Some things to think about in relation to the 'history of ISIS' comic strip appearing at the ABC link (I have to say something, and it helps to look at the link first):
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-06/where-did-is-come-from,-and-what-does-it-really-want/7369802
The Sydney Morning Herald carried a US story in 2006 where they said that Zarqawi (featured in the comic) was used in a propaganda blitz to label the general Iraqi insurgency as being Al Qaeda-linked, when it was not. The US military, contrary to the general media reports, considered Al Zarqawi's role to be very minor at that time (the comic said he had broad appeal):
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/zarqawi-used-in-us-propaganda-blitz/2006/04/10/1144521269057.html
At the same time the US created Shiite death squads as a method of countering the insurgents - which lead to more than 3000 people a month being killed. The mainstream media even reported on the Shiite death squad creation:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/06/pentagon-iraqi-torture-centres-link
The US role in escalating the situation is omitted by the comic, as was their use of Zarqawi as propaganda.
One must also consider this comic strip narrative in light of the US WMD intelligence, which was wrong and in many places Fabricated - such as the Yellow Cake Uranium forgeries, the aluminium tubes, the non-existent meeting of Iraqi officials and Al Qaeda in Prague, Curveball's nuke weapons claims, etc.
In may cases, with the WMDs, Bush officials said they KNEW EXACTLY where chemical sites were (Rumsfeld), that were North South West and East of Baghdad but ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNFDXSKh17I
.... there was never any corresponding intelligence reports to back up what people like Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and other neocons said. They were making stuff up. These were lies.
Likewise we should be careful about the Al Qaeda tales told to us by US officials.
This does not mean that Al Qaeda does not exist, but we should be careful when it comes to accepting the US account of how the organisation is run, and who is supporting them.
Informed people like journalist Seymour Hersh, ex-French foreign minister Roland Dumas, and General Wesley Clark have all said that the 'civil war' in Syria was something that was planned in the West, a number of years before fighting broke out.
The US Defence Intelligence Agency in a declassified document from 2012 stated that "the West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey" were supporting Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI (Al Qaeda in Iraq/ISIS) in Syria and that they were aiming to foster a Salafist 'blocking state' to interfere with relations between Shiite Iran, Iraq, and Syria. (The DIA report is easy to look up)
General Clark famously said on TV that the US uses extremists for foreign policy objectives (regime change).
There is clear evidence that US proxies, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, have been aiding ISIS (plus other extremist groups in Syria). Veteran mainstream journalist Robert Fisk said as much on Australian TV (Lateline). There is also video of trucks (with arms and oil) and fighters freely moving from Turkey to Syria, and nothing is done to stop what is happening.
The Turkish President's family is up to their eyeballs in the ISIS oil trade too (via his son). None of this is hard to look up. And it's not an internet creation - we have German TV crews showing what was occurring on the border.
IMHO, although a nice comic strip, the material here simply serves as propaganda that masks the harsh realities of what is going on - extremist nut cases being puppeteered via support from Nation States in order to overthrow or disrupt the (secular) Shiite Governments of that region.
The extremists do want to have their own Islamic State, but they are being heavily supported by outside forces and would not exist without such help.
And I could go on about how military bloggers criticised the (phony) US air campaign against ISIS (before the Russians came in) and that it looked like they (the US) were doing next to nothing (and that pilots later interviewed said they were not allowed to hit 75%+ of their targets etc), but I have to stop somewhere.
I follow this stuff fairly closely. I don't like to see the public being hoodwinked.
ps. I forgot to add that we should ALSO not trust the US account of events in the region because of how Team Bush and people like General 'death-squad-facilitator' Patraeus in 2006-7 were trying to tie the insurgency in Iraq to Iran and said Iran was illegally developing nuclear weapons. More lies.
Regarding the insurgency, the US claimed Iran was supplying shaped charge explosives (EFPs) that were destroying armoured vehicles. Two things sank the propaganda - which was aimed at launching a war with Iran in 2007/2008 - one was the fact that factories were discovered INSIDE Iraq that were making the shaped charge explosives only 'Iran could make' (Google: efp factory Iraq 2007, for multiple headlines) and the November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, that was leaked, which said Iran was NOT developing a bomb. Bush is on video saying he has no idea why the Intelligence agencies were saying the opposite of what the neocons had been saying.
See the link below for the 2007 NIE summary which is what really sank the propaganda. At the time the conflict in Iraq was deeply unpopular, the US was effectively losing, and few people in the military thought that opening a new front against Iran was a good idea. Not everyone inside the US military-intelligence establishment was willing to go along (again) with further stories used to justify a new war.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/.../int.../20071203_release.pdf
[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, June 12th, 2016.]
