BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
ARE we the people going to let the military-industrial complex, the war profiteers of wall street and the Washington politicians mislead and deceive us into another war in Iraq, another Middle East war? Are we going to send our military to die and be wounded in countries where we, as a nation, are hated and despised? We can't even provide proper care and support for the wounded still returning from our war in Afghanistan and from our last war in Iraq? Tragic and brutal as the murders of James Foley and Steve Sotloff were, they do not justify the deaths and wounding of thousands more Americans. We do not have allies in the Arab Middle East, we have consumers of our weapons systems and business interest. American lives should not be sacrificed for corporate profits. Click the link to tell your senators NO MORE AMERICAN WARS in the Middle East. And remember, it was public outrage and outcry that prevented us from getting us involved in Syria last year. We have the power and can stop this march to war in Iraq and Syria. From +Daily Kos ..... War hawks are trying to rush us into yet another lengthy war without
any questions or debate. We need to hit the pause button here, take a
breath and remember what happened the last two times we did this.
Then, we need to make sure our elected officials take the time to ask the tough questions.
War hawks like Dick Cheney and John McCain are beating the drum for new
war in the Middle East—and, just as in 2003, most of the media are
letting them make their case without criticism or questioning. Even
Congress may allow new military intervention in the Middle East without
so much as a floor debate or a vote to authorize it. This is
unacceptable.
After a decade of war, Americans understand that military action has
profound consequences. Congress needs to vigorously and publicly debate
newly proposed action in the Middle East.
Everything I wrote here still stands.
We've spent billions arming our Middle East allies to the teeth. They
are the ones directly threatened by Islamic State/ISIS/ISIL. Not us.
So why is it us that have to do the fighting? It's their backyard,
but they can watch comfortably as the United States bleeds trillions
more to bail them out? Nice gig, if you can get it.
Let those directly threatened by Islamic State put their skin in the game.
Originally posted to kos on Wed Sep 10, 2014 at 01:26 PM PDT.
ALL the repiglicans and tea-baggers howling about Pres Obama playing golf on Martha's Vineyard after his press conference about isis and the beheading of James Foley need to explain these presidential events in history.....
A particularly intolerable meme continues to play out in the
news media and online: Apparently U.S. history began on January 20,
2009, when Barack Obama was inaugurated. In case you were unaware,
President Obama is evidently the first president to take vacations; he's
the first president to play golf; he's the first president to be
photographed without a suit or tie; and he's the first president to
routinely use a teleprompter. If you believe any of that, then you're a
moron who needs to crack a good book -- anything prior to the events of
2009 will do. There you'll find that not only are Obama's vacations and
so forth in line with most previous presidents, but in terms of overall
time off, he's taken the fewest vacation days of any modern president
other than Bill Clinton.
As reported recently by The Daily Banter's Tommy Christopher and Michael Luciano,
the latest round of outrage directed at the president has to do with
his so-called "bad optics" -- inappropriate, non-presidential behavior.
In this latest case, Obama's crazy decision to remain on
vacation following the horrifying beheading of American journalist James
Foley. A cursory check of AM talk radio, Fox News Channel and
conservative Twitter reveals the usual double standard and historical
amnesia we've seen over and over again.
So, in the interest of history and the obvious inability of
Republican concern-trolls to actually do the research themselves, I
decided to set the way-back machine to the beloved Ronald Reagan
presidency. Here's a series of harrowing events from the 1980s, along
with the comparatively AWESOME optics from Reagan, the now-sainted chief executive. The photographs are all from the specified dates. EVENT, October 10, 1981 -- The funeral of assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. REAGAN OPTICS, October 10, 1981 -- Reagan went horseback riding at Camp David. EVENT, August 29, 1983 -- Two Marines were killed and 14 wounded in Beirut. REAGAN OPTICS, August 29, 1983 -- Reagan remained on vacation at Rancho Del Cielo, California. EVENT, September 1, 1983 -- Reagan was still on vacation in California when the Soviets shot down Korean Airlines Flight 007. REAGAN OPTICS, September 1, 1983 -- According to Fox
News Channel's Chris Wallace, as well as contemporaneous accounts,
Reagan planned to remain on vacation until he was photographed horseback
riding and was convinced to return to the White House.
The Washington Post, 9/4/83 -- At this point,
[Press Secretary Larry] Speakes was interrupted and asked if Reagan was
going back to Washington. He ignored the question and read a statement
on the Middle East. Asked again if Reagan was going back to Washington,
Speakes answered, "There are no plans for the president to return to
Washington earlier than anticipated."
FOX NEWS CHANNEL'S CHRIS WALLACE:
I was covering Ronald Reagan at that time. He was in Santa Barbara at
his ranch when that happened, and quite frankly he didn't want to leave.
And his advisers realized how terrible this looked, and eventually
persuaded him he had to fly back to Washington and had to give this
speech to the nation, but it did take him four days.
EVENT, October 22, 1983 -- The administration began planning its military incursion into Grenada. REAGAN OPTICS, October 22, 1983 -- Reagan remained on vacation at the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia. Repeat: golf resort. Here are three strikingly presidential photos from Augusta -- the golf resort! First, Reagan in his jammies being briefed on the Grenada plans, then, later hitting the links. Where were the Republicans of 2014 to scold him?
President Reagan was still on vacation at the GOLF! resort the next day when the Marine barracks in Beirut were bombed, killing 241 Marines. EVENT, July 18, 1984 -- 21 people were killed and 19 wounded when a gunman entered a San Ysidro, California McDonald's and opened fire. REAGAN OPTICS, July 21, 1984 -- On the day when many of the gun massacre victims were to be buried, Reagan went horseback riding at Camp David. EVENT, April 2, 1986 -- Four Americans were killed in a terrorist attack at a TWA counter at the Athens Airport, Greece. REAGAN OPTICS, April 4, 1986 -- Two days later, here's Reagan's uber-presidential optics, while on vacation (!!) at Rancho Del Cielo: EVENT, September 5, 1986 -- The Pakistani military stormed the hijacked Pan Am Flight 73. Twenty-two people were killed, including two Americans, and 150 were injured. REAGAN OPTICS, September 6, 1986 -- Again, while on vacation at his California ranch, Reagan went horseback riding with the First Lady and was photographed with a "Just Say No" sign.
Presidential optics! Any questions? Cross-posted at The Daily Banter. Click here to listen to the Bubble Genius Bob & Chez Show podcast. BobCesca.com Blog with special thanks to Nicole Naum.
MORE beating of the war drums by the military-industrial complex and the big oil / energy companies who are more interested in their profit margins than the deaths of American soldiers in another worthless war in Iraq and probably Syria. These war pigs care nothing about the fate of the American men and women in uniform serving and defending our country. The American interest they say we need to protect are the war profiteers who reap millions from death and destruction. We need to stop this before we are in another full blown war to "save" another Middle Eastern country who will turn against us once we have saved the asses of their corrupt political leadership. I wish Pres Obama and Congress were as outraged over the neglect and suffering of the tens of thousands of wounded vets from Iraq and Afghanistan as they are over the murder of James Foley. Maybe then the government would actually take the necessary action to take care of these wounded warriors. War is not the answer, when will we, as a nation learn? From +PBS NewsHour
Islamic
State fighters captured the last major military base in northeastern
Syria on Sunday, bolstering its influence in the already unstable
region. The U.S. kept up airstrikes against the group over the weekend,
amid growing talk of an expanding ai campaign into Syria. Jeffrey Brown
gets analysis on the threat from retired Army Col. Peter Mansoor and
Stephen Walt of Harvard University.
GWEN IFILL: Last
week’s execution-style murder of journalist James Foley has intensified
the debate over how the U.S. should handle the expanding Islamic State
group. Officials at the White House and the Pentagon have signaled they
will act against the militant group soon, perhaps striking within Syria.Jeffrey Brown takes a closer look at the choices facing the Obama administration.
http://youtu.be/nth1vLvqHkw JEFFREY BROWN: U.S.
jets flying off the carrier George H.W. Bush kept up airstrikes against
Islamic State fighters in Iraq over the weekend. There was also growing
talk of expanding the air campaign across the border into Syria.
