush administration made plenty of noises about going into Syria, this turned out to be mostly bluster. It took the Obama administration to launch this folly, and they did it by creating a proxy army, the “moderate” Islamists of the Free Syrian Army, ostensibly in order to overthrow Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad. A newly revealed classified document uncovered by Judicial Watch gives us a glimpse into how this effort was inextricably intertwined with the real history and origins of the Islamic State (formerly known as ISIS).

A Defense Intelligence Agency analysis of the Syrian civil war, dated August 12, 2012, starts out by drawing the battle lines, noting that the “major forces driving the insurgency” are “the Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq]” and are being supported by “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey.” Russia, Iran, and China are said to support the Assad regime. The war won’t unseat Assad, but will develop, predicts the memo, into a “proxy war.” In order for the West to win that war, the author recommends setting up “safe havens under international sheltering, similar to what transpired in Libya when Benghazi was chosen as the command center for the temporary government.”

Safe havens for al-Qaeda and its allies – just what the doctor ordered!

In a matter-of-fact tone, the memo projects the establishment of “an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria.” While positing that this could endanger the unity of Iraq, the memo goes on to say that this project is supported by “Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey,” and makes this alarmingly prescient prediction:

“… [T]here is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”

Such a development would create “the ideal atmosphere for AQI to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi” – which is precisely what has happened. Mosul fell last year, and Ramadi was just taken, much to Washington’s consternation.

Far from being taken by surprise, the rise of the Islamic State was anticipated – and facilitated – by this administration. Critics of our Syria policy, including this writer, have been saying this for quite some time, but this DIA memo documents and confirms it for the first time.

The policy of the Obama administration, and particularly Hillary Clinton’s State Department, was – and still is – regime change in Syria. This overrode all other considerations. We armed, trained, and “vetted” the Syrian rebels, even as we looked the other way while the Saudis and the Gulf sheikdoms funded groups like al-Nusra and al-Qaeda affiliates who wouldn’t pass muster. And our “moderates” quickly passed into the ranks of the outfront terrorists, complete with the weapons we’d provided.

This crazy policy was an extension of our regime change operation in Libya, a.k.a. “Hillary’s War,” where the US – “leading from behind” – and a coalition of our Western allies and the Gulf protectorates overthrew Muammar Qaddafi. There, too, we empowered radical Islamists with links to al-Qaeda affiliates – and then used them to ship weapons to their Syrian brothers, as another document uncovered by Judicial Watch shows.

It seems Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) wasn’t too far off the mark when he asked then Secretary of State Clinton what she knew about arms shipments from Benghazi to the Syrian rebels. Here’s the exchange:

“PAUL: My question is, is the U.S. involved with any procuring of weapons, transfer of weapons, buying, selling, anyhow transferring weapons to Turkey out of Libya?

CLINTON: To Turkey? I will have to take that question for the record no one has ever asked me.

PAUL: It has been in news reports that ships have been leaving from Libya and they might have weapons. What I would like to know, is the annex that was close by [in Benghazi]. Were they involved with procuring, buying, selling, obtaining weapons, and were any of these weapons being transferred to other countries – to any countries, Turkey included.

CLINTON: Senator, you’ll have to direct that question to the agency that ran the annex. I will see what information is available. I do not know. I do not have information on that.”

Sen. Paul was righter than he knew: not only were the arms shipments going to Turkey, and then on to the rebels, but, as Judicial Watch discovered, they were also going directly to Syria.

The divisions in the administration over what to do – or not to do – in Syria came out in a 2013 Senate hearing in which then CIA director Leon Panetta admitted to Sen. John McCain that he, the Joint Chiefs, then CIA chief Gen. David Petraeus, and Secretary Clinton had all supported a plan to arm the Syrian rebels, which was vetoed by the White House. Yet those arms shipments made it from Benghazi to Syria, leaving port in late August, 2012 – shortly before Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed in an assault on what appears to have been a CIA redoubt, set up near the US consulate.

What was that spook outpost up to? Was Ambassador Stevens involved in facilitating that shipment? (One of his last meetings was with Mahmoud Mufti, the owner of a shipping company.) In short, did the Clinton-Petraeus-Panetta team do an end run around the White House, setting up a clandestine arms shipment operation that funneled Qaddafi’s arsenal to their Syrian proxies?

We don’t know the answer to these questions, of course, but one wonders: why did Secretary Clinton insist on keeping the Benghazi “consulate” – really a cover for a CIA operation – open despite repeated warnings about the lack of security?

