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A former Pentagon intelligence chief, Iraqi government sources, and a retired career US diplomat reveal US complicity in the rise of ISIS

A new memoir by a former senior State Department analyst provides stunning details on how decades of support for Islamist militants linked to Osama bin Laden brought about the emergence of the ‘Islamic State’ (ISIS).

The book establishes a crucial context for recent admissions by Michael T. Flynn, the retired head of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), confirming that White House officials made a “willful decision” to support al-Qaeda affiliated jihadists in Syria — despite being warned by the DIA that doing so would likely create an ‘ISIS’-like entity in the region.

J. Michael Springmann, a retired career US diplomat whose last government post was in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, reveals in his new book that US covert operations in alliance with Middle East states funding anti-Western terrorist groups are nothing new. Such operations, he shows, have been carried out for various short-sighted reasons since the Cold War and after.

In the 1980s, as US support for mujahideen fighters accelerated in Afghanistan to kick out the Soviet Union, Springmann found himself unwittingly at the heart of highly classified operations that allowed Islamist militants linked to Osama bin Laden to establish a foothold within the United States.

After the end of the Cold War, Springmann alleged, similar operations continued in different contexts for different purposes — in the former Yugoslavia, in Libya and elsewhere. The rise of ISIS, he contends, was a predictable outcome of this counterproductive policy.

Pentagon intel chief speaks out

Everyday brings new horror stories about atrocities committed by ISIS fighters. Today, for instance, the New York Times offered a deeply disturbing report on how ISIS has formally adopted a theology and policy of systematic rape of non-Muslim women and children. The practice has become embedded throughout the territories under ISIS control through a process of organized slavery, sanctioned by the movement’s own religious scholars.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is Turkey In Over Its Head?

August 14, 2015

Is Turkey In Over Its Head?

Turkey’s war against Islamic State began with bombs being dropped on Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) forces – a central actor in the ongoing insurgency across parts of Syria (a country that ostensibly no longer exists) and Iraq. The PKK has sought autonomy from Turkey since the mid-1980s, with tens of thousands of Turkish and Kurdish soldiers and civilians being counted as part of the casualties of the roughly 30-year conflict. Attempts to carve out a sovereign Kurdish homeland from Turkey during the 1980s led to the deaths of over 30,000 people, many of whom were ethnic Kurds. As part of Turkey’s new role in its conflict with ISIS, the United States has been granted permission to launch aircraft from the Incirlik airbase located near Adana. The United States already has approximately six fighter aircraft and several hundred military personnel stationed at the base.

The battle of Kobane, which lasted from mid-September 2014 until mid-March 2015, brought the fighting to the borders of Turkey. At the end of July 2015, when Turkey entered into the conflict, its attacks against the PKK were the first strikes against the Kurds situated in northern Iraq since the brokering of a peace deal between Turkey and the PKK in 2013. The Kurdish group’s accusations that the Turkish government is plotting terrorist attacks (in collusion with ISIS forces) against ethnic Kurdish communities greatly adds to tensions due to Ankara’s already inimical disposition toward the Kurds.

The situation in northern Iraq and Syria is a Gordian knot: Turkey vs. Kurds (with Kurdish intergroup fighting predating ISIS) vs. ISIS (with internal fragmentation and al-Qaeda support) vs. Syrian opposition groups.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Seeking War to the End of the World

July 20, 2015

Seeking War to the End of the World

Exclusive: Despite the disastrous Iraq War, neocons still dominate Official Washington’s inside-outside game, government policymakers coordinating with think-tank opinion leaders to keep world tensions high and money flowing to military projects, a process personified by Robert Kagan and Victoria Nuland, says Robert Parry.

If the neoconservatives have their way again, U.S. ground troops will reoccupy Iraq, the U.S. military will take out Syria’s secular government (likely helping Al Qaeda and the Islamic State take over), and the U.S. Congress will not only kill the Iran nuclear deal but follow that with a massive increase in military spending.

