Jerusalem News (6 February, 2015, 17 Shevet, 5775)
Contents:
1. How Iran Is Making It Impossible for the US to Beat ISIS
2. Sept. 11's '20th hijacker' claims members of Saudi royal family were al-Qaida donors
Saudi Embassy dismisses Zacarias Moussaoui's allegations
3. U.S. Seen in Middle East as Ally of Terrorists
by Khaled Abu Toameh
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1. How Iran Is Making It Impossible for the US to Beat ISIS
http://unitycoalitionforisrael.org/uci_2014/?p=13211
by Michael Weiss and Michael Pregent
February 1st, 2015
(d/Reuters)
Extracts:
It was August 2007, and General David Petraeus, the top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, was angry. In his weekly report to then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Petraeus wrote: 'I am considering telling the President that I believe Iran is, in fact, waging war on the U.S. in Iraq, with all of the U.S. public and governmental responses that could come from that revelation.  I do believe that Iran has gone beyond merely striving for influence in Iraq and could be creating proxies to actively fight us, thinking that they can keep us distracted while they try to build WMD and set up [the Mahdi Army] to act like Lebanese Hezbollah in Iraq.'
There was no question there and then on the ground in Iraq that Iran was a very dangerous enemy. There should not be any question about that now, either. And the failure of the Obama administration to come to grips with that reality is making the task of defeating the so-called Islamic State more difficult, indeed, more likely to be impossible, every day.
In 2007, there were 180,000 American troops in Iraq. Under Petraeus's oversight, U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the elite forces responsible for hunting terrorists around the world, was divided into two task forces. Task Force 16 went after al Qaeda in Iraq, the group that eventually would spawn ISIS, while Task Force 17 was dedicated to 'countering Iranian influence,' chiefly by killing or capturing members of Iraq's Shia militias, though in some cases, it even arrested operatives of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF) who were arming and supervising those militias' guerrilla warfare against coalition troops.
At one point, in the summer of 2007, Petraeus concluded that the Mahdi Army, headed by the Shiite demagogue Muqtada al-Sadr, posed a greater 'hindrance to long-term security in Iraq' than al Qaeda did. As recounted in The Endgame, Michael Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor's magisterial history of the Second Iraq War, two-thirds of all American casualties in Iraq in July 2007 were incurred by Shiite militias. Weapons known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, were especially effective against the U.S. forces. They were Iranian designed and constructed roadside bombs that, when detonated, became molten copper projectiles able to cut through the armor on tanks and other vehicles, maiming or killing the soldiers inside.
So it came as a surprise to many veterans of the war when Secretary of State John Kerry, asked in December what he made of the news that Iran was conducting airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq, suggested 'the net effect is positive.' Similarly, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, formerly the commander of the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad, told reporters last month, 'As long as the Iraqi government remains committed to inclusivity of all the various groups inside the country, then I think Iranian influence will be positive.'
Whatever the Iraqi government says it is committed to, 'inclusiveness' is not what's happening on the ground.
Iran's influence in Iraq since ISIS sacked Mosul last June has resulted in a wave of sectarian bloodletting and dispossession against the country's Sunni minority population, usually at the hands of Iranian-backed Shia militia groups, but sometimes with the active collusion of Iraq's internal security forces. Indeed, just as news was breaking last week that ISIS's five-month siege on the Syrian-Turkish border town Kobane finally had been broken, Reuters reported that in Iraq's Diyala province at least 72 'unarmed Iraqis' , all Sunnis, were 'taken from their homes by men in uniform; heads down and linked together, then led in small groups to a field, made to kneel, and selected to be shot one by one.'
Stories such as these out of Iraq have been frequent albeit under-publicized and reluctantly acknowledged (if at all) by Washington both before and after Operation Inherent Resolve got underway against ISIS.
For instance, 255 Sunni prisoners were executed by Shia militias and their confederates in the government's internal security forces between June 9 and mid-July, according to Human Rights Watch. Eight of the victims were boys below the age of 18. 'Sunnis are a minority in Baghdad, but they're the majority in our morgue,' a doctor working at Iraq's Health Ministry, told HRW at the end of July. Three forensic pathologists found that most of the victims in Baghdad were shot clean through the head, their bodies often left casually where they were killed. 'The numbers have only increased since Mosul,' one doctor said.
