By Robert C. Koehler

Barack Obama’s central dilemma last week, when he tried to sell a new war to the American public on the eve of the thirteenth anniversary of 9/11, was to speak convincingly about the wisdom and effectiveness of U.S. foreign policy over the last decade-plus while at the same time, alas, dropping the bad news that it didn’t work.

Thus: “Thanks to our military and counterterrorism professionals, America is safer.”

Hurray! God bless drones and “mission accomplished” and a million Iraqi dead and birth defects in Fallujah. God bless torture. God bless the CIA. But guess what?

“Still we continue to face a terrorist threat. We cannot erase every trace of evil from the world, and small groups of killers have the capacity to do great harm.”

So it’s bombs away again, boys — another trace of evil has popped up in the Middle East — and I find myself at the edge of outrage, the edge of despair, groping for language to counter my own incredulity that the God of War is on the verge of another victory and Planet Earth and human evolution lose again.

Obama ended his executive declaration of more war with words that the military-industrial shills have slowly managed to turn into an obscenity: “May God bless our troops, and may God bless the United States of America.”

God bless another war?

Tom Engelhardt, writing a few days ago at TomDispatch, called it “Iraq 3.0,” noting: “Nowhere, at home or abroad, does the obvious might of the United States translate into expected results, or much of anything else except a kind of roiling chaos. . . . And one thing is remarkably clear: each and every application of American military power globally since 9/11 has furthered the fragmentation process, destabilizing whole regions.

“In the twenty-first century, the U.S. military has been neither a nation- nor an army-builder, nor has it found victory, no matter how hard it’s searched. It has instead been the equivalent of the whirlwind in international affairs, and so, however the most recent Iraq war works out, one thing seems predictable: the region will be further destabilized and in worse shape when it’s over.”

Obama’s speech is addressed to a nation with a dead imagination. Doing “something” about the Islamic State means dropping bombs on it. Bombing runs don’t inconvenience a politician’s constituents and always seem like stalwart action: a squirt of Raid on an infestation of bugs. They never kill innocent people or result in unintended consequences; nor, apparently, do they provoke an instant sense of horror, the way a beheading does.

Indeed, declarations of war always seem to lift people up. This is because they separate us from the evil that our enemies are committing. Addressing the complexity of others’ brutal behavior means facing our terrifying complicity in it — which is asking far too much of any Beltway-entrenched U.S. politician. Obama hasn’t broken in any way from his inarticulate predecessor in attempting to exploit the simplistic emotional safe haven of war and militarism.

“How do I respond when I see that in some Islamic countries there is vitriolic hatred for America?” George Bush asked during a press conference a month after the 9/11 attacks (quoted recently by William Blum in his latest Anti-Empire Report). “I’ll tell you how I respond: I’m amazed. I’m amazed that there’s such misunderstanding of what our country is about that people would hate us. I am — like most Americans, I just can’t believe it because I know how good we are.”

Obama is trying to extract the same public acquiescence to military aggression from the IS beheadings of two U.S. journalists and a British aid worker as Bush did from 9/11. Bush had the distinct advantage of not having himself — and the disastrous mess he created — as his predecessor. Nevertheless, Iraq 3.0 is going to become a reality, even though bombing Iraq will just strengthen IS and likely open the door to the next multi-year military quagmire.

As David Swanson laments on the website World Beyond War, speaking of the first journalist IS brutally murdered, “James Foley is not a war ad.”

“When 9/11 victims were used as a justification to kill hundreds of times the number of people killed on 9/11, some of the victims’ relatives pushed back,” Swanson writes. Linking to a video in which Foley talks about the hell and absurdity of war with filmmaker Haskell Wexler during the NATO protests in Chicago two years ago, he adds: “Now James Foley is pushing back from the grave.”

He invites us to watch Foley talk about “the dehumanization needed before people can be killed, the shallowness of media coverage” and other toxic realities of war that usually don’t show up in presidential speeches.

“We cannot erase every trace of evil from the world . . .”

I can’t believe I live in a country that still tolerates such simplistic, knife-edged rhetoric. Oh, so much evil out there! The U.S. government, in all its might and purity, has no choice but to go after it with every weapon in its arsenal. What Obama doesn’t bother to say, though perhaps in some helpless, futile way he knows, is that engaging in the game of war is always an act of defeat. And the opponents, in their brutal aggression toward each other and everyone else, are always on the same side.

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press), is still available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his website at commonwonders.com.

© 2014 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, INC.

ISIS has created a movie preview for the coming war, a war it eagerly wants Washington to take part in. The White House and Congress would like to oblige, as long as the movie can be a short one, on the model of Libya. Here's the plot: Evil force arises out of nowhere; United States destroys it; credits roll. If Libya-The-Movie had begun with years of support for Gadaffi or ended with the disaster left behind, the critics would have hated it. Framing is everything.

Kathy Kelly published an article on Wednesday describing her visit some years back to a U.S. prison camp in Iraq where Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai spent four years under the name Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi before becoming the leader of ISIS.

Imagine a Hollywood-like movie that began in that camp. An opening scene might show Baghdadi and his fellow prisoners paraded naked in front of female soldiers and forced to say "I love George Bush" before they could get their food rations. We'd see them sleeping on the ground in the cold, cursing their captors and swearing every last drop of energy and instant of remaining life to that highest of all Hollywood values: violent revenge.

Cut to the present and a scene in a small house in Iraq with 500-pound U.S. bombs exploding just outside. Baghdadi and his gang of loveable heroes look horrified, but -- with a twinkle in his eye -- Baghdadi gathers the others to him and begins to smile. Then he begins to laugh. His comrades look bewildered. Then they start to catch on. "You wanted this, didn't you?" exclaims Sexy Female Rebel. "This was your plan, wasn't it!"

"Hand me the ultimate weapon," Baghdadi says, turning to a future nominee for best male supporting actor. BMSA grins and pulls out a video camera. Baghdadi raises the camera over his head with one hand. Turning to Sexy Female Rebel he says "Go on the roof and look north. Tell me what you see coming."

Cut to view through binoculars as music swells to high enthusiasm. Countless oceans of people on foot are making their way over the land with burning U.S. flags on sticks leading the way.

Of course, even Hollywood, which made Avatar, wouldn't make exactly THIS movie. The White House is going to have to make it. But who's directing? President Obama is hunting around for a name for this war, while ISIS has already released one in its video preview. Even the U.S. public seems increasingly interested in the full-length feature. "How does this end?" they want to know. "This was begun by Bush" they say, depending on their partisanship.

What if the script were flipped, not to portray the Iraqi as protagonist, but to abandon the religion of violent revenge?  What if Washington were to say to ISIS this:

We see that you want a war with us. We understand that you would gain local support because of how deeply we are hated. We're tired of being hated. We're tired of taking direction from criminals like you. We're not going to play along. We're going to make ourselves loved rather than hated. We're going to apologize for our occupations and bombings and prisons and torture. We're going to make restitution. We're going to provide aid to the entire region. It'll cost us a lot less to do that than to keep dropping bombs on you, so you can forget the plan to bankrupt us. We're going to save trillions of dollars in fact by ceasing to arm ourselves and the rest of the world to the teeth. We're going to announce a ban on shipping weapons to the Middle East. And since we ship 80% of them, not even counting our own military's, we're already off to a huge start. We're going to prosecute any oil company or country that does business with your organization. But we're going to hold no grudges against anyone who abandons your organization and seeks peace, just as we ask you to do what you can toward overcoming grudges against our past barbarity.

What would happen? You might be surprised. Gandhi-The-Movie brought in over $50 million in 1982.

