The following is the
preface to the book, ISIS
IS US.
I strongly urge the
reader to purchase and read the complete book: I especially recommend the
Kindle version ($9.99) which can be read, searched,
notated, sampled, and carried on any smart phone, as well as sharing quotes on
social media.
https://www.amazon.com/ISIS-US-Shocking-Behind-Terror-ebook/dp/B019RXBP7M
Ambassadors of Terror
by John-Paul
Leonard
The world has never seen anything quite like ISIS[4] before.
Where in the world did it come from? Many pundits say this unique terrorist
army would not exist if we had not crushed Saddam Hussein’s regime in Bush’s
war on Iraq. Politicians like Donald Trump or Rand Paul are saying that Iraq,
Libya and Syria were better off under Saddam, Qaddafi and Assad than they are
now.
Americans had supported the war on Iraq “ to make the world
safe for democracy” –to stop a dangerous dictator from oppressing his people
and using weapons of mass destruction –not to plunge the Middle East into the
hands of savage extremists who seem set on demolishing modern civilization.
The world was shocked by the ISIS blitz of June 2014 that
captured huge areas of Iraq, oil fields and the second largest city, Mosul,
nearly bringing the government in Baghdad to collapse. NBC News headlined, “ Huge
Majority Regret Iraq War.” [5] A poll showed that only 22% of Americans still
thought the Iraq war had been a good idea. This was a new low, down from 32% in
2013 and 62% in March 2003, when Secretary of State Colin Powell told the big
lie at the UN about Saddam Hussein’s “ threat” to our security.
Apparently, many Americans make the link between the war on
Iraq, and the rise of terrorism in the region.
Few critics, however, have gone so far as to accuse the US
or its allies of the unthinkable madness of intentionally creating ISIS.[6] For
us in the US this would be difficult to accept. We cherish the faith that our
nation is a force for good in the world; we want to share the good things about
America with the rest of the world when we can. Yet we have also heard of a
dark side, that sometimes bubbles up to the surface –as, for example, during
the Iran-Contra scandal. And therein lies a tale, a biography of deeds you
won’t read on Wikipedia for a very long time, at the end of this preface.
A Lot of
Blackwater Under the Bridge
It’s a basic historical fact that the US has shored up many
Latin American dictatorships, but few details are generally known about how
they do it. One practitioner who knows is Ambassador John Dimitri Negroponte, a
veteran counter-insurgency expert going back to Operation Phoenix in the
Vietnam War. He has held many high posts. Including Ambassador to Honduras
1981-1985, and US Ambassador to Iraq, 2004-2005...
Prof. Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research reveals
how Negroponte fulfilled his assignment to defeat the Iraqi insurgency –and
nearly managed to destroy Iraq as a nation as well. The recruitment of death
squads is part of a well-established US military-intelligence agenda. There is
a long and gruesome US history of covert funding and support of terror brigades
and targeted assassinations going back to the Vietnam war...
The recruitment and training of
terror brigades in both Iraq and Syria was modeled on the “ Salvador Option”, a
“ terrorist model” of mass killings by US-sponsored death squads in Central
America. It was first applied in El Salvador, in the heyday of resistance
against the military dictatorship, resulting in an estimated 75,000 deaths.[7]
As Ambassador to Honduras in the 1980’s, Negroponte was the
lynch pin between Washington and the US-sponsored death squads in Honduras, El
Salvador and Nicaragua.
In April 2004, G.W. Bush hired him as “ the man for the job”
to bring the “ Salvador Option” to Iraq and Syria. In the same month, Al-Qaida
in Iraq, the precursor to ISIS, was formed.[8]
Chossudovsky cites a report in The Times Online, in
Jan. 2005, that the Pentagon was looking at
forming hit squads of Kurdish and
Shia fighters to target leaders of the Iraqi insurgency [Resistance] in a
strategic shift borrowed from the American struggle against left-wing
guerrillas in Central America 20 years ago.
Under the so-called “ El Salvador
option”, Iraqi and American forces would be sent to kill or kidnap insurgency
leaders, even in Syria, where some are thought to shelter.
