Uprooted Palestinian: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM – سلام القدس عليكم

Saturday, 19 December 2015

International Military Review - Syria-Iraq battlespace, Dec. 16, 2015

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

Iran: “We have infiltrated enemy intelligence agencies”

Syrian Free Press

Official: Iran Has Inside Men in Enemy Spy Agencies

(FNA) ~ A senior Iranian official revealed that the country’s intelligence agents have found a way into the spy agencies of those countries that have taken a hard line on the Islamic Republic.

“We have infiltrated the enemy’s spy agencies,” Chief of the Supreme Leader’s Office for Ideological and Political Affairs Hojjatoleslam Gholamreza Safayee said in Tehran on Tuesday.

Safayee did not disclose any further details, citing the secret nature of the operation.

Yet, he said that the capture of the executed ringleader of Jundollah terrorist group four years ago was the result of the same inside job in the secret services of the enemies.

In relevant remarks in August, Iranian Intelligence Minister Seyed Mahmoud Alavi warned that the western, Israeli and certain regional countries’ spy agencies had hatched plots to create insecurity in Iran.

“The intelligence services of the US, Israel, Mossad, MI6 and certain regional states are making attempts to challenge the Islamic Republic’s security and it is hard for them to see that the sound of blasts is heard in any corner of the world but not in the Islamic Republic and to see that it is a secure island,” Alavi said in an interview with the state TV.

He also referred to the attempts made by terrorist groups, including the Takfiri terrorists, to harm the Islamic Republic’s security, and said fortunately the Iranian security forces’ intelligence superiority and efforts thwarted all their plots.

Also, in March, top Military Aide to the Iranian Supreme Leader Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi said agents of some 17 foreign spy agencies have sought to foment dissent and unrest in Iran’s oil-rich Southwestern province of Khuzestan.

General Rahim Safavi said that “17 regional and trans-regional intelligence services affiliated to the Arab and western states” are running operations “in support of ethnic separatist groups to sow discord among the local people” in Khuzestan.

He said “the Arab and European secret services are supporting separatist groups with financial and political backups” to stir unrest through fomenting sectarian strife in the bordering province.

In relevant remarks in January, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei underlined that the enemy’s intelligence agencies were behind the plots hatched against Muslims.

“The hands that sow discord among Shiites and Sunnis are linked to the spy services of the enemies of Islam,” said the Supreme Leader in a meeting with a group of people and the delegates who participated in the Islamic Unity Conference Tehran.

Ayatollah Khamenei reiterated that the Western-style teachings alleged to be Islamic were in fact against Islam.

“The (so-called) Shiism linked to the UK’s MI6 is not real Shiite Islam, nor is the (so-called) Sunnism, but they are both are against Islam,” the Supreme Leader said.

Ayatollah Khamenei, meantime, called on the Muslim nations to close ranks and foster their unity.

The Supreme Leader noted that certain Middle East states which were pursuing a hostile approach vis-à-vis Iran had set foot in the wrong path.

“Some regional countries have based their foreign policies on observing animosity against Iran, but that is a big mistake and contradictory to the rule of sound mind and rationalism,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, adding,“Establishment of friendly relations with Muslim and neighboring countries is the basis of the Iranian foreign policy”.

SOURCES:
Fars News
Submitted by Cem Ertür 
War Press Info Network at:
https://syrianfreepress.wordpress.com/2015/12/16/iran-inside-enemies/
~

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

TERRORISTS ROUTED IN LATAKIA AGAIN AS SYRIAN ARMY REACHES TURK BORDER

Ziad Fadel

LATAKIA: More news pouring in as the terrorist rats of Nusra/Alqaeda eat dirt while running for cover in Erdogan’s Turk-Occupied Syria (Hatay). We can confirm the liberation of the following areas:

Elevation 754.5

SyriaTel Tower

Al-Aswad Al-Kabeer Mountain

‘Utayra on the Turk border

The Syrian Army has expanded its artillery control over these areas:

Bayt Malik

Al-Qantara

Bayt Shurooq

Al-Khadhraa`

Zaahiya

Al-Kubayr

Al-Sawwaaf

Qal’at Bujaak

_______________________________________________________

PHOTO OF THE DAY: DR. ASSAD AND THE FIRST LADY, ASMAA` AL-ASSAD, VISIT THE CHURCH OF THE LADY OF DAMASCUS TO CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS WITH THE CHRISTIANS OF THE CAPITAL:

زيارة مفاجئة للرئيس الأسد والسيدة أسماء إلى ‏كنيسة سيدة ‏دمشق

Would that reeking, syphilitic pig, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdaadi, do this? Would Abu Muhammad Al-Jawlaani? Would the Wahhabist heretics allow a church on their holy sands? Hardly. This is the face of secular Syria.

