Turkey wants to see Syrian Head Bashir Assad removed from power. Turkey made the decision in 2012 to put it’s full support behind the Syrian Rebels who evolved into what is now ISIS. These facts will not easily disappear just because they are uncomfortable admissions for the current U.S. administration.
Turkey, under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not a free western secular nation, nor do they draw distinct seperation from ISIS objectives in that regard. The same Turkey who would not participate in the rescue of the Yazidi people in the Northern Iraq mountains, is the same Turkey who will not commit to the elimination of ISIS.
Western media attempt to obfuscate the NATO country of responsibility under the auspices of their reluctance being attached to Turkish prisoners being held captive by ISIS fighters. But honest reviews of the behavior of Turkey in relationship to Syria would evidence a greater alignment with ISIS than any moderate Islamic entity. It was Turkey who coordinated the arming of the ISIS jihadists in 2012/2013 and coordinated the flow of U.S. weapons in that regard.
This ideological alignment is why Turkey refused to join a communique with Arab nations to distance themselves from ISIS and the Sunni extremists, and it is not without notice that Erdogan and President Obama hold similar views and internal dispositions.
JIDDA, Saudi Arabia — Arab nations vowed on Thursday to “do their share” to confront and ultimately destroy the Sunni extremist group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The promise came after the nations’ foreign ministers met here behind closed doors with Secretary of State John Kerry.
A joint communiqué issued by the United States and 10 Arab states endorsed a broad strategy to stop the flow of volunteers to ISIS, curtail its financing and provide aid to communities that had been “brutalized” by the militants. (more…)

Tonight at 9:00pm Eastern President Obama will deliver a speech to the nation outlining his strategy to defeat a rising Islamic terror threat known as ISIS. Oddly some of the speech has already been leaked by the White House:
UPDATE – FULL SPEECH VIDEO:

FULL WH TRANSCRIPTION OF SPEECH HERE

“With a new Iraqi government in place, and following consultations with allies abroad and Congress at home, I can announce that America will lead a broad coalition to roll back this terrorist threat. Our objective is clear: we will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy.

I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.

Rather, it is a “counter-terrorism campaign” that “will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out ISIL wherever they exist using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground,” he will say. It’s a strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, and is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years”.

It was only a few weeks ago, August 9th, when President Obama told the New York Times it was/is “a fantasy” to support “moderates” within Syria and expect them to be able to defeat radical Sunni Islamists.  Now, it appears, he is reversing course and saying the previous “fantasy” will be his specific approach. (more…)

– You Just Can’t Make This Stuff Up –

Obama’s Syria / ISIS  Plan:

√ Step One – Tell New York Times :  “It’s always been a fantasy,” he said, “this idea that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth.”

√ Step Two – Go Golfing (vacation)

√ Step Three –  Interrupt vacation – Tell Media it’s horrible to see U.S. Journalists beheaded.

√ Step Four – More Golf.

√ Step Five –  End vacation – Announce you have no plan/strategy to deal with ISIS in Syria.

√ Step Six  – Conduct Polling

√ Step Seven – Apologize for golfing while U.S. journalists are beheaded by ISIS, and announce goal to develop a plan to deal with ISIS in Syria – details later.

√ Step Eight –  Review Polling Data – Keep results super secret.

√ Step Nine –  Call in MSNBC contributors to assemble sales pitch to deal with ISIS.

√ Step Ten  –  Construct marketing plan to sell the previously dismissed approach.  We will now “provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth.” in Syria.

√ Step Eleven –  Call in congressional leadership to inform them his MSNBC team has “got this” plan, are ready to sell it, and he doesn’t need congress. (link)

Step Twelve – Tell American electorate in prime-time speech to the nation how providing arms to the “moderate Syrian forces” will insure success in Syria.

(more…)

We pointed this out last night and apparently it was so brutally obvious even Andrea Mitchell had to admit it:

The bigger story is actually who is not present. Within the list of the absent you can identify President Obama’s approach. (more…)

The key issue is not that ISIS is using U.S. made weapons.  Given ISIS geographic conquests it would be expected, vis-à-vis Iraq, they were able to capture weapons and armament.     No, it’s the *type* of weapons, specifically boxed M16’s, which identifies the covert shipments to Syria we outlined within the Benghazi Brief.   

In 2012 those small arms were shipped to Syria as a result of President Obama’s authorization.  Saudi Arabia and Qatar were providing the financing, Turkey provided an initial storage base near Adana where the nerve center for supporting what became ISIS was set up.   The UN peacekeeper Kofi Annan was pulled out of Syria, and U.S. weapons were poured in.

On September 5th 2012 a Libyan flag ship called Al Entisar docked in the Turkish port of Iskenderun, it carried small arms and rockets from the U.S. originally destined for the Free Syrian Army.  However, by that point the FSA had collapsed and most of the leaders defected to join what is now ISIS.

(Via Raw Story) Islamic State fighters appear to be using captured US military issue arms and weapons supplied to moderate rebels in Syria by Saudi Arabia, according to a report published on Monday.

The study by the London-based small-arms research organisation Conflict Armament Research documented weapons seized by Kurdish forces from militants in Iraq and Syria over a 10-day period in July.

The report said the jihadists disposed of “significant quantities” of US-made small arms including M16 assault rifles and included photos showing the markings “Property of US Govt”. (more…)

Not to put too fine a point on it, yet knowing President Polling is going to deliver a magnanimous prime-time speech in a few days, the Syrian conversation with Chuck Todd needs, or, well, deserves a little e-x-p-a-n-s-i-o-n.