“Your brother created ISIS!” Well, not quite. While it’s true that ISIS would never have succeeded in setting up an Islamic State in the heart of the Levant if we hadn’t gone to war in Iraq, the real parents of this mutant offspring of American policymakers are Hillary Clinton and her co-thinkers in the Obama administration. So intent were they on overthrowing Assad that they funded and armed our mortal enemies.

This whole episode dramatizes, in the most vivid way imaginable, the principle of “blowback” in the conduct of foreign affairs. US intervention in the internal politics of other nations leads, inevitably, to unforeseen consequences. The problem we sought to solve worsens – and new problems, often on a much larger scale, raise their heads.

Yet the policymakers responsible for this fiasco will never change: they believe they can centrally plan the transformation of entire nations from one social system to another and control how complex societies react to their efforts at social engineering. They really think they can run the world. Each time they fail they attribute it to a reluctant American public, or a lack of funding, or some other factor that somehow interferes with the proper application of their omniscience.

They never learn.

Yes, but the American people are learning. Slowly but surely, we anti-interventionists are turning the tide in our favor. The public is sick unto death of perpetual war, and the polls show it. The only problem is that the War Party has control of the media, and dominates the debate in Washington. We aim to change all that: but we can’t do it without your help.

You might have noticed that our Spring fundraising drive is in full swing – and, I have to tell you, it’s not been all smooth sailing. While there’s been a recent uptick in donations, we are still straining to make our fundraising goal.

We need these funds to keep going – and to keep giving you the kind of analysis of world events you won’t find anywhere else. We’ve been doing it since 1995 – but we can’t continue to do it without your financial support.

I’d love to stop hectoring you about this, but I really can’t until and unless we receive the money we need to keep speaking truth to power. Our ongoing educational efforts have indeed been reaching the American public, which is increasingly on our side. However we can’t let up now: we’ve got to keep the pressure on. Please help us make the case for peace and liberty – make your tax-deductible donation today.

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2015/05/26/isis-an-inside-job/

They don´t care at this point i guess what info is out there. Most of the public is totally brain dead and will eat up anything from the corporate media and corporate-owned politicians. And they´ll vote as before for homicidal maniacs and other psychopaths sponsored by the war industry.

While the Western mainstream media and even independent gatekeepers like Noam Chomsky for years spread the lie that any suggestion that the United States and NATO were supporting ISIS was a “conspiracy theory,”recently uncovered and declassified documents from the Defense Intelligence Agency have proven the Western press and the likes of Chomsky wrong and, yet again, the so-called “conspiracy theorists” right.

This is because, on May 18, Judicial Watch published a selection of recently declassified documents that were obtained from the US Department of Defense and the US State Department as a result of a lawsuit filed against the US government. The lawsuit and most of the documents contained within the release revolved around the Benghazi scandal but a deeper look into the documents dating back to 2012 reveal an even bigger story – that the US and NATO have admitted in their own documents to supporting al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria and Iraq. ...more

http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-department-of-defense-admits-supporting-isis-buffer-zones-in-syria/5451809

nothing to see here. zionist western powers have sponsored islamic extremists everywhere from afghanistan to the balkans.

To tell the truth, I am really impressed with the ability of NATO to simultanously create bloody armed conflicts all around the world. Right now they have their creation ISIS fighting in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan and Libya, and at the same time other NATO backed terrorists are launching attacks in Macedonia, Colombia, Myanmar.etc.

Hell no it won't but in the longshot chance that the MSM does report on it, it will be pretty much glossed over in passing. Rand Paul has been pretty much been saying this as Hillary was the head of the state dept that was overseeing the smuggling of arms from Libya to Syria, yet it won't spread far and wide by MSM that he's the one that called this early on and especially in his grilling of her during the Benghazi hearing a while back.

Now that the Iraq war question had been leveled at some of these establishment republicans running for prez and them having to walk it back so to speak, tptb don't want this subject and the errors in intelligence surrounding it to be linked to the behind the scenes shenanigans going on in the Libya-Syria situation. Basically it goes, start the problem or initiate bullcrap intelligence and then you have another quagmire to enrich defense contractors by having another socalled war or creating and facilitating terrorists groups to attempt to topple another regime. Yet, when toppling the regimes it creates a vacuum allowing the radical elements that were kept in check by the aforementioned regime to flourish and do more harm thus allowing the MSM to feed the propaganda back to the people to call for more intervention that was the end game anyway. Full circle interventionism and only Ron earlier and Rand Paul now, telling it how it was/is.