Read more

Syrian Army Establishes Control over Strategic al-Sayyed Mountain in Lattakia

The Syrian Arab army is advancing further in the northern countryside of Lattakia among other areas, killing more terrorists and destroying their heavy weaponry, SANA agency reported.

With cooperation from the popular defense groups, the army established control over the strategic al-Sayyed Mountain in the northern countryside of Lattakia province,” a military source announced on Thursday.

Terrorists positioned in the area were fired at intensively, with many of them getting killed and the rest escaped, the source told SANA.

During combing operations in the mountain, the army units dismantled many explosive devices and mines planted by terrorists and found at its foot a 50 m tunnel equipped with lighting that contained vehicles and equipment used by the terrorists to dig trenches and tunnels to hinder the army’s advance in the region, according to the source.

The new achievement came one day after the army established control over the strategic al-Noubeh Mountain in Lattakia northern countryside.


Source: Agencies	18-12-2015 - 16:57 Last updated 18-12-2015 - 16:57

Related Videos

Related Articles

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

A Blind Eye Toward Turkey’s Crimes

Source

The alleged ties between Turkish President Erdogan and Islamist terrorists in Syria is an embarrassment for the Obama administration and the U.S. news media, which would prefer to look the other way rather than face up to the danger created by an out-of-control NATO “ally.”

Theoretically, it would be a great story for the American press: an autocrat so obsessed with overthrowing the leader of a neighboring country that he authorizes his intelligence services to collaborate with terrorists in staging a lethal sarin attack to be blamed on his enemy and thus trick major powers to launch punishing bombing raids against the enemy’s military.

And, after that scheme failed to achieve the desired intervention, the autocrat continues to have his intelligence services aid terrorists inside the neighboring country by providing weapons and safe transit for truck convoys carrying the terrorists’ oil to market. The story gets juicier because the autocrat’s son allegedly shares in the oil profits.

To make the story even more compelling, an opposition leader braves the wrath of the autocrat by seeking to expose these intelligence schemes, including the cover-up of key evidence. The autocrat’s government then seeks to prosecute the critic for “treason.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

But the problem with this story, as far as the American government and press are concerned, is that the autocratic leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is in charge of Turkey, a NATO ally and his hated neighbor is the much demonized Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Major U.S. news outlets and political leaders also bought into the sarin deception and simply can’t afford to admit that they once again misled the American people on a matter of war.

The Official Story of the sarin attack – as presented by Secretary of State John Kerry, Human Rights Watch and other “respectable” sources – firmly laid the blame for the Aug. 21, 2013 atrocity killing hundreds of civilians outside Damascus on Assad. That became a powerful “group think” across Official Washington.

Though a few independent media outlets, including Consortiumnews.com, challenged the rush to judgment and noted the lack of evidence regarding Assad’s guilt, those doubts were brushed aside. (In an article on Aug. 30, 2013, I described the administration’s “Government Assessment” blaming Assad as a “dodgy dossier,” which offered not a single piece of verifiable proof.)

However, as with the “certainty” about Iraq’s WMD a decade earlier, Every Important Person shared the Assad-did-it “group think.” That meant — as far as Official Washington was concerned — that Assad had crossed President Barack Obama’s “red line” against using chemical weapons. A massive U.S. retaliatory bombing strike was considered just days away.

But Obama – at the last minute – veered away from launching those military attacks, with Official Washington concluding that Obama had shown “weakness” by not following through. What was virtually unreported was that U.S. intelligence analysts had doubts about Assad’s guilt and suspected a trap being laid by extremists.

Despite those internal questions, the U.S. government and the compliant mainstream media publicly continued to push the Assad-did-it propaganda line. In a formal address to the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 24, 2013, Obama declared, “It’s an insult to human reason and to the legitimacy of this institution to suggest that anyone other than the regime carried out this attack.”

