From today’s front pages, starting a third Iraq War and the blame game is on …

The Fatal Flaw in the Fight Against ISIS

Even now, after they have signed up to the US-led coalition against  (ISIL) , the Turks are conflicted. The government worries about the export of Isis terrorism to Istanbul. More importantly, it wants to avoid making a choice between defeating (ISIL) and removing the Syrian government.

Such tensions are not uniquely Turkish, the writer went on to say, adding that like ‘glorious Istanbul’, everyone in the region is ‘looking in two directions.’ Saudi aircraft are flying sorties against ISIL fighters, but Saudi Arabia remains the principal source of the fundamentalist theology that is the foundation stone for the jihadis.

[Source FT authored by Philip Stephens]

A few days ago, Bob Graham pushed the same theme, blaming the Saudis for ISIL. More falsehoods from our chief propagandist and the person responsible for Obama’s foreign policy in Iraq and the Ukraine …

Biden Blames US Allies in Middle East for Rise of ISIL

US Vice-President Joe Biden has accused America’s key allies in the Middle East of allowing the rise of the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant terrorist group, saying they supported extremists with money and weapons in their eagerness to oust the Assad regime in Syria.

America’s “biggest problem” in Syria is its regional allies, Biden told students at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University.

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Vice President Joe Biden speaks to students faculty and staff at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Mass. on Oct. 2, 2014. In Panetta's forthcoming memoir, Worthy Fights, excerpted in this week's TIME, the former Pentagon chief takes issue with Obama's handling of the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and the subsequent rise of ISIS in Syria. (Photo credit Time Magazine)

“Our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria,” he said, explaining that Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were “so determined to take down Assad,” that in a sense they started a “proxy Sunni-Shia war” by pouring “hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons” towards anyone who would fight against Assad. [The US initiated the “proxy Sunni-Shia war” in March 2003 by bombing Saddam Hussein and invading Iraq. Appears no one is blaming the Bush-Cheney junta before elections this fall. – Oui]

“And we could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them,” said Biden, thus disassociating the US from unleashing the civil war in Syria. [The Obama administration is fully responsible for the Libyan echec and the Syrian quagmire, and it ain’t over yet – Oui]

“The outcome of such a policy now is more visible,” he said, as it turned out they supplied extremists from Al-Nusra Front and Al-Qaeda.

No one seems willing to speak up about the role of Israel in the Middle-East turmoil. The United States is a close ally and coordinate its ME policy with Israel and its leaders and establishment wherever it may reside.

Read on below the fold …

Israel lobby supports US designated terror group Jabhat Al-Nusra | MoA |

Israel gives cover and opened a corridor for Jabhat al-Nusra along the Golan height demarcation line to reach south Lebanon and the southern approaches to Damascus.

There seems to be no concern in Tel Aviv that one day Jabhat al-Nusra could turn against Israel too. That is somewhat astonishing as both Hizbullah and Hamas started with Israeli support as counterweights to the Palestinian Liberation Organization only to later become the most capable foes of the Israeli occupation forces. One might have thought that Israeli strategists had learned from such foolishness.

But obviously they have not and now their U.S. lobby, in form of the Washington Institute, supports that dumb policy by calling for further support for the Al-Qaida affiliate.  

Israel downs Syrian aircraft attacking rebels on Golan Heights
by Joel Greenberg | McClatchy | Sept. 23, 2014 |

Israel on Tuesday shot down a Syrian fighter jet that it said had flown into Israeli-controlled airspace over the Golan Heights. The Russian-made Sukhoi-24 fighter was targeted with a U.S.-supplied Patriot ground-to-air missile after it had “infiltrated into Israeli airspace,” the Israeli army said.

An unidentified senior military official told Israel Radio said that the downed plane was apparently on a mission against Syrian rebels who in recent weeks have seized areas near the frontier with the Israeli-held Golan.

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli army spokesman, said that the plane had penetrated about half a mile into Israeli-controlled airspace and was hit over Syrian territory after it had turned back.

    “The timing is split-second, and the area is so small that there is little room for mistake. That’s why immediate interception is required.”

American Hostage Released by Al Nusra Front on Golan Heights
by Oui @BooMan on Aug. 24, 2014

The Qatar-based Al Jazeera television network, which first reported the release, said Qatar had played a key role in the negotiations. It did not give details, but Qatar has been central to a number of hostage releases in Syria in recent months.

In one release negotiated by Qatar last year, Lebanese captives in rebel custody were exchanged for prisoners held by the Syrian government. Earlier this year, a group of Syrian nuns held by Jabhat al-Nusra also were released in return for prisoners held by the government.

Anti-Assad rebels said to seize 95% of Syrian Golan Heights | Times of Israel | June 2014 |

Israel Destroyed Syrian Weapons Depot In Latakia Containing Advanced Russian Arms  
by Richard Silverstein | Global Research / Tikun Olam | July 2013 |

A massive explosion last Thursday at a major Syrian weapons depot in Latakia, not far from the main port of Tartus, completely destroyed the facility and munitions stored there. Though the Free Syrian Army took immediate credit for the attack, it was not the responsible party.

Tartus is Syria’s main port.  It is largely controlled by the Russian military, and the route by which all weapons transported by sea would enter Syria.  A confidential Israeli source informs me that Israeli forces attacked the site.  The target were components of Russia’s SA-300 anti-aircraft missile system which had been shipped by Russia to Tartus and stored in Latakia.

Israel and exerted tremendous pressure on Vladimir Putin to cancel its contract to supply the missile batteries to Syria, since once they were operational they would render Israeli aircraft more vulnerable to attack.

This is Israel’s third attack inside Syria since January. It considerably escalates the conflict there since it is the first known attack by Israeli forces which destroyed Russian armaments.

Came across a thoughtful stance that deserves to be mentioned …

A direst question: “Are you an isolationist?” by Andrew Sullivan

At a speech the other night, I was asked a direct question: “Are you an isolationist?” I’ve never been asked that question before and I found myself wanting to say yes, just to stir shit up. But in a moment of restraint, I did say yes in the current case, but not always. I’m against isolationism if there is something we can do that actually works. But no amount of moral outrage at outright evil makes any sense if there’s nothing we can really do to stop it. Or indeed if our intervention will actually make things worse. As it has in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Readers have asked me what I would do if I were president in this case. My answer is nothing. I would tell the country that this is a consequence of the Iraq War, and that if we could not really quell a Sunni insurgency with a hundred thousands troops on the ground for nearly a decade, then air-strikes are not going to do a thing now. I’d insist that the neighboring Sunni states will have to deal with this themselves – or allow Iran to handle it. If a regional Sunni-Shi’a war is the result, we can always hope that both sides will lose. Invading Iraq was not Obama’s responsibility; his responsibility was to get us out and to stay out. Once Syria’s WMDs had been taken out of the country, it would be a regional conflagration – like the Syrian civil war that has already cost 200,000 lives, or the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.

Yes, we should tighten our defenses; yes, we should deal firmly with any Americans who are going to fight there; yes, we should perhaps intervene from a distance if one side seemed to be gaining the upper hand too much. (Our real interest is in bolstering the one stable power in the region, which is Iran.) But basically: leave these insane, foul, sectarian conflagrations to those who fight them. Above all, do not make this a war between Islam and the West. Let it be what it is: a war of Islam against itself.

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