Thread: Years Of War And We Have Not Learned A Thing - ISIS Is A Phony Crisis

Years Of War And We Have Not Learned A Thing

September 8, 2014 by Bob Livingston

RIBER HANSSON, SYDSVENSKAN

As we approach the 13^th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it seems that despite the years, the thousands of military casualties, trillions of dollars spent and regime changes caused, we in the U.S. seem to have learned little and accomplished less.
On Sept. 13, 2001, Hillary Clinton proclaimed that, “Every nation has to either be with us, or against us. Those who harbor terrorists, or who finance them, are going to pay a price.” President George W. Bush proclaimed much the same thing, using almost the exact same words, to Congress a week later as he sought and obtained a use of force agreement from Congress that essentially gave him and subsequent presidents carte blanch to bomb whomever they chose, all in the name of fighting a “war on terror.” Funny, that “price” promised by Clinton and Bush apparently didn’t extend to our “ally” Saudi Arabia.
Soon after the invasion of Afghanistan in response to 9/11 — ostensibly to root out former CIA contract agent and U.S. ally (and Saudi Arabian national) Osama bin Laden (who we were told was responsible for the attacks) and unseat the Taliban that governed the country and harbored bin Laden — we were emphatically told by the Bush regime and the propaganda media that al-Qaida in Iraq and Saddam Hussein posed an “existential threat” to the U.S. and that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. This was the imprimatur Bush and the neocons used to rally Congress and Americans to the cause of perpetual Middle East war and regime change wherever and whenever in order to “spread democracy.”
Anyone in the Middle East and the African continent suddenly became a potential target of U.S. bombers and drone strikes… all for “humanitarian” reasons or to fight “terrorists” — terrorists that, it turns out, the U.S. and its “allies” were arming and training all along.
“We had to attack them there before they attack us here,” was a common refrain uttered by the Bush regime, his proxies, the propaganda media and, sadly, most Americans. It made for great theater and even greater sleight of hand. All this on the basis of a false meme: that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and there was a nexus between al-Qaida and Saddam. There was never a call to attack the real culprit: Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia provided 15 of the 9/11 hijackers (if you believe the official “story” as told by Washington) and much of the funding for the operation. This has been reported by such august “official” publications as The New York Times, and others. More details of the Saudi involvement are also likely what’s found on the 28 redacted pages of the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry of 9/11 that Reps. Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) are trying to have declassified — information the two men called “shocking.”
For most of the 18 months following the Afghanistan invasion, all we heard from the Bush regime was a rallying cry to justify a war on Iraq. The resulting fearmongering, with an assist from an al-Qaida beheading video (Daniel Pearl), got Americans rousingly on board with the attack that commenced in March 2003.
The U.S. has been bombing ever since. It’s bombed wedding parties and birthdays in Pakistan and U.S. citizens in Yemen. In order to “save” citizens in Libya, it bombed them. It helped assassinate Moammar Gadhafi. “We came, we saw, he died,” Clinton yucked when she learned of Gadhafi’s death.
It’s bombed people in Mali, Somalia and Algeria. According to the Bureau for Investigative Journalism, the drone campaign had killed at least 2,400 innocent civilians — including hundreds of children — by January 2014. Tens of thousands more died in Libya from NATO (read U.S.) bombs.
The result was a power vacuum in a once peaceful country that’s left hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Libyans dead or impoverished and caught in the crossfire of a sundry of militant groups vying for power. It also enabled the gunrunning operation through the Libyan consulate that got Ambassador Chris Stephens and three others killed.
Is anyone surprised that there are people in the world who bitterly hate the United States and its rulers?
Now ISIS, birthed by the U.S. in 2006 with an assist from Saudi Arabia and nurtured, aided and abetted by the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, is the new terror brand for the military-industrial complex. They are, we are told, an existential threat to America. They are, we are told, massing on our Southern border. And they have, we are told, “beheaded” two journalists and untold other Syrians and Iraqis.
ISIS, we are told, is the greatest threat to America since Nazi Germany. Fact: ISIS has only about 10,000 to 20,000 fighters. Many of those are simply “joiners” who have no particular loyalty and signed on because they wanted to be on the “winning team.”
The American public, just recently weary of perpetual war and having last year staved off a neocon- and Obama-proposed U.S. attack on Syria — which would have benefited the very group of al-Qaida-linked terrorists that have since become or joined with ISIS — is now clamoring for war with ISIS. This clamor is fueled by two suspicious “beheading” videos, one of which has been proven as staged if not completely faked and the other suspicious in both its similarity to the first and the fact that it was initially released by the same group responsible for the release of the fake video blamed in the Benghazi narrative by the Obama regime. Those facts, coupled with James Foley’s ties to the CIA front group USAID, make the beheading videos suspicious and likely false flag events designed specifically for the purpose of agitating the American public for war.
It is very difficult to get any truth in America from the politicians or the controlled media.
It is risky to believe anything official. The art of war is that all warfare is based on deception and that rulers must cultivate the appearance of moral rightness in order to rally the people and persuade them to fight. It works!
The government of the United States has reasserted its power over the American people. It is now stronger, much stronger, because of the threat of a “terrorist” attack. This threat, we are told, comes from ISIS, which the U.S. created and funded, and which, if it’s on U.S. soil in any form is here because the Obama regime opened up the border and invited it in. And now we stand poised to start all over in Iraq. And some in Congress want to give the president sanction to bomb some more?
Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken told CNN last week a new Iraq war would “probably go beyond even this administration to get to the point of defeat.” That means embarking on another Middle East misadventure without end.
The U.S. has been making war in the Middle East for 34 years. It’s enriched the globalists and the military-industrial complex, impoverished the people and earned the U.S. great, well-deserved enmity.
I want to candidly remind you that governments — all governments — need crisis, no matter how much lip service they give to the idea of “peace.” Crisis is a well-known Machiavellian strategy to gain and solidify political power and persuade public opinion.
Crisis provides the stage where governments can control all sides. At least they can arrange events to “naturally” unfold. Governments must have scapegoats and phony enemies. The people must have perceived threats to their security, and so naturally government is there to “protect.”
Governments must have enemies to the extent that they finance them. There can be no military budgets without perceived enemies.
Don’t be fooled again. The U.S. has nothing to gain by entering an Islamist religious war. When will the American people learn?