Army
General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said last week
that’s the only way to defeat the militant group. But at the White House
today, spokesman Josh Earnest was noncommittal. JOSH EARNEST, White House Press Secretary: The president thus far has not made a decision to order additional military action in Syria. JEFFREY BROWN: Also
today, Syria’s foreign minister today rejected any airstrikes, unless
Damascus is consulted. Still, he said Syria welcomes all help, despite
repeated U.S. calls for President Bashar al-Assad to step down. WALID AL-MOALLEM,
Syrian Foreign Minister (through interpreter): We are ready to
cooperate and coordinate with regional countries and the international
community in fighting terrorism following the resolutions of the
Security Council. We welcome everybody. JEFFREY BROWN: The
need for help was evident Sunday, as Islamic State forces captured the
last major military base in northeastern Syria. They celebrated in the
streets of Raqqa with vehicles honking horns and shots fired in the air.
Calls
for U.S. action to extend into Syria have mounted since American
journalist James Foley was beheaded by Islamic State captors. Sunday, on
NBC, the British ambassador to the U.S., Peter Westmacott, said
investigators are close to identifying the British-accented militant in
the video. He also acknowledged that some 500 Britons have joined the
Islamic State.
The chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Republican Mike Rogers, warned that Westerners in the group pose a mortal threat. REP. MIKE ROGERS,
R-Mich.: And one of the problems is, it’s gone unabated for nearly two
years, and that draws people from Britain, to across Europe, even the
United States to go and join the fight. They are one plane ticket away
from U.S. shores, and that’s why we’re so concerned about it. JEFFREY BROWN: Meanwhile,
the U.N. human rights chief, Navi Pillay, accused Islamic State forces
of widespread crimes in Iraq, including slavery, sexual abuse, and mass
executions of hundreds of prisoners.
How great a threat is the Islamic State group? And what should the U.S. do about it?
We
join the debate now with retired Army Colonel Peter Mansoor. He was
executive officer to General David Petraeus in Iraq during the surge in
2007 and ’8. He’s now an associate professor of military history at the
Ohio State University. And Stephen Walt is professor of international
relations at Harvard University. He’s written extensively about security
policy issues.
Peter Mansoor, let me start with you.
How do you define the threat and how urgent is the need to act? COL. PETER MANSOOR (RET.),
U.S. Army: Well, ISIS is a group that is well-funded, well-armed, and
has thousands of fighters under its ranks and more joining it every day.
It’s
a threat to the region. It can destabilize the Middle East, from which
we get most of our oil, in terms of the global economy. And it can
inject terrorism into Europe and the United States, given that it has
hundreds of fighters in its ranks who hold Western passports.
So this is a group that is a threat to the United States and the global community and it needs to be dealt with. JEFFREY BROWN: Stephen Walt, how do you respond to that? How do you define the threat first? STEPHEN WALT, Harvard University:I
think that there’s no question ISIS is a bunch of very bad guys. But
it’s primarily a threat to the people in the areas they control and not a
direct threat to the United States.
It’s a predominantly Sunni
group which will not be able to expand into non-Sunni areas. And the
potential terrorist threat there, I think, has been greatly exaggerated.
There are lots of groups around the world who would like to be able to
go after the United States. Most of them fail. And, in fact, the way to
deal with it is primarily with intelligence and counterterrorism here at
home. JEFFREY BROWN: All right, so, Peter Mansoor, what
exactly would you propose? Are there — are airstrikes into Syria
required? Are special forces on the ground required? Spell it out for
us, what you would like to see. COL. PETER MANSOOR: Well,
if the goal is to destroy ISIS, you have to do it on both sides of what
is now a nonexistent international border, because, otherwise, if you
just deal with the group in Iraq, it will just move back into Syria and
remetastasize.
I believe we need to wait until there’s an
inclusive and legitimate government in Baghdad. But provided that
happens under Prime Minister designate Haider al-Abadi, then I think we
need to provide advisers and trainers to reform and retrain the Iraqi
army and Kurdish Peshmerga, ramp up the equipment effort, especially to
the Kurdish forces in the north, ramp up our airstrikes and provide more
drone strikes and aircraft, and base them in the region, so they don’t
have to be based on ships floating out in the Gulf.
And then I
think — and this is probably the most controversial point of what I have
to say — we need to provide special forces to embed themselves with
Sunni tribes and rekindle the awakening that did so much to destroy the
forerunner to ISIS, al-Qaida in Iraq, in 2006, 2007 and 2008. And they
need to do that probably on both sides of the Iraqi-Syrian border. JEFFREY BROWN: All
right, Stephen Walt, you didn’t see the same threat, so I assume you
don’t see that same kind of ramp-up. What’s your response? STEPHEN WALT: I
think that, first of all, the United States should remember that we
have spent the last 15 years trying to use military power, including
military assistance, to try and organize the politics of this region.
And we have failed miserably.
We have got a failed state in Iraq.
We have a failed state in Libya, and we spent $25 billion training the
Iraqi army, which then subsequently turned and ran when confronted by
ISIS. So I think to believe that we can go in again with airpower
primarily and some special forces and eliminate this problem is
fanciful.
This is going to be ultimately a problem for locals to
deal with, not for the United States to try and deal with. And because
it is not a vital threat to core American security interests, it’s one
we should stay away from. JEFFREY BROWN: What about,
though, Mr. Walt, the argument that if we don’t — if the U.S. doesn’t do
something now, it may be too late later on if you are wrong? STEPHEN WALT: Well,
again, we have to recognize this is not the Third Reich. This is not an
incredibly powerful movement. It has maybe 20,000 fighters, no air
force, no navy, basically lightly armed infantry that has been able to
expand in stateless area, areas that are stateless in part because we
destroyed the states that were governing there.
And the idea that
we are going to go in again with a few thousand special forces and
reorganize the politics of that region, I think, has been tried and
found wanting in the past. And it would be found wanting again if we
tried it again. JEFFREY BROWN: And, Peter Mansoor, speaking
of complications in your argument, Syria has warned against airstrikes
into its space. Would your — would a push toward going across the border
not complicate things even more there? COL. PETER MANSOOR: Well, it’s a simple military mission of destroying an enemy armed force.
And
we send Syria a simple message: Stay out of our way or we will start
bombing you as well. And I think Bashar al-Assad and his forces would be
happy to watch us bomb ISIS with or without coordination with them.
I
think the main difference between Professor Walt and me is, he doesn’t
see ISIS as a threat to the United States. And I see it as a direct
threat to the United States. It has an ideology that will eventually
lead it to attack us. JEFFREY BROWN: But, Mr. Mansoor, even
if it is a threat or not to the United States, one of his arguments, as
I hear it, is history doesn’t bode well. It doesn’t show us that the
U.S. has the kind of power, ability, efficiency to do what you think we
can do. COL. PETER MANSOOR: Well, I beg to differ.
I
just finished writing a book on the surge. And in 2007 and 2008, we did
turn around a war effort that had nearly failed, and had that country on
the road to stability. Unfortunately, through political missteps, most
of them by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, that victory was thrown away.
So
I don’t see the same military dysfunction as Professor Walt. What I do
know is that, without U.S. help, Iraqi forces and Kurdish forces cannot
defeat ISIS. JEFFREY BROWN: Stephen Walt? STEPHEN WALT: I
think, first of all, if the Iraqi forces and Kurdish forces can’t
defeat them, then we’re not going to be able to defeat them ourselves.
And
we disagree on the success of the surge. The surge was a tactical
success, but a strategic failure, because it did not produce the
political reconciliation that was a requirement for strategic success
there. And there’s no evidence that we have the magic formula for
recreating political order in Syria or in Iraq. And, ultimately, that’s
going to be a task for the residents of those areas to do, and not
expect the United States to do it for them. JEFFREY BROWN: One
other brief issue, starting, Peter Mansoor. What about the allies? Does
— can — should the U.S. act alone if it doesn’t have the support of
other allies? COL. PETER MANSOOR: We actually do have the support of a lot of nations around the world who have been calling for U.S. leadership in this case.
