By Gordon Duff for New Eastern Outlook, Moscow and VT
The United States has been performing air strikes inside Syria for many months now with a singular lack of success. Thus, today’s announcement that something has changed, that the US will now be defending the fighters they recently trained inside Turkey, numbering only 60, is certainly bizarre.
However, what is more bizarre is the phony story published in the Wall Street Journal on “condition of anonymity.” That is a hoax, pure and simple, driven by that newspaper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch and his endless striving for propagandizing and use of hoax stories that are meant to break the will of any nation that refuses to submit to rule by Netanyahu.
There are no anonymous sources in the Pentagon. An anonymous source is a leak, a whistleblower and subject to arrest. If information is released without authorization yet claiming to be “official,” it is invariably nothing but sourceless editorial “spin” as so often used by the WSJ, Huffington Post and Washington Post, to name a few.
Such articles have, when involving Syria, included no fly zones and an imaginary 20,000 man American force to be stationed, supposedly since 2012, in Jordan. Today is no different. What is sad is that news services like Russia Today are invariably taken in because of the sound of the name, “Wall Street Journal,” not knowing it had been purchased by the Murdoch organization and turned into a tabloid.
What is the real story?
Al Nusra, the al Qaeda franchise so close to the heart of Murdoch’s good friend, Senator John McCain, announced it was going to go after any fighters that became involved in what they call “the American experiment.” President Obama’s announcement is a response to that move on the part of al Nusra.
You see, if fighters who sign up for America’s failed training program in Turkey are immediately slaughtered or forced to flee the region, as has happened with the first very small batch that graduated, America will suffer a humiliation.
This has already happened even though the Wall Street Journal never published it nor was it covered in the western press, it happened all the same.
What was also announced in the real story is quite the opposite of the version published in the Wall Street Journal and republished in Russia Today, a publication far more likely to be read in the Middle East where real damage can be done.
The US has acknowledged that it may give direct air support to “some groups possibly aligned with the Damascus regime.” Now this is a real statement and represents the political change that makes a presidential announcement necessary.
There is something stranger still afoot here where raw speculation is justified under the guise of “analysis.” The US has admitted that it has bombed al Nusra forces that announced earlier that they had attacked the US trained force. However, something is being left out. The US trained force never left Turkey.
Does this mean the US bombed inside Turkey? Does it also mean that al Nusra forces are openly operating inside Turkey, which would by rationality necessitate the complicity of the Turkish Army and Turkish intelligence services?
When taking into account that al Nusra has used Turkey as a supply, recruiting and tactical transit zone with full complicity of the Turkish, Saudi and Qatari government, something long demonstrated, it doesn’t take much to assume that the al Nusra forces inside Turkey, trained at Saudi financed camps, might have “moseyed over” and visited their “brothers in arms” being trained by the US, just out of irritation alone.
There is another issue and that involves the Turkish bombing campaign. Thus far Turkey has rounded up, or so they admit to, over 1500 “terror suspects.” The ensuing demonstrations, both inside Turkey and throughout Europe by Kurds of all political leanings, is an indication that this is a political crackdown.
You see, Erdogan lost the June election. He has been unable to form a new government and should step aside. Instead, he has cracked down on the Kurds, not just the outlawed PKK but the HDP, the legal Kurdish party that won 10% in the last election. It is the HDP that is driving Erdogan’s crackdown on freedom of speech and rights inside Turkey, not the PKK.
Then there is the bombing campaign. Erdogan has ordered the bombing of villages in Northern Kurdistan, typically an area that is pro-PKK but killing civilians in regions of Iraq that are unfriendly to Turkey to answer his own domestic political failures is more likely a war crime than “self-defense.”
Yet NATO is fully behind Turkey as is the powerful Israeli lobby and seemingly the Kurdish Regional Government’s leader, Barzani. Turkey has, over and over, brought military forces into that region of Iraq, in violation of Iraq’s sovereignty, shelling villages, destroying bridges and advancing on the Kurdish capitol of Erbil. I was there during one of these attacks in 2007.
Saddam would never have allowed this. Turkey gained what they see as the right to invade Iraq at will, often driven by a need to influence their own domestic politics, through a secret agreement made in Washington with key Bush advisors. Iraq never allowed this but the US led government of Iraq and in particular the very pro-US regional government in Erbil has always turned a blind eye to Turkish incursions even if they are in clear violation of international law.
This week there was an explosion of the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline that carries oil from Iraq through Turkey to the Mediterranean. Turkey reported that they had intercepted a PKK announcement taking credit for this attack. This was followed up by 300 air sorties flown inside both Iraq and Syria, against the PKK but also against the US backed YPG which had freed Kobani with US help. Turkey also bomb Kurdish civilians in both Iraq and Syria. What Turkey did not do and has not done is fly a single air sortie against and ISIS target.
The “however” here is simple, the PKK in reality announced that it had nothing to do with the attack. It is a reasonable assumption that Turkish intelligence attacked the pipeline as a pretext to a broader bombing campaign. They have done this before. You see, Turkey’s control of this vital financial lifeline for Iraq is a way of leveraging Iraqi silence when Turkey decides to use Iraq as a punching bag.
Then again, we go back two weeks to the Suruc terror bombing that made Erdogan the victim. What media in the west ignores is that all 32 victims were Erdogan’s political enemies and that Suruc is in a zone tightly controlled by Turkish military and intelligence. Nothing happens that they don’t know of.
The Suruc attack has been cited as a “false flag” in much of the world’s media, quite an obvious one. In response perhaps, we can never be sure, two Turkish police officers were killed. To Erdogan, this is Turkey’s “9/11.”
Conclusion
American whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator who was silenced by the Bush Administration under threat of being sent to “Gitmo,” told an unbelieving America of the power of the Turkish lobby in the US and of the full penetration of Washington’s circles of power by Turkish intelligence.
Added to that, we have the dark alliance between Turkey, Israel and Saudi Arabia, three of the most oppressive regimes in the world, each with broad ambitions and a need to manipulate events to silence domestic political opposition.
Today’s manipulation of world media and purposeful and systematic “spin” or mischaracterization of US foreign policy in order to destabilize Syria is symptomatic of a sickness. The sickness is fueled by the media certainly, both the fully controlled media, CNN, FOX, the Guardian, Wall Street Journal and others but also those media organs that are clearly in over their heads.
A spun news story can do more damage than a shipload of bombs. What is worse is that the world’s media where it isn’t corrupt and controlled is lazy and ignorant.
No, the US is not going to give air support for forces inside Syria fighting the Damascus government. This isn’t the first time this story has risen from the dead, “Zombie news” as it were. No, there are no “anonymous spokesmen” from the Pentagon.
No, the Wall Street Journal is simply an organ of Israeli intelligence, seemingly “rented” to their Turkish allies in order to aid in Erdogan’s twisted policies and emerging patterns of war crimes.
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of VT, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.
Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.
Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.
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