Iraq wins pledge of global military support against Islamic State at the international meeting in Paris - THE DAILY STAR

Iraqi Leader Asks World Powers to Pursue Islamic State in Syria - Alaska Dispatch

VIDEO: World’s Top Diplomats Pledge Iraq Support - VOA

White House claims Arab nations offer to join airstrikes against IS in Iraq, Syria - Fox News

French Rafale Fighter Jets Fly over Iraq as Anti-Islamic State Paris Summit Begins - Yahoo News UK

First U.S. airstrikes near Baghdad in expanded Iraq fight - US News

Airstrikes Have Halted Islamic State in Iraq, U.S. Says - WSJ

POLLS: Obama’s Iraq policy gains bipartisan support, polls show - LA Times

Rights group calls for probe into Iraqi airstrike that killed 31 civilians, including 24 children - US News

Iraq: Survivors Describe Government Airstrike - Human Rights Watch

Iraq′s prime minister halts airstrikes in civilian areas - DW.DE

Kerry: Airstrikes against Islamic State would be ‘deconflicted’ with Syria, but there would be no formal cooperation or coordination - The Washington Post

AP Sources: US would hit back against Assad if he were to go after American planes launching airstrikes in his country - ABC News

US covertly giving Assad intel on Islamic State, regime daily claims - The Times of Israel

Intelligence operation focuses on Syria's Raqqa in Jihadi John hunt (PHOTOS) - Mail Online

VIDEO: Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister 'Action against Islamic State should include Syria’ - BBC News

US rejects military cooperation with Iran in Iraq, open to talks - Yahoo News

Iran supreme leader spurns U.S. overture to fight Islamic State - Reuters

Iraq FM says 'regrets' Iran not invited to Paris conference - Yahoo News

Iran fills key role in battling Islamic State in Iraq - LA Times

Hezbollah vows to destroy Islamic State in Syria - The Times of Israel

Turkish military weighs 'buffer zone' against Iraq, Syria threats: media - Reuters

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House Republicans drafting resolution to authorize training and arming of Syrian rebels - WashingtonExaminer.com

Syria's 'moderate' rebels say they need weapons, not training - Reuters

Lobbyists For Syrian Rebels To Woo Congress For Funding In Closed-Door Meeting - huffingtonpost.com

IS Strikes Non-Aggression Deal With ‘Moderate' Syrian Rebels: Reports - huffingtonpost.com

White House Denies Truce Between Syrian Rebels And IS - huffingtonpost.com

A statement from Jamal Marouf, leader of Syrian Revolutionary Front, denying his group signed a truce with IS - Hassan Hassan on Twitter

‘Moderate’ Syrian Revolutionaries Front continues to support al Qaeda - Uprootedpalestinians's Blog

Wow. US-backed Syrian Revolutionary Front rebels killed & crucified 2 apparent IS suicide bombers - Charles Lister on Twitter

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Kurdish fighters capture several Syrian villages amid heavy fighting with Islamic State, “We are fighting, on behalf of the world, the terrorism” - AP

YPG statement on recent clashes with IS - LiveLeak.com

Kurdistan Prime Minister Barzani and PKK leaders Discusse Joint Force Against IS - Rudaw

Peshmerga and Syrian Kurdish Forces Agree to Fight Together in the push to retake Yezidi town from Islamic State - Rudaw

West Widens Contacts With Syria's Kurds But Suspicion Remains - Business Insider

Analysis: YPG - the Islamic State's worst enemy - IHS Jane's 360

Peshmerga Forces Recruit Christian Fighters, says Local Official - Rudaw

Peshmerga's Spokesman: US will build two military sites to attack the Islamic State, one in Erbil - National Iraqi News Agency

VIDEO: On the Peshmerga front line in the fight against IS - BBC News

VIDEO (English Sub): IS running away from Kurds - Rudaw

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Barbaric IS earning $3m a day: Experts - AP

U.S. Targets Islamic State’s Lucrative Oil Smuggling Operations - oilprice.com

Islamic State fighters drawing on oil assets for funding and fuel - The Washington Post

Complex Network Smuggles Oil for Islamic State - WSJ

Who All are Buying Oil from Islamic State? Possibly Everyone - ibtimes.co.in

Turkish minister denies buying smuggled oil from ISIL, slams Western reports - hurriyetdailynews

Islamic State sells ‘blood antiquities’ from Iraq and Syria to raise money - The Washington Post

How IS became the wealthiest terror group in history - The Independent

Funding ISIS Infographic - The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

To contact Bartolo email peaceloversingle_at_gmail.com (replacing _at_ with @)

The Senators leading the pack of war-dogs, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, opined in The New York Times this week on the need for the U.S. to go all-out in the Middle East:  We must face facts: A comprehensive strategy to defeat ISIS would require more troops, assets, resources and time. Such an undertaking should involve Congress. We have consistently advocated revising the Authorization for Use of Military Force that has provided congressional backing for counterterrorism operations since September 2001.These plans carry with them a repeat, or worse, of the mass death and destruction of society the U.S. carried out in an attempt to control Iraq.

By Staff, www.PopularResistance.org

Below are views of people whose voices are not often heard in the corporate media but who have worked on issues of militarism and war for many years. We sought out the views of those who recognize that war is not the answer to complex foreign policy issues for their views on President Obama’s recent speech declaring war on ISIS. Obama did not use the word “war” as he prefers to avoid explicitly stating what is really happening by talking about “air strikes” and “counter terrorism.”

In reality his speech was a declaration of war. And, he says it will last three years, which we suspect underestimates the war-quagmire he is beginning. As we have said in previous columns, President Obama needs to get (1) authorization for the use of military force from Congress, and (2) authorization from the United Nations before the attack he has announced. He is not pursuing either but instead has taken on the power to send the United States into a new war on his own. In fact, this July the House passed a resolution requiring authorization from Congress for a sustained presence of combat troops in Iraq. The resolution passed with bipartisan support in a 370-40 vote. The House has warned Obama to seek authorization, he has ignored them.  President Obama is violating both domestic and international law. When unilateral military action is taken then every action taken in support of this illegal war is a war crime.

The US public has generally shown opposition to more war in consistent polling — leading to Americans being described as ‘war weary.’ With the recent focus on the extremism of ISIS, especially the beheading of two journalists, there has been a brief spike of support for military action. But as the quicksand of conflict with ISIS takes hold and this war drags on, public opinion will shift back to its opposition to war. People will see that US military intervention is not destroying anti-Americanism but increasing it and thereby strengthening ISIS and similar groups. It is important for those who oppose war to build a campaign now against the war on ISIS in order to move public opinion and end this military conflict as quickly as possible.

This is not about legalisms and US public opinion polls, it is going to be about the killing of tens of thousands of people with air strikes that primarily kill civilians. US military action will add to the chaos in the region, chaos made worse, if not caused, by US intervention in Iraq, Libya, Syria as well as the many countries President Obama has unilaterally bombed.  The US has conducted 94,000 air strikes in the Middle East since 9/11 why does anyone think that continuing this strategy will being peace and security to the region or the United States. When has more of the same ever worked? If the goal is more chaos, division and destruction, Obama has chosen the right path; if the goal is peace and security, he is going in the wrong direction, when there are many other more sensible and effective paths to follow.

Perspectives of those who Oppose War in Iraq and Syria Against ISIS

David Swanson, Director, World Beyond War
Operation Unchanging Hopelessness is going to leave a lot of people feeling degraded and destroyed. ISIS on the other hand is getting what it wanted when it published the videos that have scared so many people into ignorant and soon-to-be-regretted support for mass murder. Just after the speech, Rachel Maddow was glorying in the fact that ISIS wouldn’t get U.S. troops on the ground which, she said, is what they really, really want. But if you’re aware of being manipulated into an act of mass-murder should you be happy that you’re picking a second-choice method that will actually mean MORE dying, only dying of non-Americans? And since when is 1500 troops on the ground with a promise to Chuck Todd to keep it under 100,000 a decision not to have troops on the ground? Remember, 1,000 Russian troops (albeit fictional) constitutes an invasion of Ukraine. Now that I mention it, I’m feeling a bit degraded already.

Veterans for Peace
President Obama outlined a strategy no different from what the U.S. has done for the past thirteen years. It is not a plan for success, it is a gamble that war will work this time when it has spectacularly failed thus far. We at Veterans For Peace challenge the American people to ask whose interests does endless war serve?  Who is paying for these wars, whose children are dying in these wars and who is getting paid to finance and provide weapons for these wars? We the people are being driven by manipulated fear to support polices that are not in our interest. Peace is harder than war, but it is cheaper in blood and treasure. After thirteen years it is time to take another path, the path of peace.

