Original color photographs of the D-Day invasion of Normandy during World War II. From British and American soldiers preparing for the invasion in England to German prisoners being marched through the streets after France’s liberation, these images are some of the only color photographs taken during the war. This set of photographs is primarily from the German Galerie Bilderwelt, part of Getty Image’s exclusive Hulton Archive collection.
Posted by Katie Wood
Source : denverpost.com
Judicial Watch
MAY 18, 2015
Administration knew three months before the November 2012 presidential election of ISIS plans to establish a caliphate in Iraq
Administration knew of arms being shipped from Benghazi to Syria
a(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it obtained more than 100 pages of previously classified “Secret” documents from the Department of Defense (DOD)and the Department of State revealing that DOD almost immediately reported that the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was committed by the al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood-linked “Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman” (BCOAR), and had been planned at least 10 days in advance. Rahman is known as the Blind Sheikh, and is serving life in prison for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other terrorist acts. The new documents also provide the first official confirmation that shows the U.S. government was aware of arms shipments from Benghazi to Syria. The documents also include an August 2012 analysis warning of the rise of ISIS and the predicted failure of the Obama policy of regime change in Syria.
The documents were released in response to a court order in accordance with a May 15, 2014, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against both the DOD and State Department seeking communications between the two agencies and congressional leaders “on matters related to the activities of any agency or department of the U.S. government at the Special Mission Compound and/or classified annex in Benghazi.”
Spelling and punctuation is duplicated in this release without corrections.
A Defense Department document from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), dated September 12, 2012, the day after the Benghazi attack, details that the attack on the compound had been carefully planned by the BOCAR terrorist group “to kill as many Americans as possible.” The document was sent to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Obama White House National Security Council. The heavily redacted Defense Department “information report” says that the attack on the Benghazi facility “was planned and executed by The Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman (BCOAR).” The group subscribes to “AQ ideologies:”
The attack was planned ten or more days prior on approximately 01 September 2012. The intention was to attack the consulate and to kill as many Americans as possible to seek revenge for U.S. killing of Aboyahiye ((ALALIBY)) in Pakistan and in memorial of the 11 September 2001 atacks on the World Trade Center buildings.
“A violent radical,” the DIA report says, is “the leader of BCOAR is Abdul Baset ((AZUZ)), AZUZ was sent by ((ZAWARI)) to set up Al Qaeda (AQ) bases in Libya.” The group’s headquarters was set up with the approval of a “member of the Muslim brother hood movement…where they have large caches of weapons. Some of these caches are disguised by feeding troughs for livestock. They have SA-7 and SA-23/4 MANPADS…they train almost every day focusing on religious lessons and scriptures including three lessons a day of jihadist ideology.”
The Defense Department reported the group maintained written documents, in “a small rectangular room, approximately 12 meters by 6 meters…that contain information on all of the AQ activity in Libya.”
(Azuz is again blamed for the Benghazi attack in an October 2012 DIA document.)
The DOD documents also contain the first official documentation that the Obama administration knew that weapons were being shipped from the Port of Benghazi to rebel troops in Syria. An October 2012 report confirms:
Weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the Port of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The weapons shipped during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s, and 125 mm and 155mm howitzers missiles.
During the immediate aftermath of, and following the uncertainty caused by, the downfall of the ((Qaddafi)) regime in October 2011 and up until early September of 2012, weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The Syrian ports were chosen due to the small amount of cargo traffic transiting these two ports. The ships used to transport the weapons were medium-sized and able to hold 10 or less shipping containers of cargo.
The DIA document further details:
The weapons shipped from Syria during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s and 125mm and 155mm howitzers missiles. The numbers for each weapon were estimated to be: 500 Sniper rifles, 100 RPG launchers with 300 total rounds, and approximately 400 howitzers missiles [200 ea – 125mm and 200ea – 155 mm.]
The heavily redacted document does not disclose who was shipping the weapons.
Another DIA report, written in August 2012 (the same time period the U.S. was monitoring weapons flows from Libya to Syria), said that the opposition in Syria was driven by al Qaeda and other extremist Muslim groups: “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.” The growing sectarian direction of the war was predicted to have dire consequences for Iraq, which included the “grave danger” of the rise of ISIS:
The deterioration of the situation has dire consequences on the Iraqi situation and are as follows:
This creates the ideal atmosphere for AQI [al Qaeda Iraq] to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi, and will provide a renewed momentum under the presumption of unifying the jihad among Sunni Iraq and Syria, and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against what it considers one enemy, the dissenters. ISI could also declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory.
