Authored by F. William Engdahl via New Eastern Outlook,
In recent weeks one nation after another is falling over themselves, literally, to join the turkey shoot known, erroneously, as the war in Syria, ostensibly against the Islamic State or Daesh. The most wanted but most feared question is where will this war frenzy lead, and how can it be stopped short of dragging the entire planet into a world war of destruction?
"They can resort to the U.N. Security Council, that is their natural right, but this is not an honest step,” Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday, referencing Baghdad’s move to appeal to a “higher” authority in an increasingly tense standoff with Ankara stemming from the latter’s decision to send several hundred troops and 25 tanks to Bashiqa (just northeast of Mosul) a week ago.
Three weeks ago, we highlighted what we dubbed “the greatest piece of terrorist video propaganda in history.” The clip, a 5-minute Hollywood special produced by Islamic State’s al-Hayat Media (the nerve center for a labyrinthine network of “Wilayats”), begins with a glorification of the “caliphate”, as an English-speaking narrator notes that ISIS’ territory is now “thirty times the size of Qatar.”
Earlier this week, a rather amusing piece appeared on Sputnik entitled “Ahead of the Game: Russia Moving Faster in Syria Than US Media Can Report.” In it, Russian media outlined five steps US diplomacy expert Robert Farley thinks Russia will take next in Syria. The point of the article is this: Russia had already taken four of the five steps by the time Farley produced his list.
Back in May, the US was elated to report that commandos had killed Islamic State “gas minister” Abu Sayyaf in a raid in Eastern Syria.
That effort has been cited as evidence of how effective targeted SpecOps raids can be when it comes to taking out senior ISIS commanders. In November, the US claimed to have killed the infamous Jihadi John in a drone strike near Raqqa.