Jason Ditz / Anti-War.com – 2015-05-29 23:58:25
White House Demands Congress Vote to Approve ISIS War
Jason Ditz / Anti-War.com
(May 29, 2015) — White House officials today angrily condemned Congress for ongoing talk about the authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) against ISIS, saying they should simply sign off on what President Obama wants.
“Their job requires basically only fulfilling the bare minimum,” insisted press secretary Josh Earnest, adding that passing the AUMF exactly as Obama worded it would show unity among US officials on the war.
When the White House introduced their AUMF, it was widely expected Congress would pass whatever was put in front of it. Administration bragging about the language being deliberately vague to allow them to do whatever they want fueled some opposition, however, and the bill basically died in committee.
Since the administration has been carrying out the war illegally for nearly a year at any rate, there is a growing sense among Congress that the White House is going to do whatever it wants with or without the vote, with Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) insisting the vote was little more than an intellectual exercise.
Video Shows Turkish Government Arming ISIS
Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com
(May 29, 2015) — Turkish daily newspaper Cumhuriyet has released a series of still images and video showing Turkish state intelligence agents participating in smuggling of arms across the border to Syrian Islamist rebels.
The video shows security officials unloading a box of antibiotics, revealing large amounts of mortar shells underneath. This is reportedly the same January 2014 incident reported recently as part of testimony in legal proceedings.
Exactly where the arms went once they crossed the border is unclear, but they were believed to have been distributed broadly among Islamist factions, particularly ISIS which controls a large portion of the Turkish border.
Turkey has repeatedly denied the charges, and followed up today’s publication by announcing the newspaper that broke the story is facing charges of “terrorism” for making the report. Prosecutors who were pushing a case related to the weapons smuggling have similarly been detained, and Turkey seems determined to cover this up at all costs.
Testimony Confirms Turkish Spy Agency Helped Arm ISIS
Jason Ditz / Anti-War.com
(May 21, 2015) — Witness testimony obtained by Reuters has once again shown that the Turkish government was dishonest about their involvement in the rise of Islamist rebels in northern Syria.
The testimony of officials revealed that Turkey’s MIT state spy agency repeatedly accompanied cargoes of weaponry across the border into Islamist rebel-controlled territory in January of 2014, and threatened border police who objected.
The weapons shipments were distributed among various rebel factions, and are believed to have played a significant role in ISIS gains in that area of Syria, which they control to this day.
Prosecutors dubbed the arms smuggling process a “total massacre of the law,” though President Erdogan insisted that the spy agency’s trucks were full of humanitarian aid, and other officials insisted anyone who said otherwise was just trying to embarrass the government.
As Losses Grow,
Pentagon Officials Push New Iraq ‘Surge’
Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com
(May 29, 2015) — Since Iraqi troops lost the city of Ramadi to ISIS, the Pentagon has been talking up changes to their training and arming programs as a way to boost Iraqi military effectiveness. That’s the public version. Privately, some officials are talking up a more precipitous escalation.
Pentagon officials are now talking up what is being dubbed a new military “surge” into Iraq, including embedding “spotters’ and “advisers” with Iraqi military forces on the frontline. Some of these troops would be involved in actual combat missions in everything but name.
Army Chief Gen. Ray Odierno, who formerly led the military occupation of Iraq during the last surge, conceded that the embedding program would greatly increase the risk to US ground troops in Iraq, but insisted it would “probably” make Iraqi troops more effective to have US troops looking over their shoulder.
Putting ground troops in Iraq at all was repeatedly ruled out by White House officials in the past, though this was eventually shifted to “no combat troops,” and later “no enduring combat missions.” The process seems to be continuing toward escalation to a full-scale ground war, and each failure in the war seems to be followed by the same response, more escalation.
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