Cindy Sheehan, peace activist
I believe the reason that the presidents of the US can continue to make such belligerent and jingoistic speeches and follow through with the continuation of endless wars is because the American people keep falling for the propaganda and the lie that either one of the two major political parties is better than the other when it comes to war for profit. I think last night’s speech by Obama was just a regurgitation of any speech by GWB and shame on anybody who is falling for this same tired, yet hostile, rhetoric. It would be funny if so many lives weren’t unnecessarily compromised because of US aggression.

CODE PINK
As we commemorate the 13th anniversary of 9/11, we recall the invasion of Afghanistan the US launched one month after the attacks, and the war on Iraq launched on lies in 2002 – and look in horror at conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan today. The lesson? War and violence are the problem, NOT the solution to terrorism.  Based on the speech President Obama gave yesterday, it seems like he –– and the entire US government –– still haven’t learned that lesson.  The situation in Iraq and Syria is complicated, with no easy or perfect solutions. While we are concerned for the safety of the Iraqi and Syrian people threatened by ISIS, we know that American military force and contractors will only make the crisis worse and cause more suffering.

Coleen Rowley, retired FBI agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel
Did I miss where Obama recognized that elements of the “Free Syrian Army” that the US has been arming and assisting to topple Assad, presumably after being vetted as the “good guys” were actually the ones who sold, at least one if not both, American journalists to the “bad guys” who then beheaded them? Did I miss where he admitted that drone bombing Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, ETC –which resulted in deaths of wedding parties and other innocent civilians as well as mostly low level “foot soldiers”—and putting hundreds of men who had nothing to do with 9-11 in Guantanamo prison camps without any due process, torturing and killing some of them, has ratcheted up a certain amount of hatred of the US world wide but especially in the Mid-east thus making it fertile ground for radicalization and recruitment by Islamic State and other extremists?  Did Obama even admit what most of his military commanders have concluded, that “there is no military solution”? Did he close with God bless our exceptional country that luckily is so exceptional that it’s above the law in its pursuit of “full spectrum dominance” yet has the neocon chutzpah to expect other (non-dominant, non-exceptional) countries to follow? Maybe I just missed the parts where Obama told the truth.

Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
Here’s how you know you live in an empire devoted to endless militarism: when a new 3-year war is announced and very few people seem to think the president needs anyone’s permission to start it (including Congress) and, more so, when the announcement - of a new multiple-year war - seems quite run-of-the-mill and normal.

Sheldon Richman, Vice President, Future of Freedom Foundation
The US government went to war against al Qaeda and got ISIS. Now it’s going to war against ISIS. What will come next? The only thing we know for sure is that, as Randolph Bourne said, “War is the health of the state.

ANSWER Coalition
President Obama’s new war plans in Iraq and Syria will not liberate the people of either country but will lead to more destruction. The U.S. military defeat of the secular Iraqi and Libyan governments (in 2003 and 2011) and its policy of fueling armed civil war against the secular, nationalist government in Syria are the fundamental reasons the so-called Islamic State has grown and become strong. Perpetuating a now 23-year-long U.S. political tradition, President Obama is announcing tonight that he, like the three preceding U.S. presidents, will go forward with another bombing campaign in Iraq. This is a war that will lead only to more catastrophe and destruction.

Nathan Goodman, Lysander Spooner Research Scholar in Abolitionist Studies at the Center for a Stateless Society
Obama’s speech embodies a cycle of violence that remains inevitable as long as the US remains an empire. As UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk and others have noted, ISIL’s power is blowback from prior US intervention. Much of that intervention stems from a “War on Terror” that began in response to the 9/11 attacks. The 9/11 attacks themselves were retaliation for US aggression in the Middle East, including the disastrous sanctions against Iraq. The attacks were orchestrated by Osama bin Laden, who was previously backed by the CIA in order to fight the Soviet Union. Who knows what blowback Obama’s new campaign of bombing will unleash? Rather than responding to every problem with more intervention, violence, and bloodshed, the US needs to dismantle its empire. Until this happens, intervention followed by blowback will leave us with a vicious cycle of violence, bloodshed, and imperial murders euphemistically termed “collateral damage.”

Matthew Hoh, Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy and former Director of the Afghanistan Study Group
The United States’ official policy in the Middle East is now perpetual war. What has been known for some time, including by those of us who have served overseas, by the millions who have suffered through our bombs and our bullets, and, of course, by the hundreds of thousands whose lives have been ripped from their families and from any promised futures, President Obama solidified last night. The United States, by agreeing to airstrikes without end in support of a corrupt and sectarian government in Baghdad; by championing a Shia and Kurdish invasion of Sunni lands; and by promising arms, munitions and money to rebel groups in the middle of the Syrian Civil War, the same groups that sold Steven Sotloff to his beheading, has adopted a policy that will exacerbate the civil wars in both Iraq and Syria and deepen the nightmare existence of their people. President Obama’s speech will be remembered as a mark of moral shame on the United States.

Nicolas J. S. Davies is the author of “Blood On Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.”
Since 9/11 the United States has launched more than 94,000 air strikes, mostly on Afghanistan and Iraq, but also on Libya, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Rumsfeld’s plan has undoubtedly achieved his goal of changing the way people live in those countries, killing a million of them and reducing tens of millions more to lives of disability, disfigurement, dislocation, grief and poverty. A sophisticated propaganda campaign has politically justified 13 years of systematic U.S. war crimes. The chaos that Obama’s doctrine of covert and proxy war has wreaked in Libya, Syria and Iraq should be a reminder of one of the obvious but unlearned lessons of September 11, that creating and arming groups of religious fanatics as proxies to fight secular enemies has huge potential for blowback and unintended consequences as they gain power and escape external control.  Now that ISIS is once again fighting in Iraq as well as Syria, we have come full circle and Western propaganda and ISIS itself have again found common cause in exaggerating its strength and highlighting its brutality. The dirty little secret that our propaganda system cannot mention is that the current crises are all deeply rooted in U.S. policy.

Michael D. Ostrolenk, conservative activist
“No American President has the authority to unilaterally declare war on either a state actor or non-state actor.  According to our Founding Fathers , the President, unless responding to an attack or imminent threat, must seek approval from Congress for acts of war.  President Obama should go to Congress, lay out his case, and allow for a real debate to take place amongst the People’s representatives.”

Michael Eisenscher, National Coordinator, U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW)
The president yesterday announced his “strategy” for dealing with the threat posed by the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) in Iraq and Syria.  He has given terror networks and the international arms industry cause for great celebration.  The former because he is giving them just what they want – a direct confrontation with the “Great Satan” and powerful recruiting inducement, both in the region and around the world.  The latter because at a moment when actual cuts are possible in the obscene level of funding for the Pentagon and war, he has opened the door to yet another bountiful feast at the public trough for the armaments industry.  In the process, he is turning his back on the millions of Americans who continue to suffer unemployment, under-employment, substandard (or no) housing, education beyond reach for many and a source of lifetime indentured servitude to the banks for those who must borrow to obtain a higher education, and the multitude of other urgent unmet needs we have here.

He also disregards the consequences for the environment and global climate of war and militarism, which are not only crimes against humanity but also crimes against the planet the consequences of which will be born by generations to come, since the Pentagon is the single largest polluter on the planet and wars escalate the severity of that pollution.  And he, a constitutional lawyer who was elected on a platform of ending war, demonstrates utter contempt for the separation of powers and congressional authority alone to declare war and commit U.S. forces to battle.  And as has been the case with so many presidents before him, he is telling the rest of the international community that national sovereignty can be violated at will without regard for international law, the U.N. Charter and other treaties whenever it suits the U.S. but that our borders are inviolate, including by those escaping the ravages and horror of wars (both military and economic) which our country has engaged in and supported in our own hemisphere.  Shame on him and a supine Congress that has abdicated its constitutional duty, and shame on us if we allow this to happen without a determined struggle to stop it.

Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies
Military actions will not set the stage for political solutions; they will prevent those solutions from taking hold. Escalating military actions against this violent extremist organization is not going to work.

The bottom line is there is no immediate action that will make ISIS disappear, even if U.S. airstrikes manage to get the right target somewhere and take out an APC or a truckload of guys with RPGs or whatever.

You can’t destroy an ideology – or even an organization -through bombing (look at the efforts to do so with Al Qaeda . . . lots of members killed in Afghanistan, but the organization took root in a bunch of other countries). A military strike might bring some immediate satisfaction, but we all know revenge is a bad basis for foreign policy, especially when it has such dangerous consequences.