Later, a senior State Department official tried to steer me toward the Assad-is-guilty assessment of a British blogger then known as Moses Brown, a pseudonym for Eliot Higgins, who now runs an outfit called Bellingcat which follows an effective business model by reinforcing whatever the U.S. propaganda machine is churning out on a topic, except having greater credibility by posing as a “citizen blogger.” [For more on Higgins, see Consortiumnews.com’s “‘MH-17 Case: ‘Old Journalism’ vs. ‘New’.”]

The supposedly conclusive proof against Assad came in a “vector analysis” developed by Human Rights Watch and The New York Times – tracing the flight paths of two rockets back to a Syrian military base northwest of Damascus. But that analysis collapsed when it became clear that only one of the rockets carried sarin and its range was less than one-third the distance between the army base and the point of impact. That meant the rocket carrying the sarin appeared to have originated in rebel territory.

But the “group think” was resistant to all empirical evidence. It was so powerful that even when the Turkish plot was uncovered by legendary investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh, his usual publication, The New Yorker, refused to print it. Rebuffed in the United States – the land of freedom of the press – Hersh had to take the story to the London Review of Books to get it out in April 2014. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Was Turkey Behind Syria Sarin Attack?”]

The Easier Route

It remained easier for The New York Times, The Washington Post and other premier news outlets to simply ignore the compelling tale of possible Turkish complicity in a serious war crime. After all, what would the American people think if – after the mainstream media had failed to protect the country against the lies that led to the disastrous Iraq War – the same star news sources had done something similar on Syria by failing to ask tough questions?

It’s also now obvious that if Obama had ordered a retaliatory bombing campaign against Assad in 2013, the likely winners would have been the Islamic State and Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front, which would have had the path cleared for their conquest of Damascus, creating a humanitarian catastrophe even worse than the current one.

To confess to such incompetence or dishonesty clearly had a big down-side. So, the “smart” play was to simply let the old Assad-did-it narrative sit there as something that could still be cited obliquely from time to time under the phrase “Assad gassed his own people” and thus continue to justify the slogan: “Assad must go!”

But that imperative – not to admit another major mistake – means that the major U.S. news media also must ignore the courageous statements from Eren Erdem, a deputy of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), who has publicly accused the Erdogan government of blocking an investigation into Turkey’s role in procuring the sarin allegedly delivered to Al Qaeda-connected terrorists for use inside Syria.

In statements before parliament and to journalists, Erdem cited a derailed indictment that was begun by the General Prosecutor’s Office in the southern Turkish city of Adana, with the criminal case number 2013/120.

Erdem said the prosecutor’s office, using technical surveillance, discovered that an Al Qaeda jihadist named Hayyam Kasap acquired the sarin.

At the press conference, Erdem said, “Wiretapped phone conversations reveal the process of procuring the gas at specific addresses as well as the process of procuring the rockets that would fire the capsules containing the toxic gas. However, despite such solid evidence there has been no arrest in the case. Thirteen individuals were arrested during the first stage of the investigation but were later released, refuting government claims that it is fighting terrorism.”

Erdem said the released operatives were allowed to cross the border into Syria and the criminal investigation was halted.

Another CHP deputy, Ali Şeker, added that the Turkish government misled the public by claiming Russia provided the sarin and that “Assad killed his people with sarin and that requires a U.S. military intervention in Syria.”

Erdem’s disclosures, which he repeated in a recent interview with RT, the Russian network, prompted the Ankara Prosecutor’s Office to open an investigation into Erdem for treason. Erdem defended himself, saying the government’s actions regarding the sarin case besmirched Turkey’s international reputation. He added that he also has been receiving death threats.

“The paramilitary organization Ottoman Hearths is sharing my address [on Twitter] and plans a raid [on my house]. I am being targeted with death threats because I am patriotically opposed to something that tramples on my country’s prestige,” Erdem said.

ISIS Oil Smuggling

Meanwhile, President Erdogan faces growing allegations that he tolerated the Islamic State’s lucrative smuggling of oil from wells in Syria through border crossings in Turkey. Those oil convoys were bombed only last month when Russian President Vladimir Putin essentially shamed President Obama into taking action against this important source of Islamic State revenues.

Though Obama began his bombing campaign against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria in summer 2014, the illicit oil smuggling was spared interdiction for over a year as the U.S. government sought cooperation from Erdogan, who recently acknowledged that the Islamic State and other jihadist groups are using nearly 100 kilometers of Turkey’s border to bring in recruits and supplies.

