-Was This ISIL’s First Terror Attack on America?
-NBC: ISIL ‘Collecting’ Foreign Hostages
-James Foley’s parents: ‘He was a martyr, a martyr for freedom’
-Al-Qaeda in Yemen Announces ‘Solidarity’ With ‘Our Muslim Brothers in Iraq’
-Muslims on Twitter Defend Beheading Journalist James Wright Foley
-Lt Col Ralph Peters Wants to Firebomb ISIL and Their Goats!
-War Propaganda: Supposed ISIS Beheading of American Journalist
-CFR Boss Calls for Military Action Against ISIS
-Officials: US rescue mission in Syria failed
August 20, 2014 BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff (UPDATED)
Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell said the beheading of U.S. journalist James Foley was ISIL’s “first terrorist attack against the United States” and called for the Obama administration to “pick up the pace” of airstrikes against the terror group in Iraq.
“What ISIL is trying to do is intimidate the United States into backing off the attacks we’ve done over the last several weeks. And I think our response should be and our response will be to not do that. In fact, we should pick up the pace here. The definition of terrorism is political violence, violence for political effect. So, we should mark this date down because this is ISIL’s first terrorist attack against the United States,” Morell said on CBS This Morning.
Morell’s concern is shared by NBC’s Richard Engel who reports ISIL is currently “collecting” western hostages in Syria.
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/was-this-isils-first-terror-attack-on-america/
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WH Knew of ISIS Threat to Kill US Journalist – Did Nothing
Aug 20, 2014 By Arlette Saenz and Jonathan Karl
ISIS had recently threatened to kill U.S. journalist James Foley to avenge airstrikes the United States has conducted in Iraq, a senior U.S. official told ABC News.
The White House had been aware of the threat prior to the release of a video Tuesday night that appears to show the beheading of Foley and warns that militants will carry out a similar act against U.S. journalist Steven Sotloff, who went missing in August, the official said.
President Obama was briefed on the video aboard Air Force One Tuesday night as he returned to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, from Washington to resume his August vacation. The White House said the intelligence community is working to authenticate the gruesome video that allegedly shows Foley’s beheading.
“If genuine, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent American journalist and we express our deepest condolences to his family and friends,” Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, said.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/08/white-house-knew-of-recent-isis-threat-to-kill-us-journalist/
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White House: If true, video of journalist beheading by Islamic State ‘appalling’
August 19, 2014 By Susan Crabtree
A White House spokeswoman Tuesday night said U.S. intelligence officials are “working as quickly as possible” to determine the authenticity of a video in which Islamic militants claim to have beheaded an American journalist in retaliation for airstrikes in Iraq.
“If genuine, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent American journalist and we express our deepest condolences to his family and friends. We will provide more information when it is available,” National Security Council spokesman Caitlin Hayden said in a statement.
A video released online claims to show the execution of James Foley, an American photojournalist who went missing while covering Syria’s civil war.
As the video plays out, a masked executioner threatens a second prisoner, identified as Steven Joel Sotloff, also a journalist who disappeared in Syria.
“The life of this American citizens, Obama, depends on your next decision,” the militant says.
Foley was working as a photographer in Syria for the Boston-based news website GlobalPost when he went missing in November 2012. He previously worked as a reporter for Stars and Stripes. Sotloff, a freelancer who reportedly worked for Time, the National Interest and Media Line, disappeared in Syria in August 2013.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/white-house-if-true-video-of-journalist-beheading-by-islamic-state-appalling/article/2552212
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James Foley’s parents: ‘He was a martyr, a martyr for freedom’
August 20, 2014 by Dylan Stableford, Yahoo News
The parents of James Foley, the American journalist whose brutal execution by Islamic militants was posted to YouTube, gave an emotional press conference outside their New Hampshire home Wednesday.
“The way he died was horrific,” Foley’s father, John, said. “It testifies to his courage. We believe he was a martyr, a martyr for freedom.”
Foley, 40, had been freelancing for the GlobalPost and Agence France-Presse when he disappeared in Syria in November 2012.
“Jim felt the world needed to know about suffering,” his mother, Diane, said. “He felt compelled …
“How do you make sense of someone as good as Jim meeting such a fate?” she asked. “He wanted to cover what was happening at the human level.”
The grieving parents told reporters in Rochester, N.H., that they had just spoken to President Barack Obama, who expressed his sympathy over the killing of their son.
