September 12, 2015 by Washington’s Blog
INTRODUCTION
Where did ISIS come from? How was it able to gain land, arms and money so quickly?
This book will answer those questions … and unmask ISIS.
Part 1 shows that the U.S. – through bad policies and stupid choices – is largely responsible for the rise of ISIS.
Part 2 reveals the strange history of the leaders of ISIS … Including one who never really existed, and another who – if you read mainstream media drivel – was killed … then arrested … and then killed again.
Part 3 delves into the little-known, secret history of Iraq and Syria … and discusses the real motivations behind our current policies towards those countries.
And Part 4 reveals the shocking truth about who is really supporting ISIS.
So grab a cup of coffee, and prepare to learn the real story.
PART 1: OOPS … WE CREATED A MONSTER
President Barack Obama noted in an interview in March 2015:
ISIL [also known as ISIS] is a direct outgrowth of Al-Qaeda in Iraq that grew out of our invasion. Which is an example of unintended consequences. Which is why we should generally aim before we shoot.
He’s correct. After all:
ISIS leaders themselves credit the Iraq war for their success
The New Yorker reports:
ISIS is run by a council of former Iraqi generals …. Many are members of Saddam Hussein’s secular Baath Party who converted to radical Islam in American prisons.
Torture of Iraqis by Americans led to the rise of ISIS … and America’s Guantanamo prison inspired ISIS atrocities
Al Qaeda wasn’t even in Iraq until the U.S. invaded that country, as admitted by President George W. Bush to ABC News in 2008:
Bush: One of the major theaters against al Qaeda turns out to have been Iraq. This is where al Qaeda said they were going to take their stand. This is where al Qaeda was hoping to take …
ABC News Interviewer: But not until after the U.S. invaded.
Bush: Yeah, that’s right. So what?
ISIS took over large swaths of Iraq using captured American weapons leftover from the Iraq war
In addition, the entire American policy of arming “moderate” Syrian rebels has backfired.
Lebanon’s Daily Star reports that so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels support ISIS terrorists:
“We are collaborating with the Islamic State and the Nusra Front [another extremist and hard-line Islamic terrorist group] by attacking the Syrian Army’s gatherings in … Qalamoun,” said Bassel Idriss, the commander of an FSA-aligned rebel brigade.
***
“A very large number of FSA members [in Arsal] have joined ISIS and Nusra,”Abu Fidaa [a retired Colonel in the Syrian army who is now the head of theRevolutionary Council in Qalamoun] said.
The so-called “moderate” Free Syrian Army has also signed a non-aggression pact with ISIS.
The New York Times writes:
President Obama’s determination to train Syrian rebels to serve as ground troops against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria leaves the United States dependent on a diverse group riven by infighting, with no shared leadership and with hard-line Islamists as its most effective fighters.
After more than three years of civil war, there are hundreds of militias fighting President Bashar al-Assad — and one another. Among them, even the more secular forces have turned to Islamists for support and weapons over the years, and the remaining moderate rebels often fight alongside extremists like the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria.
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Analysts who track the rebel movement say that the concept of the Free Syrian Army as a unified force with an effective command structure is a myth.
***
The Syrian rebels are a scattered archipelago of mostly local forces with ideologies that range from nationalist to jihadist. Their rank-and-file fighters are largely from the rural underclass, with few having clear political visions beyond a general interest ingreater rights or the dream of an Islamic state.
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Some European allies remain skeptical about the efficacy of arming the Syrian rebels. Germany, for instance, has been arming and training Kurdish pesh merga forces in Iraq, but has resisted doing the same for any groups in Syria — partly out of fear that the weapons could end up in the hands of ISIS or other radical groups.
“We can’t really control the final destination of these arms,” said Peter Wittig, the German ambassador to the United States.
***
The fluidity of battlefield alliances in Syria means that even mainline rebels often end up fighting alongside the Nusra Front, whose suicide bombers are relied on by other groups to soften up government targets.
“Even the groups that the U.S. has trained tend to show up in the same trenches as the Nusra Front eventually, because they need them and they are fighting the same battles,” Mr. Lund said.
***
Current and former American officials acknowledge the government’s lack of deep knowledge about the rebels. “We need to do everything we can to figure out who the non-ISIS opposition is,” said Ryan C. Crocker, a former United States ambassador to Iraq and Syria. “Frankly, we don’t have a clue.”
