IS crisis in Iraq and Syria

[General Brock]

If Syria started to use chemical weapons against ISIL will we condemn the attacks?

Why not? There's no way Syria's opponents in the West would pass up the opportunity, verifiable or not. That that's coincidentally the right thing to do, if verifiable, is unfortunately not likely to be the motivation.

Syria has disclosed more chemical weapons sites, so pressure should always be kept up so that even if Assad himself would not authorize their use, no loose cannon in his organization will or be tempted to hold out against government orders to destroy them.

[General Brock]

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Nobody sane accepts this as a "fact" except facetiously in the sense that US aid inadvertantly flowed to ISIS, initially, in a misguided attempt to support anti-Assad elements.

As far as main street goes, perfectly reasonable people can identify 'plausible denial' games; its only a question of whether one wants to agree with the company line or not. Saddam's WMDs cast a long shadow even if one isn't aware of the chronic duplicity of the Syrian rebels.

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NBC, huh? That's a bit too mainstream for you. What happened to all the "alternative media"? Surely, NBC is in cahoots with "O-blam-a" so they can't be trusted.

Reliable source not to far out of line with any other.

Anyway, there's no point in even discussing anything further with you since you won't let go of this silly claim. It's a well-established, well-documented fact that ISIS is self-sufficient, and receives plenty of donations and funding from non-US sources - they also make money through crime, and most importantly - by seizing assets in banks they take over. Since you won't acknowledge that fact I'm still not sure why exactly I'm responding to you at all.

They also spend money like bullets. How long is that supposed to last? I've documented $750 million from the U.S., $3 billion from Qatar, and $3 billion from Saudi Arabia. They don't make their own weapons, ammo, or vehicles. So, roughly $7 billion in assorted resources had netted them $2 billion in assets. That kind of looks like a loss of $5 billion and Mosul was it for loaded rich cities caught off guard.

They are not self-sufficient but dependent on whatever their step-removed sponsors and local tribes are willing to donate and what they can capture from their opponents and rivals. They've only had new oil wells for a couple of months and apart from projected revenues from existing pumped and stored crude, I haven't found any hard numbers on what ISIS gets to keep of that, but to suggest 'all of it' is ridiculous. Politico gives a breakdown of ISIS' oil revenues versus expenses that seems better thought out than CNN.

So where does all of ISIL’s money go?

ISIL historically has paid its members (yes, it maintains payroll sheets) based on a flat monthly rate per person and then additional fixed amounts for each wife, child and dependent unmarried adult woman in the household. In Anbar, Iraq, the rate was $491 per year in 2005 and 2006, and then about $245 per year per dependent; the rate was similar in Mosul in 2007 and 2008. These payments to family are meant to continue if the ISIL member is captured or killed—a primitive form of life insurance. If enough members are captured and killed, however, these costs start to mount.
...
ISIL also pays rent for its members in some cases—payments that might be bonuses to high-performing members, although we cannot be sure—and medical expenses for some members and their families. In the past, the group has sometimes hired lawyers to help get captured members out of jail. And it runs safe-houses and has to buy equipment. Guidelines published by a predecessor of the group say that expense reimbursements should be filled out in triplicate and explain where each copy goes within the organization. We don’t know for sure whether ISIL today is making money or even breaking even, but at least in Anbar from 2005 to 2006, the money was being spent as fast as it came in.

As a cash-based organization, ISIL relies on couriers not only to deliver messages among its dispersed leadership but also to move money—follow the right courier and you get to the leadership. Because it deals only in cash, ISIL also needs to worry about the honesty of its members. We have seen instances of skimming for personal enrichment, as you might see in any cash-based criminal network.

As a state, albeit a twisted version of one, ISIL also has administrative expenses. It is responsible for making sure electricity and water flow and the roads stay repaired in the regions of Iraq it now controls—including parts of the Anbar, Ninewa Salah-al-Din, Kirkuk and Diyala governorates. Whether the group chooses to or is able to fulfill those responsibilities creates a vulnerability: A discontented population is unlikely to remain passive under ISIL’s leadership.

Even if ISIL is making $3 million per day—at the higher end of the various estimates out there—then it makes slightly more than $1 billion per year. Just to be conservative, in case ISIL is doing more business than we’re aware of, let’s double that to $2 billion per year. Although exact totals are difficult to find, in 2013, before ISIL’s advance, the Iraqi government spent far more than $2 billion per year running the governorates ISIL now controls, including salaries to civil servants, other costs of service provision and investment spending. That means ISIL likely isn’t keeping up the same level of service that the Iraqi government once did. True, ISIL need not maintain that level—it hardly rules with the consent of the governed. But it’s not only a problem that those under its rule can rebel, as happened in 2007 and 2008; with the exception of oil, the group’s continued revenue-raising also depends on there being enough money to skim and extort from the economy, and this requires some minimum level of services and economic activity.

There is little that outside forces can do to halt the extortion and skimming that take place within ISIL territory. Oil smuggling, though, can be disrupted, at least to an extent. Intelligence resources from the United States, Iraq and any other country that takes on ISIL should be focused on identifying middlemen and buyers for the smuggled fuel and using any means necessary to halt those purchases.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ ... z3Fp3HeTdH

The author does not regard blowing up oil installations as necessary, but does advocate military action in an obligatory, toss-off kind of way, as well as blowing up refineries - which means killing people who are often local, civilian entrepreneurs - and blowing up roads, which are easy to fix and vital to the local economy that remains, so that too will generate local hate towards airstrikes. The article doesn't mention the inevitable payoffs to local tribes to not take over the wells while the daeshi are off fighting somewhere else.

...
Right, cause randomly bombing the Mid East or anywhere else totally serves US interests.

Genuine U.S. interests, the best interests of American citizens, and those of its allies, no.

