Press TV has conducted an interview with Dr. Webster Griffin Tarpley, an author and historian from Washington, to discuss the recent events in northern Iraq and how the US is responsible for the way that some Iraqi army forces acted in the region.
The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.
Press TV: What are we looking at here; I don’t know if you heard the US President Barack Obama who just spoke at the White House, he said that he is going to be sending 300 additional military advisors to train the forces there. This is, of course, after announcing 275 Marines that are going to protect the Baghdad embassy. Clarify for us the term “advisors” because many are saying that’s boots on the ground. It sounds awfully like what they said about Libya in terms of advisors not to mention what they are going to leave in Iraq – when they left – again using the term “advisors”?
Tarpley: I think Obama is extremely reluctant to become involved and that what he’s doing is the character of a concession to the raving warmongers from the Republican Party who, this morning, were popping off in the Senate. That includes McCain, Lindsey Graham, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and a bunch of others who want large-scale bombing and they want in many cases actual infantry brigades.
But let’s just step back. This ISIS or ISIL is a very artificial creation. According to all the intelligence we have, it is first of all financed and commanded by Prince Abdul Rahman Faisal of Saudi Arabia. He is the brother of Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Foreign Minister and also Prince Turki al-Faisal who had been ambassador to London and the United States here.
So, it’s a Saudi operation and it comes out of a training camp which the US, the British and the French, in other words NATO, had established in Jordan, quite a few months ago, to train guerrilla fighters, death squads that would be used principally against Assad in Syria but now they’ve been retasked.
The leader of this ISIS is a fellow called Baghdadi. He has a four-year diploma, four-year degree as an asset of the CIA which he got by being in a prison camp and getting brainwashed and becoming a double agent as a condition for coming out. And the goal of this entire thing is multiple.
It is to try to save the Syrian rebels from ultimate defeat which is otherwise facing them. To overthrow the government of Maliki in Iraq with the excuse that it’s too pro-Iranian. To try to bring in then Ayad Allawi, the classic US puppet inside Iraq and perhaps if they can start bombing, when you listen to Senator McCain and Lindsey Graham, they say the bombing can begin in Iraq but it should then extended to Syria which is extremely dangerous and then, of course, if you begin in Iraq maybe you might venture into Iran which is even more dangerous. So, I would recommend obviously not doing any of that.
The one interesting thing the US government could do, would be to issue an ultimatum to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the Emirates, Oman and the rest of those Persian Gulf States to stop their financing and logistical support for this ISIS.
The Turkish government is also very heavily involved. This ISIS operated out of a sanctuary in Turkey. Last summer, they made a big attack on Latakia in Syria, killed a lot of people. It’s reported that those cadavers of children were used then in August of last year for the Ghouta, so-called chemical weapons scare which was, of course, orchestrated but that some of the grisly human remains were actually brought in by ISIS. After that ISIS was transferred across southern Turkey to Ar-Raaqqah in Iraq and then they have been retold for the current mission.
The other thing I have to say is that members of the Iraqi army, the officers, generals were quite obviously bribed by the CIA, told that they should run away. Remember the Nazi Blitzkrieg against France in 1940. It turns out that a lot of those French generals were on the payroll of Hitler. And in this case, it looks to me like the Iraqi generals that ran away were on the payroll of the US, the CIA and NATO.
So, we are being faced with a very artificial situation but of course this can lead to a real tragedy on a tremendous level. I think the US government really ought to cooperate with Assad. If you want to stop ISIS, you should cooperate with Assad because he can destroy the basis of ISIS.
Press TV: You talk about the US engagement in terms of multiple fronts such as when you said that the US is actually responsible for the way that the Iraqi army acted, pretty much fleeing the scene that they were… well in whatever shape and form influenced by the US and that’s in sharp contrast to what many have deduced to have been Saudi Arabia’s role as playing a hand in that along with the fact that obviously they have been the ones who are supporting the ISIL. Even though the Saudi Arabia is saying they are not, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has come out, blame them and also we’ve heard other countries blaming Saudi Arabia for supporting these ISIL. Is the US playing double face here? I mean would it sounds like based on the assessment that you made?
