In order to promote plan to bombing campaign in Syria Obama and U.S. Intelligence invented an imaginary terrorist organization which they initially referred to as "The Khorasan Group". So will Obama's true believers make excuses for his actions as George W. Bush's true believers made excuses for his illegal and unethical self-serving actions. When it comes to foreign policy Obama uses the same playbook as President Bush and the Neoconservatives. Obama downplays the deaths of innocent civilians claiming anyone killed by American bombs and missiles are all by definition deserving of death. So when a drone attack kills dozens of children are those children deserving of death because their parents are America's enemies or because those children might grow up to be terrorists therefore the killings are a pre-emptive attack. The IDF of Israel uses the same logic since to them all Palestinians, all Muslims, all Arabs are the potential enemy and are are not as deserving of life as an Israeli.
How the U.S. Concocted a Terror Threat to Justify Syria Strikes, and the Corporate Media Went Along
According to writer Murtaza Hussain, anonymous officials say there was not any plan in the works to attack the United States. at DemocracyNow! via Alternet.org, Sept. 29,2014
As the U.S. expands military operations in Syria, we look at the Khorasan group, the shadowy militant organization the Obama administration has invoked to help justify the strikes. One month ago, no one had heard of Khorasan, but now U.S. officials say it poses an imminent threat to the United States. As the strikes on Syria began, U.S. officials said Khorasan was "nearing the execution phase" of an attack on the United States or Europe, most likely an attempt to blow up a commercial plane in flight. We are joined by Murtaza Hussain of The Intercept, whose new article with Glenn Greenwald is "The Khorasan Group: Anatomy of a Fake Terror Threat to Justify Bombing Syria."
AMY GOODMAN: The United States is continuing to expand its military operations in Iraq and Syria. Late last week, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel deployed a division headquarters unit to Iraq for the first time since the U.S. withdrawal in 2011. The 200 soldiers from the Army’s 1st Infantry Division headquarters will joins 1,200 U.S. troops already inside Iraq. Overnight, U.S.-led warplanes hit grain silos and other targets in northern and eastern Syria. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the attacks killed a number of civilians working at the silos.
While the United States has been bombing areas in Syria controlled by the Islamic State, it has also struck targets connected to a separate militant group that U.S. officials are calling the Khorasan group. If you never heard of the group before this month, you’re not alone. The Associated Press first reported on this new entity on September 13th. In the article, unnamed U.S. officials warned of a shadowy, terrorist group that posed a more imminent threat than the Islamic State. The AP described the group as, quote, "a cadre of veteran al-Qaida fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan who traveled to Syria to link up with the al-Qaida affiliate there, the Nusra Front." It went on to say the group poses a, quote, "direct and imminent threat to the United States, working with Yemeni bomb-makers to target U.S. aviation." Soon, major TV networks began echoing these claims about the Khorasan group.
...AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about the Khorasan group, we’re going to go to Toronto, Canada, where we’ll be joined by Murtaza Hussain, a reporter with The Intercept. He wrote a piece with Glenn Greenwald called "The Khorasan Group: Anatomy of a Fake Terror Threat to Justify Bombing Syria."
...MURTAZA HUSSAIN: So, the Khorasan group is a group which first came up in the media around September 13th, roughly a week or so before the U.S. bombing campaign of Syria began. Heretofore, no one had heard of this group. It was not known in intelligence circles or among people who follow Syria. And suddenly we saw in the media that this was being described as the major terrorist threat emanating from that country and a direct threat to the U.S. homeland, unlike ISIS. So, this ended up being one of the main justifications for the war on Syria or the military airstrikes which are conducted on Syria, and it became the major media narrative justifying that action.
Andrea Mitchell: 'Why Aren't We Just Bombing The Hell Out Of ISIS?'
By John Amato September 29, 2014 via Crooks&Liars.com
Glenn Greenwald has a good post up about the propaganda of "The Khorasan Group" that's been going on in the beltway media to help convince America that we need to bomb the sh*t out of Syria. it's the same old song we've heard with different politicians in office.