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It's not like the US already spent trillions setting up a friendly government in Baghdad to ensure the oil keeps flowing... we also need to make up excuses to keep bombing Iraq because .... ??? reasons? Something... something... COG .... Something... neocons? (Apparently in your mind the world is run by Bond villains.)

Stop chasing your own tail. We're bombing DAESH now, remember? Those Syrian rebels we sponsored who decided Al Nusra wasn't doing enough for the cause and whom we essentially continue to sponsor via support of Syrian rebels who just can't hold on to all the aid we give them and fighters we train?

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Um... the US isn't funding ISIS. They're trying to support the secular rebels (Free Syrian Army, etc.) You're the only idiot who thinks this is some big conspiracy to "keep bombing the Middle East" for some reason.

There's no such thing as the Free Syrian Army. There is no meaningful secular rebel force on the ground.None.

The initial movement to overthrow Assad was secular led, but they aren't fighters. Once violence became the social currency if the day, it was over for them.

Had they striven harder for peaceful, non-violent action and not wrecked the state's monopoly of coercive force, then they might have stood a chance for as long as they could keep jihadist elements from pillaging their democratic gains, which means they still could have lost. Modern democracy requires the majority population be self-disciplined and loyal to peaceful republican governance so winning does not become mob rule or the losers on an election, rebels. America's test was the election of 1800, sometimes referred to as the Revolution of 1800.

As it turns out, Assad won the last Syrian election. Even the refugeesvoted for him. You could say some people, like all the radical Islamics, did not get a fair chance to vote, of course.

[The Romulan Republic]

I'm sure those were completely fair elections. Wanker.

[General Brock]

Hey, Brock, listen up.

This is a formal statement that I am calling you out on your claim that the US is funding ISIL, which you made about half a dozen times in your most recent post ALONE.

KK.

People have been telling you this isn't true, and presenting many arguments for why this isn't true, for literally the whole time you've been participating in this thread.

Not very convincingly, but whatever.

Not ONCE have you provided any quantitative evidence for the scale of US aid supplies that were stolen by ISIL from other Syrian rebel groups. Not ONCE have you provided any evidence beyond your own conjecture that the US meant for this to happen. And yet you treat it as established fact that ISIL is the product of a deliberate US policy to sustain them, and will vanish if that policy changes.

Put up or shut up.

Since the U.S. government is not going to release top secret documents explaining why they keep supporting Syrian rebels who defect anyway, and the aid policy is not going to change, you are asking for a peculiarly high level of proof.

Under Debating Rule #4, and Debating Rule #5, I am outright demanding that you prove this claim of yours, quantitatively, by showing the following:

1) The value of the US-supplied goods and funds that ISIL captured from other Syrian rebels is large, large enough to be a majority or at least a major share of their total resources.

Yes, I know you believe that- now prove it. With numbers.

Ah, I must prove but you need not bother backing your pro-war nonsense.

I'm calling this a red herring, a diversion from your non-arguments. I've provided links that detail some of the stolen items, and of course DAESH promotional videos brag about the equipment implied to be commonplace in their organization. However, such an itemized list as you demand has not been made public. So, if you have a problem with reported information, take it up with the reporters.

2) That these supplies falling into ISIL's hands DOES reflect a deliberate policy of the US government, not just the kind of accident that routinely happens when you back the wrong side in a civil war and your proxies get their asses kicked on the battlefield by a more motivated and better organized force.

Yes, I know you believe that- now prove it. With actual evidence that real US politicians, not conspiracyland fantasy versions of those politicians, are doing this on purpose.

Senate Intelligence Vice Chairman Saxby Chamblis expects some rebels to flip and doesn't know where some of the aid will end up. So, that's the kind of real politician in charge of American national intelligence.

If this kind of accident routinely happens and so is a known phenomenon, why wouldn't the United States government game this to re-enter Iraq and finally establish a permanent military presence there so as to pursue the global war on terrorism, as was the original plan?

If you cannot support BOTH (1) and (2), then I am calling on you, as one nominally sane person to another, to STOP making this baseless and unjustified claim.

If you are unable to stop, I am going to report this thread for persistent violations of Debating Rule #4 and #5, because you are showing a textbook example of a wall-of-ignorance with your broken record tactics.[/url]

Report away. Your wall of ignorance exceeds mine any day.

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[]Because they're not trendy postmodernist aren't-I-ironic types like you? Because the verb 'to crush' has implications to them that it doesn't have to you? Because, and this is important, the way you think about things is not the way everyone thinks about things.

I'm pretty sure vandals are no more associated with nation building in Islam than the secular West.

...Stop. Listen to yourself.

Listening.

You just asked yourself: "Why did I tenaciously defend the idea that the Western media's name for ISIL is proof that the whole thing is a CIA brainchild, when literally every other human who interacted with me on the subject disagreed and said it was a foolish idea?"

I also figured it might have been coincidence. You've never refuted anything else with as much confidence.

And your answer was: "Because the name being ISIL is an incidental detail that could fit this narrative of mine."

Stop and think about what that says about how your mind is working. There's a logical fallacy called cherry picking, which involves hunting around for very small pieces of evidence that might support your ideas, and then using a big slab of confirmation bias to paste it all together.

I wasn't looking for it. Anyone can see ISIS was named ISIS and find it odd if they know who Isis is and the beyond-history class meaning of occult references to some people into secret societies.

That's what you're doing here. You're believing strange and outlandish things about ISIL, things that totally contradict its own stated mission and the way it organizes itself and its own conduct. And you're believing them because they COULD fit into this narrative of yours.

That's not how evidence works. If you tenaciously defend a highly counterintuitive idea, because it COULD fit into your grand narrative of how the US is making the Middle East into a hellhole on purpose for the sheer evilness of it all... You're simply being a bad debater, and mixing up fact and fiction.