Tarpley: What I am trying to point out is this is an opportunity to educate the American people in the idea that Saudi Arabia is actually an enemy, that Saudi Arabia is responsible for these destabilizations and civil wars. And, of course, I know that the US foreign policy establishment does not want to do anything for Assad. But, since they are telling us that the ISIS is the end of the world, right that it’s literally the apocalypse, personified with these supermen about to sweep down on Baghdad. Well, in that case Assad is certainly a lesser evil.
The other question though, the US politics on this, the other coup in addition to the anti-Maliki coup, that is the goal of this operation is a cold coup around Obama and McCain came out and said it last week. He demanded that Obama fire all of his own loyalists and, of course, these are in my view bad people but still those are Obama’s people and bringing General Petraeus. General David Petraeus, of the Pentagon and the CIA and Wall Street, he now works for Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. He has got a financial angel with multi-billion-dollar deep pockets.
And, of course, Petraeus personifies the danger of bonapartism here in the United States, of a kind of a dictatorial seizure of power. And we know that this clique is now super active. The neo-cons are mobilized as never before. And I am talking about Kimberly Kagan at the Institute for the Study of War, Frederick Kagan at the American Enterprise Institute, Donald Kagan at the Brookings Institution and his charming wife Victoria Nuland who has disgusted the world with her vulgarity.
The goal of this is, coming on the heels of Benghazi, which was an anti-Obama October surprise, designed to bring in Romney and the neo-cons, but it failed, after this Bowe Bergdahl hysteria which we’ve had. This is now the third wave of a neo-con counteroffensive, designed to push out whoever Obama has, that doesn’t want to go along with it and put in neo-cons.
And I will also add Kerry of skull and bones, the Secretary of State and Samantha Power, the humanitarian bomber, who represents the US at the United Nations, these are people who have been skimming to get a way to bomb Syria, now for months, and it’s been on the front page of the Washington Post and they’ve actually brought in Petraeus and this General Keen who is a friend of this entire group, to try to find ways to push Obama towards war with Syria.
Press TV: There’s obviously a spillover that has happened by some accounts over what has occurred in Syria, I mean this situation, this ISIL ,60 miles or kilometers away from Baghdad, and you have the threats that they have set against holy Shia shrines in Iraq such as Karbala and so forth so on, and that puts another dimension of the dangerous predicament that it puts the region in when you are talking about, for example, the Shia shrines. Iran has come out and said, “We will defend the Shia shrines.” If they were to carry out on that threat, everything would change, wouldn’t it? What direction would that go, how will things play out, do you think?
Tarpley: That, of course, would be extremely dangerous. I am afraid though that I don’t share the idea that democracy will guarantee happy ending and I think it’s wrong to impute a rationality to the process here, Washington, that it does not have.
What we have is a war psychosis in the entire elite, neo-cons and the humanitarian bombers or responsibility to protect the crowd, the Samantha Power types. They are horrified, they wanted to bomb Syria, they didn’t get to bomb Syria. They never wanted to negotiate with Iran. They wanted to bomb Iran and the other question, of course, Putin.
They are humiliated there, they are apoplectic about Ukraine. They are afraid to confront Putin in Ukraine because of Russia’s Topol-M Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles and therefore we have the line coming Anne-Marie Slaughter, formerly at the State Department saying, “If you want to confront Putin, you confront him in Syria where he is much weaker than he would be in Ukraine.”
And one other, I think, big danger is, in the State Department now, there is this idea that Maliki has to go. This takes me back to Vietnam in 1963.
When Averell Harriman and a couple of other people in the State Department decided that president Diem was counterproductive and they arranged to have a coup and his assassination. Of course, the people that they brought in were perfectly incompetent and indeed set the stage for these military debacles. So, these are people who have learned nothing.
One of the things that Professor Steven Cohen was saying the other day at a Russian seminar is an anti-war opposition in the United States is nonexistent compared to the Cold War and compared to the time ten years ago when you had George Bush in the White House. So, the doors are relatively open to adventurers and it means the neo-cons surrounding Obama, be who is a weak and passive figure, of course, a puppet president of Wall Street but, surrounding him and pushing him into direction of something unthinkable.
SOURCE |
http://presstv.com/detail/2014/06/20/367806/us-should-aid-syria-to-get-rid-of-isis/