Since then, however, U.S. warplanes have provided indirect air support to Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Kataib Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist entity, both of which were at the vanguard of the troops that ended ISIS's months-long siege of Amerli, a Shia Turkomen town of about 15,000, in November 2014. These militias have also been seen and photographed or videoed operating U.S. Abrams tanks and armored vehicles intended for Iraq's regular army, which means that there are now two terrorist organization, Sunni ISIS and Kataib Hezbollah, armed with heavy-duty American weapons of war.
The Hezbollah-ization of Iraq's military and security forces has been overseen by the IRGC-QF, another U.S.-designated terrorist entity, which is headed by Maj. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, a man personally sanctioned by the Treasury Department for his role in propping up Bashar al Assad's mass murderous regime in Syria.
Suleimani is the same Iranian operative Petraeus once called 'evil'  because of his well-documented role orchestrating attacks on U.S. servicemen. The most notorious episode happened in Karbala in 2007, in a raid that was carried out by Asaib Ahl al-Haq and resulted in the death of five G.I.s One of the founders of this militia and a main perpetrator of the attack, Qais al Khazali, was captured by coalition forces and subsequently released in a prisoner swap for a British hostage in 2009. Today, al Khazali moves freely around Iraq, dressed in battle fatigues, commanding Asaib militants.
Indeed, Iraq's Interior Ministry gained notorious reputation in the last decade for being a clearinghouse for sectarian bloodletting. During the civil war in the mid-2000s, its agents, nominally aligned with U.S. troops, moonlighted as anti-Sunni death squads that functioned with the impunity of officialdom. The ministry also ran a series of torture-prisons in Baghdad, such as Site 4, where, according to a 2006 U.S. State Department cable, 1,400 detainees were held in 'in squalid, cramped conditions,' with 41 of them bearing signs of physical abuse. Ministry interrogators, the cable noted, 'had used threats and acts of anal rape to induce confessions and had forced juveniles to fellate them during interrogations.'
Needless to add, Badr has hardly mended its ways with the passage of time and the exit of U.S. troops from Iraq. Today, the militia has been accused of 'kidnapping and summarily executing people, Â [and] expelling Sunnis from their homes, then looting and burning them, in some cases razing entire villages,' in the words of Human Rights Watch's Iraq research Erin Evers, who added for good measure that the current White House strategy in Iraq is 'basically paving the way for these guys to take over the country even more than they already have.'
Consider this week's blockbuster disclosure that the CIA and Israel's Mossad collaborated in the 2008 assassination of one of Suleimani's other high-value proxies, Hezbollah security chief Imad Mughniyeh. In close collaboration with Iran, Mughniyeh coordinated suicide attacks ranging from the 1983 U.S. Marine barracks bombings in Beirut to the blowing up of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires in 1994. Mughniyeh also was linked to the kidnapping of several Europeans and Americans in Lebanon in the 1980s, including CIA Station Chief William Buckley, believed to have died in 1985 after months of torture by Iranian and Iranian-trained interrogators.
So it is not surprising that Langley wanted Mughniyeh dead. What is suprising is that according to the Washington Post the CIA and Mossad had 'a chance to kill' the Iranian master-spy Suleimani as he strolled through Damascus with Mughniyeh in 2008, but passed it up because of potential collateral damage. No doubt U.S. satellite surveillance is currently tracking Suleimani's plain-sight movements in Iraq and Syria, too.
Last month, an Israeli attack in the Syrian sector of the Golan Heights killed Mughniyeh's son, Jihad, who was said to have been an 'intimate' protege of Suleimani.
'Iran has used Iraq as a petri dish to grown new Shia jihadist groups and spread their ideology,' says Phillip Smyth, an expert on Shia militias. By Smyth's count, there are more than 50 'highly ideological, anti-American, and rabidly sectarian' Shia militias operating in Iraq today, and recruiting more to their ranks, all with the acquiescence of the central government.
More recently, Iraq's Vice President for Reconciliation, Ayad Allawi, a secular Shia who once served as the interim prime minister, told the same broadsheet that pro-government forces have been ethnically cleansing Sunnis from Baghdad. This is a starker admission of the atrocities being committed by America' s silent partner than currently is on offer by the State Department or Pentagon, and many Sunnis now suspect Washington of full collaboration with Tehran, whatever the protestations to the contrary.
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2. Sept. 11's '20th hijacker' claims members of Saudi royal family were al-Qaida donors
Saudi Embassy dismisses Zacarias Moussaoui's allegations
http://news.yahoo.com/moussaoui-20th-hijacker-911-saudi-royal-princes-testimony-143814464.html
Extracts:
Zacarias Moussaoui, a former al-Qaida operative sometimes referred to as the "20th hijacker" involved in the 9/11 attacks, claims that members of the Saudi royal family supported the terrorist organization.