Hit squads would be controversial
and would probably be kept secret...
The Reagan Administration funded
and trained teams of nationalist forces to neutralise Salvadorean rebel leaders
and sympathisers. …
John Negroponte, the US Ambassador
in Baghdad, had a front-row seat at the time as Ambassador to Honduras from
1981-85. In the early 1980s, President Reagan’s Administration funded and
helped to train Nicaraguan contras based in Honduras, with the aim of ousting
Nicaragua’s Sandinista regime.
The Contras were equipped using
money from illegal American arms sales to Iran, a scandal that could have
toppled Mr. Reagan.
The thrust of the Pentagon proposal
in Iraq …is to follow that model …[9]
But it gets worse. A lot worse. Chossudovsky notes:
While the stated objective of the “
Iraq Salvador Option” was to “ take out the insurgency,” in practice the
US-sponsored terror brigades were involved in routine killings of civilians,
with a view to fomenting sectarian violence. In turn, the CIA and MI6 were
overseeing “ Al Qaeda in Iraq” units involved in targeted assassinations
directed against the Shiite population... advised by undercover US Special
Forces.
Robert Stephen Ford –subsequently
appointed US Ambassador to Syria –was part of Negroponte’s team in Baghdad in
2004-2005. In January 2004, he was dispatched as U.S. representative to the
Shiite city of Najaf, which was the stronghold of the Mahdi army [an important
volunteer force loyal to the charismatic Shiite imam Muqtada al-Sadr], with
which he made preliminary contacts.[10]
So they were stoking violence from both sides of the street.
The Salvador Option is El Salvador squared, El Salvador on steroids. The
primary objective is not just quelling the insurgency to seal a US victory; it
is to take that violence and ramp it up into internecine warfare that will rip
the country into three parts. This is divide and conquer with a vengeance,
following a plan to subjugate Iraq that the Israeli strategist Oded Yinon laid
out in the 1980’s, of which more later.
Supposedly the war on Iraq was part of the US “ war on
terror.” Bush even made a lame attempt to link Saddam and Al Qaida to justify
his war on Iraq (of course, Saddam’s regime was naturally trying to eradicate
fundamentalist terrorism). Yet now the US was going to put Al Qaida into mass
production.
The policy design was devastatingly simple. The Sunnis were
to be punished because Saddam and much of his administration had been Sunni.
This decapitated the country and gutted its military. A Shiite-leaning
government was set up. The Sunni insurgency would direct its ire against this
weak center, while the “ Sunni” terrorists of Al Qaida were unleashed against
Shiite civilians. Ethnic cleansing would result, beginning the dissolution
into three separate territories, Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish.
John Negroponte and Robert Stephen
Ford were put in charge of recruiting the Iraqi death squads. While Negroponte
coordinated the operation from his office at the US Embassy, Robert S. Ford,
who was fluent in both Arabic and Turkish, was entrusted with the task of
establishing strategic contacts with Shiite and Kurdish militia groups outside
the “ Green Zone” .[11]
Chossudovsky quotes Dahr Jamail, the courageous,
award-winning American journalist cited by Wikipedia as “ one of the few
unembedded journalists to report extensively from Iraq during the 2003 Iraq
invasion:”
Negroponte had assistance from his
colleague from his days in Central America during the 1980’s, Ret. Col James
Steele. Steele, whose title in Baghdad was Counselor for Iraqi Security Forces,
supervised the selection and training of members of the Badr Organization [Badr
Brigade] and Mehdi Army, the two largest Shi’ite militias in Iraq, in order to
target the leadership and support networks of a primarily Sunni resistance.
