IS crisis in Iraq and Syria

[Patroklos]

So it's not just a question of "The Arab nation-states are poor, their weapons are inferior." They're also losing wars to other people whose weapons are basically equivalent to theirs, and showing persistent signs of failing to really 'get' how to use their weapons as effectively as possible, so that even when they do spend billions on modern weapons (e.g. Saudi Arabia), they still can't use them as well as they might.

Another anecdote to this.

Around 2005 I was invited with a few other US officers from my ship to visit and train with the Saudis onboard their new frigate the Al Riyadh. This was a brand new ship just out of acceptance trials and in many ways the jewel of the Saudi military at the time. It was state of the art, based off the French La Fayette-class, and on paper a beast compared to anything rivals like Iran could field.

So we come onboard and start our tour, head to combat and it became quite obvious this wasn't an exchange to cross train but rather they wanted us to teach them how to use their AAW suite, the primary mission of the ship, from scratch. I shit you not some of the consoles were still shrink wrapped and this was years after the thing had launched. After talking to their wardroom (who were all nice people) it became clear that the crew was basically a smattering of basic deck rating and them a bunch of third or fourth sons from high profile Saudi families that were stashed there to do something pseudo prestigious but basically to get them out of the way. The only actually professionals on the boat were the engineers because you can't fake that, your ship either moves or it doesn't.

This ship was a toy to them, not unlike all the fancy but mostly unused super cars in the 50 car garages of the royal family's various mansions. And that’s all they are supposed to be really, prestige pieces to show the world they are modern and powerful. They have no real need for the stuff in the first place. They invest their real time and effort on their internal security forces because that’s where they have real threats and pressures that can't be countered with flashy show pieces.

[Elheru Aran]

That may be more of an Saudi Arabian problem though. SA has absolutely ludicrous amounts of money to play with, so you get a lot of things like this. Other Arab countries are a bit more practical than that.

Saudi Arabia also doesn't have to worry as much about actually being invaded or attacked because its oil resources are just too vital to the rest of the world. There's a reason there's usually US carriers within a day or two's cruising, after all... all they have to do is cry for help. The other Arab countries aren't quite as fortunate, so they do put some more effort than that into training their militaries.

[Channel72]

You forgot Vietnam and a dozen other conflicts which were way more bloody; and where military objectives were often achieved even with inferior weapons, albeit at greater cost in life and limb.

It's beside the point, but this is debatable. Vietnam and Korea likely had higher casualty counts, but it's pretty debatable, at least with Korea.

I forgot about the Congo war - but there's hardly a "dozen" other post WW2 conflicts that rival the Iran/Iraq war in terms of sheer bloodiness and death. There seems to be like, 3, at most.

[K. A. Pital]

Comparable or larger by scale of death events include the infamous TORCHLIGHT genocidal war campaign in Bangladesh, wars in Indochina including Vietnam, the mentioned Korean war, the civil wars in Nigeria and Sudan, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the French war in Algeria and the latest bloodbath that followed the invasion of Iraq. Maybe not dozens, but not a small number either.

[cosmicalstorm]

I think it's worth remembering that int he case of the Arab-Israeli wars, the Israelis had a high motivation to fight, as far as they were concerned it was fight as hard as possible or their nation is destroyed. I doubt you could say the same for the Arab soldiers.

That is a good point. Most of them are peasant-armies. Groups with real motivation like Hezbollah, IDF, IS and some elite part of the Jordanian army seems to do fine.

Personally I don't think this completely explains the lackluster performance of Arab military in modern times.

[xerex]

Personally I don't think this completely explains the lackluster performance of Arab military in modern times.

Consider it a symptom of the general rot taking place across Arab world. All of them are oligarchies of one sort or another but they've dont even try to have a competent oligarchy. Where mid level leadership positions are filled not by capable members of the oligarchy but by the leftovers. No organization can function that way.

[Simon_Jester]

That may be more of an Saudi Arabian problem though. SA has absolutely ludicrous amounts of money to play with, so you get a lot of things like this. Other Arab countries are a bit more practical than that.

I do not for a moment deny it. On the other hand, we might see the same basic problems repeated to different degrees in different countries- Saudi Arabia might be the worst without being the only.