European
nations would like to see ISIS destroyed. They realize that a lot of
their citizens are in ISIS ranks, and could be a threat to them as well.
So with U.S. leadership, I believe that we actually will have
international legitimacy for this mission, unlike the war in 2003. JEFFREY BROWN: And a brief last word for you, Stephen Walt, if the U.S. has that kind of legitimacy? STEPHEN WALT: There’s
no question that almost everyone around the world would like to see
ISIS weakened, but ultimately that is going to be a task for the people
who are mostly threatened. And it is the people who are living right
next door to ISIS, not the United States, which is an ocean away. JEFFREY BROWN: Stephen Walt and Peter Mansoor, thank you so much. We will continue the debate.
isis is funding their regional terrorist campaign by exporting oil through the very countries it is the greatest threat to, Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Turkey. Meanwhile, the U.S. taxpayers are paying for the U.S. military "advisers" on the ground and to conduct airstrikes in Iraq to stop isis from taking over the country. No doubt, if we haven't already started doing so, we will be sending military advisers to Jordan and increasing our military aid to Jordan and Turkey (our NATO ally), all at American taxpayer expense. Meanwhile, the governments of our Gulf State allies continue their pathetic Islamic infighting over who they should be and are funding and supplying in the Syrian civil war while their governments turn blind eyes to their citizens financial support of isis and al qaeda ( we should remember the 9/11 terrorist who struck America were from saudi arabia ) Our government, the Obama administration as well as Congress, will continue the propaganda campaign about the threat isis presents to this country a la saddam hussein's WMD to justify the next Middle East War. The government and main stream media talking heads are already mouthing the scripted disinformation from the American military-industrial complex how if we had been supplying the "right" Syrian rebels this situation with isis would have never developed. They are using the brutal murder by isis of James Foley to both outrage and frighten Americans. They will progress to the patriotic responsibility we have to defend America and American interest in the Middle East (i.e. American defense contractors and American oil / energy companies) from the isis terrorist to justify American troops being sent back to Iraq and possibly into Syria. And too many Americans will loose their lives, or be mentally and physically wounded (and then neglected by the nation they serve) in the name of corporate profit margins. Will America be stupid enough believe the propaganda, to believe the deception and manipulation by the warmongerers and sacrifice our troops in another pointless Middle East war? We stopped our government from getting involved in Syria last year, and we have a responsibility to stop further involvement in Iraq and Syria now. This from +Al Jazeera America and +PBS NewsHour .....
With up to $2 million in daily revenue from black market oil, the
Islamic State insurgency not only holds sway over swathes of Syria and
Iraq but has also begun to lay the foundations to become a small petro-state.
Such is the extent of the threat posed by the network that Defense
Secretary Chuck Hagel on Thursday called the group “as sophisticated and
well-funded as any group that we’ve seen” and “beyond just a terrorist
group.”
But even as Western military leaders ratchet up rhetoric about the
Islamic State, considered to be the world's wealthiest extremist
network, analysts say the fledgling petro-state is already running into
problems.
Though details of the group’s oil smuggling operations are murky, the
Islamic State and its Sunni allies are known to have dominion over
extensive smuggling routes into Jordan, Turkey and Iran, which some
experts believe have been turning a blind eye to the group's illicit
tankers and makeshift pipelines.
There are also unconfirmed reports of the Islamic State bribing the
Syrian regime with oil to avert airstrikes — even as the group counts
itself among Syria’s anti-Assad rebellion. “We’re talking about a
regional black market extending from Syria to Iraq, from Jordan to the
southern part of Turkey,” said Luay al-Khatteeb, director of the Iraq
Energy Institute.
In contrast with similarly minded extremist groups in Libya and
Nigeria, who have periodically raided oil tankers and pipelines and
seriously disrupted state oil production, the Islamic State has actually
coerced employees of oil facilities in Syria and Iraq to keep working,
stabilizing oil production to an unprecedented degree for a non-state
actor. It’s an approach that reflects the Islamic State’s emphasis on
governance and self-sufficiency in land it seizes — a departure from the
practices of the Al-Qaeda movement from which it drew inspiration— as well as its immediate need for cash to bankroll ambitious plans of regional expansion.
But, as is the nature of an illicit oil smuggling operation, the
Islamic State's black market trade is hugely inefficient, hindered by
its illegality at every leg of the production and distribution chain.
At the extraction stage, the insurgents will never be able to match
maximum flow rates without the investment and expertise of private oil
companies, who of course won’t want to do business with a feared
extremist group. Then, once it’s out of the ground, Islamic State oil
needs to be pawned off to middlemen at rates discounted by up to 75
percent, according to some estimates, because a fixed distribution
network — pipelines and the like — would be easy pickings for U.S. and
Iraqi missiles.
According to Richard Mallinson, a geopolitical analyst at
London-based consultancy Energy Aspects, these middlemen, who vary from
corrupt businessmen to more organized smuggling operations, “capture a
lot of the value, offering one price to whoever controls the fields and
then caging quite a high mark-up, which will still be well below the
local market price.”
Finding a buyer willing to purchase oil, even indirectly, from an
armed network reviled for its brutality is not easy, even if it comes
with a drastically reduced price tag. According to Mallinson, “This
really restricts the scale of operations. There’s always a market for
smuggled oil at that low price, but not one that will simply expand and
expand.”
Through a combination of smuggling crude oil and refining smaller
quantities itself at its refineries in Syria, the Sunni Islamic State is
still projected by some experts to pull in over $700 million in a year
(though many feel that estimate is generous) if they can manage to hang
on to their vast but fragile holdings. After leading an astonishing
takeover of Sunni lands in Iraq in June, the Islamic State is now
fighting tooth and nail to wrest control of the Baiji oil refinery,
outside the IS-held city of Mosul, from Iraqi forces, which would allow
the group expand refining operations into Iraq. The Kurdish-majority
city of Kirkuk looms as another lucrative oil-rich target for the Islamic State.
But they have been pushed back on several fronts by U.S. air strikes,
which began earlier this month, and recently U.S. military officials
have begun to suggest that wider intervention in Iraq and perhaps even
Syria could be on the horizon. Many suspect the caliphate could still be
wiped out in its infancy.
There are further questions about just how long Iraq’s Sunnis will
continue to tolerate the extremist takeover of their lands, support that
has been critical to the group’s astonishing surge this summer. The
Islamic State has piggybacked on popular resentment of the Shia-led
Baghdad government, which among other things stands accused of failing to share Iraq’s considerable oil revenues with Sunnis and Kurds, and have thusly framed their black market operation as a means of returning oil wealth to the people.
But as Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy put it in an interview with Foreign Policy, in declaring their
caliphate the Islamic State has “gone from being the world's richest
terrorist organization to the world's poorest state,” propped up mainly
by extortion and oil smuggling.
That revenue stream has become ever vulnerable as the Obama
administration takes aim at the extremists. “Now that Western forces are
operating more surveillance on Islamic State terrorists, I’m sure they
can better identify where trucks are being filled, what routes they’re
taking, what borders they’re crossing,” said Mallinson.
It is just as important to ensure that adequate supplies reach Iraqi
Kurdistan, which is suffering from considerable fuel shortages due to an
influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees, as well as other places
where the Islamic State’s oil is smuggled. “If you have shortages, it
creates an environment where black market oil proliferates," Mallinson
said. "If the price is low enough, someone will always buy it.”
A more robust embargo on the oil trade in Iraq and better enforcement
along Iraq’s borders are essential to stifling the illicit flow of oil
and suffocating the insurgency, al-Khatteeb added. “It is stoppable, but
it needs very serious measures. Regional nations really need to put
their political differences aside and unite in this war on terror.”