Your reasoning for warmongering isn't made up nonsense? Your prowar positions simply do not match with reality past or present, but you're insisting it will play out differently in the future even as it does not as events unfold.

If the narrative fits, then while it may not be the correct explanation, its something to consider until conclusively disproven. That's how evidence works in real life if you're serious about knowing the truth.

On the ground, it is accepted as fact that ISIS is a crisis fabricated by the United States. But should the United States step aside, the tails wagging the dog might have to shut up and be dogs on their own.

See, this is that delusional brainbug of yours that makes this conversation tragic, it's like having a conversation with an intelligent but mentally ill man.

Nonetheless, nobody with any intelligence believes what you are promoting as truth, although anyone with a conscience might be a little grossed out and disgusted at the level of willful ignorance.

You make a few intelligent points now and then, but because you just CAN'T STOP bringing up the "US made ISIL by funding them indirectly through supplies to their hated enemies that they later stole," every argument you make is contaminated by fictional support and fictional 'evidence' that chokes out the real evidence and real analysis of the situation.

It takes very little intelligence to perceive the obvious, and less conscience to deny it artfully.

DAESH and Al Nusra are rivals, their leaders may certainly personally hate one another, but the groups are not hated enemies. DAESH could easily finish off Al Nusra if it so desired, but the pecking order has been settled; for now, DAESH is top dog.

As Churchill put it, "A fanatic is someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

Um, this thread has to be continually redirected from becoming a prowar interventionist platform.

You. Are. Making. A. Mistake. The. US. Is. Not. Supporting. ISIL. Like. You. Think.

Do you even NOTICE people telling you this anymore? Because if you're not even responding to counterarguments and just mindlessly repeat the same zombie lie over and over, I think we have actual moderator rules against doing that.

Its an in-your-face plausible denial scam treated so routine, its not even plausible to deny it. The FSA does not functionally exist. There are no moderate rebels. Yet they are funded and armed and trained as if they were and DAESH clearly has been the benefactor for over a year now.

Al Nusra may deliver a few car bombs now and then, but has it occurred to you that DAESH has no incentive to finish off Assad? The purpose of the Syrian rebellion was to kill Assad's regime and very likely himself personally. But if they did that, the free ride to Jihad is over.

And there you go again. See, that was actually an interesting argument- but then you screw it up by shoehorning the (false) proposition that they've been supplied with hundreds of millions of dollars of US aid through the expedient of money-laundering-by-battlefield.

Do you realize your argument rests on the U.S. government's not having admitted to what has obviously happened, and this position is not matched by observed reality? The precautionary principle just disappeared in dealing with the Syrian rebellion. No-one even asks the question openly, like no-one openly asks if COG protocols are in effect.

Again, you miss his point. His point is, VERY BLUNTLY, that this whole "US supplying ISIL" is a figment of your imagination. A bad joke.

For a happier analogy, its like catching two children at the cookie jar, crumbs on hand and mouth. Q - Did you steal some cookies? A - No. He (both point at the other) gave me some.

The counterarguments to that have been on this thread for like a month already, and you just keep reasserting it over and over. You never responded, you obviously never even thought about them. You just kept doing the broken-record thing.

What sort of smoking gun were you expecting, a news article specifically stating the U.S. government trained ISIS personnel like the one I linked to? They exist.

According to Jordanian intelligence sources, it is reported that the program is designed to create 10,000 fighters who will exclusively be a part of the ISIS group. ISIS is now responsible for the unrest occurring in Northern Iraq, and it would be quite ironic if the United States was actually responsible for the training that is now being used to destabilize the Iraqi nation.

So do more scholarly articles describing clandestine ops planned to destabilize the region, creating the conditions for a DAESH-like organization to arise.

Non-lethal aid has been pouring into DAESH-held territory for months, helping them solidify their hold in those areas. Might not this aid have been better deployed in out-of-Syria refugee camps?

How the West bankrolls Isis: Millions from governments and NGOs funding radical Islamic terror group
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Isis uses social media to demonstrate the brutality with which it treats its enemies and those who break its laws. But it uses the same media to show it distributing aid and administering healthcare to people under its rule.

Its ability to deliver free aid and free fuel has been a major factor in persuading residents of recently conquered towns such as Mosul to accept its rule.

A spokesman for Dfid said it did not supply aid to Isis directly: “We supply life-saving aid to people who need it, in line with international humanitarian principles including impartiality.”

Of course, it was OK to let half a million Iraqi children die from international sanctions, but maybe the U.S. and its allies learned their lesson and are determined this not happen under DAESH rule. NOT.

You don't seem to understand how science works. Direct links of cause and effect are not always immediately provable and discerned only by indirect means. For example, a planet in a distant solar system may not be physically visible but the doppler wobble of its star gives it away.

Giving non-existent moderate Syrian rebels support that ends up with DAESH on a regular reliable basis is support for DAESH. When this support continues despite knowing the phenomenon of Jihadi flip, it is support for DAESH. The U.S. government not openly admitting to supporting DAESH directly is meaningless.

You are asking me to deny the objective evidence of what actually happened and all relevantly contributing circumstances.

[General Brock]

I'm sure those were completely fair elections. Wanker.

Armed rebellion makes the ideal of electoral fairness difficult to achieve. Nonetheless, the Sunni extremists who cast bullets as ballots are probably happy with their results too, an Allawaite-free, Christian-less, Kurdless Sunnistan in northern Syria they can claim to be part of a caliphate.

[jwl]

What sort of smoking gun were you expecting, a news article specifically stating the U.S. government trained ISIS personnel like the one I linked to? They exist.

That article (by a news source so dodgy it isn't even on wikipedia) is entirely based on a article by Reuters, here which is itself mainly based on articles by the guardian,here, and Der Spiegal, whose article I can't find but there are direct quotes in Reuters's report.