Some of the “dire consequences” are blacked out but the DIA presciently warned one such consequence would be the “renewing facilitation of terrorist elements from all over the Arab world entering into Iraqi Arena.”
From a separate lawsuit, the State Department produced a document created the morning after the Benghazi attack by Hillary Clinton’s offices, and the Operations Center in the Office of the Executive Secretariat that was sent widely through the agency, including to Joseph McManus (then-Hillary Clinton’s executive assistant). At 6:00 am, a few hours after the attack, the top office of the State Department sent a “spot report” on the “Attack on U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi” that makes no mention of videos or demonstrations:
Four COM personnel were killed and three were wounded in an attack by dozens of fighters on the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi beginning approximately 1550 Eastern Time….
The State Department has yet to turn over any documents from the secret email accounts of Hillary Clinton and other top State Department officials.
“These documents are jaw-dropping. No wonder we had to file more FOIA lawsuits and wait over two years for them. If the American people had known the truth – that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other top administration officials knew that the Benghazi attack was an al-Qaeda terrorist attack from the get-go – and yet lied and covered this fact up – Mitt Romney might very well be president. And why would the Obama administration continue to support the Muslim Brotherhood even after it knew it was tied to the Benghazi terrorist attack and to al Qaeda? These documents also point to connection between the collapse in Libya and the ISIS war – and confirm that the U.S. knew remarkable details about the transfer of arms from Benghazi to Syrian jihadists,” stated Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch president. “These documents show that the Benghazi cover-up has continued for years and is only unraveling through our independent lawsuits. The Benghazi scandal just got a whole lot worse for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.”
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Posted by Bob Amoroso /
Thanks in part to the declassification of Defense Intelligence documents, connecting those missing dots seems to have finally reveled what most Middle East observers have suspected all along, that the rise of the terrorist group ISIS and the likelihood of establishing a terror state (a caliphate), had been predicated by both the CIA and DIA, as far back as 2012.
And purposely created by the Obama Administration in part to isolate the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad. The documents also predicted that the support given by the West, Turkey and the Persian Gulf Arab states to the Takfiri militants would eventually lead to the establishment of a Salafist Principality in Eastern Syria.
According to investigative reporter Nafeez Ahmed, the “leaked document reveals that in coordination with the Gulf states and Turkey, the West intentionally sponsored violent Islamist groups to destabilize Assad, despite anticipating that doing so could lead to the emergence of an ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria.”
Obviously Obama’s dismissal of ISIS being nothing more than a “JV” team and his apparent miscalculations in not keeping a residual force in place in Iraq, seems to be (as the documents indicate), considerably more sinister than first assumed, in that not leaving a contingency force behind was viewed by most Middle Eastern experts to have been a simple yet costly a tactical error.
However the documents are also shedding light on details referencing weapons operations inside Libya before the 2012 terror attack in Benghazi.
And the report leaves no doubt that U.S. intelligence agencies were fully aware that weapons were being shipped from Benghazi to Syrian ports.
However what isn’t in dispute is that American servicemen and woman and those in Benghazi have been willfully sacrificed by a clandestine Middle Eastern policy that has seen the rise of the most brutal terrorist group within our lifetime, by an administration that seems to be more concerned in concealing the facts rather than protecting our National Security.
Here is a link to the Judicial Watch press release detailing the released documents.
Here are the released documents themselves.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is withdrawing a dozen warplanes from a Turkish air base, barely a month after they arrived to help Turkey protect its air space and to conduct strikes against Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq, officials said Wednesday.
The decision was announced by U.S. European Command in Germany one day after Defense Secretary Ash Carter visited Incirlik Air Base, where the six F-15 Eagles and six F-15 Strike Eagles arrived last month from their home base in Britain. A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, told reporters that the timing was a coincidence.
During his visit Carter made no mention of the plan to withdraw the F-15s. He said the U.S. is looking for ways to do more to hasten the defeat of the Islamic State group, including by urging coalition partners to play a greater role.
