The ISIS Fiasco: It’s Really an Attack on Iran

The ISIS
Fiasco: It’s Really an Attack on Iran

By Mike Whitney
June 19, 2014 "ICH"
- "Counterpunch"
- - There’s
something that doesn’t ring-true about the
coverage of crisis in Iraq. Maybe it’s the way
the media reiterates the same, tedious storyline
over and over again with only the slightest
changes in the narrative. For example, I was
reading an article in the Financial Times by
Council on Foreign Relations president, Richard
Haass, where he says that Maliki’s military
forces in Mosul “melted away”. Interestingly,
the Haass op-ed was followed by a piece by David
Gardener who used almost the very same language.
He said the “army melts away.” So, I decided to
thumb through the news a bit and see how many
other journalists were stung by the “melted
away” bug. And, as it happens, there were quite
a few, including Politico, NBC News, News
Sentinel, Global Post, the National Interest,
ABC News etc. Now, the only way an unusual
expression like that would pop up with such
frequency would be if the authors were getting
their talking points from a central authority.
(which they probably do.) But the effect, of
course, is the exact opposite than what the
authors intend, that is, these cookie cutter
stories leave readers scratching their heads and
feeling like something fishy is going on.

And something
fishy IS going on. The whole fable about 1,500
jihadis scaring the pants off 30,000 Iraqi
security guards to the point where they threw
away their rifles, changed their clothes and
headed for the hills, is just not believable. I
don’t know what happened in Mosul, but, I’ll
tell you one thing, it wasn’t that. That story
just doesn’t pass the smell test.

Evidence of torture used in Iraq | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics

Evidence of torture used in Iraq | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics : "The Foreign Office says the 'government, including its intelligence and security agencies, never use torture for any purpose' ( MI5 and MI6 to be sued for first time over torture, September 12). The evidence in the public domain from the court martial into the death of Baha Mousa and the serious abuse of 10 other Iraqi civilians is clear in establishing this is not true. UK armed forces went into Iraq with a written policy that allowed hooding, and with a policy of training interrogators to use hooding, stressing and sleep deprivation to gain intelligence. Iraqi civilians were routinely hooded in up to three sandbags - and even old plastic cement bags. When Baha Mousa died in September 2003, partly as a result of abuse while hooded, common sense dictates that at least at that point those in positions of responsibility within the civil service and military would have acted to change the poli...

be just

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