And yet, as the Wall Street Journal, PBS, CNN, New York Times, Medium, Pulitzer prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh and others note, the U.S. and its allies have poured huge amounts of weapons and support to the Syrian Islamic “rebels”. This is in spite of the CIA warning President Obama thatarming rebels rarely works.
Washington wants regime change in Syria, so it’s making up a myth of the “moderate Syrian rebel” who hates Assad and ISIS. But they “don’t have a clue” as to whether such a mythical unicorn actually exists (spoiler alert: it doesn’t).
The New York Times reported in 2013 that virtually all of the rebel fighters in Syria are hardline Islamic terrorists. Things have gotten much worse since then … as the few remaining moderates have been lured away by ISIS’ arms, cash and influence.
Michael Shank – Adjunct Faculty and Board Member at George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, and director of foreign policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation –warned a year ago:
The Senate and House Intelligence committees’ about-face decision last week to arm the rebels in Syria is dangerous and disconcerting. The weapons will assuredly end up in the wrong hands and will only escalate the slaughter in Syria. Regardless of the vetting procedures in place, the sheer factionalized nature of the opposition guarantees that the arms will end up in some unsavory hands. The same militant fighters who have committed gross atrocities are among the best-positioned of the rebel groups to seize the weapons that the United States sends to Syria.
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Arming one side of Syria’s multi-sided and bloody civil war will come back to haunt us. Past decisions by the U.S. to arm insurgencies in Libya, Angola, Central America and Afghanistan helped sustain brutal conflicts in those regions for decades. In the case of Afghanistan, arming the mujahideen in the 1980s created the instability that emboldened extreme militant groups and gave rise to the Taliban, which ultimately created an environment for al Qaeda to thrive.
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Arming the enemies of our enemies hasn’t made the U.S. more friends; it has made the U.S. more enemies.
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Some armed opposition factions, including powerful Islamist coalitions, reject negotiation altogether. Yet these are the same groups that will likely seize control of U.S.-supplied weapons, just as they’ve already seized control of the bulk of the rebels’ weaponry.
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When you lift the curtain on the armed groups with the most formidable military presence on the ground in Syria, you find the Al Nusra Front and Al Farough Brigades. Both groups are closely aligned with Al Qaeda and have directly perpetrated barbaric atrocities. The Al Nusra Front has been charged with beheadings of civilians, while a commander from the Al Farough Brigades reportedly ate the heart of a pro-Assad soldier.
Shank’s warning was ignored, and his worst fears came to pass. And since the Obama administration is doubling-down on the same moronic policy, it will happen again …
And it’s not as if we only started supporting the rebels after the Syrian civil war started. Rather, the U.S. started funding the Syrian opposition 5 years before the civil war started … and started arming them 4 years beforehand.
And a leaked 2006 U.S. State Department Cable from the U.S. Ambassador to Syria discussed plans to overthrow the Syrian government.
So it’s not as if our intervention in Syria is for humanitarian reasons.
We summarized the state of affairs in 2014:
The Syrian rebels are mainly Al Qaeda, and the U.S. has been supporting these terroristsfor years. Indeed, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, the National and other sources, Al Qaeda’s power within the Syrian rebel forces is only growing stronger.
Rank-and-file Syrian rebels have:
– Burned American flags
– Threatened to attack America
– Said: “When we finish with Assad, we will fight the U.S.!”
– Said: “We started our holy war here and won’t finish until this [Al Qaeda] banner will be raised on top of the White House. Keep funding them, you always do that, remember? Al Qaeda for instance.”
– A former Syrian Jihadi says the rebels have a “9/11 ideology”
– Indeed, they’re literally singing Bin Laden’s praises and celebrating the 9/11 attack
In fact, one of the heads of the Syrian rebels is also the global boss of Al Qaeda … and he is calling for fresh terrorist attacks on America. CBS News reports:
Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahri called has called on Muslims to continue attacking Americans on their own soil in order to “bleed” the U.S. economy.
***
“To keep up the hemorrhage in America’s security and military spending, we need to keep the Unites States on a constant state of alert about where and when the next strike will blow,” Zawahiri said.
Let’s recap … Most of the Syrian “rebels” are Al Qaeda. The U.S. government hasdesignated these guys as terrorists.