This morning Andrea Mitchell did her bit to fan the flames of war after a report from Richard Engle near the Turkish border, by asking a Rear Admiral John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman why we aren't just bombing the hell out of Syria everywhere.
and see: THE FAKE TERROR THREAT USED TO JUSTIFY BOMBING SYRIA
BY GLENN GREENWALD AND MURTAZA HUSSAIN at The//Intercept, Sept. 28, 2014
As the Obama Administration prepared to bomb Syria without congressional or U.N. authorization, it faced two problems. The first was the difficulty of sustaining public support for a new years-long war against ISIS, a group that clearly posed no imminent threat to the “homeland.” A second was the lack of legal justification for launching a new bombing campaign with no viable claim of self-defense or U.N. approval.
The solution to both problems was found in the wholesale concoction of a brand new terror threat that was branded “The Khorasan Group.” After spending weeks depicting ISIS as an unprecedented threat — too radical even for Al Qaeda! — administration officials suddenly began spoon-feeding their favorite media organizations and national security journalists tales of a secret group that was even scarier and more threatening than ISIS, one that posed a direct and immediate threat to the American Homeland. Seemingly out of nowhere, a new terror group was created in media lore.
The unveiling of this new group was performed in a September 13 article by the Associated Press, who cited unnamed U.S. officials to warn of this new shadowy, worse-than-ISIS terror group:
While the Islamic State group [ISIS] is getting the most attention now, another band of extremists in Syria — a mix of hardened jihadis from Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and Europe — poses a more direct and imminent threat to the United States, working with Yemeni bomb-makers to target U.S. aviation, American officials say.
At the center is a cell known as the Khorasan group, a cadre of veteran al-Qaida fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan who traveled to Syria to link up with the al-Qaida affiliate there, the Nusra Front.
But the Khorasan militants did not go to Syria principally to fight the government of President Bashar Assad, U.S. officials say. Instead, they were sent by al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri to recruit Europeans and Americans whose passports allow them to board a U.S.-bound airliner with less scrutiny from security officials.
and Murtaza Hussain in a recent article deals with the question of whether IS is really representative of all Muslims and of Islam. According to some 120 Islamic scholars in an open letter to IS argue IS is not Islamic but rather a brutal organization using the religion of Islam as their cover that is to give them and their actions some legitimacy or justification which it does not in fact have.
WHY THE ISLAMIC STATE IS NOT REALLY ISLAMIC
BY MURTAZA HUSSAIN at The//Intercept, Sept. 26, 2014
Some 120 Muslim religious scholars this week published an open letter refuting the Islamic State’s claim to be a religious political movement, joining a series of high-profile condemnations of the extremist group by Islamic religious and political leaders.and Murtaza Hussain concludes the article arguing that given ...
The letter, signed by current and former grand muftis of Egypt, the former grand mufti of Bosnia, and the Nigerian Sultan of Sokoto, along with many other prominent Muslim leaders from around the world, offered a thorough, 24-point condemnation of the Islamic State’s behavior. But it still left the question of how a group that calls itself the “Islamic State” and uses religious scripture to justify its actions can possibly be described as not Islamic.
The answer is complex, but boils down to the fact that while the Islamic State is superficially and opportunistically Islamic, it owes at least as much to secular revolutionary ideologies as to its claimed religion, and borrows heavily from Western systems of organization and pop culture as well.
ISIS’s Unlikely Antecedents
The behavior of radical groups such as ISIS therefore tends to have more in common with Mao’s Red Guards or the Khmer Rouge than it does with the Muslim empires of antiquity which they claim to be heirs to. In synthesizing aspects of both Western and Islamic civilization, the group has crafted a radical ideology which is distinctly modern despite its glorification of a pre-modern past. Recognizing this is the first step to negating the clash of civilizations narrative upon which they thrive.
In the eyes of most Muslims the Islamic State is as “Islamic” as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is “Democratic”. The Open Letter to Baghdadi is simply another example of the degree to which this violent, utopian project has been rejected by a broad consensus of Muslims around the world. From a Western perspective, it’s important to not play into ISIS’s hands by giving them the type of religious or political legitimacy they crave but otherwise do not possess.
At the end of the day Islam is what its adherents say it is, and if by and large they deem the “Islamic State” to be outside of the Islamic tradition it would be foolish and counterproductive to argue otherwise. In order to effectively fight this group, it’s important to amplify the voices of the vast majority of Muslims who are condemning them, instead of listening to those on both sides who insist that this is at heart a conflict between Islam and the West.
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