Planned or not, these death squads promptly spiraled out of control to become
the leading cause of death in Iraq. Intentional or not, the scores of tortured,
mutilated bodies which turn up on the streets of Baghdad each day are
generated by the death squads whose impetus was John Negroponte. And it is this
U.S.-backed sectarian violence which largely led to the hell-disaster that Iraq
is today.[12]
Demographic warfare. This was the era when Shiite and Sunni
mosques and neighborhoods were rocked by terror bombings, until the residents
were forced to flee to areas where their sect was in the majority. This was
when the famous incident occurred with the two British SAS special forces
mercenaries, dressed in mufti and driving around Basra with detonators in their
car, apparently planning to bomb a mosque or a market.[13] They were arrested
by the Iraqi police. The British liberated them by driving an assault group of tanks
through the walls of the jail. Interesting parallel: during “ the troubles” in
Northern Ireland, the SAS was caught carrying out terror bombing provocations
to stoke the sectarian civil war there. “
On May 4, 2006, Congressman Dennis Kucinich gave a speech on
the floor of the House which linked the Bush administration to the death squads
in Iraq.” Kucinich had written to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, citing copious
references to newspaper articles. “ News reports over the past 10 months,” Kucinich
told Congress, “ strongly suggest that the U.S. has trained and supported
highly organized Iraqi commando brigades, and that some of those brigades have
operated as death squads, abducting and assassinating thousands of Iraqis.” [14]
Here are a few of the congressman’s news highlights:
July 28, 2005 –Los Angeles Times
reports that members of a California Army National Guard company, the Alpha
Company, who were implicated in a detainee abuse scandal, trained and conducted
joint operations with the Wolf Brigade, a commando unit criticized for human
rights abuses. In an online Alpha Company newsletter, Captain Haviland wrote, “
We have assigned 2nd Platoon to help them transition, and install some of our
‘Killer Company’aggressive tactical spirit in them.’The article further states
that despite the Wolf Brigade’s controversial reputation for human rights
violations, it is regarded as the gold standard for Iraqi security forces by
U.S. military officials.”
August 31, 2005 –BBC reports that
on the night of August 24, a large force of the Volcano Brigade raided homes in
Al-Hurriyah city in the Baghdad, kidnapping and then executing 76 citizens. The
victims were all shot in the head after their hands and feet had been tied up.
They suffered the harshest forms of torture, deformation and burning.
November 17, 2005 –Newsday reports
that in the past year, the U.S. military has helped build up Iraqi commandos
under guidance from James Steele, a former Army Special Forces officer who led
U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in El Salvador in the 1980s. The brigades built
up over the past year include the Lion Brigade, Scorpion Brigade and
Volcano Brigade [the death squad cited in the previous article].
February 26, 2006 –The Independent
reports that outgoing United Nations’human rights chief in Iraq, John Pace,
revealed that hundreds of Iraqis are being tortured to death or summarily
executed every month in Baghdad alone by the death squads working from the
Ministry of Interior. He said that up to three-quarters of the corpses stacked
in the Baghdad mortuary show evidence of gunshot wounds to the head or injuries
caused by drill-bits or burning cigarettes.
March 9, 2006 –Los Angeles Times
reports that ... U.S. trainers have also given extensive support to 27 brigades
of heavily armed commandos accused of a series of abuses, including the death
of 14 Sunni Arabs who were locked in an airtight van last summer.
March 10, 2006 –Sidney Morning
Herald reports that men wearing the uniforms of U.S.-trained security forces,
which are controlled by the Interior Ministry, abducted 50 people in a daylight
raid on a security agency. Masked men who are driving what appear to be new
government-owned vehicles are carrying out many of the raids.
March 27, 2006 –The Independent
reports that while U.S. authorities have begun criticizing the Iraqi government
over the “ death squads,” many of the paramilitary groups accused of the abuse,
such as the Wolf Brigade, the Scorpion Brigade and the Special Police Commandos
were set up with the help of the American military. Furthermore, the militiamen
were provided with U.S. advisers some of whom were veterans of Latin American
counter-insurgency which also had led to allegations of death squads at the
time.[15]
Author Mike Whitney notes that “ the appearance of Colonel
James Steele, as counselor for the Iraqi Security Forces, should remove any
doubt about the real nature of America’s involvement... Steele’s ‘stock in
trade’ is ‘spreading terror through the application of extreme violence’–Max
Fuller’s apt description of US counterinsurgency campaigns in Latin America.”