Things are getting worse, not better: Al Qaeda is gaining more and more power among the rebels….
Indeed, we’ve long known that most of the weapons we’re shipping to Syria are ending up in the hands of Al Qaeda. And they apparently have chemical weapons.
Summary: We’re arming the same guys who are threatening to blow us up.
Indeed, ISIS has tripled the size of its territory in Syria and greatly expanded its territory in Iraq even after the U.S. started its bombing campaign against ISIS. (Update: ISIS now has captured even more of Syria.)
Is something deeper going on behind the scene?
PART 2: ISIS’ STRANGE LEADERSHIP
There is a question about whether the heads of ISIS are who we’ve been told.
For example, the New York Times reported in 2007:
For more than a year, the leader of one the most notorious insurgent groups in Iraq was said to be a mysterious Iraqi named Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi.
As the titular head of the Islamic State in Iraq, an organization publicly backed by Al Qaeda, Baghdadi issued a steady stream of incendiary pronouncements. Despite claims by Iraqi officials that he had been killed in May, Baghdadi appeared to have persevered unscathed.
On Wednesday, a senior American military spokesman provided a new explanation for Baghdadi’s ability to escape attack: He never existed.
Brigadier General Kevin Bergner, the chief American military spokesman, said the elusive Baghdadi was actually a fictional character whose audio-taped declarations were provided by an elderly actor named Abu Adullah al-Naima.
The ruse, Bergner said, was devised by Abu Ayub al-Masri, the Egyptian-born leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who was trying to mask the dominant role that foreigners play in that insurgent organization.
The ploy was to invent Baghdadi, a figure whose very name establishes his Iraqi pedigree, install him as the head of a front organization called the Islamic State of Iraq and then arrange for Masri to swear allegiance to him. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s deputy, sought to reinforce the deception by referring to Baghdadi in his video and Internet statements.
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Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official and a Middle East expert, said that experts had long wondered whether Baghdadi actually existed. “There has been a question mark about this,” he said.
***
American military spokesmen insist they have gotten to the truth on Baghdadi. Mashadani, they say, provided his account because he resented the role of foreign leaders in Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
The unmasking of the terror leader as being an actor’s fictitious persona came after al-Baghdadi was – according to mainstream media reports – arrested in 2007, killed in 2007, arrested again in 2009, and then killed again in 2010.
The story of ISIS’ previous leader – Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – was odd as well. He was declared dead in 2004. Then he was said to be arrested … several different times. Then he was supposedly killed again in 2006.
The Independent – in an article on “black propaganda” (i.e. intentional disinformation) by the U.S. government – cites the forging by the U.S. government of a letter which it pretended was written by al Zarqawi, which was then unquestioningly parroted by the media as an authentic by Zarqawi letter. The Washington Post reported:
One internal briefing, produced by the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq, said that Kimmitt [Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military’s chief spokesman in 2004, and subsequently the senior planner on the staff of the Central Command that directs operations in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East] had concluded that, “The Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date.”
And CNN reported that ISIS’ current leader – Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – was “respected” very much by the U.S. Army and allowed to communicate freely with other prisoners in the prison in which ISIS was hatched (see Part 1) and to travel without restriction at that prison:
PART 3: DEEPER BACKGROUND
To understand the deeper story behind ISIS, we have to go back more than half a century to look at U.S. history in the Middle East.
Target: Iraq
Between 1932 and 1948, the roots for the current wars in Iraq were planted. As Wikipedia explains:
File:Mosul-Haifa oil pipeline.svg
The Mosul–Haifa oil pipeline (also known as Mediterranean pipeline) was a crude oil pipeline from the oil fields in Kirkuk, located in north Iraq, through Jordan to Haifa (now on the territory of Israel). The pipeline was operational in 1935–1948. Its length was about 942 kilometres (585 mi), with a diameter of 12 inches (300 mm) (reducing to 10 and 8 inches (250 and 200 mm) in parts), and it took about 10 days for crude oil to travel the full length of the line. The oil arriving in Haifa was distilled in the Haifa refineries, stored in tanks, and then put in tankers for shipment to Europe.
The pipeline was built by the Iraq Petroleum Company between 1932 and 1935, during which period most of the area through which the pipeline passed was under a British mandate approved by the League of Nations. The pipeline was one of two pipelines carrying oil from the Kirkuk oilfield to the Mediterranean coast. The main pipeline split at Haditha with a second line carrying oil to Tripoli, Lebanon, which was then under a French mandate. This line was built primarily to satisfy the demands of the French partner in IPC, Compagnie Française des Pétroles, for a separate line to be built across French mandated territory.