Here are a some excerpts from said articles you may find interesting:

A Jordanian source familiar with the training operations said: "It's the Americans, Brits and French with some of the Syrian generals who defected. But we're not talking about a huge operation."

He added that there had so far been no "green light" for the rebel forces being trained to be sent into Syria. But they would be deployed if there were signs of a complete collapse of public services in the southern Syrian city of Daraa, which could trigger a million more Syrians seeking refuge in Jordan, which is reeling under the strain of accommodating the 320,000 who have already sought shelter there.

The aim of sending western-trained rebels over the border would be to create a safe area for refugees on the Syrian side of the border, to prevent chaos and to provide a counterweight to al-Qaida-linked extremists who have become a powerful force in the north.

Jordanian intelligence services are involved in the program, which aims to build around a dozen units totaling some 10,000 fighters to the exclusion of radical Islamists, Spiegel reported.

"The Jordanian intelligence services want to prevent Salafists (radical Islamists) crossing from their own country into Syria and then returning later to stir up trouble in Jordan itself," one of the organizers told the paper.

[The Romulan Republic]

I'm sure those were completely fair elections. Wanker.

Armed rebellion makes the ideal of electoral fairness difficult to achieve. Nonetheless, the Sunni extremists who cast bullets as ballots are probably happy with their results too, an Allawaite-free, Christian-less, Kurdless Sunnistan in northern Syria they can claim to be part of a caliphate.

If you think Assad cares about a fair election under any circumstances you're a fool.

[Simon_Jester]

Hey, Brock! Listen up!

Remember how in my last post directed at you I said this?

Hey, Brock, listen up.

This is a formal statement that I am calling you out on your claim that the US is funding ISIL, which you made about half a dozen times in your most recent post ALONE.

People have been telling you this isn't true, and presenting many arguments for why this isn't true, for literally the whole time you've been participating in this thread.

Not ONCE have you provided any quantitative evidence for the scale of US aid supplies that were stolen by ISIL from other Syrian rebel groups. Not ONCE have you provided any evidence beyond your own conjecture that the US meant for this to happen. And yet you treat it as established fact that ISIL is the product of a deliberate US policy to sustain them, and will vanish if that policy changes.

Put up or shut up.

Under Debating Rule #4, and Debating Rule #5, I am outright demanding that you prove this claim of yours, quantitatively, by showing the following:

1) The value of the US-supplied goods and funds that ISIL captured from other Syrian rebels is large, large enough to be a majority or at least a major share of their total resources.

Yes, I know you believe that- now prove it. With numbers.

2) That these supplies falling into ISIL's hands DOES reflect a deliberate policy of the US government, not just the kind of accident that routinely happens when you back the wrong side in a civil war and your proxies get their asses kicked on the battlefield by a more motivated and better organized force.

Yes, I know you believe that- now prove it. With actual evidence that real US politicians, not conspiracyland fantasy versions of those politicians, are doing this on purpose.

If you cannot support BOTH (1) and (2), then I am calling on you, as one nominally sane person to another, to STOP making this baseless and unjustified claim.

If you are unable to stop, I am going to report this thread for persistent violations of Debating Rule #4 and #5, because you are showing a textbook example of a wall-of-ignorance with your broken record tactics.

That is something we call a threat. I am now going to decide whether to carry it out, going over all the posts you spammed to see if any of them contain what I asked for. I am going to ignore your delusions about, let's see...

-Machine guns.
-Possibly your pro-Baathism although frankly religious fanatics can sometimes make fascists look good by comparison so that may not be a delusion.
-Your incessant strawmannery of myself and my own opinions
-Your claim that the 'COG Conspiracy' or whatever has taken over and is somehow overriding normal electoral processes (which is what you said even if it's not what you think)

I am ignoring all these things, because I care ONLY, right now, about getting you to PUT UP OR SHUT UP on the specific subject of how you allege that ISIL is dependent on US 'aid' to survive.

I am also going to ignore the logical concerns you have (liberally salted with delusional bullshit, but logical concerns nonetheless) about, let's see...

-The Turks being generally treacherous and letting Syrian/Iraqi Kurds get hammered by ISIL,
-About 'warmongering' being ineffective and frequently very immoral (if not always)
-The problematic nature of using 'petrodollars' as a tool of economic bullying


The reason I'm ignoring these things because while they are quite true they are not relevant to the specific point I am now focusing on. And I'm not going to even bother engaging with you on these issues unless you actually pass the goddamn Turing Test on this ONE issue, by either supporting or withdrawing your claim.

---

Now, let me see what you actually did in response to this... Here you provided lots of quantitative evidence of other countries who are NOT the US providing arms to ISIL on a large scale. You seem to have thought that these other countries' aid constitutes "US aid," as if Saudi Arabia takes its marching orders from Washington, but that's your problem. The practical upshot is, you have provided evidence for the aid NOT coming from the US, maybe you're using it as a baseline so you can later say "well, the Saudis gave ISIL three billion dollars in aid, but the US gave thirty billion dollars!"

You also babbled delusionally about my "armed intervention notions." But hey, you can't help it, it's a compulsion. I get that. I get that you can't actually stop and read another person's posts and comprehend what they think and what they're saying to you; you just have this weird random-number generator in your head that spots a few key-words in the other guy's post and spits out a reply to some imaginary strawman in your head.

So to recap, here you provided quantitative evidence... of something other than what you were supposed to be trying to prove. If anything this evidence might even undermine what you're trying to prove, because obviously if ISIL gets lots of funding from other sources, there's no reason to assume it's reliant on supplies 'sent' to it by the screwy means of the US giving weapons to their hated enemies, who proceed to use the weapons incompetently and get them captured.

---

Then we go to your next post...

...You're still on that?

Can you provide a count of the value of the stolen American weapons you keep harping on? Because the casual "oh, yeah, the US is a primary supporter of ISIL thing" is really sticking in my craw. You've asserted bizarre and delusional things on this point and have never shown even one sign of willingness to either prove your assertions or concede them.