Susan Kerin, Fund Our Communities
We need to support a global diplomatic, humanitarian, and economic effort, not U.S. military escalation. U.S. military action only adds fuel to the sectarian fire. And what will be the costs for this misadventure? Perhaps you recall what happened in Iraq—a war that was supposed to pay for itself (via Iraqi oil) and be over in a couple of months actually cost us over $3 trillion and lasted 8 years. And guess what: in this new air campaign, we will be compounding the costs of that war, as we will be paying to blow up the weapons we previously sent to the region. Meanwhile, food insecurity is at an all-time high in the U.S., our infrastructure continues to deteriorate, and we don’t seem to have the funds to adequately care for children who are crossing our southern border in fear of their lives. Our priorities are way out of whack.

Debra Sweet, The World Can’t Wait
On this 9/11 anniversary, I’m hearing — including from Obama last night — that what happened 13 years ago means the U.S. must create even more 9/11′s in the Middle East.  But all the US bombs and occupation have done is generate and strengthen the very forces they tell us they will destroy with more of the same.  Even the examples Obama put forward of “success” — Yemen and Somalia — show that yes, the US can conduct secret drone assassination campaigns, but no, that does not bring liberation for the people living in those countries.

People, even those who have been anti-war during the Bush years, are getting drawn into supporting this unjust, illegitimate, immoral plan for unending U.S. war for empire.  This time, with no visible opposition in Congress, the supporters of this war can’t be dismissed as Bush regime Republican thugs. There’s unity at the top that US interests require aggressive “going on the offense” for “‘America” as Obama puts it. We can’t let that stand unchallenged.  In the streets, the newspapers, in the schools and religious institutions, protest and dissent must be heard.

Alice Slater, Coordinating Committee of World Beyond War
It is heartbreaking to see our country embarking on another futile effort to bomb our way out of a situation that calls out for diplomacy, foreign aid, UN supervision, refugee assistance, almost anything you can think of in place of the devastating US assaults that inevitably murder innocent civilians.  How is the evil beheading of innocent journalists any worse than the impersonal murder of innocents on the ground by a thoroughly detached computer nerd, sitting at his lap top someplace in Colorado, pulling on his joystick and destroying, by drone, unseen victims on the ground tens of thousands of miles away.   We haven’t even had a body count for all the people who died in Iraq at the point of a US weapon. Meanwhile we repeatedly honor and memorialize our dead soldiers, sent on a wild goose chase after “terrorists” whose destruction of the twin towers  was a criminal act that deserved arrest and trial, not perpetual war on two countries, and now three countries.  Echoes of 911 are constantly flung in our face like metaphysical war paint, to stir the loins for battle and death.  At this time, sensible people should be calling for a global moratorium on all arms sales.  We need to stop the only ones who benefit from all this—the arms manufacturers and their co-conspirators in endless war and grasping Empire.  Those who truly yearn for peace on earth should also be calling for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, emulating the great success enjoyed by South Africa when it ended a potential bloodbath and years of slaughter by inviting people from all sides of the conflict to come forth, admit their wrong doing, apologize, and be granted amnesty to go free.   As long as we hold out for bringing murderers to justice, they will fight us to the last bullet, knife, and bomb.  That goes not only for the irregulars in the knife slashing brigades but for our own soldiers and our leaders who ordered them into this cruel conflict as well.

Vijay Prishad, professor of international studies at Trinity College
A rational observer of United States intervention in the swath of land that runs from Libya to Afghanistan would come to a simple conclusion: U.S. military action leads to chaos. Examples are legion, but the two most dramatic are Iraq and Libya. In both cases, the U.S. bombed the state institutions to smithereens. It takes a hundred years to build state institutions. They can be destroyed in an afternoon. The chaos that followed in both countries was the ideal condition for the flotsam of al-Qaida. In Iraq, al-Qaida in Mesopotamia (2004) morphed into the Islamic State of Iraq, and eventually ISIS.

United for Peace and Justice
President Obama may prefer the term “counter-terrorism,” but it is clear from last night’s speech that he is taking the United States into another war.

His long-term plan for bombing Iraq and Syria, for placing U.S. troops on the ground as “trainers,” and for assistance to allied fighters, is opening another tragic chapter in the failed “war on terrorism,” initiated by President Bush and rejected by the voters in 2008.

We deplore the brutality and violence of ISIS, but we do not believe that U.S. air strikes will solve the problem, even if there are short-term military gains. Despite the President’s many references to “a coalition,”in reality the United States will be intervening unilaterally in two civil wars, each of which has multiple factions and complex roots.

U.S. air-strikes –whether in Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan or Afghanistan- have never had the precision that is claimed. Thousands of civilians have been killed, with the result that America’s enemies multiplied. The “new strategy” the President just unveiled isn’t new. It was tried by President George W. Bush in Afghanistan, where it failed, creating a Washington demand for tens of thousands of U.S. combat troops.

Kevin Martin, Executive Director, Peace Action
We agree with the president that there is no military solution to the problems posed by ISIS. And yet his proposed strategy relies far too heavily on the use of military force. It’s time to stop the bombing and escalation and use the other tools of U.S. foreign policy — working with allies in cutting off weapons, oil and funding streams for starters — which will be much more active in dealing with ISIS.

John Fullinwider, President, Dallas Peace Center
To effectively oppose the President on this one, we need to spell out what should be done instead of bombing ISIS.  I want a response that is credible to the everyday, non-political person to this question:  “ISIS cut off the heads of two American journalists – are you saying just let them get away with it?” The case to be made involves diplomacy at the U.N. and directly with the regional powers, particularly Iran and Turkey; humanitarian assistance to the dispossessed; a cut off of the weapons supply and funding to all militias and non-state actors, specifically pressuring Qatar and Saudi Arabia on this point; and – you name it. But let’s make the case clearly and concisely. The U.S. opened the “gates of hell” in the Middle East with the invasion of Iraq more than a decade ago; we can’t close them with a new bombing campaign. To effectively oppose this campaign, we will need all the tools of organizing and activism, from letters and calls to social media to lawful street protest to civil disobedience.

Jim Albertini, Malu ‘Aina, Center for non-violent education and action
Here We go again!  War profiteers want endless War.  Obama’s bamboozle strategy is create fear and panic –scare the hell out of people.  Don’t buy into the manufactured fear.  Bombs are not tools for justice and peace.  Stop the wars.  Save the planet.

Roger Kotila, Earth Federation News & Views
Unfortunately, anything President Obama has to say is something like the “pot calling the kettle black.” ISIS (or ISIL, or Islamic State) allegedly cuts off heads, while US/NATO blows them off. It’s time to put the Earth Federation Movement’s Earth Constitution into place, upgrading the UN so that there is enforceable world law. The UN and the International Criminal Court remain helpless to deal with VIP world criminals who go about their murderous (war) business with impunity. No individual should be above the law.

ISIL replaces Russia as the top threat to the United States according to president

"There's a sucker born every minute." President Obama agrees based on his address to the nation. How else can you explain the pathetic national address just delivered?

Tonight's viewing event featured ISIL, the latest excuse for increased military spending. The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is also called ISIS and IS. The name really doesn't matter. ISIL is code for angry Muslims who decapitate reporters. ISIL didn't quite pass public relations muster when it stood for angry Muslims who attack Iraqi towns and cities.

Early in the speech, the president said, "we have consistently taken the fight to terrorists who threaten our country." Therefore, we're taking "the fight" to ISIL, right? It's a little more complicated than that.

Remarks of President Barack Obama

Address to the Nation

September 10, 2014

Washington, D.C.

As Prepared for Delivery

My fellow Americans – tonight, I want to speak to you about what the United States will do with our friends and allies to degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL. 

By Sherwood Ross

Approximately 3.3 million Iraqis, including 750,000 children, were “exterminated” by economic sanctions and/or illegal wars conducted by the U.S. and Great Britain between 1990 and 2012, an eminent international legal authority says.

The slaughter fits the classic definition of Genocide Convention Article II of, “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” says Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois, Champaign, and who in 1991 filed a class-action complaint with the UN against President George H.W. Bush.

