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“Turkey made me do it” – the next stage in backstopping the unraveling ISIS narrative

by BlackCatte

In today’s Independent, Patrick Cockburn, reliable purveyor of backstopping, sets out the latest fallback position for the west’s increasingly discredited “ISIS narrative.” Viz: “it’s all Turkey’s fault.”

The disastrous miscalculation made by the United States in signing a military agreement with Turkey at the expense of the Kurds becomes daily more apparent. In return for the use of Incirlik Air Base just north of the Syrian border, the US betrayed the Syrian Kurds who have so far been its most effective ally against Islamic State (Isis, also known as Daesh). In return for this deal signed on 22 July, the US got greater military cooperation from Turkey, but it swiftly emerged that Ankara’s real target was the Kurds in Turkey, Syria and Iraq. [emphasis ours]

Oops. That’s unfortunate isn’t it. How did this happen, then Patrick? Ah well, says P, that’s easy to answer: the US was just misled by its own trusting nature…

There are signs of a growing understanding in Washington that the US was duped by the Turks, or at best its negotiators deceived themselves when they agreed their bargain with Ankara. Senior US military officers are anonymously protesting in the US media they did not know that Turkey was pretending to be going after Isis when in practice it was planning an offensive against its 18 million-strong Kurdish minority.

In fact, there is growing evidence that the Turkish government has gone even further than that in weakening US allies opposing Isis in Syria, Arab as well as Kurd. For several years the US has been trying to build up a moderate force of Syrian rebels who are able to fight both Isis and the Syrian government in Damascus. The CIA-run initiative has not been going well because the Syrian military opposition these days is almost entirely dominated by Isis, which holds half Syria, the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, and the equally sectarian Sunni Ahrar al-Sham. But in July, the US plan to create such a moderate force was humiliatingly knocked on the head when Jabhat al-Nusra attacked and kidnapped many of this US-trained force as they entered Syria from Turkey. It now seems certain that Nusra had been tipped off by Turkish intelligence

Yes, apparently, the poor old bumbling US, with its worldwide intelligence ops and its $600 billion defense budget didn’t know the Turks had an undisclosed agenda, even though it was being reported in the alt media back in early August. They were “duped” into accidentally helping out ISIS by accidentally allowing Turkey to decimate the single most effective opposition to ISIS on the ground – the Kurds.

Just like back in the 1980s, when they accidentally allowed their then-pal Saddam Hussein to do the same thing, with the poison gas they’d accidentally sold him.

Is Patrick at all curious why the US seems to be so regularly duped or confused into accidentally helping people who are helping ISIS?

Could Russian claims that the US is using the existence of ISIS as a cover for attacking the Assad regime offer some answers here?

How about the numerous allegations (including one published in the Independent) and evidence chains linking the US to covert support for ISIS?

Can it be it’s not actually all Turkey’s fault after all?

No, of course not. The incipient collapse of the western ISIS narrative only means that a new scapegoat is needed. And it’s been pretty obvious for a while who that is going to be…

But there is a deeper reason for America’s inability to confront Isis successfully. Ever since 9/11, the US has wanted to combat al-Qaeda-type movements, but without disturbing its close relations with Sunni states such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the Gulf monarchies. But it is these same allies that have fostered, tolerated or failed to act against the al-Qaeda clones, which explains their continuing success.

Yes, it looks as if the above named perps are being singled out and set up for a fall, if they are not careful and don’t stick to the Empire’s script. Unless they want to end up murdered and/or raped for the delectation of Hillary and her chums they’d better watch how they go.


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Categories: latest, Media Criticism