Like spraying lighter fluid on a roaring barbecue, the neocons also want a military escalation in Ukraine to burn the ethnic Russians out of the east and the neocons dream of spreading the blaze to Moscow with the goal of forcing Russian President Vladimir Putin from the Kremlin. In other words, more and more fires of Imperial “regime change” abroad even as the last embers of the American Republic die at home.

Much of this “strategy” is personified by a single Washington power couple: arch-neocon Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century and an early advocate of the Iraq War, and his wife, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who engineered last year’s coup in Ukraine that started a nasty civil war and created a confrontation between nuclear-armed United States and Russia.

Kagan, who cut his teeth as a propaganda specialist in support of the Reagan administration’s brutal Central American policies in the 1980s, is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing columnist to The Washington Post’s neocon-dominated opinion pages.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Endless enemies – how the US is supporting the Islamic State by fighting it

July 18, 2015

Endless enemies – how the US is supporting the Islamic State by fighting it

From al-Qaeda to the Islamic State to Assad, the US is fighting terrorists of its own creation by partnering with other terrorists of its own creation

Geopolitics is a murky game. Precisely how murky is reflected in the well-worn phrase, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

What happens, though, when you follow that ancient proverb with the faith of a religious believer?

Now that the war on the “Islamic State” (IS) is, ostensibly, in full-swing, the US is making “friends” out of enemies, old and new. Among our new friends is al-Qaeda.

Except they are supposedly not “our” friends, but friends of our allies.

Al-Qaeda, freedom fighters for Gulf monarchies

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are now working to support al-Qaeda’s official arm in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra, to re-take Syrian territory from Bashir al-Assad. The strategy resulted in a coalition of rebel groups, led by the al-Qaeda faction, conquering Idlib in April.

The three regional powers claim they are hoping to compel al-Nusra to renounce its relationship to al-Qaeda – but the reality is they are funding the al-Qaeda affiliate without any meaningful guarantee of control.

“Nusra will stay with al-Qaeda unless the other rebel forces are able to unify into one force,” said one al-Nusra member. “[Al-Qaeda leader Ayman] al-Zawahiri says the unification of Muslims is more important than membership in any group.”

According to Rami Abdelrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, al-Nusra is “not so different from IS. They want to make an emirate but are looking for the right opportunity.”

Publicly, the official line is that the Saudi-Qatari-Turkish strategy is not directly funding al-Nusra, although the geopolitical coalition is aware that al-Nusra will benefit from the support to Islamist rebel groups.

– See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/endless-enemies-how-us-supporting-islamic-state-fighting-it-1621962798#sthash.A6sh8j6a.dpuf

US/Israeli/Saudi ‘Behavior’ Problems

July 16, 2015

US/Israeli/Saudi ‘Behavior’ Problems

There is a madness in how the mainstream U.S. media presents the world to the American people, a delusional perspective that arguably creates an existential threat to humanity’s survival. We have seen this pattern in the biased depiction of the Ukraine crisis and now in how Official Washington is framing the debate over the Iranian nuclear agreement.

In this American land of make-believe, Iran is assailed as the chief instigator of instability in the Middle East. Yet, any sane and informed person would dispute that assessment, noting the far greater contributions made by Israel, Saudi Arabia and, indeed, the United States.

Israel’s belligerence, including frequently attacking its Arab neighbors and brutally repressing the Palestinians, has roiled the region for almost 70 years. Not to mention that Israel is a rogue nuclear state that has been hiding a sophisticated atomic-bomb arsenal.

An objective observer also would note that Saudi Arabia has been investing its oil wealth for generations to advance the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam, which has inspired terrorist groups from Al Qaeda to the Islamic State. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were identified as Saudis and the U.S. government is still concealing those 28 pages of the congressional 9/11 inquiry regarding Saudi financing of Al Qaeda terrorists.

The Saudis also have participated directly and indirectly in regional wars, including encouragement of Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980, support for Al Qaeda-affiliate Nusra Front’s subversion of Syria, and the current Saudi bombardment of Yemen, killing hundreds of civilians, touching off a humanitarian crisis and helping Al Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate expand its territory.