About 160,000 US troops occupied Iraq, and the cost to Iraq
so far, has been about 160,000 civilian lives. The troops were gradually
replaced with mercenaries from Blackwater and other “ private security firms.” By
the end of 2011, the US Army withdrew. It lost 4,400 men, cost $ 1 trillion,[16]
and released thousands of veterans disabled by trauma into US society. They
leave behind them a fractured, instable and radioactive Iraq. By 2013, civilian
casualties were already on the rise again.[17]
Negroponte understudy Robert S. Ford, the No. 2 “ genius of
genocide” who helped set up the Iraqi death squads, stayed in Baghdad until
2006. He was then assigned as ambassador to Algeria (another target for regime
change) until 2008, when he returned to the Baghdad embassy as Deputy Head of
Mission.[18] Ford was by then well prepared for his appointment as US
Ambassador to Syria in January 2011, coinciding with the “ Arab Spring” disturbances
by the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo. In a scarce two months thereafter, the
armed insurgency started in Syria. The “ military-industrial-media complex” was
all geared up to present it as a spree of insane violence by President Assad
against his own people.
From the very start, fighters, weapons and supplies were
funneled over the border from Iraq and Turkey into Syria –including the vicious
and extremist death squads of the LIFG, or Libyan Islamic Fighting group: fresh
veterans of the Libya campaign, mercenaries of an Empire of Terror.[19] The
US-trained veteran terrorist brigades began to commit atrocities against
civilians, then post footage of the carnage on Youtube, and fix the blame on
imaginary pro-government gangs –as if Assad himself had learned the tactics of
counter-insurgency terror at the School of the Americas. Each time, the mass
media would then join in a chorus of hysteria about the US “ responsibility to
protect” civilians (so-called R2P) –the trick that had just worked to mobilize
the extreme violence of NATO firepower to bring down Qaddafi and smash Libya.
Russia and China learned their lesson, and vetoed NATO intervention in Syria at
the UN.
Our lying, embedded media are acting as the purveyors of
fakery, and the enablers of genocide. They are just as guilty as those who do
the actual killing, because these war crimes could never happen without their
protection. ***
Damascus holds a place of honor as the world’s oldest
continuously inhabited city, and the third holiest city in Islam. Religious tolerance
has deep roots in Syria. When the city surrendered peacefully to the Muslim
siege in 634, the Orthodox Christians were treated benevolently by the new
masters. The Koran considers Islam to be a continuation of the Judeo-Christian
tradition, and ordains respect towards Christians and Jews as peoples with a
holy scripture.[20]
When the Allies parceled out the Turkish empire after World
War I, and the French got their mandate over Syria, they tried to divide and
conquer the land by splitting it up into six ethno-religious enclaves. The
Syrians, who are three-quarters Sunni, would have none of it. They have an
ingrained suspicion of foreign conspiracies attempting to divide them along
religious lines.[21] Some critics believe the imperialist aim is not regime
change or balkanization, but “ merely” the destruction of a non-compliant
nation. However, the Kurds, who are Sunni but not Arab, do have aspirations for
more autonomy, and it was easy enough to use them to occupy Syria’s oil fields.
So as we will see, the “ French option” is not off the table.
Terror attacks have been concentrated against Syria’s
minorities, especially the Christians and the Alawites, Assad’s sect. The
effect is to force them to flee as refugees, leaving a Sunni state that will be
more susceptible to takeover by extremists, and to join the Sunni bloc of Gulf
states allied with the US. In Iraq, the Christian population has now decreased
by 80% or 90% from a figure of about 1.5 million in 2003.[22] As to who
benefits, well, “ three’s a crowd.” Friendship between Muslims and Christians
is the nemesis of Zionism (just as the world alliance between Christendom and
Zionism is so fatal to the Muslim peoples.)