The U.S. and U.K. “obstinately insisted” that their sanctions remain in place until after the “illegal” Gulf War II aggression perpetrated by President George W. Bush and UK’s Tony Blair in March, 2003, “not with a view to easing the over decade-long suffering of the Iraqi people and children” but “to better facilitate the U.S./U.K. unsupervised looting and plundering of the Iraqi economy and oil fields in violation of the international laws of war as well as to the grave detriment of the Iraqi people,” Boyle said.

In an address last Nov. 22 to The International Conference on War-affected Children in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Boyle tallied the death toll on Iraq by U.S.-U.K. actions as follows:

# The slaughter of 200,000 Iraqis by President Bush in his illegal 1991 Gulf War I.

# The deaths of 1.4 million Iraqis as a result of the illegal 2003 war of aggression ordered by President Bush Jr. and Prime Minister Blair.

#  The deaths of 1.7 million Iraqis “as a direct result” of the genocidal sanctions.

Boyle’s class-action complaint demanded an end to all economic sanctions against Iraq; criminal proceedings for genocide against President George H.W. Bush; monetary compensation to the children of Iraq and their families for deaths, physical and mental injury; and for  shipping massive humanitarian relief supplies to that country.

The “grossly hypocritical” UN refused to terminate the sanctions, Boyle pointed out, even though its own Food and Agricultural Organization’s Report estimated that by 1995 the sanctions had killed 560,000 Iraqi children during the previous five years.

Boyle noted that then U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright was interviewed on CBS-TV on May 12, 1996, in response to a question by Leslie Stahl if the price of half a million dead children was worth it, and replied, “we (the U.S. government) think the price is worth it.”

Albright’s shocking response provides “proof positive of the genocidal intent by the U.S. government against Iraq” under the Genocide Convention, Boyle said, adding that the government of Iraq today could still bring legal action against the U.S. and the U.K. in the International Court of Justice. He said the U.S.-U.K. genocide also violated the municipal legal systems of all civilized nations in the world; the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child; and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and its Additional Protocol 1 of 1977.

Boyle, who was stirred to take action pro bono by Mothers in Iraq after the economic sanctions had been imposed upon them by the Security Council in August, 1990, in response to pressure from the Bush Senior Administration.  He is the author of numerous books on international affairs, including “Destroying World Order” (Clarity Press.)                                    #

(Sherwood Ross is a columnist, broadcast commentator and public relations consultant “for good causes.” He formerly reported for major dailies and wire services and is the author of “Gruening of Alaska”(Best). Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com )

I know you mean well. I know you think you've found a bargain that nobody else noticed hidden in a back corner of the used car lot. Let me warn you: it's a clunker. Here, I'll list the defects. You can have your own mechanic check them out:

1. If you want to bomb a country every time an evil group murders people in a gruesome manner, you'll have to bomb a lot of countries including our own.  ISIS draws its strength in Iraq from resentment of the Iraqi government, which bombs its own cities using U.S. weapons, and which beheads people, albeit in grainier footage with lower production values.  Allies in the region, including allies that support ISIS, including allies armed by the United States (some of which arms end up in the hands of ISIS), themselves behead people regularly. But is that worse than other types of killing? When President Barack Obama blew up a 16 year old American boy whom nobody had ever accused of so much as jaywalking, and blew up six other kids who were too close to him at the time, do you imagine his head remained on his body?

As with most drone strikes, that boy could have been arrested and questioned. Had he been, though, gruesome death would have remained a possibility. In April, the United States injected a man with chemicals that made him writhe in excruciating pain for 43 minutes and die. Last week in the United States a man facing a similar fate on death row was proven innocent and freed. The prosecutor who had put him there 30 years earlier showed zero remorse. Now I'm not proposing that we bomb North Carolina because I'm angry at that prosecutor. I'm not even angry at that prosecutor. I am suggesting that there are evil killers all over the place, some wearing Western suits and ties, some wearing military uniforms. Bombs, which mostly kill innocent people who had nothing to do with it, won't help.

2. The bombs will mostly kill innocent people who had nothing to do with it, and will only make the crisis worse. Most people who die in wars are civilians by everyone's definition. People still use words like "battlefield" as if wars were waged in a field the way a football game is played. They couldn't play football on our streets and sidewalks because grandparents and baby strollers would end up tackled and crushed. Well, wars are waged on people's streets and sidewalks, even when one side is only present in the sky above in the form of unmanned robot death planes. The slow-moving die first: the very old and the very young. And when anyone dies, according to top U.S. officials, more enemies are created in greater numbers. Thus, the operation is counterproductive on its own terms, making us less safe rather than safer. This is why President Obama is always saying "There is no military solution" just before proposing to use the military to seek a solution. When he proposes bombing Iraq for three more years, that number has no basis in military calculation whatsoever. I challenge you to find a general who says otherwise. It is a number almost certainly based on the U.S. election schedule, aimed at convincing us to accept a war without question until a date after the next presidential election. When Obama says he's going to get a good government in place in Iraq this week and then make a speech, he's delusional or enjoying toying with your gullibility, but he's also pointing to the actual problem: a nation destroyed by 24 years of wars and sanctions and lacking a legitimate governing system.

3. Bombing is crazy, and bombing for three years is certifiable. Bombing strengthens ISIS. Three years is longer than most U.S. wars have taken from beginning to end.  The U.S. Constitution, which did not foresee a permanent standing army, much less one permanently standing in most other nations on earth, did not permit -- and does not permit -- creating and funding one for a longer period than two years at a time (Article I. Section 8.). But of course nothing guarantees that the bombing will stop after three years and not go on for thirty more. And nothing guarantees that this war will involve only bombing. Already Obama has sent over 1,100 troops, and is promising to send some number less than 100,000. Read that twice please, slowly. Obama wants Congress to debate his war plans but not vote on them. Why not? Because Congress might be compelled by you and me to vote no, if not on this war then on the next one. Obama wants himself and all future presidents free to launch wars without Congress, exactly what he campaigned for office opposing.

"The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." —Senator Barack Obama. 

The U.S. "intelligence" agencies, by the way, deem ISIS no threat to the United States. Apart from trashing the Constitution and really the one thing its framers got right, President Obama is trashing the U.N. Charter and the Kellogg Briand Pact, laws that forbid war.

4. The fact that it's Obama doesn't make it OK. A majority of you supported attacking Afghanistan and within a couple of years a majority of you said Afghanistan should not have been attacked. Why not? Not because there weren't evil people in Afghanistan, but because bombing the country made everything worse, not better.  You kept telling pollsters it was a bad idea for over another decade, but the war rolled on, and still rolls on.  Iraq is a similar story, although you were even faster to change your mind.  And the occupation ended when President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki signed an agreement for three more years of that war, and then the three years ran out.  At that point, President Obama tried to win approval from the Iraqi government to keep U.S. troops in Iraq longer, but with immunity for any crimes they might commit.  Failing at that, Obama withdrew the troops.  Having won that concession now, he's sending them back in.  Does the fact that it's Obama doing it, rather than Bush, make it OK? Remember the massive protests when Bush proposed a war on Iraq? Obama just put the band back together in Wales, and you're squealing with delight that he visited Stonehenge, or you're busy coloring in your "I'm Ready for Hillary" posters.

The nation of Iraq was utterly destroyed last time. The place is in total chaos: violence, hatred, poverty, illness, desperation, fanaticism.  Dumping gasoline on that fire is worse now than before, not better. And now we have NATO toying with a nuclear confrontation with Russia, drone wars generating violence and terrorism in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia, the U.S. Navy poking China in the eye with a stick, troops heading into a dozen new parts of Africa -- How is starting a war this time better than last time, which you came to view as a mistake by 2004, elected a Congress to end in 2006, thought you were voting against again in 2008, and cheered for the eventual ending of in 2011? Observers have called this the most dangerous moment since World War II. Please don't tell me you trust Obama, believed the fraudulent threat to Benghazi and are now unaware of the disaster he created in Libya, where France has just proposed yet another war to fix the damage of the last war. Please don't tell me you believed the disproven claims of evidence that Assad used chemical weapons or Russia shot down an airplane. This is a government that lies about possible grounds for war and possible outcomes of war, just like its predecessors.