I have been explaining them. You seem to just ignore the explanations.

No. That is not true. The problem is that you explain things but you do not prove them. You repeat the same assertions over and over, without presenting proof. You say "All these things are happening, which PROVES I'm right!" Except many of them do not prove you're right. Some of them actively contradict your arguments. Others have very obvious and logical explanations that have nothing at all to do with your arguments.

The thing about presenting evidence is that you have to provide actual logic to justify why this particular evidence supports your position. That's the part you have failed to do. It's almost like you're saying "Hi! I linked fifty newspaper articles selected at random! I WIN!"

...One, that is not an official US contribution to ISIL, it is a contribution to their hated enemies. Said enemies are not just a money-laundering front for ISIL. You have never shown any sign that you understand this.

Um, I explained it was easier to go off the U.S. amount than investigate and enumerate each Syrian rebel/DAESH contributer. America is in this case, truly the indispensable nation.

And where did you get this notion from? The voices in your head? You have yet to support that with numbers.

And without that being true, you are still fundamentally wrong about this basic point: ISIL's enemies in Syria are not a money-laundering front for providing aid to ISIL. At most, they are groups actively fighting ISIL... but not doing very well. This is a very different thing.

That didn't make any sense at all. If one knowingly gives firearms to a gang, and some members of that gang used them to rob banks on a regular basis, and one knows this, but keeps giving them arms, one would be charged with being a straw buyer if not an accomplice, depending on the skills of the defense attorney vs the prosecutor.

If one buys weapons for the police, and the police sometimes lose gunfights to MS-13 and some of the guns get captured, no you would NOT get charged as a straw buyer for the gang.

Buying guns to kill someone with is not the same as buying guns for them to use.

Provide quantitative evidence, however, that the flow of stolen US aid is actually a primary source of ISIL's supplies... and THEN I will change my tune.

Finally, a real rebuttal. Sort of. Seems to me Saddam's Iraq and Assad's Syria, secular republics albeit with presidents for life, would have been far more natural allies given that they are Baathist modernists. To bad they had to be destroyed for some reason and the Gulf monarchies supported without question.

Iraq and Syria under the Baathists were in fact fascist regimes with secret police forces; the only reason they now look less bad is because people like ISIL are worse.

America has committed itself to fracking for oil. Its wasteful and destructive, but that's another debate. Suffice it to say, if America committed itself to peaceful redevelopment into an inevitable post-petrolium economy, even as it developed a comfortable level of petrolium self-sufficiency in the interim, America could guarantee its hegemony. What's being squandered right now in pointless wars to protect those who profit from the petrolium-centred monopolies, is everything the United States needs to stay ahead in the world.

With this I do not disagree. The problem is, well, that delusional claim you keep repeating. Even if you say things that ARE totally true and interesting, you're not worth anyone's time if you can't distinguish fact from fiction reliably, and if you can't recognize when one of your own claims is totally unsupported.

---

Now we move on to the next post, the one where you directly replied to the passage I quoted above.

People have been telling you this isn't true, and presenting many arguments for why this isn't true, for literally the whole time you've been participating in this thread.

Not very convincingly, but whatever.

I submit that if, say, three to five people all try to convince you of the same thing, and they can't... well, that might actually be because of you, not because of them. Especially when you have managed to win exactly zero converts to your "The US is backing ISIL" position on what is normally a forum very ready to condemn the US and blame them for their shady and outright evil actions in various countries.

Not ONCE have you provided any quantitative evidence for the scale of US aid supplies that were stolen by ISIL from other Syrian rebel groups. Not ONCE have you provided any evidence beyond your own conjecture that the US meant for this to happen. And yet you treat it as established fact that ISIL is the product of a deliberate US policy to sustain them, and will vanish if that policy changes.

Put up or shut up.

Since the U.S. government is not going to release top secret documents explaining why they keep supporting Syrian rebels who defect anyway, and the aid policy is not going to change, you are asking for a peculiarly high level of proof.

So you can't actually prove that your claims about the US government's motives are correct? OK, then explicitly label them as conjecture, which is what an honest man would do. Or stop making them, which is also what an honest man might do.

Granted, you have Convictions, so it would be more in keeping with your overall character (assuming you were honest) to simply label your own statements:

"This is an unsupported conjecture, but I think the US has to be doing this on purpose to keep ISIL going..."

This would require you to do a bit of self-reflection, but that's a good thing.

Ah, I must prove but you need not bother backing your pro-war nonsense.

I am not making positive claims about where ISIL's money is coming from. Except, perhaps, to provide counterexamples of where it MIGHT be coming from in order to help refute your own claim.

You are making such positive claims. It is as if you had said "Boss Grubermann, the crime lord, is funding this politician." That is a positive claim that requires evidence. If you claim such a thing without proof, or at least without reasonable grounds for the claim, it is what we call 'libel.' The contrary claim, "This politician is independent of Boss Grubermann," does not in itself require evidence.

It may require evidence if existing evidence already makes 'Boss Grubermann owns this politician' the default hypothesis, but that doesn't apply here. 'ISIL is dependent on US help' should not be the null hypothesis when the US has never expressed any desire to see ISIL succeed and is in fact actively trying to kill them with warmongerizing explosions. In this case, the null hypothesis would be "I don't know exactly where ISIL gets their money from, but it is most likely not from the people trying to kill them."

Now, to recap:

I am making the claim "ISIL is not dependent on support funding that comes from the US, including support the US allegedly funnels through proxies." You are making the claim that ISIL is dependent on such support.

You are making the positive claim. I am not. Therefore, you have a higher burden of proof than me.

Go on, refute the null hypothesis. I dare you.