In sworn testimony given last October from a Colorado federal prison where he is serving a life sentence, Moussaoui alleged that in the late 1990s he was directed by Osama bin Laden to create a digital database of al-Qaida's donors.
"Sheikh Osama wanted to keep a record who give money ... who is to be listened to or who contributed to the jihad," Moussaoui said, according to a transcript of the deposition filed in federal court in New York on Monday and published Wednesday by the New York Times.
Among them: Prince Turki Al-Faisal, then the Saudi intelligence chief; Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the longtime Saudi ambassador to the United States; and Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, a prominent billionaire investor.
Moussaoui, Â a French national who was detained in Minnesota weeks before 9/11 and pleaded guilty to six terror-related charges in 2005, also alleged that he once delivered letters from bin Laden to King Abdullah's brother, Prince Salman, and other members of the Saudi royal family. Abdullah died last month, and Salman was installed as king.
In a statement, the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington dismissed Moussaoui's allegations.
In 2004, the 9/11 Commission concluded there was no evidence that the Saudi government funded al-Qaida.
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3. U.S. Seen in Middle East as Ally of Terrorists
by Khaled Abu Toameh
Source: gatestoneinstitute.org.    Article date: February 4th, 2015
http://unitycoalitionforisrael.org/uci_2014/?p=13225
Extracts:
While the Egyptian government has been waging war on the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic radical groups, the U.S. Administration and some Europeans are continuing to hamper efforts to combat terrorism.
Many Egyptians and moderate Arabs and Muslims were shocked to hear that the U.S. State Department recently hosted a Muslim Brotherhood delegation. They were equally shocked when an EU court decided to remove Hamas from the bloc's list of terror groups.
The State Department's hosting of the Muslim Brotherhood leaders has outraged Egypt's President Abdel Fattah Sisi, who has been waging a relentless war against the organization over the past year.
'If the White House is out to offend some of its closest Arab allies and is intent on heightening their suspicions, it's succeeded,' wrote Middle East expert Linda S. Heard. 'If there's a plot, then it's unfolding,' she added. 'Just two days after the controversial visit, the Brotherhood called for a war against their fellow Egyptians.'
The Egyptian government condemned the hosting of the Muslim Brotherhood officials by the State Department. Egyptian Foreign Minister Same Shoukry denounced the State Department's move, saying, 'The Muslim Brotherhood is not a political party, but according to the Egyptian law, which must be respected, it is designated as a terrorist organization.'
The timing of the meeting between State Department officials and Muslim Brotherhood leaders could not have been worse for many Egyptians, Â it took place shortly after Islamist terrorists killed 31 soldiers and wounded 45 others in a series of attacks on Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.
Although the Islamic State terror group took credit for the attacks, Sisi held the Muslim Brotherhood responsible. 'Egypt is waging a war against the strongest clandestine group over the past two decades,' he said. 'This organization has secretive arms, secretive thoughts and secretive forums.'
Egyptian columnists and newspaper editors have also attacked the U.S. Administration for its ties with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Another Egyptian columnist, Mohamed Salmawi, launched a scathing attack on the U.S. Administration; he accused it of deception and double standards. He said that the meeting between U.S. officials and Muslim Brotherhood leaders exposes the U.S. Administration's deceptive policy toward Islamic terror groups.
'The U.S. Administration says it is combating these groups at home while it is supporting them abroad,' Â Salmawi wrote. 'This meeting has grave indications because it shows that Washington has not abandoned its policy of double standards toward Islamic terrorism.
Salmawi also took issue with the U.S. Administration for turning a blind eye to the hypocrisy and double talk of the Muslim Brotherhood. 'One of the leaders of Muslim Brotherhood, for example, told the world that he welcomes the Jews of Israel,' he added. 'But this same leader announced in front of the Egyptian people that they should march in the millions to liberate Jerusalem from the occupation of the Jews. [Ousted President] Mohamed Morsi, before his election, described these Jews as descendants of apes and pigs. In English, the Muslim Brotherhood says one thing and in Arabic something completely different.'
Said Lindawi, a prominent Egyptian international affairs expert, said that the meeting of the Muslim Brotherhood leaders with State Department officials means that the Obama Administration has given the organization a green light to carry out terrorist attacks against Egypt.
By embracing the Muslim Brotherhood, the U.S. Administration has sent the wrong message to moderate Arabs and Muslims. This is a message that says that Washington believes that there are good terrorists and bad terrorists.