5. The enemy of your enemy is your other weapons customer. Public pressure was instrumental last year in halting proposed attacks on Syria, the plans for which involved massive death and destruction. But the White House and CIA went right ahead and armed and trained one side in that war, the ISIS side. ISIS now has weapons provided directly to it and indirectly to it by the United States, including those seized from the Iraqi government. ISIS has troops trained by the United States and "radicalized" (enraged) by the United States in its brutal prisons in Iraq, as well as troops previously in the Iraqi military who were thrown out of work in 2003 by the U.S. occupation.  Last year, the evil to be confronted was Assad, at all costs. To your great credit you didn't fall for it. Why not? Not because Assad doesn't do evil things, but because you understood that more war would make things even worse.  

Now you're being told that Assad's enemies must be attacked at all cost, and you're falling for it, to your great discredit.  With supposed surgical precision the "moderate" beheaders will be spared, in order to blow up only the "extremist" beheaders. Don't believe it.  Six months ago the great Satan was Iran.  Now you're on Iran's side.  Were you aware of that? You're stirring up trouble to the ultimate benefit of only one group: the weapons makers.  You think of the Middle East as a violent place, but 80% of the weapons come from the United States. Imagine how much less violent the Middle East could be if it only had 20% of the weapons.  We're not talking about stockpiles. These weapons get used.

6. There are other options. Try telling a four-year-old he has only two choices: eat the broccoli or eat the lima beans.  He'll throw another 18 alternatives at you in less than a minute, beginning with eating ice cream. Try telling a non-American adult about the current state of disaster in Iraq, and they'll begin by opposing making it worse, and then start discussing a variety of steps to make it better, from humanitarian aid to diplomacy to disarmament to emergency U.N. police forces, etc.  But tell a U.S. adult that Iraq must be bombed or we must do nothing other than sit back and revel in our evil state of ISIS-loving, and your befuddled manipulated subject will shout "Bomb em! Bomb em!" Why?

Last year we were told that we had to bomb Syria or love the poisoning of children with chemical weapons. We did not accept that those were the only two choices. Why not? Because we were thinking straight.  We hadn't been frightened into blind stupidity by high-quality videos of beheadings and threats that we might be next.  Nobody thinks well when they're scared. That's why the government likes to scare you.  That's why your you're hearing all this nonsense about ISIS coming to your neighborhood. The more the U.S. keeps bombing people, the more some of those people will want to fight back. Did you ever wonder why nations that spend 2% what the U.S. does on its military feel so much safer than you do? Part of it is the reality that war generates enemies rather than removing them, but mostly it's a culture of cowardice that we're living in. Here are 15 things we could do about ISIS instead of bombing.

7. We don't have time for this barbaric insanity. War is sucking our resources and energy and attention away from where they are needed, namely on a massive campaign to protect the climate of the earth. Imagine a proposal to dump untold trillions of dollars and every ounce of energy into that project! Would Congress step aside and allow it? It would benefit even your short-term economic interests, but would you permit it? Would you demand it? Would you join with me in insisting that we stop the wars and save the climate?

UPDATE: Newsweek says ISIS is intentionally manipulating you into attacking it.

UPDATE 2: Matt Hoh Says the Beheadings Are Bait

What to do about ISIS.

By Veterans For Peace

The U.S. is racing down a slippery slope towards war in Iraq and Syria. Since Aug. 8, the U.S. has conducted more than 124 airstrikes in Iraq. Approximately 1,000 U.S. troops are now on the ground in Iraq, with at least 350 more currently on their way.

President Obama initially said the bombing was part of a humanitarian mission to assist the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq being threatened by ISIS, the fundamentalist Islamic army that now controls wide swaths of Iraq and Syria. But Obama has now announced an open-ended bombing campaign, and he has ordered Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry into the region to build military and political coalitions to sustain a long term war against ISIS.

According to the New York Times, President Obama has also authorized U.S. surveillance flights over Syria, reportedly in search of ISIS targets for later bombing missions. The Syrian government has offered to coordinate with U.S. military action against ISIS, the strongest rebel force fighting to overthrow the Assad government in Syria. But the U.S., which has aided ISIS' growth by facilitating the arming and training of rebels in Syria, has not asked permission for its flights into Syrian airspace.

Veterans For Peace members have witnessed the brutality and the futility of war, including the war in Iraq. We were sent to a war based on lies and we became part of the killing of a nation, along with as many as one million of its people. We watched as U.S. policy makers consciously stirred up ethnic and religious divisions, creating the conditions for civil war today.

Veterans know from first hand experience that you cannot bomb your way to peace. More bombing will ultimately mean more division, bloodshed, recruitment for extremist organizations, and a continual cycle of violent intervention.

Last year the American people overwhelmingly sent a message to President Obama and the Congress: No U.S. Bombing in Syria. Last month, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed H. Con. Res. 105 stating that there is no legal authority for U.S. military involvement in Iraq without express Congressional approval. By unilaterally pursuing miltiary action in Iraq and Syria, President Obama is acting in contempt of the American people, as well as of U.S. and international law.

We support the troops who refuse to fight and who blow the whistle on war crimes. Under international law, military personnel have the right and the responsibility to refuse to be part of illegal wars and war crimes. U.S. troops are not the cops of the world. There is no legitimate mission for any U.S. service members in Iraq or Syria. We encourage GI's to find out their rights at the GI Rights Hotline.

Veterans For Peace absolutely opposes U.S. military intervention in the Middle East, no matter what the rationalization. We call on all our members to speak out against any U.S. attacks on Iraq and Syria.

We wish to see a U.S. foreign policy based on true humanitariasm and real diplomacy based on mutual respect, guided by internatianal law, and dedicated to human rights and equality for all.

We call attention to the excellent constructive proposals in a recent letter from 53 National Religious Groups, Academics, and Ministers Urging Alternatives to U.S. Military Action in Iraq.

We applaud the initiatives of several key peace groups and we encourage our members to participate.

Sign Code Pink's letter telling President Obama not to bomb Syria or Iraq.

Sign Peace Action's petition restricting U.S. arms sales around the world.

VETERANS FOR PEACE WORKS FOR PEACE AT HOME AND PEACE ABROAD!

By Dave Lindorff

Flash! The US has re-invaded Iraq!

Iraq forces counterattack after breaking Islamic State’s siege of Amerli - AFP

Iraqi forces regain control of key road to Baghdad after breaking IS siege of Amerli - theguardian.com

Aid enters Amerli after 2-month Islamic State siege broken (VIDEO) - AP

In Iraq, residents of Amirli celebrate end of IS siege - Los Angeles Times

VIDEO: Crowds cheer as Iraqi forces enter Amerli - Reuters

VIDEO: Turkmen from Amerli Describe Survival of IS Siege - YouTube

VIDEO: Grannies 'took on Islamic State in Amerli’ - BBC News

Shiite Militias Join in Iraq Victory - WSJ

As battle lines shift in Iraq, Sunnis who welcomed the Islamic State fear retribution - The Washington Post

Iranians play role in breaking IS siege of Iraqi town - Reuters

Weapons Expert Warns About IS Militants' Supply Of Guns And Ammunition - huffingtonpost.com

--------------------------------------------------

U.S. Airstrikes Help Break Islamic State Siege on Amerli - WSJ

Pentagon: U.S. forces airdropped 109 bundles of much-needed humanitarian aid to the people of Amerli - U.S. Air Force

VIDEO: Night Vision B-Roll of Humanitarian Aid Air Drop Near Amerli, Iraq - YouTube

Pentagon: Humanitarian operations, airstrikes will continue to support Iraqi and Kurdish forces in their fight with Islamic State - Defense.gov

Islamic State still threat to Mosul Dam, Pentagon says - Army Times

VIDEO: Pentagon News Conference With Kirby (FULL) - Bloomberg

TRANSCRIPT: Department of Defense Press Briefing by Rear Adm. Kirby - Defense.gov

Pentagon Says Iraq Operations Costing On Average $7.5 Million Per Day - Business Insider

Humanitarian aid to Iraq costs U.S. taxpayer dollars - WJLA.com

Obama notifies Congress of ordering air strikes, airdrop campaign in Iraq's Amerli - Reuters