U.S. Meddling

Then there’s the United States, which has been meddling in the Middle East overtly and covertly for a very long time, including one of the CIA’s first covert operations, the overthrow of Iran’s elected government in 1953, and one of U.S. foreign policy’s biggest overt blunders, President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Pentagon Brands ‘Belligerent’ Journalists As Legitimate “Enemy Combatant” Targets

June 25, 2015

Pentagon Brands ‘Belligerent’ Journalists As Legitimate “Enemy Combatant” Targets

The Pentagon has released an 1,176-page book of instructions on the “The Law Of War” detailing acceptable ways of killing the enemy. The manual also states that journalists can be labeled “unprivileged belligerents,” an obscure term that replaces the Bush era “unlawful enemy combatant.”

As The Washington Times reports, an eye-catching section deals with a definition of journalists and how they are expected to stay out of the fight –

“In general, journalists are civilians. However, journalists may be members of the armed forces, persons authorized to accompany the armed forces, or unprivileged belligerents.”

While the Pentagon did not specify the exact circumstances under which a journalist might be declared an unprivileged belligerent, lumping terrorist writers with bona fide reporters prompted a civilian lawyer who opines on war crime cases to call the wording “an odd and provocative thing for them to write.”

Michael Rubin, a Middle East expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said the manual reflects today’s muddled world of journalism.

“It’s a realization that not everyone abides by the same standards we do,” said Mr. Rubin. “Just as Hamas uses United Nations schools as weapons depots and Iran uses charity workers for surveillance, many terrorist groups use journalists as cover.”

Mr. Rubin recalled that two al Qaeda terrorists posed as journalists to assassinate anti-Taliban leader Ahmad Shah Massoud. Chechen Islamists went on missions with camera crews.

“Journalists are the new consultant. Anyone can claim to be one,” he said. “No American serviceman should ever be killed because a politician told them they had to take a foreign journalist at his or her word.”

As RT adds,

The 1,176-page “Department of Defense Law of War Manual” explains that shooting, exploding, bombing, stabbing, or cutting the enemy are acceptable ways of getting the job done, but the use of poison or asphyxiating gases is not allowed.

Surprise attacks and killing retreating troops have also been given the green light.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Pathetic Zombie Wars

June 22, 2015

Pathetic Zombie Wars

Our New Friend, al-Qaeda

The wars go on!

We’re not against them. We might as well be against stomach gas – it will happen whether we like it or not. Real wars, as we’ve been exploring recently, are glorious and moronic. But zombie wars are just sordid are pathetic.

A new item in the Wall Street Journal tells us that our enemy’s enemy is becoming our friend.

“In the three-way war ravaging Syria, should the local al-Qaeda branch be seen as the lesser evil to be wooed rather than bombed?

This is increasingly the view of some of America’s regional allies and even some Western officials. In a war now in its fifth year, in which 230,000 people have been killed and another 7.6 million uprooted, few good options remain for how to tackle the crisis.”

These are not real wars. There are no real war aims, no enemy worthy of the name, and no real victories. Instead, they are zombie wars. They go on and on… with changing targets and shifting alliances. Why do we never win?

Vetting process …

Cartoon by Steve Breen

Because too many people benefit from losing… The media, the military, the contractors, the politicians, the lowlife defense contractors in Northern Virginia, the grandstanders in Congress, the CIA, the NSA … all have been zombified.

Jon Basil Utley in the American Conservative:

“America doesn’t “win” its wars, because winning a war is secondary to other goals in our war making. Winning or losing has little immediate consequence for the United States, because the wars we start, Wars of Choice, are not of vital national interest; losing doesn’t mean getting invaded or our cities being destroyed.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The American far-right’s trojan horse in Westminster

June 17, 2015

The American far-right’s trojan horse in Westminster

Elites are using the Henry Jackson Society to sell surveillance, war, white supremacism, banks, and misogyny

There is a violent extremist fifth column operating at the heart of power in Britain, and they stand against everything we hold dear in Western democracies: civil liberties, equality, peace, diplomacy and the rule of law.

You wouldn’t think so at first glance. In fact, you might be taken in by their innocuous-looking spokespeople, railing against the threat of Muslim extremists, defending the rights of beleaguered Muslim women, championing the principle of free speech — regularly courted by national TV and the press as informed experts on global policy issues.

