Turkey – […] Kerry has been touring the Middle East to build support for President Barack Obama’s plan, announced on Wednesday, to strike both sides of the Syrian-Iraqi frontier to defeat Islamic State Sunni fighters, who control swathes of both countries.
On Thursday, Kerry won backing for a “coordinated military campaign” against Islamic State from 10 Arab countries – Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and six Gulf states including rich rivals Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
But it remains far from clear what role individual nations will play and while he confirmed France’s commitment to use military force in Iraq, Kerry declined to say whether France would join a similar campaign in Syria.
That follows conflicting reports in key ally Britain over its potential role, with Prime Minister David Cameron on Thursday saying he has not ruled out military action in Syria after his foreign secretary said Britain would not take part in any air strikes there. (more…)
The State Department and White House avoid the word “war” because they’ve already declared the “war on terror” over, so naturally they cannot take military advice to combat a terror threat…
WASHINGTON DC – As he laid out his strategy to combat the Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria, President Obama rejected the “best military advice” of his top military commander in the Middle East.
Quoting two U.S. military officials, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), said “that his best military advice was to send a modest contingent of American troops, principally Special Operations forces, to advise and assist Iraqi army units in fighting the militants.”
Austin’s recommendation was taken to the White House by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey. The White House rejected CENTCOM’s “advise and assist” contingent due to concerns about placing U.S. ground forces in a frontline role. (more…)
As previously stated, there is no ideological distance between President Obama and Recep Erdogan. Absent of plummeting polling numbers, which handcuff his ability to continue domestic agenda items, President Obama would NOT be fighting ISIS. For seven years we have watched the relationship between Erdogan and Obama as it flourished into a bromance of Sunni favoritism. As expected Turkey will not participate in attacks against it’s ideological compatriots, ISIS. Makes you wonder why Secretary John Kerry is even bothering with the trip. TURKEY – Turkey will refuse to allow a U.S.-led coalition to attack jihadists in neighboring Iraq and Syria from its air bases, nor will it take part in combat operations against militants, a government official told AFP Thursday.
“Turkey will not be involved in any armed operation but will entirely concentrate on humanitarian operations,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
The decision echoes the country’s refusal to allow the U.S. to station 60,000 troops in Turkey in 2003 to invade Iraq from the north, which triggered a crisis between the two allies. (more…)
Tonight at 9:00pm Eastern President Obama will deliver a speech to the nation outlining his strategy to defeat a rising Islamic terror threat known as ISIS. Oddly some of the speech has already been leaked by the White House: UPDATE – FULL SPEECH VIDEO:
“With a new Iraqi government in place, and following consultations with allies abroad and Congress at home, I can announce that America will lead a broad coalition to roll back this terrorist threat. Our objective is clear: we will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy.
I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.
Rather, it is a “counter-terrorism campaign” that “will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out ISIL wherever they exist using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground,” he will say. It’s a strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, and is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years”.
It was only a few weeks ago, August 9th, when President Obama told the New York Times it was/is “a fantasy” to support “moderates” within Syria and expect them to be able to defeat radical Sunni Islamists. Now, it appears, he is reversing course and saying the previous “fantasy” will be his specific approach. (more…)
√ Step One – Tell New York Times : “It’s always been a fantasy,” he said, “this idea that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth.”
√ Step Ten – Construct marketing plan to sell the previously dismissed approach. We will now “provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth.” in Syria.
√ Step Eleven – Call in congressional leadership to inform them his MSNBC team has “got this” plan, are ready to sell it, and he doesn’t need congress. (link)
Step Twelve – Tell American electorate in prime-time speech to the nation how providing arms to the “moderate Syrian forces” will insure success in Syria.
The key issue is not that ISIS is using U.S. made weapons. Given ISIS geographic conquests it would be expected, vis-à-vis Iraq, they were able to capture weapons and armament. No, it’s the *type* of weapons, specifically boxed M16’s, which identifies the covert shipments to Syria we outlined within the Benghazi Brief.