The pipeline and the Haifa refineries were considered strategically important by the British Government, and indeed provided much of the fuel needs of the British and American forces in the Mediterranean during the Second World War.
The pipeline was a target of attacks by Arab gangs during the Great Arab Revolt, and as a result one of the main objectives of a joint British-Jewish Special Night Squads commanded by Captain Orde Wingate was to protect the pipeline against such attacks. Later on, the pipeline was the target of attacks by the Irgun. [Background.]
In 1948, with the outbreak of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the official operation of the pipeline ended when the Iraqi Government refused to pump any more oil through it.
Why is this relevant today? Haaretz reported soon after the Iraq war started in 2003:
The United States has asked Israel to check the possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil refineries in Haifa. The request came in a telegram last week from a senior Pentagon official to a top Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem.
The Prime Minister’s Office, which views the pipeline to Haifa as a “bonus” the U.S. could give to Israel in return for its unequivocal support for the American-led campaign in Iraq, had asked the Americans for the official telegram.
The new pipeline would take oil from the Kirkuk area, where some 40 percent of Iraqi oil is produced, and transport it via Mosul, and then across Jordan to Israel. The U.S. telegram included a request for a cost estimate for repairing the Mosul-Haifa pipeline that was in use prior to 1948. During the War of Independence [what Jews call the 1948 war to form the state of Israel], the Iraqis stopped the flow of oil to Haifa and the pipeline fell into disrepair over the years.
***
National Infrastructure Minister Yosef Paritzky said yesterday that the port of Haifa is an attractive destination for Iraqi oil and that he plans to discuss this matter with the U.S. secretary of energy during his planned visit to Washington next month.
***
In response to rumors about the possible Kirkuk-Mosul-Haifa pipeline, Turkey has warned Israel that it would regard this development as a serious blow to Turkish-Israeli relations.
So the fighting over Iraq can be traced back to events occurring in 1948 and before.
But let’s fast-forward to subsequent little-known events in Iraq.
The CIA plotted to poison the Iraqi leader in 1960.
In 1963, the U.S. backed the coup which succeeded in killing the head of Iraq.
And everyone knows that the U.S. also toppled Saddam Hussein during the Iraq war. But most don’t know that neoconservatives planned regime change in Iraq once again in 1991.
4-Star General Wesley Clark – former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO – said:
It came back to me … a 1991 meeting I had with Paul Wolfowitz.
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In 1991, he was the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy – the number 3 position at the Pentagon. And I had gone to see him when I was a 1-Star General commanding the National Training Center.
***
And I said, “Mr. Secretary, you must be pretty happy with the performance of the troops in Desert Storm.” And he said: “Yeah, but not really, because the truth is we should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein, and we didn’t … But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won’t stop us. And we’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes – Syria, Iran, IRAQ – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.”
And many people don’t know that the architects of the Iraq War themselves admitted the war was about oil. For example, former U.S. Secretary of Defense – and former 12-year Republican Senator – Chuck Hagel said of the Iraq war in 2007:
People say we’re not fighting for oil. Of course we are. They talk about America’s national interest. What the hell do you think they’re talking about? We’re not there for figs.
4 Star General John Abizaid – the former commander of CENTCOM with responsibility for Iraq – said:
Of course it’s about oil, it’s very much about oil, and we can’t really deny that.
Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said in 2007:
I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil
President George W. Bush said in 2005 that keeping Iraqi oil away from the bad guys was a key motivefor the Iraq war:
‘If Zarqawi and [Osama] bin Laden gain control of Iraq, they would create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks,” Bush said. ”They’d seize oil fields to fund their ambitions.”
John McCain said in 2008:
My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will — that will then prevent us — that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.
Sarah Palin said in 2008:
Better to start that drilling [for oil within the U.S.] today than wait and continue relying on foreign sources of energy. We are a nation at war and in many [ways] the reasons for war are fights over energy sources, which is nonsensical when you consider that domestically we have the supplies ready to go.