Saudi Arabia also doesn't have to worry as much about actually being invaded or attacked because its oil resources are just too vital to the rest of the world. There's a reason there's usually US carriers within a day or two's cruising, after all... all they have to do is cry for help. The other Arab countries aren't quite as fortunate, so they do put some more effort than that into training their militaries.

They do, but that doesn't mean they're entirely immune to the same problems.

For instance, one of the problems Patroklos identified is that of aristocratic and essentially useless people occupying officer positions- so the people nominally in charge of the ship have minimal military training and view it as a sinecure in peacetime.

The de Atkine article "Why Arabs Lose Wars" article talks about this- about the cultural split that allows officers to behave insolently and irresponsibly, while failing to provide adequate leadership and organization. And this account of the Saudi frigate is an example of that.

But that's a persistent problem, to some extent or at least it was in the past- Egyptian and Syrian officers frequently fled and abandoned their troops to die or be captured when under Israeli attack in the Six Days' War, for instance. In a Western army that would be utterly shameful and totally unbecoming conduct; a properly trained officer would do no such thing, and would know that even if his nerve cracked and he did, his military career and perhaps his life would be forfeit.

Likewise to quote the de Atkine article about the Gulf War, "A dramatic example of this occurred during the Gulf War when a severe windstorm blew down the tents of Iraqi officer prisoners of war. For three days they stayed in the wind and rain rather than be observed by enlisted prisoners in a nearby camp working with their hands."

So while the Saudis may take this to extremes (totally useless 'fortunate son' officers, totally untrained ratings who cannot operate their ship's weapons)... it's still relevant to a degree.

[Elheru Aran]

It's all part of the same picture. There is an attitude of aristocratic entitlement prevalent in many Arab countries once you get above a certain income level or job category. Sort of a "we can pay you to do this stuff so we don't have to ourselves" thing. It extends (with the Saudis at least) to their allies-- why bother throwing your own (useless) troops at the Bad Guys when you can just wave some barrels of oil at the Americans, who will promptly make it their business to take care of the problem for you?

Add into all that being insufficiently trained upon the equipment they have, low morale, internal rivalries or power struggles, etc, and really you're adding it all up to a fairly toxic picture. ISIL is succeeding right now because it's managed to motivate a central cadre of highly fanatical troops and is taking advantage of modern vehicular capability to pursue a very mobile style of warfare, versus poorly motivated and equipped, struggling national troops that have the whole "oh no the crazy fanatics are going to behead us all if they catch us" thing going in their heads.

[Channel72]

The aristocratic entitlement thing is much more of a Gulf-state/KSA phenomenon. There is no Iraqi aristocracy, and the US has spent a lot of money trying to properly train the Iraqi army. Yet still, we find ourselves in this situation...

[Simon_Jester]

Well, the officer/enlisted divide can manifest even in environments where there isn't an explicit aristocracy. Hence my references to the behavior of Iraqi, Syrian, and Egyptian officers.

One of the bare minimum requirements for a functioning military is that the enlisted soldiers have confidence that their officers are competent military leaders willing to take risks alongside them, and who will not order them into danger and suffering without good cause. If you don't have that, your military has the cohesion of a wet paper bag no matter how many big guns and cool training programs it goes through.

[Patroklos]

There most definitely is an Iraqi aristocracy, it is simply hidden from view often times in the labyrinthine tribal politics and interactions which many Westerners are oblivious to.

Just because an aristocracy doesn’t look like the stereotypical Western notion of a king holding court in a baroque castle in the Alps doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. The Saudis largely coopted a lot of our Western notions of how a ruling class should look. Don’t doubt for a second that was done for our benefit, they still have their own unique Arab/tribal hierarchy active under the robes that is quite alien to what we generally think of.

One of the bare minimum requirements for a functioning military is that the enlisted soldiers have confidence that their officers are competent military leaders willing to take risks alongside them, and who will not order them into danger and suffering without good cause. If you don't have that, your military has the cohesion of a wet paper bag no matter how many big guns and cool training programs it goes through.

I'd say the best militaries motivate that way. Historically threatening to put your family to the sword if you fail to perform or promising you all the loot you can carry worked just as well at times. Thats a nitpick, but this was used in even modern times such as the aformentioned Iraq/Iran War (Iraq anyway with their largly Shia army) and any number of African warlords.