In a press conference on Martha’s Vineyard, Obama said he “heartbroken” by the beheading of Foley at the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).
“Jim was taken from us in an act of violence that shocks the conscience of the entire world,” the president said. Obama said he had spoken to Foley’s parents and told them “we are all heartbroken at their loss and join them in honoring Jim and all that he did.”
“We’re very proud of him,” Diane Foley said. “He was a courageous, fearless journalist, very compassionate American. I mean, the best of America.
“Jim was just innocent, and they knew it,” she said of his ISIL captors. “They knew that Jim was just a symbol for our country.”
At the end of the video, Foley’s killer threatens to kill Steven Sotloff, another American freelance journalist being held hostage by the militant group.
“They never hurt anybody,” John Foley said of the pair. “They were trying to help, and there’s no reason for their slaughter.”
Diane said her 7-year-old granddaughter, Rori, told her this morning her heart was broken.
“That’s the way we’re all feeling,” Diane said. “She said it all.”
The Foleys said they never lost hope that their son would come home. His last words to them, they said, were: “I wish I had more time to see my family.”
https://news.yahoo.com/james-foley-parents-video-183644711.html
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US Mother’s Heartbreaking Message on Terrorist Slaying of Son
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NBC: ISIL ‘Collecting’ Foreign Hostages
August 20, 2014
NBC’s Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel reports ISIL is collecting, buying, and trading foreign hostages in Syria.
This report comes a day after ISIL beheaded U.S. journalist James Foley.
Engel said “between 30 and 40 Western hostages” are currently located in Syria.
“ISIL has been collecting them. They’ve been buying them from other groups, they’ve been trading them. Sometimes they’ve been stealing them off of militants. So now almost all of the foreign hostages are being held by this very dangerous group.”
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/nbc-isil-collecting-foreign-hostages/
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Al-Qaeda in Yemen Announces ‘Solidarity’ With ‘Our Muslim Brothers in Iraq’
August 20, 2014 By Patrick Goodenough
(CNSNews.com) – The world’s two most dangerous Islamic terror groups appear to be joining forces.
A statement purportedly by al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based branch — al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula — expresses support for the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS/ISIL), the Yemen Times reported on Tuesday.
“We announce solidarity with our Muslim brothers in Iraq against the crusade. Their blood and injuries are ours and we will surely support them,” the newspaper quoted the AQAP statement as saying.
“We stand by the side of our Muslim brothers in Iraq against the American and Iranian conspiracy and their agents of the apostate Gulf rulers.”
The statement went on to offer ISIS fighters tips on how to avoid airstrikes, like those President Obama ordered against the jihadists in northern Iraq 12 days ago.
“Based on our experience with drones, we advise our brothers in Iraq to be cautious about spies among them because they are a key factor in setting goals; be cautious about dealing with cellphones and internet networks; do not gather in large numbers or move in large convoys; spread in farms or hide under trees in the case of loud humming of warplanes; and dig sophisticated trenches because they reduce the impact of shelling,” the statement said.
The U.S. considers AQAP the most active of the various al-Qaeda affiliates, and has long conducted a campaign of drone strikes against the group.
ISIS meanwhile has been viewed as a growing threat to the United States. Last January, ISIS leader Ibrahim al-Badri (aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) warned the U.S. that the group would soon be “in direct confrontation” with America, and the threats have increased since the airstrikes began this month.
Wire services reported Monday on an ISIS video featuring a statement warning that it will attack Americans “in any place” and vowing, “we will drown all of you in blood.”
On Tuesday ISIS posted a video showing the beheading of an American journalist who went missing in Syria in 2012, and threatened to kill another U.S. journalist it holds captive, unless the airstrikes stop. It also warned Obama that his actions “will result in the bloodshed of your people.”
If authentic, an AQAP statement in support of ISIS would be significant since al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri publicly disavowed ISIS last year, after al-Badri made a bid for leadership of all al-Qaeda elements among the anti-Assad forces in Syria.
At the time the presumably Pakistan-based Zawahiri declared the al-Nusrah Front to be the only al-Qaeda affiliate engaged in the anti-Assad campaign, and instructed al-Badri to stick to Iraq. The order was ignored, and ISIS continued its violent operations in both Syria and Iraq.