Shadi
Hamid of the Brookings Institution and Steven Simon of the Middle East
Institute join Judy Woodruff to discuss the threat the Islamic State
poses and how they’re recruiting members, including westerners.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And now we learn more about the threat the Islamic State poses and how they’re recruiting Westerners.
That
comes from Steven Simon, who served as a senior director for Middle
Eastern and North African affairs on the National Security Council staff
from 2011 to 2012. And Shadi Hamid, he’s a fellow at the Brookings
Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy. He’s also the author of
“Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle
East.”And we welcome you both to the NewsHour.
Steven
Simon, I will just start with you. How — we have been reading so much
about ISIS, ISIL, Islamic State, recently. How are they different from
these other extreme groups, and particularly al-Qaida? STEVEN SIMON,
Middle East Institute: Well, they’re different in terms of their
tactics, and I think in terms of their overall strategy. Their tactics,
as we have seen, are savage.
They deploy savagery as a tactic.
This is a tactic that has been repudiated by core al-Qaida. You know,
the al-Qaida leadership in South Asia, Ayman al-Zawahri, the current
leader of al-Qaida and the replacement for bin Laden, he has
specifically enjoined al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, from doing the
kinds of things that he is doing, because, from an al-Qaida point of
view, it alienates most Muslims. And that’s a serious defect in the
strategy. JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Shadi Hamid, is that the main
difference, that this is just a more extreme — a group that is just far
more willing to take extreme actions? SHADI HAMID, Brookings Institution: That’s a key difference, but it goes well beyond that.
They’re
not your terrorists of early to mid 2000s that were blowing things up
and just killing innocent civilians without any kind of vision of how to
build something. What’s really scary about ISIS is that they actually
have a governing program. They actually control and hold territory. They
provide social services. They run local government. They provide some
modicum of law and order.
So they are actually able to obtain some
local support in Iraq and Syria precisely for those reasons. So it’s
the viciousness along with governing. JUDY WOODRUFF: And,
Steven Simon, is that one of the reasons they have been able to attract
the supporters, the members, the young men who have come not only from
the Middle East, from that part of the world, but we also know
Westerners from Europe, even from the United States? STEVEN SIMON: Well,
this side of the successful Muslim movement challenging the West in
particular, challenging those who want — who are perceived to want to
kill Muslims is a galvanizing thing, I think, for Muslim young men in
many places, including Europe.
In Iraq, in particular, though,
ISIS is benefiting from the mismanagement of Iraqi affairs by the Iraqi
government, the exclusion of Sunnis from public goods, the disregard for
Sunni interests, in the wake of the massive dislocation that followed
the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.
There’s a lot of
unhappiness among the Sunni majority population, especially those Sunnis
who are concentrated in the areas where ISIS has gotten a foothold. So
ISIS is able — has been able to join forces with the Baathists, former
Saddam people, and other disaffected individuals to gain a pretty
serious grip. JUDY WOODRUFF: What about in Syria, Shadi
Hamid? I mean, they were clearly able to swell their forces, draw more
adherents in Syria, and, again, from the West, from Europe, from the
United States. What’s the appeal? And we just — we saw in the video, the
terrible video with James Foley, the man who was there with him had a
British accent. SHADI HAMID: This actually worries me that
we’re focusing so much on Iraq, and senior administration officials
focus on that part of it. They barely even mention Syria. Obama clearly
doesn’t even want to talk about that.
But the rise of ISIS is more
directly tied to Syria than it is to Iraq. And Syria experts were
warning this administration a year-and-a-half ago, saying that if there
is more — this power vacuum continues and we can’t support the more
mainstream rebel forces, extremist groups like ISIS are going to gain
ground.
So I think that we have been kind of asleep at the wheel.
Americans are waking up to the threat right now, but ISIS has been
beheading Arabs and Muslims for over the past year.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So why is that an appeal? What’s the appeal to young people to join? SHADI HAMID: Well,
I think part of the problem with the kind of Arab spring is that
peaceful protest didn’t work, working within the democratic process
didn’t work, so we had peaceful protesters in Syria, but they were being
shot down and slaughtered by the Assad regime.
We had mainstream
Islamic movements like the Muslim Brotherhood, which were trying to work
within the democratic process. Yes, they had — we, as Americans, don’t
share their values. They were deeply conservative and illiberal, but at
least they were saying that there has to be a process.
ISIS is
saying that you can have an Islamic state through brute force, that you
don’t have to wait, you don’t have to be gradualist about it. And
there’s a kind of appeal, the kind of — I think for radicals and for
radicalized Europeans, they see a kind of purity to their vision. JUDY WOODRUFF: And let’s pick up on that, Steven Simon.
What is it — for young men living — who are Muslim living in Europe, living in the United States, I mean, what is the draw? STEVEN SIMON: Well,
I think they see themselves engaged in a noble and virtuous endeavor.
They’re doing something that they feel is a fight for a really good
cause.
And it’s interesting, because they don’t see themselves as
going to join a terrorist movement. They see themselves going to join
liberators. And, for this reason, for example, they tweet and Facebook
their way to the battlefield, to the delight, I have to say, of law
enforcement and intelligence officials in Western Europe and the United
States. JUDY WOODRUFF: So I guess the — you know, stepping
back, the question on everyone’s mind, Shadi Hamid, is, what is the
threat here, both to the region, the wider region beyond Syria and Iraq,
and then ultimately to Europe and then to the United States? SHADI HAMID: Yes.
So
we shouldn’t underestimate ISIS. And I worry that with all this
rhetoric about ISIS being inexplicably evil, to use John Kerry’s words,
that we will just look at them as these kind of fringe extremists, but
we have to understand the root causes of their rise and also their
staying power.
If we don’t have any plan to understand the Syrian
roots of the conflict, ISIS is probably going to be with us for the
foreseeable future, three years, five years, 10 years, God knows how
long. So that’s what’s so scary about this is that they are a reality on
the ground. In some ways, they’re the most successful extremist group
in modern history.
So there isn’t an easy solution, unless there is a coherent vision that addresses both Iraq and Syria. JUDY WOODRUFF: And,
I mean, what would you add to that, Steven Simon? What do you see the
threat? We heard I think Secretary Hagel say this is a threat beyond
anything we have ever seen. STEVEN SIMON: Well, you know,
look, there aren’t that many ISIS fighters. The numbers vary really
widely depending upon who’s counted as being an ISIS and who isn’t. The
initial ISIS attack in Iraq consisted of about 3,000 fighters.
OK,
this is essentially a minuscule force. The Iraqi army consists of
900,000 individuals, 900,000 soldiers. The Pentagon says about a third
of those are workable, you know, that the United States could help about
a third of that army fight ISIS. That’s a huge advantage.
The
Peshmerga, the Kurdish forces, they haven’t fired a shot in anger in a
long time. They folded initially, but they have come back. Where is ISIS
actually going to go is really the question? They can’t invade Iran.
They’re not going to invade Saudi Arabia. They can’t invade Jordan.
They’re not going to invade Turkey, and they can’t invade Israel. JUDY WOODRUFF: So you see them as more contained than what… STEVEN SIMON: I
see them as fundamentally contained. I think their tactics will earn
them a lot of enemies, and the tacit alliances that they formed in Iraq
won’t last. SHADI HAMID: But even if they don’t gain
additional territory, what they control now is a very large swathe of
territory in both Iraq and Syria. So there is an extremist so-called
Islamic State in the middle of the Middle East.
And that
destabilizes obviously Iraq and Syria, but also you see spillover
effects in Jordan, in Lebanon. So, even if we contain it, it’s still a
huge problem. JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, they have certainly gotten a lot of people’s attention.
Shadi Hamid, Steven Simon, we thank you both. SHADI HAMID: It’s good to be here.