[Simon_Jester]

One of the bare minimum requirements for a functioning military is that the enlisted soldiers have confidence that their officers are competent military leaders willing to take risks alongside them, and who will not order them into danger and suffering without good cause. If you don't have that, your military has the cohesion of a wet paper bag no matter how many big guns and cool training programs it goes through.

I'd say the best militaries motivate that way. Historically threatening to put your family to the sword if you fail to perform or promising you all the loot you can carry worked just as well at times. Thats a nitpick, but this was used in even modern times such as the aformentioned Iraq/Iran War (Iraq anyway with their largly Shia army) and any number of African warlords.

I call militaries like that 'marginal,' not 'functional' because they almost invariable fail to make any advance in the face of determined defenders, and shatter utterly at the first clash with a real military.

An "army" that cannot take the offensive and accomplish anything meaningful, except by expanding into a power vacuum, is not a real army.

That said, a pseudo-army that runs largely on intimidation, with cowardly and unreliable officers, CAN work after a fashion. As long as it doesn't run into a determined and slightly competent defender. Or enemies with comparable weaponry. Or a spell of particularly bad weather.

[General Brock]

(@ Stas Bush)... Sometimes in a proxy war, the side you back loses to the side that has more popular support. Or you were fooling yourself about the strength and competence of your proxies. It happens.

Ah, I see the problem. The default is armed intervention, not whether or not to intervene. My mistake.

The atrocities ISIL is committing are of a piece with any number of other atrocities that have occurred throughout time and throughout the world, including actions taken by Sunni extremists specifically over a period of nearly three hundred years. Do you think US intelligence was behind the initial campaigns of al-Wahhib and bin Saud back in the 1750s?

U.S. intelligence hasn't been around that long. The United States hasn't been around that long.

As to their success... they have succeeded in overpowering outlying areas in countries that have just experienced civil wars. Coutnries governed by weak regimes. Countries whose armies and populations have little or no loyalty to the central government. They have done this because they have an ideology that attracts the compliance of much of the population, the active loyalty of a large minority of the population, and the fanatical armed support of a significant fraction of that minority. They are operating at a time when the West is politically weary of military intervention in the Middle East and is thus reluctant to strike at them preemptively, and when no existing regime in the region is stable enough to stop them.

Why do you think that has to be the product of a conspiracy on the part of the West? It seems to me like this is a textbook example of a time when a Third World movement of religious fanatics COULD succeed in expanding to fill out a large area of land without any Western intervention for or against it.

If a textbook example exists then perhaps Coalition forces used it to blast the void you seem to claim just happened to spontaneously form. Lacking such a textbook myself, its obvious at least that no such void existed for ISIS before Iraq War II since back then Isis was to most people an artifact from Egyptian history books.

So your argument is that resources given to one group constitute support for some other group? How does that make sense? That's conspiratorial crazy-talk: an attempt to take evidence that someone tried to do X, and twist it into 'proof' that they 'really' wanted to do Y, because Y is what actually happened.

This is the prototypical problem with all conspiracy theories: they are based on the idea that because Y is what happened, Y must have been planned all along by [insert conspirator list here]. It doesn't make allowances for the idea that ISIL might thrive because of its own clever tactics or loyal supporters. Or for the idea that maybe ISIL thrived by default under conditions of civil war in Syria, and that the only thing the US could have done to prevent this was to preemptively end the civil war by intervening on a large scale in favor of one side or the other.

Um, arming the Syrian rebels was always a risky proposition and opponents said so. Yet as the worse continued to happen, the rebels continued to be supplied and their supplies kept ending up with Al Nusra, then ISIS. So now we have a caliphate and a pretext for American entry back into Iraq. The support for the Syrian rebels keeps flowing as to the flows from rebels to ISIS, which endangers any troops on the ground but like Foley, any martyrs will promote the cassis belli. Yet, you seem to think it was all spontaneous stupidity.

Military people work out multiple outcomes to important scenarios. If the brakes weren't applied to supplying the Syrian rebellion, then one has to assume confidence in the outcomes as they evolved, were within whatever modelling was done.

You know how you work out the viability conspiracy theories? Check the facts and context of the facts. A few grainy pictures of UFOs, aliens, and first encounter testimonies are not proof of aliens, for example, since there are many ways those can be faked and incentives to do so. The stories are sometimes interesting reading, though.

