In July two senior Centcom analysts filed a formal complaint saying officials at the Pentagon were manufacturing rosy assessments on the military campaign against the Islamic State. In September an additional 50 defense analysts signed on to the complaint.
The claim prompted the inspector general at the Pentagon to begin an investigation, an unusual move.
Centcom refused to provide details or comment on the investigation. Centcom spokesman Col. Patrick Ryder said “the I.G. has a responsibility to investigate all allegations made, and we welcome and support their independent oversight.”
According to a report posted by The Daily Beast the “accusations suggest that a large number of people tracking the inner workings of the terror groups think that their reports are being manipulated to fit a public narrative. The allegations echoed charges that political appointees and senior officials cherry-picked intelligence about Iraq’s supposed weapons program in 2002 and 2003.”
In November it was reported a task force would be formed on the allegations and on Friday it was announced no less than three House committees will jointly investigate the allegations.
“Today, the House Armed Services Committee, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Appropriations Committee established a Joint Task Force to investigate allegations that senior U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) officials manipulated intelligence products,” Reps. David Nunes (R-Calif.), Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) and Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) said in a joint statement.
War On Syria Not the Islamic State
The Pentagon’s investigation and those conducted by Republicans in the House are unlikely to reveal the real reason the war against the Islamic State is a failure.
From the start the air campaign against IS has targeted the economic infrastructure of Syria and Iraq.
“So far the US raids that came after the direct Russian involvement in Syria have only targeted civilian, infrastructure plants, electricity plants and other infrastructure, and they have not targeted any terrorist groups,” Jamal Wakim, a professor at the Lebanese International University, said in November.
“What I can see happening is that the targets they’re selecting are those that have, in many cases, no military value at all to ISIS or any other rebel group but really are intended to break whatever infrastructure the Syrian government will have when the fighting is over, such as: the Conoco oil refinery and the grain elevator,” Alan Sabrosky, a professor at the University of Michigan and a graduate of the US Army War College, said in October.
In mid-October the US targeted the Syrian electrical grid when it conducted airstrikes against two power plants under the control of ISIS in the al-Rudwaniya area to the east of Aleppo.
After two thermal power plants in Aleppo were bombed the Syrian government sent letters to the UN Security Council saying the “airstrikes of the so-called anti-terror US-led coalition against infrastructure in different Syrian areas was a vicious aggression.”
In addition to civilian power plants the US-led coalition has targeted oil and gas fields and facilities in Hassaka and Deir EzZour provinces “causing huge damage to pipelines and oil wells not to mention the great environmental pollution which may lead to greater environmental disasters because of the fires broken out in the fields,” The Syrian Times reports.
The destruction of critical civilian and economic infrastructure in Syria is standard operating procedure.
In Libya, NATO bombed the country’s irrigation system. The system transported water from aquifers beneath Libya’s southern desert to about 70% of the population.
The military targeting of civilian infrastructure, especially of water supplies, is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.
During the invasion of Iraq in 1991, the US military targeted the civilian electrical power generation system. The damaged power infrastructure was re-targeted during the 2003 invasion.
In addition to the electrical system in Iraq, the U.S targeted telephone and radio exchanges, relay stations, towers and transmission facilities, food processing, storage and distribution facilities and markets, railroad transportation facilities, bus depots, bridges, highway overpasses, highways, sewage treatment and disposal systems and even historical markers and ancient sites.
In 2001 Thomas J. Nagy “discovered documents of the Defense Intelligence Agency proving beyond a doubt that, contrary to the Geneva Convention, the U.S. government intentionally used sanctions against Iraq to degrade the country’s water supply after the Gulf War. The United States knew the cost that civilian Iraqis, mostly children, would pay, and it went ahead anyway.”
NATO and the US replicated this pattern during the bombardment of the former Yugoslavia. During the campaign, NATO bombed hospitals, schools, daycare centers, food warehouses, civilian homes, and world cultural heritage sites, including churches and monasteries.
Creative Destruction
The Bush neocons hijacked the term “creative destruction” and applied it to the effort to violently deconstruct nations and rebuild them in way advantageous to the globalist order. In Syria this process can only be accomplished if Bashar al-Assad is deposed like Gaddafi was in Libya.
Declassified Defense Intelligence Agency documents reveal the game plan: the destruction of al-Assad’s government and the establishment of a Salafist principality controlled in proxy fashion by Saudi Arabia.
The Islamic State, formerly ISIS and prior to that al-Qaeda in Iraq—established by an admitted Pentagon PSYOP—is the preferred tool of creative destruction. The Centcom investigation will undoubtedly ignore this fact and will be used instead to amplify and expand the war on the Islamic State which is in fact a war on al-Assad.
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