But peer beneath the surface, and an entirely different picture emerges: a web of self-serving trans-Atlantic elites who are attempting to warp public discourse on key issues that pose a threat not to the public interest, but to their own vested interests.

One key organisation at the centre of this web is the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), an influential British think-tank founded a decade ago, ostensibly to promote noble ideals like freedom, human rights and democracy. But its staff spend most of their energies advancing the very opposite.

More recently, HJS has turned to demonising Edward Snowden supportersand privacy advocates as accomplices with al-Qaeda and the ‘Islamic State’ (IS) — as is also being done by Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times, with its hole-ridden story claiming Snowden’s revelations’ had allowed Russia and China to identify active MI6 agents.

Robin Simcox, author of the new HJS report, Surveillance after Snowden

Journalists who have reviewed the Snowden files say that there was nothing in them that would permit MI6 operatives to be identified.

Former senior CIA official Robert Steele, whose books have received endorsements from the past and then serving Chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, said:

“I can state categorically that there could not have been names of either intelligence officers or agents in the Snowden materials. The system simply does not work that way.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

German Court Turns Down Drone Lawsuit But Leaves Door Open to Others

May 31, 2015

German Court Turns Down Drone Lawsuit But Leaves Door Open to Others

On August 29, 2012, a drone flying above the Yemeni town of Khashamir launched four missiles at a group of five men standing near a vehicle on a remote mountainside. All of them perished. Three of the men were suspected al Qaeda militants, but the other two were Jaber’s relatives — his nephew Walid Abdullah bin Ali Jaber was a local police officer, and his brother-in-law Salim bin Ahmed Ali Jaber was a respected imam who days earlier had publicly denounced al Qaeda.

Their deaths triggered protests across Yemen. In the years since, Faisal has committed his life to finding answers — and justice — for his slain kin.

Earlier this week, the drone killings were the focal point of a historic lawsuit that was heard in a German courtroom. Though a panel of German judges dismissed the case on Wednesday, and the current security crisis in Yemen prevented Faisal from attending the proceedings, he and his attorneys consider their effort a victory, marking the first time Germany’s role in U.S. drone strikes has been acknowledged in court.

“One of the good things to come out of the decision that was taken by the judges is that an appeal is immediately available to us,” Faisal said in a phone interview. “So the path remains clear for us to continue challenging this case in the German courts.”

Faisal filed the suit along with two of his relatives in an administrative court in Cologne in 2014. The complaint, brought by the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights as well as Reprieve, an international human rights group, alleged that by permitting the U.S. government to use its air base at Ramstein to facilitate drone strikes across the globe, Germany violated its constitutionally enshrined duty to preserve human life.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Was Charlie Hebdo a “Convenient” Incident for Policymakers?

May 30, 2015

Was Charlie Hebdo a “Convenient” Incident for Policymakers?

Many Questions

On the 7th of January two gunmen attacked the office of Charlie Hebdo, a French weekly magazine. The shooters were two brothers who belonged to the Yemeni branch of the Islamist terrorist organization Al-Qaeda. The attack resulted in 11 casualties and many injured, while the shooters were shot a few days later in an exchange of fire with the police. Charlie Hebdo is a satire magazine, and its jokes and cartoons and its secular approach are widely considered anti-religious. Social media went into a frenzy with the hashtag “Je suis Charlie”. Four days later two million people including tens of world leaders participated in a rally for national unity in Paris, and over three million participated across France. A lot of questions were raised by this tragic event and its aftermath that we will look at in this article.

The gunmen who attacked Charlie Hebdo and their get-away car
Photo via Reuters TV

How Free Should Free Speech be When it Comes to Religion?