Which would have bogged the US down in exactly the kind of prolonged occupation and multisided Middle Eastern war you claim to not want.

So arguably, the current power of ISIL is a direct consequence of Obama and the rest of the US government, all pursuing a strategy of NOT getting involved in a significant way, and instead hoping the problem would go away. Well, it didn't, and it turns out that sometimes a major civil war results in unsavory bastards seizing power and becoming a major military threat in the region. Who would have imagined that?

That's an MSM line; its not the fault of intervention but of not intervening enough. Which is inarguably nonsense, since without Syrian rebel arms and funds, ISIS could not have have arisen, let alone succeed in dominating the rebellion.

I'm getting tired of hearing you ramble and throw around conspiracy theorist dog-whistles in hopes that people will agree with you even though you have no concrete evidence and no coherent logic underlying your position. So frankly, I think you should either be specific, or shut the hell up.

Whether people agree with me or not is not relevant; they can and should think for themselves in their own best way.

A version of 7-in-5 Pentagon plans to clean up old Soviet client states (Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran) was clearly executed. Yet, your standard of evidence seems to require documentation of the official final plans down to code names and table of spinoff ops to deal with the situations as the evolved on the ground. The obvious execution of 7-in-5 is just a 'conspiracy theory' to your mind with no connection to PNAC.

Why ignore the obvious - cut off the Syrian Rebels and you cut off ISIS. ISIS' decisive edge in American weaponry appears in every ISIS blitzkreig story in the news.

My assertions are very general but familiar to anyone who regularly reads the alternative news services like Infowars which often link to much more scholarly detail. Your worldview is fanatically restricted to the MSM versions of events complete with omissions and the axiom, non-intervention is off the table.

Sure, ISIS sentiment might survive an end to covert Western aid. ISIS might even evolve into another group with another name. But what can they do without outside weapons and money? Odds are, they won't be the beheading blitzkreiging sons of Islam we love to hate.

You cannot just make up arbitrary random 'motivations' for a vaguely defined group of Washington lobbyists and assert on that basis that the US must in fact have pursued whatever strategy you claim that they pursued.

Otherwise, you could literally claim that the US government is trying to do ANYTHING, or nothing, because there is always one or another lobby you can assert (without proof) wants to accomplish this or that thing.

I could certainly make the claim that the anti-PNAC conspiracy is doing poorly. PNAC neoconservatism is very well defined as a deranged interventionist cult and has succeeded in placing the United States back on track for another Iraq occupation.

Maybe so. That is, you know, a reason not to just randomly attack everyone you want; some countries are real countries with real weapons, and the US does not have infinity power to influence or control their actions.

Gee, I wonder if maybe we might apply that logic to the idea that the US does NOT have all-controlling conspiratorial powers to decide which of several factions wins a civil war in those countries?

Its not that they have or don't have the power, so much as they keep trying to effect outcomes as if they do.

Don't say things you know damn well you can't back up. It make you look childish and ignorant.

Do you know I also thought but could not prove ISIS might reflect the Neocon strategy of using poster non-white-male persons to promote establishment old-white-guy colonial imperialist policies? Obama, a black man, promotes a foreign policy indistinguishable from Shrub the Younger, except that Western bullying is not usually associated with a black face. Obama in turn has, like Shrub used Condeloza Rice, placed women to front the most controversial policies foisted upon him to promote.

Janet Napolitano fronted for the TSA until the frat girl went to far and had to be golden parachuted to President of the University of California. Kathleen Sebelius headed the controversial Obamacare website debut. Samantha Power spearheads R2P in the U.N. I've mentioned Nuland. Using women to sell stuff is a time-tested advertising gimmick.

Wouldn't it be culturally significant if ISIS merely reflected that its architects and proponents were mostly women, and ISIS was kind of like getting to name their own op? Women special forces were used in Afghanistan to connect with with Afghan women. 'Maya', a women agent allegedly led the killing of an old man in Abbotabad. Its amazing the progress some women are making in the first world even as they contribute to the demise of civil society that impacts women the hardest.

You're a goddamn liar repeating your goddamn lies.

At worst I may be mistaken, but not lying insofar as beleiving what I'm saying within the limits of what I know to be accurate and the occasional educated guess worth believing in.

Hint: English is not the language of the whole world.