http://personalliberty.com/years-war-learned-thing/

Warning to War Supporters

Posted on September 10, 2014 by DavidSwanson

I know you mean well. I know you think you’ve found a bargain that nobody else noticed hidden in a back corner of the used car lot. Let me warn you: it’s a clunker. Here, I’ll list the defects. You can have your own mechanic check them out:

1. If you want to bomb a country every time an evil group murders people in a gruesome manner, you’ll have to bomb a lot of countries including our own. ISIS draws its strength in Iraq from resentment of the Iraqi government, which bombs its own cities using U.S. weapons, and which beheads people, albeit in grainier footage with lower production values. Allies in the region, including allies that support ISIS, including allies armed by the United States (some of which arms end up in the hands of ISIS), themselves behead people regularly. But is that worse than other types of killing? When President Barack Obama blew up a 16 year old American boy whom nobody had ever accused of so much as jaywalking, and blew up six other kids who were too close to him at the time, do you imagine his head remained on his body?
As with most drone strikes, that boy could have been arrested and questioned. Had he been, though, gruesome death would have remained a possibility. In April, the United States injected a man with chemicals that made him writhe in excruciating pain for 43 minutes and die. Last week in the United States a man facing a similar fate on death row was proven innocent and freed. The prosecutor who had put him there 30 years earlier showed zero remorse. Now I’m not proposing that we bomb North Carolina because I’m angry at that prosecutor. I’m not even angry at that prosecutor. I am suggesting that there are evil killers all over the place, some wearing Western suits and ties, some wearing military uniforms. Bombs, which mostly kill innocent people who had nothing to do with it, won’t help.
2. The bombs will mostly kill innocent people who had nothing to do with it, and will only make the crisis worse. Most people who die in wars are civilians by everyone’s definition. People still use words like “battlefield” as if wars were waged in a field the way a football game is played. They couldn’t play football on our streets and sidewalks because grandparents and baby strollers would end up tackled and crushed. Well, wars are waged on people’s streets and sidewalks, even when one side is only present in the sky above in the form of unmanned robot death planes. The slow-moving die first: the very old and the very young. And when anyone dies, according to top U.S. officials, more enemies are created in greater numbers. Thus, the operation is counterproductive on its own terms, making us less safe rather than safer. This is why President Obama is always saying “There is no military solution” just before proposing to use the military to seek a solution. When he proposes bombing Iraq for three more years, that number has no basis in military calculation whatsoever. I challenge you to find a general who says otherwise. It is a number almost certainly based on the U.S. election schedule, aimed at convincing us to accept a war without question until a date after the next presidential election. When Obama says he’s going to get a good government in place in Iraq this week and then make a speech, he’s delusional or enjoying toying with your gullibility, but he’s also pointing to the actual problem: a nation destroyed by 24 years of wars and sanctions and lacking a legitimate governing system.
3. Bombing is crazy, and bombing for three years is certifiable. Bombing strengthens ISIS. Three years is longer than most U.S. wars have taken from beginning to end. The U.S. Constitution, which did not foresee a permanent standing army, much less one permanently standing in most other nations on earth, did not permit — and does not permit — creating and funding one for a longer period than two years at a time (Article I. Section 8.). But of course nothing guarantees that the bombing will stop after three years and not go on for thirty more. And nothing guarantees that this war will involve only bombing. Already Obama has sent over 1,100 troops, and is promising to send some number less than 100,000. Read that twice please, slowly. Obama wants Congress to debate his war plans but not vote on them. Why not? Because Congress might be compelled by you and me to vote no, if not on this war then on the next one. Obama wants himself and all future presidents free to launch wars without Congress, exactly what he campaigned for office opposing.

