US officials leak information about the ISIS raid that’s more sensitive than anything Snowden ever leaked – Trevor Timm

Over the weekend, the US government announced that special forces soldiersentered Syria to conduct a raid that killed an alleged leader of ISIS, Abu Sayyaf. In the process, anonymous US officials leaked classified information to the New York Times that’s much more sensitive than anything Edward Snowden ever revealed, and it serves as a prime example of the government’s hypocrisy when it comes …

CONFIRMED: US “Operation Rooms” Backing Al Qaeda in Syria – Tony Cartalucci

US policy think-tank Brookings Institution confirms that contrary to propaganda, US-Saudi “moderates” and Turkey-Qatar “Islamists” have been coordinating all along.  The war in Syria continues to drag on, with a recent and renewed vigor demonstrated behind an opposition long portrayed as fractured and reflecting a myriad of competing foreign interests. Chief among these competing interests, the public has been told, …

The United States Considers Itself a Human Rights Champion. The World Begs to Differ. – Jamil Dakwar

Starting Monday, the United States’ human rights record will be subject to international scrutiny by the U.N. Human Rights Council. It may just be the perfect catalyst for the Obama administration to make good on past and present wrongs that should never be associated with a liberal democracy predicated on respect for human rights. The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is …

Who Is Bombing Whom in the Middle East? – Robert Fisk

Let me try to get this right. The Saudis are bombing Yemen [3] because they fear the Shia Houthis are working for the Iranians. The Saudis are also bombing Isis in Iraq and the Isis in Syria. So are the United Arab Emirates. The Syrian government is bombing its enemies in Syria and the Iraqi government is also bombing its enemies in Iraq. …

Climbing into Bed with Al-Qaeda – Daniel Lazare

After years of hemming and hawing, the Obama administration has finally come clean about its goals in Syria.  In the battle to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, it is siding with Al Qaeda. This has become evident ever since Jisr Ash-Shughur, a small town in the northeastern part of the country, fell on April 25 to a Saudi and Turkish-backed coalition consisting of the Al-Nusra …

The ISIL is in Ukraine: America’s “Agents of Chaos” Unleashed in Eurasia – Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

Is the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)/Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) / Islamic State (IS) / Al-Dawlah Al-Islamiyah fe Al-Iraq wa Al-Sham (DAISH/DAESH) active in post-EuroMaidan Ukraine? The answer is not exact. In other words, the answer is both yes and no. Then again, what is the ISIS/ISIL/IS/DAISH/DAESH? It is a loosely knit band …

Darkness in the Morning: American Policy in the Middle East – JOSEPH GROSSO

In one way, since the end of the Second World War, when the U.S. assumed its role as the leading global hegemon, American policy towards the Middle East has resembled a damaged pinball machine gone tilt. There was the CIA led 1953 coup against Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, whose sin was nationalizing the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, …

The War on ISIS is a Farce – T. J. Petrowski

Nowhere in recent years have the contradictions of imperialism been so clear than in the West’s war against ISIS. Working people are bombarded with messages in the media of the worldwide threat of ISIS, with the aim of the messages to convince working people of the need to sacrifice their civil liberties and democratic freedoms to counter ISIS and to …

Syrian Rebels Caught in ‘False-Flag’ Kidnapping of NBC Correspondent – Robert Parry

In December 2012, Syria’s U.S.-backed “moderate” rebels pulled off a false-flag kidnapping and “rescue” of NBC’s chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel and his crew, getting the crime blamed on a militia tied to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a propaganda scam that NBC played along with despite having evidence of the truth. On Wednesday, Engel, who had blamed an Assad-linked Shiite militia …

Obama’s Fateful Indecision

The foreign policy quandary facing President Barack Obama is that America’s traditional allies in the Middle East – Israel and Saudi Arabia – along with Official Washington’s powerful neocons have effectively sided with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State out of a belief that Iran represents a greater threat to Israeli and Saudi interests. But what that means for U.S. interests …