Well, I found 'Daash' kind of a neat coincidence and said as much. The coincidences are getting much more elegant than when Al Qaida was supposed to mean 'the base' in Arabic, which translates well into English until you realize its apparently part of an Arabic colloquial term "Ana raicha Al Qaeda" - (going to) 'the toilet'.

Its also kind of neat that some people beleive the world is run by reptilian shape shifters - but killing people over nonsense would still be wrong.

Going back to Iraq to kill ISIS fanatics would also be wrong since the simplest way to stop them is to cut off their supply lines and let attrition to local rivals and enemies do the rest.

What inane babble is falling out of your mouth now? This doesn't mean anything or make any sense in the context of the actual subject of discussion.

The subject of discussion... oh yeah, why not cut of ISIS at the knees by cutting the Syrian rebels off at the knees?

Perhaps pulling the plug on the Syrian rebels to thwart ISIS is just too simple and logical and not irrationally warmongery enough.

Is this Whiteness Theory in action? Maybe that's what this singleminded preference to armed intervention is all about, clinging to a discredited social paradigm wherein we must intervene with force upon unenlightened heathans for their/our own good.

The modern moderates are being killed off by the same fundamentalists who already existed without the US's knowledge or consent, and including organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood that predate the rise of Arab nationalism in the first place.

Again, you seem to be assuming that because a thing happens, and because it might somehow be interpreted as a thing that is to the advantage of some strategic goal you allege the US government is pursuing... that there must be a US conspiracy to make that thing happen.

The trouble with your position, is that you are assume the military-intel people never plan. The exact opposite extreme of my alleged position. Who is likely to be correct, myself or you?

Moreover, regimes like ISIL are hard if not impossible to control via colonialism, as the headline "ISIL Beheads American Journalist" might indicate, if you bothered to read the headlines of the threads you spray conspiracy-theory nonsense into.[/quote]

Beheading Foley is a cassis belli. I never claimed this was planned in detail, but any atrocity against an American was kind of no-surprise. As you pointed out earlier, this kind of violence in not unusual to the region. Although, I think its more a modern revival than straight continuity from medieval times.

So even accepting your own premises, your conclusion does not follow: it makes no sense to weaken regimes that hate and oppose America but supporting factions that hate and oppose America harder.

It makes perfect sense to have Arabs kill Arabs. If all are regarded as enemies, and can be convinced to do so, then it just a repeat of the noteable advantage Western colonialism has against some indigenous groups; discrete groups would sooner settle a local rivalry than unite against a foreign rival not seen as their immediate problem. This proclivity is best summed up by Martin Niemoller's (1892–1984) "First they came for..." quote.

I didn't say Arab regimes hate and oppose America. That is your default assumption. Some may, with good reason.

To quote Hamid Karzai, former Afghan President,

“To the American people, give them my best wishes and my gratitude. To the U.S. government, give them my anger, my extreme anger."

Sure, extremist groups exist on their own. And the military intel complex has ways of harnessing them. Armed intervention has become gaming the system, like how a "If you break it, you fix it" policy becomes a moral hazzard when fixers are paid exhorbitant amounts of money to fix things, but not held accountable for breaking them in the first place.

Those extremists have existed for many decades and grew steadily more powerful under the rule of the Arab nationalists and the dictatorships. The last nation that was able to enforce peace and order among the diverse ethnic groups of the Middle East was the Ottomans, who were- surprise surprise! the same ones who enforced it among the Balkan states!

So it turns out that breaking up Ottoman territory into ethnic states divided by nationalist resulted in chaos in the Balkans. AND that breaking up Ottoman territory into purely geographic states containing diverse ethnic groups also resulted in chaos in the Middle East. And that the third option, "don't break up the Ottoman Empire" wasn't really on the table because the Ottomans picked the wrong side in World War One and their (already fragile) government had totally collapsed by the time the war ended. Much like the Russian Empire did... And note that at first the Russians too fragmented into states controlled by various factions and ethnic minorities, and only the military success of the Bolsheviks allowed them to reunite Czarist Russia as Soviet Russia.

So yeah, imperial monarchies dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries can sometimes keep a large, ethnically diverse population united under pre-industrial conditions. This does not mean any special conspiracy is required to explain why, when the imperial monarchy inevitably collapses under the pressure of modernity, suddenly you get ethnic chaos and war among the splinter states that fell out of the empire.