Why
has the famed Peshmerga army in Iraq, considered one of the best in the
region, fallen back at several points along its internal frontier
against the Islamic State? To investigate, chief foreign affairs
correspondent Margaret Warner spent the day with Kurdish military
leaders as they traveled to the town of Jalawla. She joins Judy Woodruff
for an update.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Now, to the frontline of the fight to save Iraq.One
element of the U.S. effort to turn the situation around relies on
arming Kurdish security forces in their fight with militants from the
Islamic State group.
Our chief foreign affairs correspondent,
Margaret Warner, just spent the day with Kurdish military leaders as
they traveled to Jalawla, which is not that far from Baghdad.
Here’s her report. MARGARET WARNER: Racing
south on the highway between Iraq’s Kurdish capital, Irbil, and
Baghdad, miles of open desert unfold, dotted by villages and towns. But
just a quarter of the way down, Iraq’s most vital commercial lifeline
becomes the frontline.
The Islamic State group, also known as ISIS
or ISIL, has advanced to within 650 yards of the road. Kurdish forces
Colonel Wria Hasan took us to one of many well-manned Kurdish Peshmerga
outposts guarding the new frontier to show us just how close the
militants’ forbidding flag flew.
What keeps the ISIS forces from just moving across this road? COL. WRIA HASAN,
Peshmerga (through interpreter): If they came closer, we could stop
them, and we could move their way, but there are a lot Arabs living
there. MARGARET WARNER: So you’re saying it will be a very bloody battle if you tried to advance that way? COL. WRIA HASAN (through interpreter): Yes it would be bloody, and many civilians would die. MARGARET WARNER: Colonel
Hasan was escorting us in his armored SUV to the town of Jalawla, 100
miles northeast of Baghdad, in southern Diyala Province. The province is
now partly controlled by the Kurds since the Iraqi army collapsed
before the Islamic extremists’ onslaught in mid-June.
We’d come to
explore why, over the past month, the famed Peshmerga army, considered
one of the best in the region, had also fallen back at several points
along its internal frontier against the Islamist group.
General
Mahmoud Sengawi commands this southern region, and on our way to the
front, I asked him why he was now fighting to take back the
strategically located town of Jalawla.
How did the Peshmerga forces lose Jalawla on August 11? GEN. MAHMOUD SENGAWI,
Peshmerga (through interpreter): Because there were civilians inside
the town, and because we couldn’t distinguish those who are ISIS with
those who are not. There were snipers among them, and our Peshmerga were
getting killed. This is why I decided to retreat from Jalawla. MARGARET WARNER: We continued talking behind the shelter of a Peshmerga outpost overlooking a two-mile stretch of no-man’s land east of Jalawla.
How different are these fighters from Islamic State than other forces you have ever faced? GEN. MAHMOUD SENGAWI
(through interpreter): ISIS is essentially fighting the way Islamic
fighters did in early centuries, when they spilled a lot of blood to
occupy other countries. We have never fought anyone like that. MARGARET WARNER: So, how are you going to have to adjust your tactics and your strategy? GEN. MAHMOUD SENGAWI
(through interpreter): Yes, of course we need to change strategy. These
fighters came straight from the streets, and we need to learn to fight
them in the streets. MARGARET WARNER: Street fighting
training is key, says military analyst Michael Stephens, who lives
part-time in Irbil. I spoke with him today via Skype from London. MICHAEL STEPHENS, Royal
United Services Institute: But the general rank-and-file Peshmerga are
not able to do this. In fact, they have almost been turned into a
checkpoint army, where they’re basically responsible for static security
protection, and not the kind of dynamic advanced tactics that ISIS are
using the ground. MARGARET WARNER: But that’s not the only change they need, Stephens says. MICHAEL STEPHENS:
The other thing, of course, is that ISIS are almost fighting a new type
of warfare that the Kurds are not used to. A tank is no good against
mobile units of independently working armored Humvees that are very able
to move quickly. And the Peshmerga just simply aren’t trained for that
sort of combat. MARGARET WARNER: The Kurdish forces blame
their problems on the lack of the sort of advanced weapons they need to
combat the modern American-made items captured by Islamic State forces
from Iraqi army bases in Mosul and elsewhere.
General Hussein
Mansour, who runs the weapons supply unit for the south, took us to see
just how old fashioned their weapons are. GEN. HUSSEIN MANSOUR, Peshmerga: It was made in 1955. MARGARET WARNER: No. MARGARET WARNER: Really, 1955? GEN. HUSSEIN MANSOUR: Fifty-five or ’50. MARGARET WARNER: And you keep it running. GEN. HUSSEIN MANSOUR: We have no options, so… MARGARET WARNER: Yes.
The general’s phone rang constantly with requests from commanders in the field, demanding more weapons. GEN. HUSSEIN MANSOUR: Peshmerga, this is what is has, no armor, and here is what ISIS has, armored Humvees. MARGARET WARNER: Inside his operations center, Mansour explained further. GEN. HUSSEIN MANSOUR
(through interpreter): Unfortunately, our weapons are very old, left
over from Saddam’s regime, and we do not have sufficient ammunition. We
are supporting our Peshmerga fighters as much as we can. But we really
need help to acquire modern weapons, because we think this fight is a
long-term war, and it will not end easily. MARGARET WARNER: Can you retake Jalawla without better weapons? GEN. HUSSEIN MANSOUR
(through interpreter): There, we have problems larger than weapons.
Arabs in those towns support ISIS. Jalawla has always been a bastion of
Baathist support. There are 1,200 former high-ranking Baathist officers
there. It’s always been a bastion of terrorists, even when the Americans
were here. MARGARET WARNER: To test that notion, we had
Mohammed Mala Hassan, mayor of Khanaqin, where the Peshmerga are based,
take us in his convoy of heavily armed men to meet one of the many Sunni
Arabs he said have fled to Khanaqin from Jalawla.
Amer Yusef, a
successful contractor, left with his family of 13 in June as the Islamic
State began infiltrating Jalawla. He has a decidedly negative view of
the Islamist group.
He said it’s true some Sunnis are with them, but often the extremists are more brutal with Sunnis. AMER YUSEF,
Contractor: (through interpreter): They are a terrorist organization
that wants to harm us. They have harmed most of the families who have
stayed in the town. MARGARET WARNER: Many people say all Arabs here support the Islamic State. Is that true? AMER YUSEF
(through interpreter): I have a close friend who was a member of the
municipality, my neighbor, and he is a Sunni Arab. They killed him few
days ago. After taking him and his brother to their Sharia court, his
brother said they killed them. MARGARET WARNER: The Islamic State says they’re doing all of this in the name of pure Islam. AMER YUSEF
(through interpreter): No. They everyone’s enemy. Who are they killing
the most? Christians or Muslims? They have killed mostly Muslims, both
Sunnis and Shiites. MARGARET WARNER: To halt the Islamic
State’s onslaught here and throughout Iraq, the Kurdish commanders say
they need more American help, including the weapons they say they have
not received.
Back at our spot overlooking Jalawla, General Sengawi had an ominous warning. GEN. MAHMOUD SENGAWI
(through interpreter): They should help us. I tell you, if they succeed
in occupying our country, they next will take the battle to America. JUDY WOODRUFF: And Margaret joins me now from Irbil.
Hello, Margaret. That was quite a report.
Now,
we are hearing that there is fresh fighting today in the same place
where you were yesterday between Kurdish fighters and these Islamic
extremists. MARGARET WARNER: Well, Judy, certainly Kurdish
and British Web sites are reporting that the Peshmerga forces launched a
new assault against Jalawla today and, in fact, took an eastern
district, which is exactly where we were, I was, in that crow’s nest
outpost at the end with that general.
And a senior Kurdish
military official confirmed that to me tonight. What is more, The
Guardian’s reporting is that this action was supported by U.S.
airstrikes. And, meanwhile, CENTCOM put out a report saying they had
launched U.S. airstrikes, but in the vicinity of Mosul dam. We were not
able to get confirmation from the Pentagon tonight as to whether the two
were related. JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Margaret, one other
thing. What can you tell us about whether the Kurds have been receiving
weapons from the U.S.? We know U.S. officials are saying they have. The
Kurdish commanders were telling you they haven’t. MARGARET WARNER: Well,
Judy, on the way home, the long drive home from this shoot yesterday I
did call a senior Kurdish military — Kurdish political official and
reported what the commanders had said to me when he asked me. And he
said, take that with a grain of salt. Commanders always like to say if
things aren’t going too well that, well, they didn’t have the right
weapons.