“The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” —Senator Barack Obama.

The U.S. “intelligence” agencies, by the way, deem ISIS no threat to the United States. Apart from trashing the Constitution and really the one thing its framers got right, President Obama is trashing the U.N. Charter and the Kellogg Briand Pact, laws that forbid war.
4. The fact that it’s Obama doesn’t make it OK. A majority of you supported attacking Afghanistan and within a couple of years a majority of you said Afghanistan should not have been attacked. Why not? Not because there weren’t evil people in Afghanistan, but because bombing the country made everything worse, not better. You kept telling pollsters it was a bad idea for over another decade, but the war rolled on, and still rolls on. Iraq is a similar story, although you were even faster to change your mind. And the occupation ended when President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki signed an agreement for three more years of that war, and then the three years ran out. At that point, President Obama tried to win approval from the Iraqi government to keep U.S. troops in Iraq longer, but with immunity for any crimes they might commit. Failing at that, Obama withdrew the troops. Having won that concession now, he’s sending them back in. Does the fact that it’s Obama doing it, rather than Bush, make it OK? Remember the massive protests when Bush proposed a war on Iraq? Obama just put the band back together in Wales, and you’re squealing with delight that he visited Stonehenge, or you’re busy coloring in your “I’m Ready for Hillary” posters.
The nation of Iraq was utterly destroyed last time. The place is in total chaos: violence, hatred, poverty, illness, desperation, fanaticism. Dumping gasoline on that fire is worse now than before, not better. And now we have NATO toying with a nuclear confrontation with Russia, drone wars generating violence and terrorism in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia, the U.S. Navy poking China in the eye with a stick, troops heading into a dozen new parts of Africa — How is starting a war this time better than last time, which you came to view as a mistake by 2004, elected a Congress to end in 2006, thought you were voting against again in 2008, and cheered for the eventual ending of in 2011? Observers have called this the most dangerous moment since World War II. Please don’t tell me you trust Obama, believed the fraudulent threat to Benghazi and are now unaware of the disaster he created in Libya, where France has just proposed yet another war to fix the damage of the last war. Please don’t tell me you believed the disproven claims of evidence that Assad used chemical weapons or Russia shot down an airplane. This is a government that lies about possible grounds for war and possible outcomes of war, just like its predecessors.
5. The enemy of your enemy is your other weapons customer. Public pressure was instrumental last year in halting proposed attacks on Syria, the plans for which involved massive death and destruction. But the White House and CIA went right ahead and armed and trained one side in that war, the ISIS side. ISIS now has weapons provided directly to it and indirectly to it by the United States, including those seized from the Iraqi government. ISIS has troops trained by the United States and “radicalized” (enraged) by the United States in its brutal prisons in Iraq, as well as troops previously in the Iraqi military who were thrown out of work in 2003 by the U.S. occupation. Last year, the evil to be confronted was Assad, at all costs. To your great credit you didn’t fall for it. Why not? Not because Assad doesn’t do evil things, but because you understood that more war would make things even worse.
Now you’re being told that Assad’s enemies must be attacked at all cost, and you’re falling for it, to your great discredit. With supposed surgical precision the “moderate” beheaders will be spared, in order to blow up only the “extremist” beheaders. Don’t believe it. Six months ago the great Satan was Iran. Now you’re on Iran’s side. Were you aware of that? You’re stirring up trouble to the ultimate benefit of only one group: the weapons makers. You think of the Middle East as a violent place, but 80% of the weapons come from the United States. Imagine how much less violent the Middle East could be if it only had 20% of the weapons. We’re not talking about stockpiles. These weapons get used.
6. There are other options. Try telling a four-year-old he has only two choices: eat the broccoli or eat the lima beans. He’ll throw another 18 alternatives at you in less than a minute, beginning with eating ice cream. Try telling a non-American adult about the current state of disaster in Iraq, and they’ll begin by opposing making it worse, and then start discussing a variety of steps to make it better, from humanitarian aid to diplomacy to disarmament to emergency U.N. police forces, etc. But tell a U.S. adult that Iraq must be bombed or we must do nothing other than sit back and revel in our evil state of ISIS-loving, and your befuddled manipulated subject will shout “Bomb em! Bomb em!” Why?
Last year we were told that we had to bomb Syria or love the poisoning of children with chemical weapons. We did not accept that those were the only two choices. Why not? Because we were thinking straight. We hadn’t been frightened into blind stupidity by high-quality videos of beheadings and threats that we might be next. Nobody thinks well when they’re scared. That’s why the government likes to scare you. That’s why your hearing all this nonsense about ISIS coming to your neighborhood. The more the U.S. keeps bombing people, the more some of those people will want to fight back. Did you ever wonder why nations that spend 2% what the U.S. does on its military feel so much safer than you do? Part of it is the reality that war generates enemies rather than removing them, but mostly it’s a culture of cowardice that we’re living in. Here are 15 things we could do about ISIS instead of bombing.
7. We don’t have time for this barbaric insanity. War is sucking our resources and energy and attention away from where they are needed, namely on a massive campaign to protect the climate of the earth. Imagine a proposal to dump untold trillions of dollars and every ounce of energy into that project! Would Congress step aside and allow it? It would benefit even your short-term economic interests, but would you permit it? Would you demand it? Would you join with me in insisting that we stop the wars and save the climate?