I'm not sure how this contradicts my post or even the general idea of the West not interfering militarily if peace is indeed the objective.

There is no evidence of any significant faction within the US government or politics that is actually attempting a religious crusade as such. There is, occasionally, stuff that conspiracy theorists can ramble about. That is all, as far as I know. Do you know something I don't? Something specific, instead of vague defamatory rambling about how 'someone' wants to do 'something' with 'someone?'

Be specific or shut the hell up.

Only the Pope can officially call a religious Crusade, and no pope has in modern times. George W. got into trouble using the word in a speech and it has since ceased to be used in government. The word also has secular meaning, but in a Middle Eastern war of choice, the religious nuance is useful in describing the motivations of those in a real position to say yea or nay.

Protestant America is not under the control of the Pope, and if interpreters of the Bible decide they read a crusade, they'll act on it even if they can't declare one.

The U.S. Military is weighted decisively towards Christian evangelicism. A grassroots Islamophobic crusade is ongoing. The Jesus Guns controversy is just a small expression of war fervour from this segment of Western society.

My use of the word 'crusade' is used in secular terms as a deliberately inflammatory description of PNAC and its agents.

Some Christian End Times researchers now believe the Empire of the Antichrist will be a new Caliphate, given that the old Caliphate, at different times in history, fit the descriptions within the Book of Daniel.

Many radical Christians want to start WWIII, believing as George W. Bush does, it will bring on the apocalypse. Shrub was instrumental in embracing and ensconcing Neocon thought within the American government guided by Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

People believe some crazy things, but few act on them muderously. The original fourth kingdom of Daniel was supposed to be a ressurected Roman Empire, so the goalposts have been shifted, just as in earlier times End Time predictions did not play out. Caliphate or no, there will always be a reason to explain why The Apocalypse hasn't arrived and Jesus not returned yet. Assuming people are still around to wonder after all the attempts to bring it about play out.

Which brings us back to why not cut off the Syrian rebels to cut off ISIS. This is a separate point which stands on its own regardless of the extent to which my background arguments are true. Those are, that Western intelligence agencies are behind ISIS, and American armed interventions are not based on sound reasoning or motivations and have done more harm than good, and gamed prophesy for fun and profit.

Is that specific enough? Or are you going continue to be deliberately obtuse?

You think Russia had to be 'baited' into pursuing its own interests in the Ukraine by an American?

Russia already was pursuing its own interests in the Ukraine as they have a shared culture and history of over 1000 years. Ukraine was a centre of Russia's modernmilitary industrial complex after all. Russia was Ukraine's largest trade partner. Apparently killing Ukrainians with Russian troops and risking WWIV in confronting NATO is not appealing to Putin whatever the provocation.

Do you even grasp the idea that foreigners are sentient humans that sometimes do things without an American's permission?

Actually, I was kind of implying American Neocons grasp and dislike the idea that foreigners act without American permission against whatever Neocons define America's interests to be, even if those interests, like supporting ISIS via Syrian rebels, then re-occupying Iraq, are clearly against America's best interests.

Do you grasp the idea that foreigners don't like armed intervention on their soil? Even if, as in former Iraqi President Malaki's case, they were asking for it in the form of airstrikes. But that's a special case, as the U.S. failed to restore the Iraqi Air Force before they left.

This article reads like conspiracist bullshit- it assumes the US military knows what happens without proof, it assumes that a Ukrainian Su-25 was carefully guided in to shoot down an airliner on purpose despite not normally being designed for the purpose, and despite the Ukraine having plenty of more capable fighters that ARE designed for the purpose of shooting down planes. And that this is somehow a co-equal explanation with "because the Ukrainian military operates warplanes over rebel territory, the rebels (sensibly) procured SAMs, but lacked the resources to efficiently control and coordinate their own air defenses, so their undertrained spotters and operators accidentally shot down a civilian aircraft." Then it degenerates into meaningless babble about "the black hypotheses" and video games and whatever.

This... this isn't even stupid. It's beneath stupid. It's like a willful attempt to stop thinking about actual facts, logic, and information, in favor of more entertaining forms of speculative fiction.

You're faulting me for a link to an internationally recognized real news organization with a real news columnist repeating information no-one has rebutted in the peer review of the free press (at that time), such as it is. Instead of confining myself to facts you approve of placed in a paradigm you approve of.