Earlier this month, Obama said he has had “repeated conversations with President Erdogan about the need to close the border between Turkey and Syria,” adding that “there’s about 98 kilometers that are still used as a transit point for foreign fighters, ISIL [Islamic State] shipping out fuel for sale that helps finance their terrorist activities.”

Russian officials expressed shock that the Islamic State was allowed to continue operating an industrial-style delivery system involving hundreds of trucks carrying oil into Turkey. Moscow also accused Erdogan’s 34-year-old son, Bilal Erdogan, of profiting off the Islamic State’s oil trade, an allegation that he denied.

The Russians say Bilal Erdogan is one of three partners in the BMZ Group, a Turkish oil and shipping company that has purchased oil from the Islamic State. The Malta Independent reported that BMZ purchased two oil tanker ships from the Malta-based Oil Transportation & Shipping Services Co Ltd, which is owned by Azerbaijani billionaire Mubariz Mansimov.

Another three oil tankers purchased by BMZ were acquired from Palmali Shipping and Transportation Agency, which is also owned by Mansimov and which shares the same Istanbul address with Oil Transportation & Shipping Services, which is owned by Mansimov’s Palmali Group, along with dozens of other companies set up in Malta.

The Russians further assert that Turkey’s shoot-down of a Russian Su-24 bomber along the Syrian-Turkish border on Nov. 24 – which led to the murder of the pilot, by Turkish-backed rebels, as he parachuted to the ground and to the death of a Russian marine on a rescue operation – was motivated by Erdogan’s fury over the destruction of his son’s Islamic State oil operation.

Erdogan has denied that charge, claiming the shoot-down was simply a case of defending Turkish territory, although, according to the Turkish account, the Russian plane strayed over a slice of Turkish territory for only 17 seconds. The Russians dispute even that, calling the attack a premeditated ambush.

President Obama and the mainstream U.S. press sided with Turkey, displaying almost relish at the deaths of Russians in Syria and also showing no sympathy for the Russian victims of an earlier terrorist bombing of a tourist flight over Sinai in Egypt. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Obama Ignores Russian Terror Victims.”]

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman expressed the prevailing attitude of Official Washington by ridiculing anyone who had praised Putin’s military intervention in Syria or who thought the Russian president was “crazy like a fox,” Friedman wrote: “Some of us thought he was just crazy.

“Well, two months later, let’s do the math: So far, Putin’s Syrian adventure has resulted in a Russian civilian airliner carrying 224 people being blown up, apparently by pro-ISIS militants in Sinai. Turkey shot down a Russian bomber after it strayed into Turkish territory. And then Syrian rebels killed one of the pilots as he parachuted to earth and one of the Russian marines sent to rescue him.”

Taking Sides

The smug contempt that the mainstream U.S. media routinely shows toward anything involving Russia or Putin may help explain the cavalier disinterest in NATO member Turkey’s reckless behavior. Though Turkey’s willful shoot-down of a Russian plane that was not threatening Turkey could have precipitated a nuclear showdown between Russia and NATO, criticism of Erdogan was muted at most.

Similarly, neither the Obama administration nor the mainstream media wants to address the overwhelming evidence that Turkey – along with other U.S. “allies” such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar – have been aiding and abetting Sunni jihadist groups, including Al Qaeda and Islamic State, for years. Instead, Official Washington plays along with the fiction that Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others are getting serious about combating terrorism.

The contrary reality is occasionally blurted out by a U.S. official or revealed when a U.S. intelligence report gets leaked or declassified. For instance, in 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted in a confidential diplomatic memo, disclosed by Wikileaks, that “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.”

According to a Defense Intelligence Agency report from August 2012, “AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq, which later morphed into the Islamic State] supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the media. … AQI declared its opposition of Assad’s government because it considered it a sectarian regime targeting Sunnis.”

The DIA report added, “The salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria. … The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition.”

The DIA analysts already understood the risks that AQI presented both to Syria and Iraq. The report included a stark warning about the expansion of AQI, which was changing into the Islamic State. The brutal armed movement was seeing its ranks swelled by the arrival of global jihadists rallying to the black banner of Sunni militancy, intolerant of both Westerners and “heretics” from Shiite and other non-Sunni branches of Islam.

The goal was to establish a “Salafist principality in eastern Syria” where Islamic State’s caliphate is now located, and that this is “exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition” – i.e. the West, Gulf states, and Turkey – “want in order to isolate the Syrian regime,” the DIA report said.