Ever since ISIS last June declared a “caliphate” across areas in controls in both countries and called on Muslims everywhere to pledge loyalty to al-Badri – now calling himself “Caliph Ibrahim” – observers have been closely watching the response from al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups.
Al-Nusrah and other groups quickly rejected the caliphate declaration, as did some leading radical Sunni figures, including the Qatar-based cleric Yusef al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader. AQAP’s response has been awaited, as has one from Zawahiri himself.
Some experts have warned that as ISIS’ notoriety grows, al-Qaeda may seek to carry out a major terrorist attack to demonstrate its ongoing ability and relevance, with AQAP seen as the most likely affiliate to do so.
On Sunday, House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers gave a similar warning, and mentioned plotting in Yemen in particular.
AQAP attempted to bomb a Detroit-bound aircraft on Christmas Day 2009, but the would-be bomber was restrained after trying detonate explosives hidden in his underwear. In October 2010 the group failed in a bid to ship bombs to the U.S., hidden in packages on commercial cargo planes.
Mutual support
Yemen Times quoted a Yemeni strategic affairs specialist as saying some AQAP members were in Syria and Iraq, affiliated with ISIS, while some ISIS gunmen were training al-Qaeda fighters in Yemen.
Saeed Al-Jamhi said AQAP appeared to be divided over ISIS, with one faction supporting it and another not.
The faction supportive of ISIS, he said, was headed by Jalal Baleedi, an AQAP terrorist blamed for the abduction earlier this month of 14 Yemeni soldiers. Photos and video subsequently released showed some of the soldiers being beheaded.
Attorney-General Eric Holder voiced “extreme” concerns last month about a rising terror threat from Yemen, specifically intelligence that AQAP bomb makers were in Syria joining forces with jihadists there.
“That’s a deadly combination,” Holder said at the time, “where you have people who have the technical knowhow along with the people who have this kind of fervor to give their lives in support of a cause that is directed at the United States and directed at its allies. And it’s something that gives us really extreme, extreme concern.”
Al-Qaeda terrorists in Yemen and Saudi Arabia established AQAP in 2009 and the State Department designated the affiliate as a foreign terrorist organization early the following year.
According to data compiled by the non-partisan New America Foundation, as many as 96 militants have been killed in Yemen by U.S. drone strikes targeting AQAP this year alone.
A 2011 airstrike killed Yemeni-American cleric and AQAP propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/al-qaeda-yemen-announces-solidarity-our-muslim-brothers-iraq
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Muslims on Twitter Defend Beheading Journalist James Wright Foley
August 20, 2014 by Godfather Politics
The day of Moderate Islam is over. If Muslims who claim that what they see happening around the world is not Islam, then they need to prove it by action.
The list of atrocities continues to add up. The beheading of journalist James Wright Foley is only the latest in a long line of atrocities. When we see images of the holocaust, we ask why the German people didn’t rise up in protest against the monster Adolf Hitler.
There’s no way to ignore the fact that Islam is a detestable religion. If there are moderate Muslims who take offense at that evaluation, then I suggest that you take to the streets by the millions and prove me wrong.
“While it is true that most Muslims are not suicide bombers, or engage in decapitating the kafir and posting their pics on Youtube, Islam itself is a political ideology that is fundamentally about bloodshed, killing, terror and jihad. While there may be ‘nice’ Muslims, Islam is not nice.
“And the fact that ‘moderate’ Muslims remain silent about all the hideous bloodshed, torture and murder being done in the name of their religion, their god, and their prophet, is most telling indeed.”
Here’s the latest on Muslim atrocities in addition to the beheading of a journalist. Take a look at these Twitter responses by Muslims posted on Answering Muslims.com:
one of the tweets
http://godfatherpolitics.com/16733/muslims-twitter-defend-beheading-journalist-james-wright-foley/
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Jedediah Bila @JedediahBila
Follow
ISIS has to be destroyed. And someone’s gonna need to have the balls to see that mission through. #straighttalk
7:51 AM – 20 Aug 2014
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Lt Col Ralph Peters Wants to Firebomb ISIL and Their Goats!
August 20, 2014 BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
Fox News analyst and retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters is fired up and ready to go!
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/beastmode-ralph-peters-wants-to-firebomb-isil-and-their-goats/
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War Propaganda: Supposed ISIS Beheading of American Journalist
Designed to stoke popular outrage and set stage for Syrian intervention
August 20, 2014 by Kurt Nimmo
The corporate media is employing adverbs – purportedly, seemingly, apparently – to describe the reported beheading of American freelance journalist James Wright Foley.