He said U.S. and allied weapons are getting through,
though many may be directed at areas of higher priority for the U.S.,
like the Peshmerga forces’ assault to retake the Mosul dam. Separately, a
military analyst here told me that part of the problem is distribution
among the two different political factions of the Kurdish forces, and
that since the weapons are being funneled — and they are being funneled,
but it’s through the political party of the president, President
Barzani of the so-called KDP, and that the other political party who
makes up part of the government called the PUK is getting the short end
of the stick.
And the forces we were with yesterday were with the
PUK. So, basically, Judy, this country is not only divided among Sunni
Arabs, Shiite Arabs and Kurds, but, in fact, even within each ethnic or
sectarian group, which gives you an idea of how complicated it is, I
think, to put this country back together. JUDY WOODRUFF: A lot of complexity to pull apart.
Margaret Warner reporting from Irbil, we thank you, and stay safe. MARGARET WARNER: Thank you, Judy.
The
humanitarian crisis in Iraq is taking its toll on displaced Christians
and those in the minority Yazidi community. As brutal attacks from the
Sunni militant group known as the Islamic State continue, hundreds of
thousands have fled to the country’s Kurdish region. Margaret Warner
toured one refugee camp near the Syrian border to find Iraqis in a state
of shock and desperation.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Other
victims of the Islamic State in recent weeks include Christians and
members of the Yazidi minority. Most who were lucky enough to escape
have flooded the Kurdish -controlled region in Northern Iraq with
nothing but the clothes on their backs.
Tonight,
chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner takes a close look
at these newly internally displaced persons, or IDPs, and efforts to
contain their suffering.MARGARET WARNER: A Boeing 747
touched down in the afternoon heat of Irbil today, carrying 100 tons of
United Nations Refugee Agency aid, the first wave of fresh supplies
since the U.N. last week announced a heightened level of emergency for
Northeastern Iraq. NED COLT, Spokesman, UN High
Commissioner for Refugees: It can’t be done overnight. No one would
suggest otherwise. But now the system is up and running in a major way.
So, we’re not just getting materials in that we already have in stock,
but we are bringing them in from around the world. MARGARET WARNER: The
tents in this shipment will shelter at least 20,000 people, but that’s
just a fraction of the estimated 1.25 million Iraqis who have fled into
the country’s Kurdish region since the self-proclaimed Islamic State
began its onslaught here eight months ago.
Yesterday, a brutal
wind whipped through the U.N.’s Bajet Kandela camp near Iraqi
Kurdistan’s border with Syria. This camp was empty two weeks ago, but
that was before I.S. attacked members of the minority Yazidi religious
community in the town of Sinjar, forcing them to race for refuge on
Sinjar Mountain. U.S. airstrikes and Kurdish forces helped thousands
escape to sanctuary here.
We accompanied Dr. Syed Jaffar Hussain,
Iraq country director for the U.N.’s World Health Organization, as he
made his rounds through the camp. DR. SYED JAFFER HUSSEIN,
Iraq Country Director, World Health Organization: I think this is one of
the extremely complex IDP crises at least I have witnessed, not only in
the region, but beyond, not only the numbers, but also with the fast
pace it happened, taking U.N. and the government unaware and unprepared
for such a huge number of IDPs. MARGARET WARNER: How does the psychological condition in which these Yazidis have arrived compare to other refugees and other displaced people? DR. SYED JAFFER HUSSEIN:
The interviews we have conducted with many of them seem to be extremely
— what we call the post-traumatic stress disorder. You can see the
gloom in their eyes, like a person who doesn’t know what will happen to
him. MARGARET WARNER: He stopped to see a family that had been in the camp more than two weeks. DR. SYED JAFFER HUSSEIN: Can you ask him, the last few days, any of these children have gone to the clinic? MAN (through
interpreter): No, we haven’t, but they got here and did vaccinations.
But we lack food. We only get some soup and some bad-quality rice. MARGARET WARNER: We
were invited by 19-year-old Fuad Hassan to the tent he shares with his
parents and eight siblings. They fled Sinjar when they heard Islamic
State forces were nearby, but one night on the mountain was enough. FUAD HASSAN, (through interpreter): It was very bad on the mountain. We saw people being eaten by insects. MARGARET WARNER: They
were fortunate to find an escape route into Syria opened up by Syrian
Kurdish fighters and made their way on foot to this camp.
So, Fuad, what comes next for you? FUAD HASSAN
(through interpreter): My grades were high. I would have entered
medical college, but now everything is ruined. We want to go back to the
homeland of our forefathers, but if we can find a country that welcomes
us, we may leave here. MARGARET WARNER: His 37-year-old mother, Zaineb Yusuf Asim, was overcome by feelings of betrayal. ZAINEB YUSUF ASIM
(through interpreter): We don’t cry only for ourselves, but for all
Yazidis. They tortured us, attacked our honor, our religion. We have
lived together with our Muslim Arab neighbors during the Iran-Iraq War,
during the first Gulf War. We protected each other. Now they became our
enemies. MARGARET WARNER: This camp for 15,000 people
originally built for Syrian refugees was the first place Yazidis found
shelter when they escaped from Sinjar Mountain. As hot, dusty, windblown
and under-supplied as this camp is, it’s far better than what others
fleeing the mountain found when they arrived.
Forty miles east, in
Dohuk, capital of Iraq’s northwestern-most province, we found what’s
far more typical here, thousands of Yazidis living in half-constructed
buildings. Khuduid Hussein, a construction worker, says the 150 people
in his group are subsisting on private donations from local citizens.
They have received no government help so far. KHUDUID HUSSEIN (through interpreter): People in Dohuk are very welcoming. They have helped us. They give us bread, water and food. MARGARET WARNER: You have all these beautiful children around you. What future do you see for these children? KHUDUID HUSSEIN
(through interpreter): If this situation remains like this, I don’t see
that they will have any future. Soon, it will be winter here and many
of them will die of cold. MARGARET WARNER: His relative, 20-year-old Afra Hassan, is seven months pregnant. AFRA HASSAN
(through interpreter): I tried to go to the hospital here, but they
wouldn’t give me any medicine because I didn’t have any money. It’s such
a miserable situation. I wish I had died in my home. HAVAL AMEDI,
Deputy Director, Emergency Response Program, Dohuk, Iraq: Dohuk is the
smallest governorate, with the smallest resources, with the highest
intensity of IDP and refugees. MARGARET WARNER: Yes.
Haval
Amedi is deputy director of a committee set up by the provincial
government just last week to try to coordinate the local response. He
admits they are overwhelmed. HAVAL AMEDI: Now the problem
becoming more and more, it’s beyond the capacity of a small governorate
to host all those people together to the here, because of the limitation
of the resources. MARGARET WARNER: He explained the waves
of Syrians and Iraqis fleeing Islamic State extremists have doubled the
population of his tiny province. But he said most Kurds had generous
feelings toward the new arrivals. HAVAL AMEDI: One day,
each of us was a refugee or an IDP somewhere. And, mainly, they believe
on helping the people. There are people who are hosting them, receiving
them at the border, at the schools, at the public buildings and
everything. MARGARET WARNER: Yet no amount of aid or kindness is likely to heal the deep psychic wounds cut here.
Back at the camp, the man of the Hassan house, Walid Hassan, stopped us before we left. He had something to say. WALID HASSAN
(through interpreter): What was our fault? What wrong have we done? We
are peaceful human beings. What is the fault of those kids who died?
They have killed so many kids. They shot them in their heads. I want to
deliver this letter to anyone who cares about humanity: Help us.