In October 2014, Vice President Joe Biden told students at Harvard’s Kennedy School that “the Saudis, the emirates, etc. … were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war … [that] they poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of military weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad except the people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and Al Qaeda.”

Despite these occasional bursts of honesty, the U.S. government and the mainstream media have put their goal of having another “regime change” – this time in Syria – and their contempt for Putin ahead of any meaningful cooperation toward defeating the Islamic State and Al Qaeda.

This ordering of priorities further means there is no practical reason to revisit who was responsible for the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack. If Assad’s government was innocent and Ergogan’s government shared in the guilt, that would present a problem for NATO, which would have to decide if Turkey had crossed a “red line” and deserved being expelled from the military alliance.

But perhaps even more so, an admission that the U.S. government and the U.S. news media had rushed to another incorrect judgment in the Middle East – and that another war policy was driven by propaganda rather than facts – could destroy what trust the American people have left in those institutions. On a personal level, it might mean that the pundits and the politicians who were wrong about Iraq’s WMD would have to acknowledge that they had learned nothing from that disaster.

It might even renew calls for some of them – the likes of The New York Times’ Friedman and The Washington Post’s editorial page editor Fred Hiatt – to finally be held accountable for consistently misinforming and misleading the American people.

So, at least for now — from a perspective of self-interest — it makes more sense for the Obama administration and major news outlets to ignore the developing story of a NATO ally’s ties to terrorism, including an alleged connection to a grave war crime, the sarin attack outside Damascus.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s

Related Videos

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

Friday, 18 December 2015

Putin: No Outsider to Decide on Syria, Improving Ties with Turkey Not on Horizon

Local Editor

Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed that Russia's stance on Syria has not changed.

He stressed that only Syrian people are to decide their own fate.

"I have repeatedly stated and I am ready to stress once again: we will never agree with the idea that a third party, whoever this party is, has the right to impose its will on another country. This does not make any sense. This is a violation of international legal standards," Putin said.

In his major end-of-the-year press conference, Putin also added that he discussed the Syrian crisis with John Kerry during his Moscow visit.

"As soon as we notice the political process has begun, and the Syrian government decides it is time to stop the airstrikes, [we are going to stop]. We are not going to be more Syrians than Syrians themselves. We don't need this, do we? The sooner it [the process] starts the better," Putin said.

Putin added that Russia will support any Syria till the political process starts as it is very important to get all parties concerned to negotiate.

On the crisis with Turkey, he said "sees no prospect" of improving relations with the current leadership of Turkey after it downed a Russian jet bomber last month.

"It is hard for us to reach agreement with the current Turkish leadership, if at all possible," Putin added. The Russian President further stated that the downing of the Russian warplane was "an act of enmity" and he did not understand why Turkey did it.

"What have they achieved? Maybe, they thought that we would run away from there [Syria]? But Russia is not such a country."

Putin added that his country was prepared to face any economic situation as the country's energy-dependent economy reels from lower oil prices.

"The government, of course, is preparing scenarios for any development of the situation," Putin said at his annual press conference in Moscow.

He said Russia had calculated its 2016 budget based an oil price of $50 per barrel, a figure he said was an "optimistic" assessment of the situation as the Brent hovered around $37.

"Volatility [in oil prices] is very high," Putin said "We will not hurry to recalculate and make adjustments to the budget because it entails a reduction in funding and in the social sphere and the real sector."

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team

17-12-2015 | 13:11

Related Videos

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

Islamic State or Wahhabi Colony?

ISIS' ideological source code can be found among America's allies in Riyadh.

Image: ISIS or Saudi Arabia? ISIS and Saudi Arabia.

December 16, 2015 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - A recent confab of so-called "Syrian rebels" took place recently in Saudi Arabia. Those attending included a collection of dysfunctional expatriate "opposition" leaders as well as commanders from various militant groups operating in Syria including Ahrar al-Sham and Jaysh al-Islam - both affiliates of Al Qaeda's Al Nusra Front - a US State Department designated foreign terrorist organization since 2012.

The BBC in its article, "Syria conflict: Divided opposition begins unity talks in Riyadh," would report:

More than 100 Syrian rebels and opposition politicians are meeting in Riyadh in an attempt to come up with a united front for possible peace talks.