Text Of Letter From President Obama: War Powers Resolution Regarding Iraq - Eurasia Review

Obama Authorizes Sending Additional Troops To Iraq - huffingtonpost.com

Are American Troops Already Fighting on the Front Lines in Iraq? - The Daily Beast

Obama heads to the NATO summit hoping to persuade more nations to join America in the fight against IS - NBC News.com

Iraq gets Russian Mi-28 attack helicopters - GlobalPost

-------------------------------------------------

New Islamic State video shows apparent beheading of U.S. journalist Steven Sotloff - AP

VIDEO: The Islamic State original full video of Steven Sotloff beheading: A second message to America - YouTube

TRANSCRIPT: American Steven Sotloff's words before apparent beheading - NY Daily News

Terrorist in ISIS execution video of Steven Sotloff appears to be same killer of James Foley - NY Daily News

Islamic State’s acts of inhumanity on unimaginable scale: UN - BBC News

Amnesty International accuses Islamic State of ethnic cleansing in Iraq, conducting mass killings of men and abducting women and children - Middle East - AP

Human Rights Watch: New ISIS Video Shows Higher Number Of Executions In Iraq; One Survivor Details Gruesome Tactics - ibtimes.com

Iraq: Islamic State Executions in Tikrit - Human Rights Watch

------------------------------------------------

Germany to deliver weapons to Iraqi Kurds battling IS terrorists - DW.DE

List of German weapons deliveries to Iraq′s Kurdish region - DW.DE

Australian Air Force plane delivers ammunition to Kurds - SBS News

Don't Expect Peshmerga Fighters to Beat the Islamic State - US News

Why The Kurds Failed Against IS In Iraq - Business Insider

Kurdish Peshmerga: Tarnishing a Reputation as Storied Warriors - NYTimes.com

PKK forces impress in fight against Islamic State - Al-Monitor

Female PKK Fighters May Be IS's Worst Nightmare - Military.com

'Islamic State tore our families apart. Now we're fighting back'. Meet the Kurdish women's resistance army - Telegraph

Iraqi Christians Weigh Taking Up Arms Against the Islamic State - nationalgeographic.com

To contact Bartolo email peaceloversingle_at_gmail.com (replacing _at_ with @)

Dangerous arguments and actions came this week from both President Obama, who plans to increase airstrikes on Iraq & Syria and announced drone surveillance (as if that has not been happening for years), and from John McCain, leader of the “US has to get back in Iraq” cabal.“Limited” airstrikes by the world's most powerful military combined with U.S.

by Debra Sweet      Dangerous arguments and actions came this week from both President Obama, who plans to increase airstrikes on Iraq & Syria and announced drone surveillance (as if that has not been happening for years), and from John McCain, leader of the “US has to get back in Iraq” cabal.“Limited” airstrikes by the world's most powerful military combined with U.S. more troops going into this extremely volatile region will not bring peace, stability, or safety.

August 27, 2014

Dear President Obama:

As religious communities, leaders, and academics, we write to express our deep concern over the

recent escalation of U.S. military action in Iraq. While the dire plight of Iraqi civilians should

compel the international community to respond in some way, U.S. military action is not the

answer. Lethal weapons and airstrikes will not remove the threat to a just peace in Iraq. As

difficult as it might be, in the face of this great challenge, we believe that the way to address the

crisis is through long-term investments in supporting inclusive governance and diplomacy,

nonviolent resistance, sustainable development, and community-level peace and reconciliation

Pope Francis has affirmed that “peacemaking is more courageous than warfare,” and more

recently said that “it is licit to stop the unjust aggressor. I underscore the verb ‘stop;’ I don’t say

bomb, make war---stop him.” But how we ask?

John Horgan asked me for a paragraph on what to do about ISIS. I sent him this:

By John Grant

Back in June 2011, James Foley gave an hour-long interview to an auditorium of students from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where he had graduated three years earlier with a Master’s degree in journalism. It was 15 days after he had been released from 45 rough days of captivity in Libya. He was a handsome young hero returning to his alma-mater.

Cheney’s Legacy: Honesty Still in Short Supply

By Ray McGovern

As the world marks the centennial of World War I, the guns of August are again being oiled by comfortable politicians and the fawning corporate media, both bereft of any sense of history.  And that includes much more recent history, namely the deceitful campaign that ended up bringing destruction to Iraq and widened conflict throughout the Middle East.  That campaign went into high gear 12 years ago today.

https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-matthew-hoh-refutes-arguments-for-bombing-iraq

Matthew Hoh is a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy and is the former Director of the Afghanistan Study Group, a network of foreign and public policy experts and professionals advocating for a change in US strategy in Afghanistan. A former State Department official, Matthew resigned in protest from his post in Afghanistan over US strategic policy and goals in Afghanistan in September 2009. Prior to his assignment in Afghanistan, Matthew was in Iraq; first in 2004-5 in Salah ad Din Province with a State Department reconstruction and governance team and then in 2006-7 in Anbar Province as a Marine Corps company commander. When not deployed, Matthew worked on Afghanistan and Iraq policy and operations issues at the Pentagon and State Department from 2002-8. Matthew’s writings have appeared in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Defense News, the Guardian, the Huffington Post, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. The Council on Foreign Relations has cited Matthew’s resignation letter from his post in Afghanistan as an Essential Document. In 2010, Matthew was named the Ridenhour Prize Recipient for Truth Telling. Matthew is a member of the Board of Directors for Council for a Livable World and is an Advisory Board Member for Expose Facts (ExposeFacts.org). He writes on issues of war, peace and post-traumatic stress disorder recovery at MatthewHoh.com.

Total run time: 29:00

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Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

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Obama: Recapture of Critical Dam in Iraq Is a Success - ABC News

VIDEO: President Obama Addresses Iraq and Ferguson Crisis, (FULL STATEMENT) - YouTube

TRANSCRIPT: Obama’s remarks on Iraq and Ferguson - The Washington Post

Obama to chair UN meeting on Syria, Iraq foreign fighters - GlobalPost

POLL: Most Americans support U.S. Airstrikes in Iraq; Concern About Getting Too Involved - Pew Research Center

POLL (Full Report): Most Americans support U.S. Airstrikes in Iraq; Concern About Getting Too Involved - Pew Research Center

Iraq Crisis: Approximately 100 CIA agents and US special forces hunt Islamic State 'Caliph' Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi - Yahoo News UK

Security of Mosul Dam Critical to Iraq’s Infrastructure: Defense Dept - Defense.gov

Mosul dam needs crucial maintenance to reduce flood risk: expert - Fox News

VIDEO: Why is Iraq's Mosul dam so important? - BBC News

Iraqis consolidating gains after victory retaking dam - usatoday.com

VIDEO: Video from a U.S. military airstrike against IS Humvee near the Mosul Dam - YouTube

VIDEO: Video from a U.S. military airstrike against IS armed truck near the Mosul Dam - YouTube

Britain steps up role in Iraq as warplanes monitor IS positions - The Guardian

Pope Backs Military Force To Protect Iraq Minorities, Wants UN OK - ABC News

UNSC takes aim at jihadist supporters in Iraq and Syria - DW.DE

Kuwait briefly detains Muslim cleric U.S. suspects of militant financing, "He was released without any charges" - Reuters

----------------------------------------------------

Plight of Iraqi Minorities Worsens With Forced Conversions and Killings - NYTimes.com

Testimonies from Kocho: The Yazidi village IS tried to wipe off the map - Amnesty's blog

VIDEO: Yazidi man tells of family wiped out by Islamic State 'massacre' in Kocho - Telegraph

In Iraq, Captured Yazidi Women Fear the Islamic State Will Force Them to Wed - Washington Post

Kurdish militants train hundreds of Yazidis to fight Islamic State - Reuters

VIDEO: Inside the Syria training camp where Kurdish forces are preparing Yazidis for battle against IS - Telegraph

Disabled Yazidi boy found by Kurdish abandoned in middle of Iraqi desert (PHOTOS) - Mail Online

VIDEO: Disabled Yazidi refugee boy 'abandoned in desert' - BBC News

Turkmen: Iraq's Third Largest Ethnic Group Is Also On The Run From The Islamic State - huffingtonpost

