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.