As the conference in the Saudi capital began, one of the most powerful rebel groups struck an uncompromising tone.

Ahrar al-Sham insisted President Bashar al-Assad would have to face justice.

It also criticised the presence of Syria-based opposition figures tolerated by Mr Assad and the absence of al-Qaeda's affiliate in the country.

In other words, Ahrar al-Sham openly wanted Al Qaeda's Al Nusra Front in Riyadh as well - and along with Jaysh al-Islam, the only other militant group mentioned by name by the BBC as attending the confab - reveals that the entire so-called "opposition" are all direct affiliates of Al Qaeda - fighting alongside Al Qaeda on the battlefield and supporting them politically off of it.

Ahrar al-Sham and Jaysh al-Islam are part of the US and Saudi Arabia's wider shell game in which they train, fund, arm, and back Al Qaeda terrorists under a myriad of varying and constantly shifting aliases and front groups. The result has been Al Qaeda and ISIS' otherwise inexplicable rise upon and domination of the battlefield, not to mention a large and steady stream of US-provided weaponry and vehicles "falling into" Al Qaeda's hands.

Al Qaeda's Rise in Syria was the Plan All Along

Al Qaeda's original inception itself was a joint product of US-Saudi geopolitical ambitions. The Muslim Brotherhood, destroyed and scattered in Syria by Syrian President Bashar Al Assad's father, President Hafez Al Assad, was reorganized and sent to Afghanistan by the US and Saudi Arabia to fight a proxy war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

Since then, the group has serendipitously found itself engaged on every battlefield and in every region the US has sought to influence, whether it was in the Balkans and Chechnya, across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), or even as far flung as Southeast Asia.

Image; When the "Free Syrian Army," Al Qaeda "affiliates," and Al Qaeda itself become indistinguishable, it is probably a bad idea to continue backing them with training, cash, and weapons, unless that was the plan all along.

During the US occupation of Iraq, Al Qaeda would find itself playing a pivotal role dividing Iraqis against one another and confounding what was at first a unified Shia'a-Sunni front against the occupation. Terrorists were funded by Saudi Arabia and brought in from across the MENA region, including from the now infamous terror capital of Benghazi Libya, through NATO-member Turkey, and with the help of Syria's future opposition, through Syrian territory and finally into Iraq.

In 2007, it would be revealed that the US and Saudi Arabia were openly conspiring to use these terrorists again, this time to overthrow the governments of Syria and Iran. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his 2007, 9 page report, "The Redirection," would spell out in great detail not only how this was being planned, but the sectarian bloodbath it would almost certainly precipitate.

Come 2011, when the first shots were fired in the Syrian conflict, those who have been paying close attention to Al Qaeda knew that from the very beginning, Hersh's prophetic report was finally being fulfilled. The sectarian bloodbath he predicted in 2007, became a horrific reality from 2011 onward, and there was no question that after the West's intentionally deceptive spin regarding just who the opposition was faded, it would emerge that it was Al Qaeda all along.

In fact, the US State Department's own statement designating Al Nusra as a foreign terrorist organization admits that even from the beginning, it was conducting nationwide operations.

The statement would claim:

Since November 2011, al-Nusrah Front has claimed nearly 600 attacks – ranging from more than 40 suicide attacks to small arms and improvised explosive device operations – in major city centers including Damascus, Aleppo, Hamah, Dara, Homs, Idlib, and Dayr al-Zawr. During these attacks numerous innocent Syrians have been killed. Through these attacks, al-Nusrah has sought to portray itself as part of the legitimate Syrian opposition while it is, in fact, an attempt by AQI to hijack the struggles of the Syrian people for its own malign purposes.

The last point is particularly interesting, since not only did the US State Department claim Al Nusra sought to portray itself as part of the legitimate Syrian opposition, groups the US claims are the legitimate opposition have also attempted to portray Al Nusra as such.

Al Nusra and ISIS' rise to prominence was not the result of US foreign policy backfiring in Syria, it was the result of US foreign policy working precisely as planned.

Hersh's article would claim that US and and Saudi efforts to create an armed opposition with which to overthrow the Syrian government would have the predictable consequence of "the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda."

And that is precisely what happened.