Fox News: “We need to go into Syria.”
Foley was reportedly abducted in Syria. Soon after his disappearance the Columbia Journalism Review said he was “almost certainly being held by the Syrian government in a detention center near the capital city of Damascus.” It was later said he was taken by ISIS, now known as IS, or the Islamic State.
On Tuesday a video was posted to Youtube allegedly showing Foley’s beheading. The video is titled “A message to America” and shows a man said to be Foley on his knees, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, next to a black-clad man British authorities believe is a Briton.
Photos and videos also appeared on Twitter accounts linked to IS groups.
“I call on my friends, family, and loved ones to rise up against my real killers, the US government, for what will happen to me is only a result of their complacency and criminality,” the man said to be Foley declares.
“My message to my beloved parents — save me some dignity and don’t accept any meagre compensation for my death from the same people who effectively hit the last nail in my coffin from their recent aerial campaign in Iraq,” a reference to the Obama administration’s token bombing campaign directed at IS in Iraq.
“I call on my brother John, who’s a member of the US Air Force, think about what you are doing.”
“I died that day, John. When your colleagues dropped that bomb on those people, they signed my death certificate.
“I guess all in all, I wish I wasn’t American.”
British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said the executioner in the video is probably a British citizen.
“On the face of it, it appears to have been a British person. We’ll have to do some more analysis to make quite certain that that is the case,” Hammond said.
The British Prime Minister David Cameron “cut short his summer vacation to return to London and chair urgent meetings on the threat posed by ISIS in Iraq and Syria,” according to NBC News.
Precisely Timed War Propaganda
The alleged beheading is now dominating the establishment news cycle, overshadowing events in Ferguson, Missouri. The media invariably engages in wall-to-wall coverage when a journalist is killed, especially in such a sensational and grotesque manner.
The alleged murder will undoubtedly be exploited by the state as it ramps up re-intervention in Iraq under the humanitarian banner. In the meantime, it is the responsibility of the corporate media to produce public outrage and further demonize IS, a paramilitary group created by the U.S. and its Gulf Emirate associates and trained by the United States military in Jordan.
“The extremists’ immediate goal was to use the shocking images to intimidate the Obama administration into halting U.S. airstrikes on ISIS strongholds in Iraq,” reports the International Business Times.
In fact, as ISIS undoubtedly knows, the exact opposite will occur – the United States and its partners will step up their bombing campaign, using the video as a convenient propaganda tool and capitalizing on popular outrage over the group.
The New York Post, owned by News Corp. magnate Rupert Murdoch, mustered its editorial board this morning and declared the “time for games is over” and the “horrific wake-up call” of Foley’s alleged murder demands military retaliation. “With American lives now being taken and even more at risk, America is now directly involved. No more playing footsie with butchers.”
Johan Galtung, a Norwegian sociologist and the principal founder of the discipline of peace and conflict studies, has described how the establishment media exploits violence to propagandize the foreign policy objectives of the state.
Manicheanism, the art of portraying one side as brutal and evil while the other is viewed as a chaste and innocent victim, plays a dominant role in war propaganda. This is the process we are now witnessing in regard to the alleged murder of James Foley.
The establishment media will continue to employ this tactic, along with decontextualizing the violence – dwelling on irrational emotional responses while ignoring the underlying reasons for violence and, in the case of ISIS, omitting the fact the group and its mercurial leader are largely a creation of U.S. intelligence and its partners.
http://www.infowars.com/war-propaganda-isis-supposed-beheading-of-american-journalist/
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CFR Boss Calls for Military Action Against ISIS
Globalist CFR drives U.S. foreign policy
August 20, 2014 by Kurt Nimmo
Richard Haass, director of the Council on Foreign Relations and former high level functionary at the State Department, is calling for attacking ISIS.
The CFR, as Hillary Clinton has readily admitted, drives U.S. foreign policy.
The remarks by Haass foreshadow an expansion of U.S. military action following the Pentagon’s attacks of little consequence on ISIS following the theatrical Mount Sinjar incident and the vastly overstated Yazidis humanitarian situation reported earlier this month.
The real objective here is not defending Iraq or the preservation of ethnic and religious minorities there, including Christians, but rather serves as an elaborately constructed excuse to enter Syria and take out the al-Assad regime, thus far a difficult task, even for ISIS, the terror army trained by the U.S. military.