It was speculated Flight MH17 was hit with an air-to-air missile and then machine gunned, which might support the idea that the SU-25 is a poor dogfighter.

Incompetence and conspiracy to control events are not the same thing.

You do remember that, right?

Only that they often come as a set.

Why do you assume ISIL will suddenly evaporate if we stop supporting their rivals and enemies? Usually, when you stop supporting a man's enemies, that man ends up in a stronger position, not a weaker position.

I did not say they would suddenly evaporate. I said in a couple of years, attrition of arms and cash would finish them. There might still be ISIS people around after that, but they would not be the same group they are today.

ISIS' edge appears to be Western aid. No aid, and their real enemies, the Syrian Army, could more easily crush them in Syria. The Sunni in Iraq would try to use'em, then lose'em once they were no longer useful against the Shia.

[General Brock]

Sigh... so you're a typical conspiracy nut it seems.

But I guess Obama isn't in on this conspiracy, because he keeps calling them ISIL. And while addressing the press, the other day, the Whitehouse representative kept calling them I-S-I-L (spelling out the acronym letter by letter).

I guess the Whitehouse didn't get the TOP SECRET CIA memo that we need to call them ISIS because it's cool, cause it sounds like an ancient goddess, which is awesome I guess. (Other names considered by the CIA were COBRA, SPECTRE, and V.E.N.O.M. (The Vicious, Evil Network Of Mayhem))

Many conspiracy theories are entertaining, like rough drafts of an Outer Limits episode. Real life with a fantasy approach, the stuff of a good movie. Like the claim that government secret services favour recruiting from secret societies, and how these secret societies are fascinated with things occult, like Isis.

Besides, ISIS is kind of a dead giveaway. Wouldn't want conspiracy theorists getting curious and finding out useful stuff by accident. It should be interesting to see how soon ISIS drops entirely from MSM references in favour of ISIL as it did here.

The conspiracy theory silencing meme is wearing thin. There are lots of funny ideas out there, but the idea the U.S. can just waltz back into Iraq and it'll be worth it, isn't funny at all.

[Grumman]

Besides, ISIS is kind of a dead giveaway. Wouldn't want conspiracy theorists getting curious and finding out useful stuff by accident. It should be interesting to see how soon ISIS drops entirely from MSM references in favour of ISIL as it did here.

If "ISIS" was really the smoking gun you seem to believe it is, and they knew it was a smoking gun they had to keep out of the media, why wouldn't they just not make it the publicly known name of the organisation? Better yet, why are you so fucking stupid that you think an Arab organisation using the name of an Egyptian goddess indicates American involvement? It's like if an Italian organisation was called ZEUS, and you took that as proof that the Russians were pulling the strings.

[madd0ct0r]

Except they're not even called fucking ISIS, the iraqis I work with just looked at me blankly the first time I used it. The name is Daash, meaning “Dulat al-Islam fi al-Iraq wal-Sham”. Claiming ISIS is the secret codeword that means it's a CIA plant is about as sensible as assuming SCAT means "Sheeples Can't Argue This" instead of meaning what scat actually means, which is shit.

[Thanas]

Sure, they know that.

On the other hand, the Kurds are not presently engaging in an expansion campaign,

You are wrong, just recently they grabbed the oil refineries of northern Iraq while fighting against IS. Also, just a week ago a kurdish mob confronted Turkish army helicopters with weapons when they went to take down a kurdish statue. They are better than IS, but that does not make them the good guys or less expansionist.

People are aware that the Kurds will use those weapons for causes other than fighting IS, right? Like shooting every Turk, Syrian, Iraqi or Iranian that stands in the way of Greater Kurdistan. IS are douchebags, but I would still think twice about just thoughtlessly arming the area up. That same mindless actionism brought us the whole malaise in Afghanistan after all.

The Kurds are a different story. They are not insane bugaboos by and large. Their organizations are Tier III terrorist groups, not Tier I or II (basically, mostly legitimate organizations that occasionally have a fanatic who goes off the reservation). They want their own state, and are happy to either use violence or diplomacy to get it. They can be worked with. We are going to have to abandon the idea of Iraq being a unitary whole potentially, and recognize Iraqi Kurdistan as a state rather than semi-autonomous region (IIRC, that is basically what it is), but it seems to me that they will be rather happy with that, at least in the short to medium term. If they end up taking bits of Syria, fine, it is Kurds who live in those area anyway. At this point, even the Turks are working with them (going from memory here, so I could be wrong), and if it is good enough for the Turks, it is good enough for me. Afterall, they have skin in the Kurdish game.