ISIS is a Wahhabi Colony

Having failed to overwhelm Syria in the opening phases of the proxy war in 2011, "deconstructing Syria" is the secondary objective. Carving out a region influenced by Washington's principle Kurdish proxy, Masoud Barzani, and a Saudi-Qatari-Turkish sphere of influence dominated by Al Qaeda appear to be the current focus of Western ambitions in the region. A divided, weakened Syria still serves the purpose of further isolating and weakening Iran in the region.

Saudi Arabia has proved over the decades to be an extremely pliable client state. Attempts to replicate this, even on a smaller scale in Syria and Iraq would be ideal. Having a Saudi-Qatari-Turkish arc of influence from the Black Sea to the Persian Gulf would be as ideal for Washington as a Shia'a arc of influence would be to Syria, Lebanon's Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia.

Image: Until recently when Russia began interdicting them, hundreds of trucks a day would cross with impunity the Turkish-Syrian border bound for ISIS territory laden with weapons and supplies to bolster the aspiring "state."

ISIS then, serves as a means to "colonize" parts of Iraq and Syria with the very same toxic ideology that has prevailed for so long in Riyadh - Wahhabism - an extreme perversion of Islam created to serve the House of Saud's own interests as far back as the 1700s.

Wahhabism was a means to indoctrinate and differentiate followers from mainstream Islam. This was necessary because its primary sponsors, the House of Saud, sought to use it as a means of achieving regional conquests and long-term regional domination. It green-lighted forms of barbarism, violence, and war strictly prohibited under Islam and relatively absent among the Saudis' neighbors.

It has been used ever since as a means of filling the House of Saud's rank and file with obedient, eager extremists ready to fight unquestionably for Saudi Arabia's self-serving interests, and constitutes the cornerstone upon which the Saudis and their sponsors on Wall Street and in Washington maintain their grip on power within their borders, and influence the world beyond them. ISIS then, represents the export of this toxic ideology, not in the form of a shadowy terrorist group, but as a full-fledged army and "state." The similarities between ISIS and the House of Saud, even superficially, are difficult to ignore.

Saudi Arabia beheads offenders of all kinds, ISIS beheads offenders of all kinds. Saudi Arabia does not tolerate opposition of any kind, ISIS doesn't tolerate opposition of any kind. Women, minorities, and political enemies are stripped of anything resembling human rights in Saudi Arabia, and likewise by ISIS. In fact, besides geographical location, it is difficult to make and distinction at all between the two. That the two are inexorably linked politically, financially, ideologically, and strategically makes the case that the so-called "Islamic State" is actually nothing more than a Wahhabi colony, all the more compelling.

What is perhaps more damning than this superficial examination, or even deductions made regarding ISIS' obvious logistical lines leading to NATO-member Turkey and Saudi Arabia itself, is the fact that official documents from the US Department of Intelligence Agency (DIA), drafted in 2012 (.pdf) quite literally admitted:

If the situation unravels 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).

To clarify just who these "supporting powers" were that sought the creation of a "Salafist principality," the DIA report explains:

The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime.

It is clear that - just as was planned since 2007 regarding the rise of Al Qaeda in Syria - the rise of a "Salafist" (Islamic) "principality" (State) was planned and pursued by the United States and its allies, including, and specifically Turkey and Saudi Arabia - with Turkey supplying logistical support, and Saudi Arabia supplying the ideological source code.

Image: Terrorist homecoming - various strains of Al Qaeda return to their source code, the Wahhabi capital of Riyadh and their paymasters, the Saudi regime. The US, while placing sanctions on other nations for much lesser alleged transgressions, doesn't seem to mind its ally and weapons customer literally inviting Al Qaeda terrorists to its capital for a meeting about future collaboration.

For those wondering why the United States has spent over a year bombing Syria allegedly to "fight ISIS" but has yet to make any progress, the fact that the US intentionally created the organization to gut Syria and would like to delay the liquidation of the terrorist army as long as possible until that occurs may provide a viable explanation.

For those wondering why Russia and the regime in Ankara are on the brink of war just as ISIS' supply lines near the Turkish border with Syria are threatened, the fact that Turkey created and has gone through extraordinary measures to ensure those lines are maintained may also be a viable explanation.

And for those wondering why Saudi Arabia is inviting obvious accomplices of Al Qaeda to its capital, Riyadh, for a confab about Syria's future, it is precisely because Saudi Arabia played a leading role in creating Al Qaeda as a means of influencing Syria's future to begin with - a conspiracy it is still very much, clearly involved in and a conspiracy the United States doesn't seem troubled leading along.

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