Let’s start with the obvious: What was the motive of the shooters? According to witness reports of the attack, one of the shooters said “You are going to pay for insulting the Prophet”. Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons and jokes are regarded as quite controversial, as they mock all religions, whether Islam, Christianity or Judaism. When respect to Islam, they repeatedly published cartoons of Mohammed, which infuriated Muslim communities worldwide as images of the Prophet are not allowed to be depicted according to Islamic teachings. Not only was the magazine sued for this, its editor-in-chief, who was killed in the attack, had been on the hit list of the Al-Qaeda branch in Yemen for some time.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Al Qaeda Syria Boss Says That His ‘So-called Khorasan Group Doesn’t Exist’

May 29, 2015

Al Qaeda Syria Boss Says That His ‘So-called Khorasan Group Doesn’t Exist’

In early September 2014, an Associated Press story quoted unnamed U.S. officials discussing an imminent threat from a previously unknown, Syria-based terror outfit called the “Khorasan Group.” U.S. officials told the AP that the jihadist group was stocked with al Qaeda veterans and was plotting imminent attacks against U.S.-bound airline flights. Officials also suggested that the level of danger posed by the group exceeded that of ISIS, the militant group which now controls much of Iraq and Syria.

Weeks later, after similarly breathless coverage of the so-called Khorasan Group from the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, NBC News, CBS News and others, American airstrikes against Syria commenced, including strikes that were said to have specifically targeted this shadowy new organization.

In the immediate aftermath of the strikes, something remarkable happened. American officials almost immediately began retracting their claims about the level of danger posed by the Khorasan Group. FBI Director James Comey, addressing previous assertions that the group posed an imminent threat to American interests, said, “I don’t know exactly what that word means … ‘imminent.’”

After the airstrikes had commenced, reports began to surface that no identifiable Syrian activists within the country had ever heard of such an organization. Days after the U.S. initiated military operations within Syria, it became increasingly unclear whether the “Khorasan Group” itself actually existed.

Yesterday, the head of al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria gave the clearest indication yet that the group is a fabrication. In an interview conducted with Al Jazeera Arabic, Abu Muhammad al Jolani, the head of Jabhat al Nusra, said the following:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Secret Pentagon report reveals West saw ISIS as strategic asset

May 22, 2015

Secret Pentagon report reveals West saw ISIS as strategic asset

Anti-ISIS coalition knowingly sponsored violent extremists to ‘isolate’ Assad, rollback ‘Shia expansion’

A declassified secret US government document obtained by the conservative public interest law firm, Judicial Watch, shows that the Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria, to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad.

The document reveals that in coordination with the Gulf states and Turkey, the West intentionally sponsored violent Islamist groups to destabilize Assad, despite anticipating that doing so could lead to the emergence of an ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

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.”

Hypocrisy

The revelations contradict the official line of Western government on their policies in Syria, and raise disturbing questions about secret Western support for violent extremists abroad, while using the burgeoning threat of terror to justify excessive mass surveillance and crackdowns on civil liberties at home.

Among the batch of documents obtained by Judicial Watch through a federal lawsuit, released earlier this week, is a US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document then classified as “secret,” dated 12th August 2012.

The DIA provides military intelligence in support of planners, policymakers and operations for the US Department of Defense and intelligence community.

So far, media reporting has focused on the evidence that the Obama administration knew of arms supplies from a Libyan terrorist stronghold to rebels in Syria.

Some outlets have noted the US intelligence community’s internal prediction of the rise of ISIS. Yet none have accurately acknowledged the disturbing details exposing how the West knowingly fostered a sectarian, al-Qaeda-driven rebellion in Syria.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“If The Public Knew About Obama’s Lies And Cover Ups, Mitt Romney Might Be President” – Judicial Watch

May 20, 2015

“If The Public Knew About Obama’s Lies And Cover Ups, Mitt Romney Might Be President” – Judicial Watch

When it comes to the countless lies of this administration (and that of the next one under Hillary Clinton) one has to just throw in the flag.

Days after Seymour Hersh exposed the biggest lie of Obama’s first term, a lie which we learned was also facilitated and perpetuated by the CIA as well (the topic of the latest Frontline documentary “How the CIA Helped Make “Zero Dark Thirty””), we get yet more evidence of the administration’s lies this time on a topic dear – and sensitive – for the person who may well be the next US president, Hillary Clinton, who as a reminder made up a story that the September 11, 2012 Benghazi embassy attack was a product of spontaneous protests of an obscure YouTube documentary by an American producer that lampooned Muslims.