Former Bush speechwriter David Frum – author of the infamous “Axis of Evil” claim in Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address – writes in Newsweek this week:
In 2002, Chalabi [the Iraqi politician and oil minister who the Bush Administration favored to lead Iraq after the war] joined the annual summer retreat of the American Enterprise Institute near Vail, Colorado. He and Cheney spent long hours together, contemplating the possibilities of a Western-oriented Iraq: an additional source of oil, an alternative to U.S. dependency on an unstable-looking Saudi Arabia.
Key war architect – and Under Secretary of State – John Bolton said:
The critical oil and natural gas producing region that we fought so many wars to try and protectour economy from the adverse impact of losing that supply or having it available only at very high prices.
General Wesley Clark said that the Iraq war – like all modern U.S. wars – were about oil:
A high-level National Security Council officer strongly implied that Cheney and the U.S. oil chiefs planned the Iraq war before 9/11 in order to get control of its oil.
The Sunday Herald reported:
It is a document that fundamentally questions the motives behind the Bush administration’s desire to take out Saddam Hussein and go to war with Iraq.
Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century describes how America is facing the biggest energy crisis in its history. It targets Saddam as a threat to American interests because of his control of Iraqi oilfields and recommends the use of ‘military intervention’ as a means to fix the US energy crisis.
The report is linked to a veritable who’s who of US hawks, oilmen and corporate bigwigs. It was commissioned by James Baker, the former US Secretary of State under George Bush Snr, and submitted to Vice-President Dick Cheney in April 2001 — a full five months before September 11. Yet it advocates a policy of using military force against an enemy such as Iraq to secure US access to, and control of, Middle Eastern oil fields.
One of the most telling passages in the document reads: ‘Iraq remains a destabilising influence to … the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export programme to manipulate oil markets.
‘This would display his personal power, enhance his image as a pan-Arab leader … and pressure others for a lifting of economic sanctions against his regime. The United States should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments.
***
‘Military intervention’ is supported …
http://www.infowars.com/unmasking-isis/
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Exclusive photos appear to show grisly effect of ISIS’ mustard gas attacks on Kurds
Sept 9, 2015 By Malia Zimmerman
Exclusive: Kurdish soldier on ISIS chemical weapon attack
Kurdish forces battling ISIS in Iraq are suffering severe health effects and pleading with the international community for help after being attacked with chemical weapons including mustard gas, according to a western military expert embedded with them who provided gruesome photos backing the charges.
Exclusive images obtained by FoxNews.com show Kurdish fighters afflicted with the telltale burns and blisters sustained after fierce fighting as recently as last week in the mountainous Barzani Province. Fighters described being targeted by mortars that exploded to unleash clouds of toxic chemicals. Several are now being treated as recently as last week for severe burns and blisters, debilitating breathing problems and even blindness.
“The Kurdish forces have been attacked multiple times with chemical weapons – the last time was a week ago,” said Tony Schiena, of MOSAIC, a private military and intelligence outfit based in the U.S. and London that trains foreign militaries in tactical operations and intelligence gathering. “They are horrified, not only by the Islamic State’s use of mustard gas, but also chlorine, as well as another unidentified chemical agent they were told by foreign advisors could be sarin.”
“ … the way these symptoms changed over time, and the patients’ testimony about the circumstances of the poisoning all point to exposure to a chemical agent.”
– Pablo Marco, Doctors Without Borders
Sarin, a designated weapon of mass destruction, is a colorless and odorless nerve agent, while mustard gas is a chemical warfare agent widely used by the Germans in World War I.
Schiena, a former South African special operator hired to train Kurdish Peshmerga Special Forces in Iraq in counter terrorism and defensive tactics, told FoxNews.com he traveled with the head of Peshmerga military intelligence over the last several days through the mountains of the Barzani Province to the front lines. There, he met with base commanding generals, medics and victims of chemical weapons attacks who, in some cases, are still struggling a month after exposure.
This Kurdish fighter described ISIS mortars that emitted a cloud of poisonous fumes.
Schiena said the fighters described a yellow gas that smelled like rotten onions and garlic, descriptions consistent with mustard gas. He said the Kurds desperately need masks and protective suits to continue their fight against the black-clad jihadist army. ISIS is armed with sophisticated weapons seized from Iraqi forces, plundered stockpiles from the arsenals of Saddam Hussein and an increasing number of improvised weapons, including chemicals, Schiena said.