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-06/where-did-is-come-from,-and-what-does-it-really-want/7369802
The Sydney Morning Herald carried a US story in 2006 where they said that Zarqawi (featured in the comic) was used in a propaganda blitz to label the general Iraqi insurgency as being Al Qaeda-linked, when it was not. The US military, contrary to the general media reports, considered Al Zarqawi's role to be very minor at that time (the comic said he had broad appeal):
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/zarqawi-used-in-us-propaganda-blitz/2006/04/10/1144521269057.html
At the same time the US created Shiite death squads as a method of countering the insurgents - which lead to more than 3000 people a month being killed. The mainstream media even reported on the Shiite death squad creation:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/06/pentagon-iraqi-torture-centres-link
The US role in escalating the situation is omitted by the comic, as was their use of Zarqawi as propaganda.
One must also consider this comic strip narrative in light of the US WMD intelligence, which was wrong and in many places Fabricated - such as the Yellow Cake Uranium forgeries, the aluminium tubes, the non-existent meeting of Iraqi officials and Al Qaeda in Prague, Curveball's nuke weapons claims, etc.
In may cases, with the WMDs, Bush officials said they KNEW EXACTLY where chemical sites were (Rumsfeld), that were North South West and East of Baghdad but ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNFDXSKh17I
.... there was never any corresponding intelligence reports to back up what people like Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and other neocons said. They were making stuff up. These were lies.
Likewise we should be careful about the Al Qaeda tales told to us by US officials.
This does not mean that Al Qaeda does not exist, but we should be careful when it comes to accepting the US account of how the organisation is run, and who is supporting them.
Informed people like journalist Seymour Hersh, ex-French foreign minister Roland Dumas, and General Wesley Clark have all said that the 'civil war' in Syria was something that was planned in the West, a number of years before fighting broke out.
The US Defence Intelligence Agency in a declassified document from 2012 stated that "the West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey" were supporting Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI (Al Qaeda in Iraq/ISIS) in Syria and that they were aiming to foster a Salafist 'blocking state' to interfere with relations between Shiite Iran, Iraq, and Syria. (The DIA report is easy to look up)
General Clark famously said on TV that the US uses extremists for foreign policy objectives (regime change).
There is clear evidence that US proxies, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, have been aiding ISIS (plus other extremist groups in Syria). Veteran mainstream journalist Robert Fisk said as much on Australian TV (Lateline). There is also video of trucks (with arms and oil) and fighters freely moving from Turkey to Syria, and nothing is done to stop what is happening.
The Turkish President's family is up to their eyeballs in the ISIS oil trade too (via his son). None of this is hard to look up. And it's not an internet creation - we have German TV crews showing what was occurring on the border.
IMHO, although a nice comic strip, the material here simply serves as propaganda that masks the harsh realities of what is going on - extremist nut cases being puppeteered via support from Nation States in order to overthrow or disrupt the (secular) Shiite Governments of that region.
The extremists do want to have their own Islamic State, but they are being heavily supported by outside forces and would not exist without such help.
And I could go on about how military bloggers criticised the (phony) US air campaign against ISIS (before the Russians came in) and that it looked like they (the US) were doing next to nothing (and that pilots later interviewed said they were not allowed to hit 75%+ of their targets etc), but I have to stop somewhere.
I follow this stuff fairly closely. I don't like to see the public being hoodwinked.
ps. I forgot to add that we should ALSO not trust the US account of events in the region because of how Team Bush and people like General 'death-squad-facilitator' Patraeus in 2006-7 were trying to tie the insurgency in Iraq to Iran and said Iran was illegally developing nuclear weapons. More lies.
Regarding the insurgency, the US claimed Iran was supplying shaped charge explosives (EFPs) that were destroying armoured vehicles. Two things sank the propaganda - which was aimed at launching a war with Iran in 2007/2008 - one was the fact that factories were discovered INSIDE Iraq that were making the shaped charge explosives only 'Iran could make' (Google: efp factory Iraq 2007, for multiple headlines) and the November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, that was leaked, which said Iran was NOT developing a bomb. Bush is on video saying he has no idea why the Intelligence agencies were saying the opposite of what the neocons had been saying.
See the link below for the 2007 NIE summary which is what really sank the propaganda. At the time the conflict in Iraq was deeply unpopular, the US was effectively losing, and few people in the military thought that opening a new front against Iran was a good idea. Not everyone inside the US military-intelligence establishment was willing to go along (again) with further stories used to justify a new war.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/.../int.../20071203_release.pdf
[Posted at the SpookyWeather blog, June 12th, 2016.]