According to Chossudovsky in The Globalization of War,[23]
the thesis of a “ Sunni belt” or bloc was spawned by Condoleeza Rice in 2006,
ostensibly as a strategy to contain Iran. It was implemented by Prince Bandar “
Bush,” the Saudi spymaster, who went right to work creating the Jabhat al Nusra
and ISIL / ISIS terror brigades. Saudi Arabia bankrolled the early years of the
death squad campaign against Syria, providing financing and plausible
deniability for the US effort.
Within days after Bandar organized a terror bombing against
the high command of the Syrian military, in July 2012, he too was nearly killed
by a bomb; many believe this was a revenge blow by Syrian military
intelligence. That is one reason PM Erdogan of Turkey took the lead role in
supporting the insurgency, but there is also the important logistical
advantage: Turkey’s long border with Syria and Iraq. The bandits financed
themselves and made Erdogan’s family rich by stealing Syria’s oil, which the
Turks then sold to Israel. It is widely believed ISIS was able to loot $ 400
million from the central bank of Mosul, but Iraq has denied it. The UK Daily
Mail reported on Iraq’s claim that ISIS is selling organs harvested from its
victims to supplement its $ 2 million-a-day income from oil, ransom payments,
and smuggled antiques.[24]
Takeaways
•Terrorist death squads in Iraq were created using the “ El
Salvador Option” under cover of US Army counter-insurgency operations in the
Iraq War. Ambassador Negroponte and Col. Steele, veterans of the Central
American “ Contras” project, set up secret police death squads and freelance
terror brigades on both sides of the Sunni-Shiite divide. The aim was to
instigate a civil war along sectarian lines, as a divide-and-conquer strategy.
ISIS (the “ Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” ) grew out of the “ Al Qaida” or “
Sunni” terror units they set up. In 2014, ISIS captured huge areas of Iraq,
thanks to a stand-down by Iraqi army officers.
•In the “ Arab Spring” of March 2011, US “ human rights” NGO’s
organized protests against the Syrian government, which worked as a screen for
the death squad operations organized by Ambassador Ford. Terror brigades
brought in from Iraq and Libya committed atrocities which were blamed on the
government. Western nations supported them, claiming they were “ moderate” pro-democracy
rebels. A huge army of mercenaries and extremists was recruited to fight the
Syrian Army, paid for by Saudi money and the theft of Syrian oil. While the US
and its allies pretended to fight their own terrorists, ISIS and its ilk grew
stronger in Syria. On Sept. 30, 2015, Vladimir Putin changed the game by
calling their bluff and carrying out massive airstrikes on ISIS, in
coordination with the Syrian Army.
Eric King: Russia is
dominating in Syria... and there’s really nothing Washington can do.
Paul Craig Roberts: No,
except make a fool of itself by supporting ISIS. We brought ISIS in there
—everybody knows that. Just the other day the former head of the Pentagon’s
Defense Intelligence Agency said on television that ‘Yes, we created ISIS and
we used them as henchmen to overthrow governments.’(Laughter).[25] ***
It’s no fun for anyone to have to admit, “ My country: wrong
and wrong!” However, the flip side of the freedoms we enjoy, is that burden of
responsibility.
This short preface can’t tell very much of the story. It can
only hope to help the sincere reader set aside natural skepticism, long enough
to consider the unfamiliar evidence in the book. It is a strange tale indeed,
and unfortunately, there is no way to expose monstrous deceptions without risking
being thought a liar oneself.
I have tried here to open one fairly clear window, one
reasonably straightforward thread of the narrative, leading from known points
in our history (“ our” Central American death squad “ rebels” or “ Contras” ),
to the unfamiliar and frightening territory of today’s terror bloodbath in the
Middle East, in Paris, and beyond.
In this book are contributions from an array of authors,
each with a unique perspective, yet arriving at similar conclusions: that ISIS
was created intentionally, not by accidental “ blowback” [26] from misguided
policies. Whether or not we convince you, I hope you will find our selections
in some measure thought-provoking, stimulating and enlightening.
It’s a minority viewpoint, but we should remember –One good
reason we have freedom of speech, is that Truth always starts from a minority
viewpoint.
–John-Paul Leonard,
San Diego, Calif.,
December 2015