Only later did the administration concede that the attack was a terrorist operation.

And now, according to a declassified Defense Department document obtained by Judicial Watch we learn that the Obama administration knew that “al Qaeda terrorists had planned the Benghazi attack ten days in advance.” Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other senior level individuals including then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Obama White House National Security Council were given intelligence within hours of the Benghazi attackdescribing how it had been planned at least 10 days in advance “to kill as many Americans as possible.”

The heavily redacted Defense Department “information report” says that the attack on the Benghazi facility “was planned and executed by The Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman (BCOAR).” The group subscribes to “AQ ideologies:”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US-Assisted Wahhabi Bombings of Yemen are “Devastating”: UN

May 2, 2015

US-Assisted Wahhabi Bombings of Yemen are “Devastating”: UN

The UN Secretary General stated Thursday that Saudi bombings of Yemen, which are assisted and coordinated by the US, “are having a devastating impact on humanitarian aid efforts and are in violation of the laws of war.”

While noting that fighters within Yemen are also committing war-crimes – ISIS, for example, has been able to establish a presence in the country thanks to the Saudi campaign – the UN has “been particularly critical of the Saudi air strikes”, for which the “United States is providing aerial refueling and intelligence” from within and outside the Saudi-Wahhabi dictatorship’s territory, as well asrescuing Saudi pilots: “U.S. military assets ha[ve] been used to rescue two Saudi pilots” – McClatchy. (The US also evacuated its own government staff.)

While 8 countries, including India, China, and Russia, have carried out missions to rescue thousands of their civilian nationals, as well as foreign nationals and some Americans from the Yemen war zone, the Obama regime, recalling Bush’s treatment of hurricane Katrina refugees, refuses to evacuate any of the3 to 4,000 US civilians trapped in Yemen, despite US-lawsuits calling on Obama to do so.

The UN said that “more than 1,200 people have been killed in the past six weeks of fighting and that 300,000 have fled their homes.”

Antiwar.com reports that US-backed Saudi aggression “has provided an opportunity for AQAP [al Qaeda] and ISIS to gain ground”, as the Houthis, a domestic Yemeni movement opposed to al Qaeda, had previously prevented the Saudi-supported groups from gaining a foothold.

Why Is Washington Supporting Saudi Arabia’s Massacre In Yemen?

April 25, 2015

Why Is Washington Supporting Saudi Arabia’s Massacre In Yemen?

For a month now, the Saudi air force has been bombing Yemen to reverse a takeover of that nation of 25 million by Houthi rebels, and reinstall a president who fled his country and is residing in Riyadh.

The Saudis have hit airfields, armor and arms depots, and caused a humanitarian catastrophe. Nearly 1,000 dead, 3,500 wounded and tens of thousands homeless. The poorest nation in the Arab world is near collapse. Dependent upon imported food, Yemen faces malnutrition and starvation.

And the United States has been an accomplice in the Saudi bombing of Yemen.

Why? Why is Yemen’s civil war America’s war?

What did the Houthis ever do to us?

While they bear us no love, their Houthi rebellion was an uprising against a pair of autocrats who had been imposed upon them, and against al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

The Houthis’ main enemy, AQAP, is America’s worst enemy.

Why are we then making ourselves de facto allies of al-Qaida?

For while the Saudis have been bombing the Houthis, easing the pressure on al-Qaida, AQAP effected a prison break of 270 inmates, including scores of terrorists, and seized the port of Mukalla.

The Saudis claim the Houthi rebellion is part of an Iranian Shiite scheme to overrun and dominate the Sunni Middle East.

But Pakistan is not buying it, and not sending troops. The Egyptians seem reluctant to enlist. Nor is there hard evidence Iran armed or incited the Houthis who have been fighting for years. Tehran reportedly advised the rebels not to take the city of Aden, and is calling for a ceasefire and peace talks.

Saudi propaganda portrays the Middle East as caught up in a great Muslim struggle, with a Shiite Crescent led by Iran seeking to swallow up the Sunni states.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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