Senate Intelligence Vice Chairman Saxby Chamblis expects some rebels to flip and doesn't know where some of the aid will end up. So, that's the kind of real politician in charge of American national intelligence.

There is a difference between "some" and "most" or "all."

If I train ten soldiers, and one of them defects to the enemy and gets two of my soldiers killed, then my actions have strengthened my side by seven soldiers (ten, minus one traitor and two dead bodies). The enemy has gained one soldier. As long as I'm not in danger of running out of resources, this is still a winning strategy, unless the enemy is in a position to inflict seven-to-one losses on me on a regular basis.

The same argument goes to bullets, antitank weapons, medical supplies, or anything else I might supply a semi-military 'rebel' force. Some of the supplies being stolen and redirected is not the same as all the supplies being stolen and redirected, such that the channel of supply becomes a money-laundering scheme for equipping the enemy.

Moreover, relying primarily on supplies stolen from their enemies is not a winning strategy for a guerilla movement. Not when said guerillas have large enemy forces arrayed against them that do NOT depend entirely on stolen equipment. Like the Kurds, the Syrians, and the Iraqi Army. Even if none of those groups are especially strong, they at least have one thing going for them: they don't have to fight a battle to procure ammunition for their own weapons.

Whereas you allege that ISIL does, every single time you talk about the 'laundering'* of aid to Syrians fighting ISIL by way of ISIL capturing that aid in battle.

*My word, not yours, but descriptive in my opinion.

I have been trying to explain this to you, but you have been really goddamn obtuse about listening.

If this kind of accident routinely happens and so is a known phenomenon, why wouldn't the United States government game this to re-enter Iraq and finally establish a permanent military presence there so as to pursue the global war on terrorism, as was the original plan?

The original plan was devised, and the 'secret plan' you link to was negotiated, by Bush the Younger. Bush the Younger's faction of the Republican Party fell from power in large part because of his handling of Iraq. You have repeatedly alleged that they are not gone, and certainly elements of their policies remain.

But this is not the same as simply assuming that US strategic priorities are totally unchanged since 2008. Or that a man who built his political career on the grounds of NOT deploying large armies to Middle Eastern countries is issuing orders in hopes that we WILL deploy such armies to such countries.

...

What sort of smoking gun were you expecting, a news article specifically stating the U.S. government trained ISIS personnel like the one I linked to? They exist.

According to Jordanian intelligence sources, it is reported that the program is designed to create 10,000 fighters who will exclusively be a part of the ISIS group. ISIS is now responsible for the unrest occurring in Northern Iraq, and it would be quite ironic if the United States was actually responsible for the training that is now being used to destabilize the Iraqi nation.

Okay, the opinion piece you cites uses Jordanian intelligence sources that cannot be verified, quotes sources that do not distinguish between ISIL and other groups. He also misquotes in the underlined passage, which is based on a basic reading comprehension fail of the Reuters article he links. "To the exclusion of radical Islamists" does not mean "exclusively a part of ISIL." In fact, it means the exact opposite.

He also makes remarks about al-Douri which are at best questionably true- or at least, NOT supported by the article he cites. He claims al-Douri is running ISIL, more or less- when in fact it looks more like al-Douri was running a guerilla organization within Iraq and decided to lay low (avoiding US attacks) until US troops left... and until such time as the rise of ISIL made it practical to ally with them.

So basically, that's not a smoking gun you have there. That's an opinion piece by a guy who either didn't link his real sources, or misread the sources he did link so badly that I honestly can't say he has a high school graduate's level of reading comprehension.

So do more scholarly articles describing clandestine ops planned to destabilize the region, creating the conditions for a DAESH-like organization to arise.

That article bases its propositions on the idea that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait are US allies, which is frankly laughable.

This is one of the negative side effects of America's attempts at world hegemon/empire/whatever. If we are the dominant force in the world, logically the default condition must be that all countries are our friends! With no actual neutrals and only a handful of 'rogue state' enemies who are effectively rebels against the (US-dominated) international order.

Except that in a place like the Middle East this is obviously not true. There are, essentially, NO countries in the Middle East that are allied with the US. There are lots of countries that pursue their own interests to the best of their ability, and which find it convenient to take the US's money and support, and to shout to the US for help when they feel threatened. But that's not the same thing at all.

Now, this makes supporting such countries rather stupid- it sort of made sense in the Cold War in the context of trying to keep out a rival for hegemony, but it certainly doesn't make sense in a unipolar world.

However, it ALSO means that you can't say something like "Qatar did it, Qatar is a US ally, therefore the US did it!" Because that is not true; Doha doesn't take its marching orders from Washington, and routinely does whatever the hell it wants while Washington quietly fumes and pretends nothing is wrong for oil's sake.

Non-lethal aid has been pouring into DAESH-held territory for months, helping them solidify their hold in those areas. Might not this aid have been better deployed in out-of-Syria refugee camps?

Maybe, but the alternative is, realistically, to sit back and let ISIL mismanage the civilian population even more and cause the creation of millions more refugees, and probably many thousands more dead bodies.

It's a dilemma, and a nasty one. Supply humanitarian aid to territory controlled by your enemy? You're a monster. Deny humanitarian aid to territory controlled by your enemy? You're still a monster.

Of course, it was OK to let half a million Iraqi children die from international sanctions, but maybe the U.S. and its allies learned their lesson and are determined this not happen under DAESH rule. NOT.

You don't seem to understand how science works. Direct links of cause and effect are not always immediately provable and discerned only by indirect means. For example, a planet in a distant solar system may not be physically visible but the doppler wobble of its star gives it away.

Giving non-existent moderate Syrian rebels support that ends up with DAESH on a regular reliable basis is support for DAESH. When this support continues despite knowing the phenomenon of Jihadi flip, it is support for DAESH. The U.S. government not openly admitting to supporting DAESH directly is meaningless.