European Command’s announcement said the F-15s were returning to Britain on Wednesday.
Davis said the withdrawal should not be seen as a change in the U.S. commitment to Turkey or to the counter-IS campaign.
“I wouldn’t read anything into us moving these out of there as any sort of less combat capability … to be able to strike in Syria,” Davis said.
The U.S. still has 12 A-10 close-air support aircraft based at Incirlik, as well as drone aircraft and refueling planes. The U.S. intends to replace six of the departing F-15s with a like number of additional A-10s, according to a senior U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the deployment has not been announced.
Some coalition partners have expressed a willingness to send more planes to Incirlik before the end of January, the senior U.S. defense official said. That would push the total number of coalition warplanes at Incirlik back to, and possibly above, the total of 59 that were based there before the F-15s began leaving Wednesday, the official said.
When Turkey agreed earlier this year to permit the U.S. to conduct airstrikes against the Islamic State with planes based at Incirlik, the Pentagon touted the decision as an important milestone. It shortened the time and distance required to conduct airstrikes in Syria and Iraq, compared with strikes flown from bases in the Persian Gulf area.
At the beginning of September there were 15 coalition aircraft based at Incirlik as part of the counter-IS coalition.
___
Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed from Baghdad.
IMAGE VIA TWITTER: Armoured: ISIS released pictures of their devastating – but rarely used – weaponry
As Written By Sam Webb For The Mirror UK:
SIS propagandists have released pictures of the sophisticated and devastating weapons it wields as part of its campaign of terror across the Middle East – including heavy TANKS.
The militants showed off their military power as part of their slick PR campaign – but fail to mention they rarely use their armoured vehicles because they are an easy target for the warplanes of Russia, America, Britain and France.
They were featured on Terrormonitor’s Twitter feed and were reportedly taken during fighting at Deir Ezzor military airport.
Britain, France, Russia and the United States provided most of the weapons being used by ISIS to carry out appalling war crimes, a new report claims.
As the UK joins its allies in carrying out airstrikes in Syria, the Government has come in for renewed accusations of having sown the seeds of conflict itself.
A new study by Amnesty International claims much of the weaponry used by Islamic State (IS) fighters was supplied by the same Western powers now trying to bomb it out of existence.
Read more: Pig’s heads left at Muslim prayer sites in Islamophobic attacks
Huge supplies of guns, rifles, mortars and missiles have been flowing into Iraq for years as the state struggled to retain control after British and American forces withdrew.
Oliver Sprague, Amnesty UK’s Arms Programme Director, said: “Decades of free-flowing arms into Iraq meant that when IS took control of these areas, they were like children in a sweetshop.
“The fact that countries including the UK have ended up inadvertently arming IS, should give us pause over current weapons deals.
“The UK was one of the key supporters of a global Arms Trade Treaty, intended to prevent the proliferation of arms and their use in horrific abuses like IS are committing.”
“Risks need to be far more carefully calculated, and we shouldn’t wait for this worst-case-scenario to happen before acting to prevent sales of arms which could fuel atrocities.”
Although Soviet Kalshnikovs are the most commonly used, the oldest piece of kit in the IS arsenal is believed to be a British World War One rifle.
Amnesty says IS fighters acquired a windfall of internationally manufactured arms after taking control of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in June, 2014.
They included US-manufactured weapons and military vehicles which they then used to take control of other parts of the country.
Meanwhile, a suicide bomber killed at least six people outside a Shi’ite mosque in the Iraqi capital on Wednesday, according to police and medical sources, in an attack claimed by Islamic State.
Seven others were wounded in the attack, which took place in the mainly Shi’ite Ubaidi neighbourhood of eastern Baghdad and targeted worshippers leaving the mosque, police said.
“The suicide attacker was trying to enter the mosque before a guard stopped him, but he blew himself up,” said one policeman near the scene of the attack.
Paul Craig Roberts
UPDATE: A friend, George Abert, suggested a reason why the Turks shot down the Russian fighter-bomber over Syria. The Russians have a technology that they recently demonstrated against the newest US missile cruiser and Israel’s US jet fighters. The technology shuts down the communication systems of hostile forces, leaving them blind. He wonders if the Russian aircraft was shot down in order to encourage the Russians to use its unknown technology whenever Russian aircraft are in the vicinity of NATO and Israeli aircraft. He bets that the US has sent every Raven and ELINT specialist to the area in hopes that Russia’s use of the technology will allow them to learn enough about the system to duplicate it or learn how to block it.