In 2012 those small arms were shipped to Syria as a result of President Obama’s authorization. Saudi Arabia and Qatar were providing the financing, Turkey provided an initial storage base near Adana where the nerve center for supporting what became ISIS was set up. The UN peacekeeper Kofi Annan was pulled out of Syria, and U.S. weapons were poured in.
(Via Raw Story) Islamic State fighters appear to be using captured US military issue arms and weapons supplied to moderate rebels in Syria by Saudi Arabia, according to a report published on Monday.
The study by the London-based small-arms research organisation Conflict Armament Research documented weapons seized by Kurdish forces from militants in Iraq and Syria over a 10-day period in July.
The report said the jihadists disposed of “significant quantities” of US-made small arms including M16 assault rifles and included photos showing the markings “Property of US Govt”.(more…)
Not to put too fine a point on it, yet knowing President Polling is going to deliver a magnanimous prime-time speech in a few days, the Syrian conversation with Chuck Todd needs, or, well, deserves a little e-x-p-a-n-s-i-o-n.
During a rather revealing part of the interview between Chuck Todd and President Obama the specific issue of Syria came up surrounding ISIS. Viewers should note in the entire dialogue it was not Obama who brought up Syria, it was Chuck Todd. (Video @9:20)
Mr. Todd even seemed a little perplexed with having to do it; albeit reluctantly, as if he knew he needed to. If Chuck Todd’s new role on MTP is to attempt credibility retention he held no choice, he had to bring up the geography. Todd specifically needed to ask, because Dear Leader avoided mentioning Syria throughout the previous ten minutes:
@09:25 President Obama: “the boots on the ground have to be Syrian”.
Chuck Todd interjects “but WHO”?
President Obama has publicly committed himself to the removal of Syrian head Basher Assad. His public proclamations to Assad’s removal make getting cooperation from the Syrian National Army a little disingenuous amid the option scale.
Additionally we know the Free Syrian Army (FSA) is little more than a corrupted fractured contingent of ne’er-do-wells, most of which defected to join ISIS. And then we have Dear Leader’s previous statements saying to the New York Times’ Tom Freidman it is “fantasy” to think “an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth” could battle “a well-armed state backed by Russia, backed by Iran, [and] a battle-hardened Hezbollah.”
So naturally Chuck Todd had to ask the question: Whose boots does Obama plan on supporting?
To wit POTUS puts three groups on the table: The Syrian national army, ISIS, and some weirdly defined “Moderate Opposition” – and then says we should support the moderate opposition who are “pinched between the Syrian Army and ISIS“.
STOP
{{Insert Scratching Record Sound}}}
Let’s just imagine a REAL REPORTER was sitting in that seat across from POTUS. (more…)
There are moments in edited TV content when a keyed-in viewer can see a cut intended to make a “comfort edit”, smoothing out the narrative. The Chuck Todd interview with President Obama was riddled with them. Even when being interviewed by a fellow ideological traveler.
But first to content: On ISIS: @00:24 “this administration has” – President Obama using third person distancing tactic discussing an uncomfortable negative. When the topic is positive, or viewed as favorable currency, the term “my administration” is used. @01:05 “what I have done over the past several months” – President Obama knowing he was caught flat-footed, having called ISIS “JV”, and having admitted not having a strategy is now trying to give appearance of them having been working on this all along. @01:45 “the next phase, is to start going on some offense” – Again, framing incompetence as if there was a previous outline/plan in place. This is similar to the re-writing of the Syrian RED LINE strategy, ‘yeah, yeah, we, um, we meant to um, create that Russian intervention WMD thing’. Embarrassingly juvenile for a President. (more…)
Iraqi News Agencies Are Reporting On Death Of Al-Baghdadi
IRAQ – Iraqi forces reported that the head of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) ‘Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’ was killed in U.S airstrikes.
“Despite that Iraqi and U.S sources confirmed the killing of Abu Bajr al-Baghdadi, but the White House did not confirmed it yet”, AFP reported. (more…)