You are asking me to deny the objective evidence of what actually happened and all relevantly contributing circumstances.

[/quote]Well hell, imagine that I grant my proposition (2), that the US is doing this on purpose. Which I'm still not convinced of, and which you have still presented only inferential evidence for, but to your credit you at least tried. And didn't completely fuck it up, in that you DID present evidence that nonmilitary aid from many countries (including the US) is pouring into ISIL's territory.

But even so, you still have a major problem with proposition (1): proving that the magnitude of the "US aid" (i.e. aid the US gave to somebody else but that ISIL is in a position to steal)

I asked you to prove that too. And you... really just blustered your way through that part.

So, one more chance. Explain why, taken as a math problem, you expect the US 'cutting support' to have a meaningful impact on ISIL. Why you think ISIL would be unable to survive and function without this support, even if the US doesn't do anything else to weaken ISIL.

And delineate precisely what "cutting support" means. Does cutting support to ISIL mean, for example, stopping weapon sales to places like Saudi Arabia? If so, fine, but you should SAY that is the case, because Saudi Arabia is hundreds and hundreds of miles from ISIL's territory.

[Channel72]

Simon, I am in awe of your efforts here.... but I think you'd seriously get a more intelligent response arguing with a more paranoid implementation of ELIZA than you're likely to get from Brock.

I think I'm going to implement a Brockbot 1.0 which basically just iterates over an input post, randomly selects keywords it identifies as nouns using a part-of-speech dictionary, and then regurgitates a string of text which includes input nouns interleaved with canned rants about COG and shadow governments. That should produce something roughly equivalent to what's going on in this thread.

[Channel72]

What's even more hilarious sad is that Brock actually thinks the Free Syrian Army - you know, the ACTUAL Syrian rebels receiving US aid - are some "money laundering front" for ISIL. As if the FSA isn't an autonomous group with it's own goals and aspirations. The FSA predates ISIL, and has been fighting Assad's regime since like 2011. The FSA is composed of real people with their own goals, ambitions, and beliefs... people that are rebelling against Assad's brutal Saddam Hussein-esque crackdowns; they're not some facade invented by the CIA for fuck's sake, and Brock's allegations are pretty fucking insulting to the FSA soldiers who died in the Syrian Civil War.

[Channel72]

A better criticism of US policy would be to complain about aid to the FSA in the first place; they are, after all, allegedly as brutal as ISIL sometimes, but at least they're not Islamist nutjobs, just your typical hardened guerrilla warriors.

[K. A. Pital]

I tend to worry much more about the 'other islamists' that people think are not ISIL. As the recent events have shown (several independent groups and Al-Quaeda remnants affiliating themselves with ISIL soon after the start of the bombing campaigns), any Sunni islamists in the region are either IS sympathizers or future ISIL converts that are only waiting to stock up on 'non-lethal aid' (rations, medicine, etc.) and then go to the ISIL with what they have.

Also I think we've had enough of Brock's conspiracy rants. Further rants by Brock will be flushed.

[Channel72]

I tend to worry much more about the 'other islamists' that people think are not ISIL. As the recent events have shown (several independent groups and Al-Quaeda remnants affiliating themselves with ISIL soon after the start of the bombing campaigns), any Sunni islamists in the region are either IS sympathizers or future ISIL converts that are only waiting to stock up on 'non-lethal aid' (rations, medicine, etc.) and then go to the ISIL with what they have.

At the risk of generalizing, that's because the Arab world is somewhat plagued by the "Insha'Allah" mentality - it's (sort of) similar to the French phrase "c'est la vie", but with a more strongly fatalistic connotation; in other words, whatever happens was meant to happen - because God wills it. ISIL is succeeding because God wills it, etc - and thus success breeds loyalty (and hopelessness).

Which is why it's absolutely critical that we discredit ISIL, because as soon as they start failing hard, the Sunnis will turn against them.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I tend to worry much more about the 'other islamists' that people think are not ISIL. As the recent events have shown (several independent groups and Al-Quaeda remnants affiliating themselves with ISIL soon after the start of the bombing campaigns), any Sunni islamists in the region are either IS sympathizers or future ISIL converts that are only waiting to stock up on 'non-lethal aid' (rations, medicine, etc.) and then go to the ISIL with what they have.

At the risk of generalizing, that's because the Arab world is somewhat plagued by the "Insha'Allah" mentality - it's (sort of) similar to the French phrase "c'est la vie", but with a more strongly fatalistic connotation; in other words, whatever happens was meant to happen - because God wills it. ISIL is succeeding because God wills it, etc - and thus success breeds loyalty (and hopelessness).

Which is why it's absolutely critical that we discredit ISIL, because as soon as they start failing hard, the Sunnis will turn against them.

If you really want to discredit ISIL, you have to discredit Wahabism, but that's as good as asking for Saudi Arabia to fade into the sands.

[Simon_Jester]

Simon, I am in awe of your efforts here.... but I think you'd seriously get a more intelligent response arguing with a more paranoid implementation of ELIZA than you're likely to get from Brock.

I think he tried to actually prove his case rather than just blindly reasserting it. Sort of. I've seen him pass the Turing Test before. I want to give him one last chance...

I think I'm going to implement a Brockbot 1.0 which basically just iterates over an input post, randomly selects keywords it identifies as nouns using a part-of-speech dictionary, and then regurgitates a string of text which includes input nouns interleaved with canned rants about COG and shadow governments. That should produce something roughly equivalent to what's going on in this thread.

...But I'm open to your interpretation too.

[Channel72]

Turkey is also run by Islamists so they have a natural friendship with IS. It's funny how the US has managed to suck the dick of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey while ignoring the natural friends in the region. Send help to Assad and send help to the Kurds before the entire region is etnhically cleansed of non-muslims, and then ethnically cleansed again of muslims who have the wrong sectarian passport. The current Middle East is a great example of how dangerous multiculture can be.