Humanity in Iraq is just gone. Iraq has become the country of monsters. JUDY WOODRUFF: I spoke to Margaret earlier this afternoon.
Margaret, thanks for joining us.
First of all, what’s the reaction of where you are in Irbil to the beheading of the American journalist James Foley? MARGARET WARNER: Well,
Judy, it is a big story here. It is leading a lot of media Web sites.
President Obama’s remarks just now recently led the Web site, and it’s
being interpreted or described as the president vowing to crush the
Islamic State forces.
I, frankly, was surprised. I thought the
attitude here would be, we have had thousands of our own people kill,
one American killed, what’s the big deal? But not at all. JUDY WOODRUFF: Now,
we just saw the report you did on the situation that the Iraqi
minorities are facing. You have reported on many other refugee displaced
populations. What’s different about the Yazidis and the Christians you
have been speaking to there? MARGARET WARNER: I think it’s
the shock, the surprise at being suddenly uprooted from their lives,
given 24 hours or less to clear out or be killed.
All refugees are
traumatized, of course, Afghanistan, Pakistan, refugees I have talked
to from Syria who’ve fled to Turkey and Lebanon. But the difference is
that most of them made a collective decision or a family decision that
the fighting had become too intense, they were being shelled by one side
or the other, and they decided to flee together. And they could take
things with them.
These people here feel to me as if — you know,
completely shell-shocked at being individually targeted, hunted, really,
because of their religion. JUDY WOODRUFF: And, finally,
Margaret, yesterday, we know the Iraqi army launched a new offensive to
try to recapture the city of Tikrit from the Islamic State force, this
just one day after the Mosul dam was retaken. They failed. They
abandoned the fight. What are you hearing there as to why? MARGARET WARNER: Judy,
the analysis here that there were two missing ingredients in the
assault on Tikrit. One, of course, is coordination with American
airstrikes. The retaking of the Mosul dam was a collective effort of
Kurdish fighters, Iraqi army fighters and American airstrikes, very
clearly targeted, strategically targeted out of a joint operations
center up here in Irbil.
The second thing that was missing, Judy,
was a cohesive Iraqi force. This time, the Iraqis were fighting entirely
on their own. And according to a senior Kurdish military official here,
it was a hodgepodge of regular Iraqi army and Shiite militia. He said
they had great weapons, but they’re very poorly led by commanders who
are appointed on sectarian grounds.
He said — and they were not
really committed to the fight. And he said that — essentially, he
described the same kind of Iraqi army that fled from Northern Iraq in
June, when the Islamic State attacked Mosul and all these other outposts
up here near the Kurdish region. And that’s a bad sign. If that’s true,
that’s a bad sign for the test that President Obama has set for greater
U.S. military involvement. That is that you have a cohesive and united —
politically united and militarily united Iraq. JUDY WOODRUFF: Margaret Warner reporting from Irbil, thank you. MARGARET WARNER: Thanks, Judy.
voice of the day "If nothing else, prayer was the glue that enabled my freedom, an
inner freedom first and later the miracle of being released during a war
in which the regime had no real incentive to free us. It didn’t make
sense, but faith did." -
James Foley, journalist who was executed by Islamic State jihadists
this week, on his captivity in Libya in 2011, as written in Marquette Magazine THE beheading of James Foley is a heinous crime that proves isis is run by apostates, not Muslims, and the God they claim to believe in and His Prophet do not advocate or condone such actions against an individual or whole cultures. Those drawn to isis are also apostates, they are sick, perverse, twisted people, a disgrace to all humanity. I know God will deal with these people in His way if they continue murdering, persecuting, and abusing innocents. My prayers are for the Foley family, that God gives them the strength to get through the brutal murder of their son, and for the hundreds of thousands of other victims isis, the families of those brutally slaughtered because of their faith or ethnic identity and those families who have had to flee for their lives. And while I am not a proponent of war, I also pray for the many military forces fighting to defeat isis, to destroy their so called caliphate, to end their barbarism. From +PBS NewsHour , +AlterNet / and +The Guardian .....SPECIAL NOTE, be sure to watch the video by James Foley's parents, they are exceptional people.....
EDGARTOWN, Mass. — President Barack Obama says the United States will continue to confront Islamic State extremists despite the brutal murder of journalist James Foley.
Obama
says the entire world is “appalled” by Foley’s killing. The president
says he spoke Wednesday with Foley’s family and offered condolences.
Obama
says the Islamic State abducts women and children, and tortures, rapes,
enslaves and kills people. He said the Islamic State targets Christians
and other minorities and aims to commit genocide.
Obama spoke
Wednesday from Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, where he’s
vacationing with his family, a day after the militants released a video
showing the American journalist being beheaded.
The slain
journalist’s parents, Diane and John Foley, spoke to reporters outside
their home in Rochester, New Hampshire, in an appearance where wrenching
grief over their son’s death mingled with laughter over his life.
Diane Foley said her son was courageous to the end and called his death “just evil.”
“We
are just very proud of Jimmy and we are praying for the strength to
love like he did and keep courageous and keep fighting for all the
people he was fighting for,” Diane Foley said Wednesday. “We pray for
all the remaining Americans.”
Think hard before clicking on images of atrocities.
James Foley reporting from Syria.
Photo Credit: via youtube
August 20, 2014 |
With depressing frequency in this summer of diverse horrors, we hear
tales of desperate human misery, suffering and depravity – and because
we live now in an era where virtually every phone is a globally
connected camera, we are confronted with graphic evidence of tragedy.
The
footage of the apparent beheading (to refer to the atrocity as an
execution serves only to lend a veneer of dignity to barbarism) of the US photojournalist James Foley at the hands of a British Isis extremist has raised particularly strong feelings. Social networks are banning users who share the footage. Newspapers are facing opprobrium for
the choices they make in showing stills or parts of the video. Others,
of course, will seek out the video after seeing the row, or else post it
around the internet in a juvenile form of the free speech argument.
Before
considering the rights and wrongs of the position, there is one fact we
should face: we are presented with images of grotesque violence on a
daily basis. Last month the New York Times ran on its front page the
dead and broken body of a Palestinian child.
Like Foley, that
child was someone’s son, someone’s brother, someone’s friend, and in a
connected world there is just as much chance his family saw the photo
and its spread as Foley’s will see the latest awful images of their
loved one.
That photo raised little controversy in comparison to
the use of images of Foley. Photos of groups of civilian men massacred
by Isis across Iraq and Syria – widely shared on social media and used
by publications across the world – caused no outcry whatsoever.
It’s
hard to look at that and not see a double standard: like many other
courageous and talented people, Foley had chosen to travel to the
region, and knew the risks that entailed. Others were killed simply
fleeing their homes. In a strange and bitter irony, one of the duties of
photographers such as Foley is documenting bloodshed in order to show
the world.
To see an outcry for Foley’s video and not for others
is to wonder whether we are disproportionately concerned over showing
graphic deaths of white westerners – maybe even white journalists – and
not others.
That’s not to say there aren’t good reasons for
outlets to think hard when selecting what, if anything, from the footage
they should show. Foley’s apparent beheading was released not at the
editorial decision of a photojournalist, but as a propaganda tool by
thugs. Outlets should consider whether they are furthering or
challenging such aims when they use such images.
There is also
simple human decency, and the difficult trade-off of not insulating
comfortable western audiences from the world’s horrors, while not
needlessly causing a dead person’s loved ones additional suffering by
showing gratuitously violent imagery.
The Guardian’s stance on Foley is a demonstration of the fine balance of those decisions: at present, one image of Foley from
the video is used, but not as a lead picture. None of his forced speech
is portrayed, and the short audio elements from the video – some of his
murderer’s speech – have been used against a still image.
But
more relevant by far is the choice each of us makes about whether to
view the many horrifying real-life murder videos that circulate the
internet. Before clicking, serious self-examination is required: why do
you want to see this? Do you need to see it to understand something
important? Still deeper self-examination should certainly be engaged
before even contemplating sharing such material.