The establishment – underscored by comments issued by Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry earlier today – is now more obviously behind the effort to decisively change the balance of power in the Middle East.
“When people harm Americans, we do what’s necessary to see that justice is done, and we act against ISIL standing alongside others,” Obama said Wednesday, using an alternative name used for the terror group.
“The world must know that the United States of America will never back down in the face of such evil,” Kerry said. “ISIL and the wickedness it represents must be destroyed, and those responsible for this heinous, vicious atrocity will be held accountable.”
Earlier in the week Pope Francis called for a concerted effort to halt the Islamic terror group. He stopped short, however, of calling for military action.
“Where there is an unjust aggression I can only say that it is legitimate to stop the unjust aggressor,” he told reporters. “I underscore the verb ‘to stop. I am not saying ‘bomb’ or ‘make war,’ but ‘stop him.’ The means by which he can be stopped must be evaluated. Stopping the aggressor is legitimate.”
ISIS, like al-Qaeda before it, is a manufactured geopolitical set piece rolled out to perpetuate the war on terror, designed to last indefinitely.
http://www.infowars.com/cfr-boss-calls-for-military-action-against-isis/
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Officials: US rescue mission in Syria failed UPDATE
Aug 29, 2014 By JULIE PACE Associated Press Videos
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama sent special operations troops to Syria this summer on a secret mission to rescue American hostages, including journalist James Foley, held by Islamic State group extremists, but they did not find them, the Obama administration said Wednesday.
Officials said the rescue mission was authorized after intelligence agencies believed they had identified the location inside Syria where the hostages were being held. But the several dozen special operations forces dropped by aircraft into Syria did not find them at that location and engaged in a firefight with Islamic State militants before departing.
“The U.S. government had what we believed was sufficient intelligence, and when the opportunity presented itself, the president authorized the Department of Defense to move aggressively to recover our citizens,” said Lisa Monaco, Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, in a statement. “Unfortunately, that mission was ultimately not successful because the hostages were not present.”
Officials disclosed the rescue operation a day after the militants released a video showing the beheading of Foley and threatened to kill a second hostage, Steven Sotloff, if U.S. airstrikes against the militants in Iraq continued.
Despite the militants’ threats, the U.S. launched a new barrage of airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria on Wednesday. The Obama administration did not rule out the prospect of a military operation in Syria to bring those responsible for Foley’s death to justice.
The disclosure of the rescue mission marks the first time the U.S. has revealed that American military personnel have been on the ground in Syria since a bloody civil war there broke out more than three years ago. Obama has resisted calls to insert the U.S. military in the middle of Syria’s war, a cautious approach his critics say has allowed the Islamic State to strengthen there and make gains across the border in Iraq.
A number of militants, but no Americans, were killed in the firefight in Syria. One American sustained a minor injury when an aircraft was hit, officials said.
“As we have said repeatedly, the United States government is committed to the safety and well-being of its citizens, particularly those suffering in captivity. In this case, we put the best of the United States military in harm’s way to try and bring our citizens home,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said in a statement Wednesday night. “The United States government uses the full breadth of our military, intelligence and diplomatic capabilities to bring people home whenever we can. The United States will not tolerate the abduction of our people, and will work tirelessly to secure the safety of our citizens and to hold their captors accountable.”
It’s unclear how many Americans the special forces attempted to rescue in Syria. While the officials who described the mission would not provide an exact number, other U.S. officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly, have said Foley was one of at least four Americans held in Syria.
Like Foley, two others are believed to have been kidnapped by the Islamic State group. The fourth, freelance journalist Austin Tice, disappeared in Syria in August 2012 and is believed to be in the custody of government forces in Syria.
Administration officials would not say specifically when or where the operation took place, citing the need to protect operational details in order to preserve the ability to carry out future rescue missions. They did say that nearly every branch of the military was involved and that the special forces on the ground were supported from the air by fixed wing, rotary and surveillance aircraft.
Obama has authorized previous military missions to rescue hostages. In 2009, Navy SEAL snipers carried out a daring sea operation to rescue an American ship captain held by Somali pirates in a lifeboat. And in 2012, special operations forces successfully rescued an American and Dutch aid worked held in Somalia.
https://news.yahoo.com/officials-us-rescue-mission-syria-failed-223712306.html
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