Turkey’s unprovoked shoot-down of a Russian military aircraft over Syria raises interesting questions. It seems unlikely that the Turkish government would commit an act of war against a much more powerful neighbor unless Washington had cleared the attack. Turkey’s government is not very competent, but even the incompetent know better than to put themselves into a position of facing Russia alone.
If the attack was cleared with Washington, was Obama bypassed by the neocons who control his government, or is Obama himself complicit? Clearly the neoconservatives are disturbed by the French president’s call for unity with Russia against ISIL and easily could have used their connections to Turkey to stage an event that Washington can use to prevent cooperation with Russia.
Washington’s complicity is certainly indicated, but it is not completely out of the question that the well-placed Turks who are purchasing oil from ISIL took revenge against Russia for destroying their oil tanker investments and profitable business. But if the attack has a private or semi-private origin in connections between gangsters and military, would Turkey’s president have defended the shoot-down on such spurious grounds as “national defense”? No one can believe that one Russian jet is a threat to Turkey’s security.
Don’t expect the presstitutes to look into any such questions. The presstitutes, such as the BBC’s Moscow correspondent Sarah Rainsford, are spinning the story that the loss of the Russian aircraft, and earlier the airliner, proves that Putin’s policy of air strikes against iSIL has backfired as Russians are not safer.
The responses to the shoot-down are also interesting. From what I heard of Obama’s press conference, Obama’s definition of “moderate Syrian rebels” includes all the extremist jihadish groups, such as al Nursa and ISIL, that are the focus of the Russian attacks. Only Assad is an extremist. Obama, following the neocon line, says that Assad has too much blood on his hands to be allowed to remain president of Syria.
Obama is not specific about the “blood on Assad’s hands,” but we can be. The blood is the blood of ISIL forces fighting the Syrian army. Obama doesn’t refer to the blood on ISIL’s hands, but even the presstitutes have told us the horror stories associated with the blood on ISIL’s hands, with whom Obama has allied us.
And what about the blood on Obama’s hands? Here we are talking about a very large quantity of blood: the blood of entire countries—Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, and the blood that Obama’s puppet government in Kiev has spilled of the ethnic Russian inhabitants of Ukraine, not to forget the Palestinian blood spilled by Israel using US supplied weapons.
If the blood on Assad’s hands disqualifies Assad from office, the much greater quantity on Obama’s hands disqualifies Obama. And Cameron. And Hollande. And Merkel. And Netanyahu.
Throughout the entire Washington orchestrated conflicts in the Middle East, Africa, and Ukraine, the Russian government has spoken reasonably and responded in a diplomatic manner to the many provocations. The Russian government relied on European governments realizing that Europe does not benefit from conflicts generated by Washington and separating themselves from a policy that is against their interests. But Europe proved to be a collection of American vassals, not independent countries capable of independent foreign policies.
In its campaign against ISIL in Syria, the Russian government relied on the agreement made with NATO countries to avoid engaging in the air. Now Turkey has violated this agreement.
I will be surprised if the Russian government any longer places any trust in the words of the West and any hope in diplomacy with the West. By now the Russian government and the Russian people will have learned that the Wolfowitz doctrine means what it says and is in force against Russia.
From the Ukrainian attack on Crimea’s power supply and the blackout that is affecting Crimea, the Russian government has also learned that Washington’s puppet government in Kiev intends further conflict with Russia.
Washington has made it clear from the beginning that Washington’s focus is on overthrowing Assad, not ISIL. Despite the alleged attack on France by ISIL, the US State Department press spokesperson, Admiral John Kirby, said that Russia cannot be a member of the coalition against ISIL until Russia stops propping up Assad.
To the extent that the shoot-down of the Russian military aircraft has a silver lining, the incident has likely saved the Russian government from a coalition in which Russia would have lost control of its war against ISIL and would have had to accept the defeat of Assad’s removal.
Each step along the way the Russian government has held strong cards that it did not play, trusting instead to diplomacy. Diplomacy has now proven to be a deadend. If Russia does not join the real game and begin to play its strong cards, Russia will be defeated.