It’s
that self-examination, or self-censorship, that best serves ourselves.
As individuals, we’re making very different decisions to publishers and
news outlets, but we should trust our own judgment rather than rush to
ask social media companies to become the arbiters of our free expression
on a knee-jerk basis.
There is a coda to this tale, another
aspect of James Foley’s life that is also being shared far and wide
across the world. It is the short statement by his mother, released on his Facebook page.
“We
have never been prouder of our son Jim. He gave his life trying to
expose the world to the suffering of the Syrian people,” her statement
began.
It has already been shared more than 2,500 times. This is
how we win: not by suppressing the worst of us, but by sharing and
saluting the best – people such as Foley and his family.
James
Foley’s journalistic career spanned multiple countries and conflicts;
his reporting from Afghanistan and Libya appeared on the NewsHour, as
well as other news outlets. Gwen Ifill remembers Foley and discusses the
dangers reporters face with Charles Sennott, co-founder of GlobalPost,
and Robert Mahoney of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
GWEN IFILL: Joining
me now to talk about James Foley and the threat that reporters like him
face covering conflicts today is GlobalPost co-founder and journalist
Charles Sennott and Robert Mahoney, deputy director of the committee to
protect journalists.
Charles
Sennott, first of all, our condolences to you and your colleagues on
the loss of James Foley. What’s can you tell us about him and how he
came to be held?CHARLES SENNOTT, Co-Founder, GlobalPost: Thanks, Gwen.
You
know, the best way to start to describe who is James Foley is probably
to start with the way his parents talked about him today. Anyone who saw
how much faith they have, how strong they are, they know where James
came from. And that’s really important to understanding him.
Jim
had strong faith in himself, but his parents had tremendous faith in
what he did as a journalist. They understood that Jim wanted to do work
that mattered. He wanted to do work that made a difference. They
understood his motivations. And they were unwaveringly supportive of it.
And that really is who Jim Foley was. He was a courageous reporter who took great risks to bring the story home. GWEN IFILL: Do we know physically where he was when this happened yesterday or whenever it happened? CHARLES SENNOTT: We don’t.
If
you have seen this video — and I hope your viewers have not seen it.
It’s the most dark and horrific thing I have ever watched. It’s about
four minutes’ long. It’s very clear he’s under great duress. It’s clear
that the statements he’s making are forced statements.
And it’s in
a sort of barren landscape that really could be Syria or it could be
Iraq. It’s very, very difficult to distinguish that. And we don’t know
precisely where that happened. GWEN IFILL: Have the people
who have been holding him — have been in touch asking for ransom?
Apparently, there is a report that there was a threat made that they
would kill him a week ago. CHARLES SENNOTT: That’s correct.
And
our CEO, Phil Balboni, at GlobalPost has really tirelessly followed
this every day for two years, and has amassed really quite an extensive
body of facts and information through a lot of information we have
gathered from law enforcement officials, from private investigators, our
own private investigators, and, importantly, from colleagues on the
ground.
You know, we have a lot of colleagues who really cared
about Jim. And every bit of information they could glean would come to
us and would be filtered. And it’s hard to sort of share in great detail
without putting some of the other hostages who may still be being held
and whose lives, as we know, are hanging in the balance — we can’t
really share a lot of that information.
But it is safe to say
that, at first, there was information he was being held by the Syrian
government. That information changed shape over time. It appeared pretty
quickly that he was being held by Islamic militants. That’s when fear
really set in. He was held in different locations, first in Aleppo, and
later in a different location.
The Guardian has reported that
location. We think it’s probably better not to report it right now, so I
won’t share it. But it is a known ISIS center inside of Syria. GWEN IFILL: Rob Mahoney, how does Syria rank as a danger zone for journalists? ROBERT MAHONEY,
Deputy Director, Committee to Protect Journalists: It’s the most
dangerous place in the world to be a journalist, has been for the last
year or so.
We have noted some 70 journalists have been killed in Syria since the conflict started in 2011. GWEN IFILL: Many of them Syrians, right? ROBERT MAHONEY: And the one thing — yes. Most of them, actually, are local journalists.
And,
also, to Jim’s story, Syria is the single worst place we have seen in
our entire history as an organization for more than 30 years where
hostage-taking has taken place in a conflict zone. There have been more
than 80 journalists held hostage at various points throughout the last
three years. GWEN IFILL: As Charlie just suggested, it’s
difficult to negotiate or to figure out a way to rescue these hostages.
What are the special problems, the special delicacies for someone like
you or for the U.S. government, for that matter, in trying to free
people like James Foley? ROBERT MAHONEY: Well, in many
cases, the families or the news organizations that some of the
journalists work for don’t want to jeopardize their safety and don’t
want us to publicly talk about where they might be or even who they are.
Steven
Sotloff, for example, who appeared in the video this week, we knew
about him, but we didn’t publicly disclose that, because we just don’t
know sometimes who we’re dealing with. There are very many groups.
They’re splintered. Some were holding journalists for hostages — sorry —
holding hostages for criminal ransom, and others were holding them for
political purposes.
So, in — with all that uncertainty, it was very difficult to get precise information about the captors. GWEN IFILL: Bob, is it more complicated when they’re freelance journalists not working for major news organizations? ROBERT MAHONEY: Absolutely.
And
we at the committee, you know, are very, very concerned for the
freelancers. They don’t have the big institutional support of
journalists that are going in for big news organizations. And the
majority of the journalists now around there are people like Jim who are
working for — as freelancers. GWEN IFILL: Charles Sennott,
James Foley’s father said today they had reached the point where they
were considering raising money for ransom or for some sort of payment.
At what stage was that at? Were you involved in that? CHARLES SENNOTT: I wasn’t involved in that.
And
one of the things that happens — and, sadly, we have been down this
road before, both with Jim and with some other correspondents. And one
of the things that you abide by the most is that it is really the family
that will dictate what is made public. This is really their decision.
We feel that’s extremely important. And we have always deferred to the
Foley family.
Just to speak a little bit to the point of
freelancers, GlobalPost, we deal with freelancers every day. And they’re
deeply at risk. There’s real concern here about how to build a news
organization that has a culture of caution and caring for the
correspondents on the ground?
We at GlobalPost have worked with
the Committee to Protect Journalists. We have worked with a lot of
different organizations to think that through. And I think Jim’s death,
this horrific news, there are a lot of sobering lessons to be learned
from this. And one of them is definitely that we are responsible as news
organizations for the people we send into the field.
We take that
seriously, but it’s also — it’s also really important to remember that
this is a deep reminder that there are journalists who are doing
courageous work out there. We live in a cynical time, when there’s a lot
of criticism of the media from the left and from the right.
But
this is a to also remember that there are journalists like Jim Foley who
are out there representing news organizations who really believe in
what they’re doing and who are doing the best they can outside of the
big network production companies or the big newspapers. They’re doing
the best work they can to bring home the stories that matter. And I
think that’s important to remember today. GWEN IFILL: Bob Mahoney, how hard does it make it to get reporting out of places like Syria at this point? ROBERT MAHONEY: It makes it very hard.
Who,
in light of what has just happened, is going to be rushing into Syria,
especially freelancers, who actually, as I say, don’t necessarily have
the backing and don’t earn the money that would even make it worthwhile
going in?
What we rely on and what the news organizations rely on
are local Syrian journalists, some of whom are there, some of whom are
outside. They’re the ones that have borne the brunt in terms of death
and capture in this conflict. And they’re the ones who don’t have
necessarily an international voice. GWEN IFILL: Robert Mahoney of the Committee to Protect Journalists and Charles Sennott of GlobalPost, thank you both very much. CHARLES SENNOTT: Thank you. ROBERT MAHONEY: Thank you. GWEN IFILL: Many
news outlets avoided showing the image of James Foley’ execution,
including us. So, how has social media adapted to change — to deal with
violent terrorist imagery? Hari Sreenivasan spoke with the chair of the
journalism department at Quinnipiac University. You can watch their
conversation online.
