Item: Team O decides to partner with Assad.

August 25, 2014 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org – This deep into Obama's second term most reasonable observers of issues relating to national security know that the President is so completely inept when it comes to foreign policy that it's frightening.

His actions regarding what is Biblically described as Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers are now front and center, though with a lap-dog-media, news from that region is censored at best.

Knowing what is going on in that area with any degree of accuracy takes work because even the most horrific events coming from that part of the world, if reported at all have no legs as far as the MSM is concerned.

This is intentional. The NYT, WashPost, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC don't want the public to be immersed in the blood flowing as a result of the actions of ISIS.

Genocide of Christians?

A brief search of Google News reveals that no major U.S. newspaper is covering it. Of the MSM, only Politico makes brief reference to the systematic depravity being carried out against the world's oldest Christian community and the Yazidis, a Kurdish derivation of Zoroastrianism.

Over the airwaves it seems that only Fox News has dealt with the topic in any amount of detail.

So allow us to present a partial thumbnail of how we got to this state of affairs, one which we note will not be easily solved.

The President set the tone very early in his first term.

In a January 2010 piece, we wrote:

"Generally it has been the position of the left, subscribed to by Mr. Obama, that the current iteration of terrorism, rather than finding its genesis in an interpretation of Islamic theology, is in large part fueled by righteous enmity against the United States and the West caused by the way these comingled entities have historically dealt with the Muslim world.

It follows from this proposition that if the United States takes a more conciliatory approach, while at the same time helping to address the relative impoverishment that the overwhelming majority of Muslims must endure, that the defusing of these supposed root causes of radicalization will largely end that which motivates the jihadists.

Thus the origin of Mr. Obama's Muslim outreach, most forcefully detailed in his June 6, 2009 Cairo speech [see, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-Cairo-University-6-04-09/], with the below statement, emblematic of this approach.

"More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam. Violent extremists have exploited these tensions in a small but potent minority of Muslims."

It must be remembered that the Cairo speech was only part of a grander apologia - offered in a particularly supplicating manner - to atone for [what the president perceives to be] America's past history of oppressive actions. [source, William Mayer, The Wake Up Call That Never Comes - Why The Latest Bin Laden Message Should Be Of Special Concern To Obama, PipeLineNews.org]

Obama's Cairo speech, delivered at the most prestigious jihadist university on Earth, Al-Azhar and in front of an administration invited contingent of key players in the [now banned in Egypt] terrorist Muslim Brotherhood, of course set the tone for what was to follow…pandemonium.

But what is happening right now in Iraq and Syria primarily grew out of two strategic mistakes, now obviously of great consequence.

The first of these was the refusal by Team O to negotiate a Statues of Forces Agreement with the Iraqis, which would have set the terms under which a small contingent of U.S. soldiers would have remained in country after the main force had departed. At that time, 2008, Iraq was a relatively stable country with a working, however dysfunctional, quasi-democracy.

Anyone could read the irresponsible and narcissistic message the president was sending, "we want out of here, consequences be damned."

And of course things immediately began to fall apart, with the Iraqis losing whatever confidence and esprit de corps the Americans had managed to instill.

Though there was no indication that any action was necessary, from March through September 2011 an American led NATO force engaged in an intense bombing campaign in Libya which resulted in deposing long time dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

It immediately became apparent that Obama had given little though to the consequences and mayhem which might ensue in the vacuum left by the demise of the long time Libyan dictator.

With central control in the country now gone, at least 20,000 heavy weapons including surface to air missiles were now free for the taking from Libya's undefended armories. Jihadists inside and outside Libya were tripping all over themselves in the mad dash to grab as much of this hardware as possible.

In short order some of the worst characters imaginable had been provided with the type of armament they might have only previously dreamt of.

In response ambassador to be, Chris Stevens with probably a couple dozen CIA operatives and Spec Ops types were dispatched to the country with the intention of regaining control over as many of these weapons as possible.

But here Team O made a fateful and flawed decision. The goal of this small contingent of specialized personnel was not to gather, then warehouse and destroy these weapons.

No, the plan was to re-route the weapons from Libya, through Turkey and then across the porous border into Syria where they were delivered to what were then called rebels, but indeed were simply anti-Assad, Sunni jihadists, hailing from Chechnya, Saudi Arabia and Europe many of whom now comprise ISIS

It's beyond doubt that Stevens and his team of spooks were engaged in gun running and much like Fast and Furious it quickly got out of control

In the waning days of 2012 the administration had basically declared war on Assad, with President Obama laying down numerous - red lines in the sand type - demands of the government, one of which was to dispose of its chemical weapon stockpile, probably having very little idea of just how many of these weapons actually existed

Team O charged Assad with attacking his own people with poison gas munitions, when in actuality all signs pointed to the gas attack originating with the so called rebels, hoping to gin up further hatred of the Assad regime.

"At the National Defense University, he [Mr. Obama] said: "The use of chemical weapons is and would be totally unacceptable." Switching to speak directly to Syrian president Bashir al-Assad, he continued: "If you make the tragic mistake of using these weapons, there will be consequences and you will be held accountable."

These comments echoed those of US secretary of state Hillary Clinton a day earlier: "I am not going to telegraph in any specifics what we would do in the event of credible evidence that the Assad regime has resorted to using chemical weapons against their own people. But suffice it to say, we are certainly planning to take action if that eventuality were to occur." [source, Adam Lokyer, Obama Draws A Line In The Sand In Syria, ABC News]

Given Obama's naiveté, of course the ruse worked, much as it does today in Gaza with HAMAS staging similar "massacres" of civilians in order to implicate Israel in "atrocities" and "war crimes."

In Syria the two major anti-Assad jihadist groups, ISIS, led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi [also 'Abu Du'a] and Jabhat al-Nusrah, whose emir is Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani fought each other for supremacy and continued recognition by Ayman al-Zawahiri.

That ISIS lost the endorsement of al-Qaeda was of no import because the group was able to recruit so effectively that it quickly became an organized army unto itself and infiltrated into Iraq where it quickly conquering Iraqi cities, declaring the re-establishment of the caliphate.

ISIS gained ground rapidly as the Iraqi army disintegrated and it quickly threatened Baghdad after taking over Mosul, looting the central bank netting them in excess of 500M dinars.

In its rout, the Iraqi army left behind hundreds of millions of dollars worth of America's most effective weapons.

Obama ignored the situation until he was forced by events to pretend to do something. First, he reluctantly sent a couple hundred advisors and Special Operators to Iraq and then as things grew more serious with ethnic cleansing of Christians rising prominently in the alternative media he authorized limited and ineffective air strikes all done for show.

Obama finds himself now locked into the confrontation upon the very public beheading of freelance photo journalist James Foley.

Now the schizophrenia really set in, Obama found himself without the big hammer he might need having personally – and apparently with great glee – decimated and demoralized the U.S. military.

So how does he deal with the onrush of ISIS, now so full of itself that it is threatening Chicago, Las Vegas and other large American cities with unnamed acts of terrorism?

Why, according to numerous sources, he plans to expand the very limited Iraqi air strikes into Syria while partnering up with the despot he was desperately trying to topple, Bashar al-Assad [see for example, Patrick Cockburn, West To Join Forces With President Assad In Face Of Islamic State , UK Guardian]

If this does play out, American foreign policy will be even more muddled than it is today and we would imagine that first call from the WH to Assad might be more than a little tense.

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