As somebody who remembers the PKK operating in Germany all too well, I very much doubt that much is going to be gained by handing an organization that acted like the mafia for most of its history (and still does) the keys to a state.

[K. A. Pital]

Kurds are better than Turks.

They are secular. They are not a former Empire. Creation of Kurdistan can upset Iraq, Turkey and Iran.

Turkey has waged a campaign against them for decades, Turkey is Islamist and the current leader is a revanchist islsmist with an ideology called Neo-Ottomanism. Restoring the Ottoman Empire will sure as hell upset and throw into chaos a lot more nations.

Thank you, but I choose them Kurds.

[Thanas]

If they are strong enough to be a viable state then they can do so without outside assistance. Nation state creation by outside forces does not work.

Also, I was unaware that this was an either-or scenario between the kurds and turkey.

[Rogue 9]

My use of the word 'crusade' is used in secular terms as a deliberately inflammatory description of PNAC and its agents.

Oh please, the Project for the New American Century dissolved in 2006. It doesn't have agents; hell, by the end in '06 it was down to a single employee running the website.

[Channel72]

Besides, ISIS is kind of a dead giveaway. Wouldn't want conspiracy theorists getting curious and finding out useful stuff by accident. It should be interesting to see how soon ISIS drops entirely from MSM references in favour of ISIL as it did here.

Wow, another classic move from the conspiracy-nut playbook. Evidence that contradicts your conspiracy is now interpreted as actually being part of the conspiracy.

Please provide evidence that ISIS is a creation of the CIA (and by evidence I mean actual evidence, not your inane paranoid ramblings or haphazard connection-making) or just shut up already.

You're a stupid conspiracy nut and what you're doing is basically what we in computer science would call "overfitting" - your brain is mistaking noise for meaningful patterns.

[xerex]

Isnt the point of a secret conspiracy to be SECRET ? Why would anyone leave clues like English language codewords to be discovered ?

[Thanas]

Not sure if General Brock is trolling or if he really turned into such a nutjob.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Isnt the point of a secret conspiracy to be SECRET ? Why would anyone leave clues like English language codewords to be discovered ?

Obviously they're hiding in plain site, just like the Illuminati.

Seriously though, I've heard some really thin conspiracy theories, but this one is near the top for nuttiness.

[Channel72]

So, now apparently there's some evidence that James Foley's execution video may have been staged. He still was almost certainly beheaded (or at least executed), but possibly off-camera. The footage released to the public may have been edited for dramatic purposes.

Source: http://nypost.com/2014/08/25/james-fole ... ff-camera/

While the video showing James Foley’s beheading was brutal, British analysts believe he was really killed after the cameras stopped rolling.

The horrific five-minute clip used “camera trickery and slick post-production techniques” to make viewers believe Foley was killed by the British jihadist who runs a six-inch knife across his neck numerous times, according to a report in the Telegraph.
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Photojournalist James Foley talks to reporters from The Associated Press in Boston in 2011.Photo: AP

But an unnamed British forensic science company believes Foley was likely killed after the video was complete and that the malicious militant in the clip may not have done the deed.

“I think it has been staged,” one analyst said. “My feeling is that the execution may have happened after the camera was stopped.”

The study argues that the sounds made by Foley toward the end of the video are inconsistent with what would be expected from such a severe slaying, which would have also had more blood.

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Photo: Freejamesfoley.org/Jonathan Pedneault
“After enhancements, the knife can be seen to be drawn across the upper neck at least six times, with no blood evidence to the point the picture fades to black,” the analysis found.

The company does not contest that Foley, who was captured in 2011 in Syria, was killed.

“No one is disputing that at some point an execution occurred,” the study concluded.

The US and UK are teaming up to assemble an elite group of fighters — known as Task Force Black — that will target top ISIS fighters. The deadly team includes the US’s CIA and Seal Team 6 as well as UK special forces.

Cue more conspiracy bullshit.

I think nobody really questions that ISIS doesn't give a shit about human life, but I guess they do have a sense of drama.