Yeah, the US' mishandling of the region is almost comical sometimes. Of course, the US is trying to support the Kurds. As for Assad, yeah at this point in history it seems like supporting Assad is probably the lesser of two (or three) evils. But the US has just never liked Assad because he smells of fascism, and some myopic idiots in the Council of Foreign Relations probably decided it would be awesome to get rid of Assad (possibly because Syria stood up to the US over the Iraq war, or maybe just as a knee-jerk proxy fuck-you to Russia as a cold-war holdover), especially after the "Arab Spring" (what a joke) by supporting the FSA. Little did they know the FSA would turn out to be pretty ineffectual, and that the "Arab Spring" was less of a watershed moment for democracy and more like the gates of Mordor opening up and letting all the Jihadis pour out and swarm over the region.

[ArmorPierce]

Do you feel like Turkey is required to put boots on the ground to fight ISIS? I've seen this sentiment expressed elsewhere and that Turkey should be kicked out of NATO for not doing so.

Why is it felt that Turkey is required to go into Syria/Iraq to fight ISIS when no other country has boots on the ground?

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't the Kurds in that region and PKK historically supported a communist movement and supported the Soviet Union? That would explain why nobody supported them in the past.

[Simon_Jester]

If a NATO member were under attack, then Turkey should be kicked out of NATO for refusing to come to that member's assistance. The core premise of NATO is that an attack on one is an attack on all.

However, neither Syria nor Iraq is a NATO member. NATO members are under no obligation to attack a foreign country purely because it sees fit to attack another foreign (non-NATO) country.

The reason for thinking Turkey is responsible is that Turkey directly borders the area affected. For the US, this is a remote affair in a far off foreign land. For Turkey it's an hour's drive away. Thus, it is reasonable to think that if ISIL is an international menace that needs to be contained for the sake of the peace and order of the region, that Turkey would be the first to step up.

[ArmorPierce]

But Turkey didn't create this mess. They objected to the direct cause of this mess (going into Iraq in the first place) by not allowing use their air strips when we went into war at Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein.

Why should Turkey now be obligated to go clean up that mess that it objected to in the first place?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

But Turkey didn't create this mess. They objected to the direct cause of this mess (going into Iraq in the first place) by not allowing use their air strips when we went into war at Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein.

Why should Turkey now be obligated to go clean up that mess that it objected to in the first place?

Erm. What? Turkey helped, funded, and allowed the Islamist militants against Assad to cross their damn border. And these are the same damn militants who are now in Iraq as well.

What are you smoking?

And as for the PKK, it was more like people were more willing to look the other way during the Cold War with regard to Turkey's past genocides.

[ArmorPierce]

Can you provide evidence that Turkey is currently funding and helping ISIS as opposed to supporting them in the past when the US was supporting the overthrow of Assad? I see lots of rumors being thrown around but little in the way of facts.

What do you mean by allowing to cross the border? Has Turkey done anything to make special accommodations or support to ISIS supporters crossing the border?

[cosmicalstorm]

There are plenty of photos of IS member waving happily from their hospital beds in Turkey. Turkeys inaction and silent support with regards to IS is obvious. Turkey is run by a man who is in love with Islam and would love nothing more than to have the hateful Kurds and Alawites exterminated and get a nice little Caliphate as it's next door neighbor. It was a true pity that the secular generals did not seize proper power over Turkey, a military dictatorship would have been better. I wonder when Turkey has a civil war.

[ArmorPierce]

So is humanitarian health aid to injured and dying foreign/enemy combatants is not allowed now? By that logic the red cross is a terrorist organization.

I agree, a military taking control of the government would have been preferable. Them being unable to do so is perhaps partly due to the west demanding decreased political power and control from Turkey's military when Turkey was making effort towards joining the European Union. It was one of the major points that they stated that Turkey needed to address.

[Simon_Jester]

All I know is, if NATO has a need to suppress ISIL for its own collective security, Turkey would logically be the first responder, and if they refuse they are no true member of NATO.

However, as of yet, ISIL has not threatened any NATO power directly, only the "interests" of various NATO powers. There's nothing in the Washington Treaty that says NATO members are required to go to war over the "interests" of a fellow NATO member.

[Channel72]

All I know is, if NATO has a need to suppress ISIL for its own collective security, Turkey would logically be the first responder, and if they refuse they are no true member of NATO.

However, as of yet, ISIL has not threatened any NATO power directly, only the "interests" of various NATO powers. There's nothing in the Washington Treaty that says NATO members are required to go to war over the "interests" of a fellow NATO member.

Yeah, Turkey is a logical first responder I guess, geographically speaking... but the US has military bases throughout the GCC area, and could probably more effectively (or at least as effectively) deploy troops into Northeast Syria than Turkey could on short notice.

I sympathize with what ArmorPierce is saying... the US refuses to commit ground troops for domestic political reasons - I mean we need to worry about Hillary and 2016 after all - don't wanna compromise Democrat voter turnout with too much overseas warring, you know - and I guess the Obama administration is hoping some local military (Kurds/Turks, etc.) will get their hands dirty and cleanup ISIL. So far only the Kurds are really putting their money where their mouth is - (I just can't stop respecting these guys enough...)

That said, I agree it is in Turkey's best interest to get their act together and start kicking ass in Syria. But I do think it's a bit hypocritical that we're relying on Erdogan to save the day here. On the other hand, his parliament did agree to sign up for NATO and all the associated economic benefits, so whatever. Ironically, among NATO members the Turkish airforce is pretty fucking amazing, ranking third behind the US and UK in terms of fleet size - they would probably be a better asset in that regard than via ground troops.

Regardless, I'm pretty confident the Kurds and Syrians can handle this with foreign air support - it's just sad and hypocritical that nobody will help them on the ground.