US Using IS to Revive War on Terror, to Finally Get War in Syria

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The United States is using the Islamic State as a pretext to revive its war on terror and to finally start the war in Syria, Asia Times roving correspondent Pepe Escobar told RIA Novosti Wednesday.

MOSCOW, September 24 (RIA Novosti), Daria Chernyshova — The United States is using the Islamic State as a pretext to revive its war on terror and to finally start the war in Syria, Asia Times roving correspondent Pepe Escobar told RIA Novosti Wednesday.

“US intelligence never saw the ISIS/ISIL, then IS offensive from Syria to Iraq (or deliberately ignored it, knowing it would be the perfect pretext to revitalize the war on terror),” Escobar said. “So now Obama's finally got his war in Syria — and in no less than three fronts; against the Caliphate; against the mysterious Khorasan jihadi group; and weaponizing the Syrian ‘rebels’ to try once more to get rid of Bashar al-Assad.”

On Tuesday, the Unites States carried out a number of airstrikes against IS positions in Syria, using aircraft, drones and Tomahawk missiles. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates also reportedly took part in the attacks.

“At the outset of the Arab Spring, the Obama administration dithered until it started privileging the Muslim Brotherhood — that is, Qatari foreign policy. That included Syria. Then the Saudis took over the ‘management’ of the Syrian ‘rebels’ — which resulted in the growth of hardcore jihadism,” Escobar recalled. “Last year Obama reached the point of almost bombing Syria — and was rescued at the eleventh hour by Moscow.”

On Wednesday, Obama pledged to support Iraqis and Syrians “fighting to reclaim their communities.”

“We will use our military might in a campaign of air strikes to roll back ISIL. We will train and equip forces fighting against these terrorists on the ground," Obama said.

“It [AUMF] is elastic enough to serve all sorts of purposes in the never-ending, ever-metastasizing Global War on Terror (GWOT). It calcifies the President as a sort of neo-Roman Emperor. He can decree anyone or any entity or in fact any nation as a legitimate military target — either to be bombed or as an honorary member of a kill list’,” Pepe Escobar told RIA Novosti.

The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) authorizes the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the attacks and grants the President the authority to use all "necessary and appropriate force" against those whom he determined “planned, authorized, committed or aided” the September 11th attacks, or who harbored said persons or groups.

A 2002 AUMF on Iraq was directed at Saddam Hussein, who no longer existed.

And those two authorizations have laid the groundwork for the administration’s justification of US actions in Iraq and Syria – the two conflicts the United States is now involved in.

Eight out of the 22 airstrikes that started on Monday were aimed at targets associated with an alleged al-Qaeda cell in Aleppo called the Khorasan group – never mentioned on Capitol Hill until a week ago. On Tuesday, the Obama administration and US military called the group as an “imminent threat” to the country.

“The Obama administration’s unison newspeak is that Khorasan includes former al-Qaeda assets not only from across the Middle East – including al-Qaeda in Iraq and Jabhat al-Nusra — but also Pakistan, as in an ultra-hardcore extension of the Pakistani Taliban,” Escobar said.

“There had to be an ‘unimpeachable’ justification for yet another Obama bombing/droning ‘kinetic’ adventure in the Middle East. So those ghostly Khorasan goons perfectly fit the bill — more evil that Caliph Ibrahim. To the point that the Pentagon is convinced their ‘plotting was imminent’ to stage a new 9/11,” he added.

Concluding, Pepe Escobar referred to Khorasan as “the perfect ghost in the GWOT [Global War on Terrorism] machine; the invisible target of a war within a war.” He also stressed that Khorasan is “the perfect terror ghost; nobody has heard about them before, nobody knows how many they are, and nobody knows exactly what they want.

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