Iraq's Sunnis Offer To Back New Government In Fight Against Islamic State - Eurasia Review

Baathist Insurgent Naqshbandi Army' Activist Front Groups - Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi

How IS Is Using Taxes To Build A Terrorist State - Forbes

-------------------------------------------------------

Reports: Islamic State Group Kills Syria Tribesmen - ABC News

PHOTOS: Three older men executed and crucified in Deir ez-Zor by IS - LiveLeak.com

Syria bombs ISIS positions in Raqqa for second day - THE DAILY STAR

Rebels ask for Iraq-style strikes in Syria against IS - Al Jazeera English

Syrian Coalition Statement Calls for Targeted Airstrikes in Syria and a Comprehensive Approach to Defeating IS - National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces

Japanese 'mercenary' captured and interrogated at knifepoint by IS jihadists with British accents in Syria - Mail Online

VIDEO: Bloodied Japanese 'mercenary’ captured by IS - YouTube

VIDEO: New IS Interrogation Video Allegedly Of Japanese Military Contractor Haruna Yukawa - LiveLeak.com

U.S. ship finishes neutralizing Syria's worst chemical arms: Pentagon - Yahoo News

Statement by President Obama on the Completion of the Destruction of Syria’s Declared Chemical Weapons - enewspf.com

Expert: Claims of Syrian Government Involvement in Sarin Gas Attack in Doubt, A Brief Assessment of the Veracity of Published Statements by Dan Kaszeta - cryptome.org

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By John Grant

On Monday, I decided to spend my evenings flipping back-and-forth between Fox News and MSNBC as the two cable channels dealt with the dueling stories of the United States tiptoeing into a third war in Iraq and the sudden appearance of what appeared to be a police state in a little town outside St Louis. From Monday to Friday, the Ferguson, Missouri story has gone from that of a bizarre and dangerous war zone to one of a relief-filled carnival in the streets.

By Danny Schechter

New York, New York: Welcome back to Iraq -- complete with our ever present WMD's -- Weapons of Mass deception.

Suddenly, the country we never wanted to have to think about again is back in the news and on our military agenda. So, after a few denials that troops would not, never, and no way be sent, sure'nuff, U.S, boots are back on the ground, but to play a very different "mission."

Of course, it's not combat, assures Secretary of Defense Hagel who was wearing his tennis clothes when he met with GIs. That is, no doubt, why we are pounding that country with bombs again.

To signal that we are not back in the days of the war for Iraqi Freedom, the Pentagon announced its latest humanitarian effort with a tweet, that, in the media world we are now part of, maybe the equivalent of a whimper not a neocon bark.

Once again, we are the good guys charging in to protect and defend, save and rescue.  You saw the alarmist stories.

This report was on RTE in Ireland: "Islamic State militants have killed hundreds of Iraq's minority Yazidis.
They buried some alive and took women as slaves, as US warplanes again bombed the insurgents.

Human rights minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani accused the Sunni Muslim insurgents of celebrating what he called a "a vicious atrocity."


But, then, predictably, there was this coda that put the story in question: "No independent confirmation was available of an event that could increase pressure on Western powers to do more to help."

It sounded like the story a few weeks back that had ISIS vowing to impose female genital mutilation on every woman they met. Happily, it was later repudiated.

This is not to say that ISIS is not brutal says Edmund Ghareeb of the Center for Global Peace at American University.

"Where have people been? Certainly some of the recent reporting of the carnage by IS is sensationalized, but their brutality is all too real. But critically, it's been happening for years in both Iraq and in Syria, where is should have been confronted. In Syria, ancient Christian churches were destroyed, nuns and bishops were kidnapped and priests were killed. In Syria and Iraq, many belonging to different religions, sects and nationalities were killed or forced to flee at the hands of extremists and criminals. This was widely ignored in large part because many in the region and in the west were so focused on attacking the Assad government.

"As for U.S. intervention, the danger is that it may further hurt the Iraqi people and fragment Iraq altogether in the name of this humanitarian intervention."

Now, we have US troops flying into the mountain that we were told was packed to overflowing with 40,000 desperate refugees facing starvation.

What happened when their saviors finally arrived?

Here's USA Today:

"WASHINGTON — A review by U.S. special operations troops of conditions on Iraq's Mount Sinjar on Wednesday has determined that the conditions of a religious minority seeking refuge there are better than believed and may not require a U.S.-led evacuation, the Pentagon said…

"Based on this assessment the interagency has determined that an evacuation mission is far less likely. Additionally, we will continue to provide humanitarian assistance as needed and will protect U.S. personnel and facilities."

Comments Jason Ditz on anti-war.com: "The Pentagon is trying to manage the narrative by simply saying the rescue mission "appears unnecessary," but the fact that it was used to start a US war remains, and the State Department is doubling down, trying to spin the lack of a crisis as vindication of the war."

Of course, protecting Americans was the first reason cited for this intervention.

So noted the political scientist Michael Brenner, without first noting that the City of Erbil is a major center for U.S. Oil companies and their employees:

"The first thing to say is that we should not confuse purpose with justification. Thursday night, Obama explicitly stated that protection of Americans in Irbil (and implicitly Kurdistan) was the reason for acting against advancing IS forces.

This is not entirely convincing; evacuation could be a logical alternative. Obviously, there are other aims, inter alia in the immediate, securing access to the air and support facilities we have established at the airport that are crucial to any future operations -- including supplying the Peshmerga, e.g. keeping open your military options; to shore up Kurdish morale; to send a message to IS and its allies that any future campaigns in that direction that they contemplate would not be a cakewalk. The President said none of this due to his anxieties about making about making implicit commitments that he is not sure that he could meet."

What they are doing, says Brenner, is dipping into an old playbook  "trying to lay the groundwork for revival of the Sawah Awakening movement among Sunni tribes that had suppressed al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia in 2006-2008." That effort was based on a vicious counter-insurgency campaign with plenty of pay-offs to our robed "allies."

Clearly, in the aftermath of the ISIS victories, this maneuver decisively failed.

No matter, for Obama, it was soon back to the golf course on Martha's Vineyard, the Kennedy and then Clinton vacation playground he has made his own. Maybe he feels like he can relax because the British and French are shipping in weapons to the US trained Peshmerga, whether they need them or not. After all, they, too, have to promote their "humanitarian" cred.

What's missing from the media narratives that focus on these forever changing daily incidents, is the deeper reality, that US intervention has not saved Iraq but destroyed it, with more than a million dead, unrepresentative and unaccountable governments and enough war crimes to keep international courts busy for decades.

To understand the depths of the destruction and Iraqi despair, you need the perspective of long time Iraq watchers like The Independent's Patrick Cockburn whose new book is titled, "The end of a country, and the start of a new dark age."

He writes, "Iraq has disintegrated. Little is exchanged between its three great communities – Shia, Sunni and Kurd – except gunfire. The outside world hopes that a more inclusive government will change this but it is probably too late.

The main victor in the new war in Iraq is the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) which wants to kill Shia rather than negotiate with them. Iraq is facing a civil war that could be as bloody as anything that we have seen in Syria and could go on for years."

Who is ultimately responsible for this? We can blame Saddam Hussein, but he's long gone, or Osama bin Laden who is swimming with the fishes.

More likely, as is most often the case, blame the victims for the crimes, but accepting responsibility is not something that Washington is ever willing or able to do. It seems like we would rather keep arming the "rebels" in Syria, the Israeli army or the Ferguson Mo. Police.

Perhaps that's why all we hear on TV news shows us a chorus for more killing, to save "civilization" from "those People, "the heathens, of course. Never mind that Iraq was the original home of civilization.

It is summer time and the living is easy. Besides, we have dead celebrities to mourn in these dog days of August.

News Dissector Danny Schechter made the film WMD about deceptive media in Iraq and wrote "When News Lies" about U.S. media war coverage. (Select Books, 2006.) He blogs at Newsdissector.net and edits the media issues site, Mediachannel.org. Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

Full statement:

“The United States is not the only country on Earth with an air force. While I support President Obama’s decision to use airstrikes to protect the lives of thousands of innocent people of the Yazidi minority, the U.S. should not have to act alone militarily in this crisis.  ISIS is a danger to the entire region and to the world.  The international community must work with the U.S.”