For example, the Islamic State uses propane canisters filled with bolts and nails, valves added to either side, with a tail and wings welded on, to create a rocket that explodes on impact. The rocket disperses flaming hot bolts and nails as well as chemical weapons and can set off vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices such as a Hummer laden with explosives, or ordnances attached to suicide bombers.
Medical experts say these yellow blisters are a sure symptom of chemical weapons poisoning.
One Kurdish soldier said that of 52 mortars ISIS launched at his team during one attack, three released yellow smoke that caused their skin to immediately water, discharge liquids, blister and create large wounds. Soldiers exposed to the gas vomited and experienced extreme abdominal pain and severe burning and itching eyes. Other mortars discharged a silver glittery substance that stuck to their skin like glue. The Kurdish soldiers said the Iraqi military also said ISIS used these chemical weapons on their forces.
“Imagine being the only organized force fighting this great evil on the front lines, getting hit by chemical weapons and you have nothing, not even a mask to protect yourself,” Schiena said.
Schiena appealed to Prince Ali of Jordan, who he said arranged for delivery of 1,000 gas masks, but said many more are needed. He questioned why the U.S. and other countries aren’t providing more support to the Kurdish fighters.
Ryan Mauro, national security analyst for the Clarion Project, said one key question is where the chemical weapons originated from.
Fighters on the front lines had no protective gear, according to Tony Schiena, shown above inspecting the wounds of a Kurdish fighter.
“Are they from the old stockpiles that Saddam Hussein supposedly didn’t have, or did they come from the Syrian regime’s stockpile that they claim to have disarmed?” Mauro asked.
Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service BND has documented the Islamic State’s use of mustard gas, according to a Sept. 7 article in the German daily newspaper Bild, which said agents took blood samples from Kurds injured in clashes with ISIS in Northern Iraq.
While the U.S. Defense Department won’t confirm the Islamic State is using mustard gas, Pentagon spokeswoman Cmdr. Elissa Smith said officials have reviewed the most recent reports detailing the alleged use of chemical weapons by ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
“While we will not comment on intelligence or operational matters, let us be clear: Any use by any party, be it state or non-state actor, of a chemical as a weapon of any kind is an abhorrent act,” Smith said. “Given the alleged behavior of ISIL and other such groups in the region, any such flagrant disregard for international standards and norms is reprehensible.”
She said the U.S. military continues to work with coalition partners to ultimately “destroy” ISIS.
“More than 60 partners are contributing to this coalition along the key lines of effort including military support, countering ISIL’s finances, countering foreign fighters flows, exposing ISIL’s true nature, and providing humanitarian support,” Smith said.
The coalition also has been working with the government of Iraq to provide support through training and equipping. In addition, the U.S. is spending an average of $9.9 million a day, or $3.7 billion since Aug. 8, 2014, for 373 days of operations.
“We have seen that with effective training, equipping, and command and control, and backed by Coalition airpower, that the Iraqi forces absolutely have the will to fight,” Smith said. “We have seen this repeatedly from the Iraqi Security Forces, including the Kurdish Peshmerga — in Tikrit, in Baghdadi, in Haditha, at Sinjar Mountain, at Rabiya, and at Mosul Dam.”
Civilians also have been targets of the chemical weapons, according to the international medical organization Doctors Without Borders.
A family in the Azaz District in Northern Syria was attacked in their own home on Aug. 21 with a mortar that discharged a yellow gas.
The three-year-old girl and a five-day-old baby girl along with their parents arrived at a Doctors Without Borders hospital one hour after the attack, suffering from respiratory difficulties, inflamed skin, red eyes, and conjunctivitis. Within three hours they developed blisters and their respiratory difficulties worsened, the group reported.
“[Doctors Without Borders] has no laboratory evidence to confirm the cause of these symptoms,” said Pablo Marco, Doctors Without Borders’ program manager for Syria, in a statement. “However, the patients’ clinical symptoms, the way these symptoms changed over time, and the patients’ testimony about the circumstances of the poisoning all point to exposure to a chemical agent.”
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/09/09/exclusive-photos-appear-to-show-grisly-effect-isis-mustard-gas-attacks-on-kurds/
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Related previous post on this blog
https://reclaimourrepublic.wordpress.com/2015/09/12/what-could-be-wrong-the-isis-intelligence-scandal-just-hit-mb-obamas-inner-circle/
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