UPDATE: Newsweek says ISIS is intentionally manipulating you into attacking it.
UPDATE 2: Matt Hoh Says the Beheadings Are Bait.



http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/...upporters.html

ISIS Threat to America a Farce

Lurid propaganda campaign stampedes public into accepting another war

by Kurt Nimmo | Infowars.com | September 11, 2014

Despite clamoring in favor of all-out war by the establishment amidst lurid scenarios of ISIS attacking deep within the heartland, there is scant evidence the group plans to conduct terror attacks in the United States.



Although many members of Congress and the establishment media portray ISIS as the number one security threat to the nation, others have taken a more measured and even a highly critical view of the move toward war.

ISIS Threat a Monumental “Farce”

In the wake of Obama’s speech on ISIS Wednesday, his former top counterterrorism adviser at the State Department, Daniel Benjamin, told The New York Times the ISIS threat is nothing less than a “farce.”

“It’s hard to imagine a better indication of the ability of elected officials and TV talking heads to spin the public into a panic, with claims that the nation is honeycombed with sleeper cells, that operatives are streaming across the border into Texas or that the group will soon be spraying Ebola virus on mass transit systems — all on the basis of no corroborated information,” said Benjamin.
Obama admitted during his speech an ISIS attack on America is a remote possibility at best. He characterized the group as a regional threat and said there is no specific information showing it poses a direct threat to the United States.
In addition to Obama’s remarks and terrorism experts discounting and downplaying the ISIS threat at home, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, said ISIS does not currently threaten the United States. Dempsey said there is no evidence the group is engaged in “active plotting against the homeland.”

Propaganda Campaign for War Wins Hearts and Minds

However, due to incessant propaganda and repeated exaggerations by the establishment media about the capability of ISIS, a large number of Americans now believe ISIS is a threat to the United States.
According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, in the wake of the unverified and highly suspicious alleged beheadings of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, Americans now overwhelmingly support military action against ISIS.

Today, 71 percent of all Americans say they support airstrikes in Iraq — up from 54 percent three weeks ago and from 45 percent in June. Among those who say Obama has been too cautious, 82 percent support the strikes; among those who think his handling of international affairs has been about right, 66 percent support them.

From the Washington Post on Monday:

Nearly as many Americans — 65 percent — say they support the potentially more controversial action of launching airstrikes in Syria, which Obama has not done. That is more than double the level of support a year ago for launching airstrikes to punish the Syrian regime for using chemical weapons.

The United Nations and the United States lied about Syria using chemical weapons. It was not the al-Assad government in Damascus, but U.S. and Saudi supported “rebels” who were responsible for a chemical weapons attack in Ghouta that reportedly killed at least 355 people. Residents in the area believe “certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack,” Dale Gavlak and Yahya Ababneh wrote for MintPress News last August. The propaganda campaign by the establishment portraying ISIS as a monumental threat will result in the United States intervening in Syria and overthrowing the al-Assad government. The Foley and Sotloff videos and the resultant shift in pubic approval for violating the national sovereignty of Syria were timed to coincide with the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks to gain the maximum amount of war propaganda leverage.



http://www.infowars.com/isis-threat-to-america-a-farce/

http://www.alipac.us/f19/resurrectio...ve-lie-310877/