Obama will give a speech to explain the United States’ "game plan" in the fight against #ISIS. http://t.co/HdZ7A9m4qZ pic.twitter.com/zwe45HazQY

— CNN International (@cnni) September 8, 2014

During a rather revealing part of the interview between Chuck Todd and President Obama the specific issue of Syria came up surrounding ISIS.   Viewers should note in the entire dialogue it was not Obama who brought up Syria, it was Chuck Todd. (Video @9:20)
Mr. Todd even seemed a little perplexed with having to do it; albeit reluctantly, as if he knew he needed to. If Chuck Todd’s new role on MTP is to attempt credibility retention he held no choice, he had to bring up the geography.  Todd specifically needed to ask, because Dear Leader avoided mentioning Syria throughout the previous ten minutes:

@09:25 President Obama: “the boots on the ground have to be Syrian”.
Chuck Todd interjects “but WHO”?
President Obama has publicly committed himself to the removal of Syrian head Basher Assad.  His public proclamations to Assad’s removal make getting cooperation from the Syrian National Army a little disingenuous amid the option scale.
Additionally we know the Free Syrian Army (FSA) is little more than a corrupted fractured contingent of ne’er-do-wells, most of which defected to join ISIS.  And then we have Dear Leader’s previous statements saying to the New York Times’ Tom Freidman it is “fantasy” to think “an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth” could battle “a well-armed state backed by Russia, backed by Iran, [and] a battle-hardened Hezbollah.”
So naturally Chuck Todd had to ask the question: Whose boots does Obama plan on supporting?
To wit POTUS puts three groups on the table: The Syrian national army, ISIS, and some weirdly defined “Moderate Opposition” – and then says we should support the moderate opposition who are “pinched between the Syrian Army and ISIS“.

STOP  

{{Insert Scratching Record Sound}}}

Let’s just imagine a REAL REPORTER was sitting in that seat across from POTUS. (more…)

At this point we choose not to share opinion of this. However, this is an official U.S. Government Agency broadcast – what are your thoughts?

Full story on the State Department Campaign – CLICK HERE

Unfortunately such is the state of current affairs. A prominent Egyptian official is telling his constituency, and the world, the reason Egypt and U.S. relations are so poor is because President Obama and John Kerry demand the Severe Islamists be included in policy decisions.
Egypt categorically rejects the considerations of radical Islamic extremism, and will not bow to pressure from the United States to be more accommodating toward the radicals within the Muslim Brotherhood.
Fatah el-Sisi is going to be speaking to the U.N. General Assembly in New York on September 25th. I’m thinking that David Cameron and President Obama should be forced to sit in the front row and listen to a real leader who understands the extremist problem.

(EGYPT) Nabil Fahmy, the former Egyptian foreign minister and a previous ambassador to the US, said that relations between Cairo and Washington remain strained because of the US’s insistence of allowing Islamists to participate in the political process.
In an Egyptian television interview on Sunday evening, Fahmy said that “the Americans have not appropriately learned the lesson of dealing with terrorism” and that they “contacted us constantly in order to integrate streams of political Islam into the political process,” the Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry al-Youm reported.
He added, however, that Egypt “pursued the will of the people” and did not give in to outside pressure. (more…)

The American Thinker article cited below is a keenly well aware and insightful dot connection. The basic question throughout the article is: “was President Obama the origin of the Arab Spring”?
Those of you who have followed our mid-east research know full well we believe the answer is a resounding yes.
However, it has only been in the past fourteen months we have been able to understand the entire scope, the larger and specific intent, of the non-spoken agenda which began unfolding immediately after the 2009 Obama Cairo speech.
Most Refuge Readers can review the summary discussion and see a the larger encapsulated insight. And, as you know, we make no apologies for our support of Egypt’s Fatah el-Sisi who is indeed a secular leader within a modern Islamic nation.

What sets el-Sisi apart from the other mid-east leaders is his core principle, backed up by his actions – not words, that affirm the freedom rights of minority citizens being protected.
Simultaneously, he’s not blind to the radicalization that can exist within contingencies of minority beliefs who use democrat principles of minority protections to advance religious hatred.
That keen insight and solid understanding is what empowers el-Sisi’s brilliant yet precarious needle threading.
In essence Prime Minister David Cameron of the U.K. has recently become awakened to this very principle.
Islamists will use minority protections as hosts – just like cancer cells use healthy organs to grown to their destructive size. Once cancer cells reach a point of critical mass, they no longer need to hide within healthy organisms; they expand exponentially. The end result is a dying organ as the cancer metastasizes throughout the host. This is the same process radical islamists use to hide within a host society while slowly deconstructing the elements which make the society viable in the first place. (more…)

With the anniversary of September 11th 2012 Soon Upon Us – By Request, Here’s The Full Benghazi Brief

Grab a cup of coffee because it’s a long read with over 350 citations and reference source links for conformational material. We think you’ll get hooked and find 95% of your Benghazi questions answered. And if you can find a factual flaw I’ll buy the coffee.. SD

We know from the Bret Baier interview with Hillary Clinton that she was physically located at her 7th floor office in Washington DC on the night of the attack. Unfortunately we also know during the November 2012 Thanksgiving holiday a mysterious fire took place in that building. Well, actually directly above her exact office – cause undetermined.
A “fire” which preceded an unfortunate slip and fall for the Secretary, resulting in a concussion, which led to the discovery of a blood clot, that ultimately delayed her congressional testimony before a Senate Hearing into the events of the night in question.
We know the Libyan uprising began on February 10th of 2011, and we also know that sometime around the end of February 2011 President Obama signed a presidential directive authorizing the State Dept and CIA to begin a covert operation to arm the Libyan “rebels”.
We also know of a Second Presidential Finding Memo authorizing additional CIA covert action in 2012, this time in Syria. However, unlike the 2011 Libyan operation we do not know the operational name of the second action in 2012 Syria.
We know the Libyan “rebels” were positioned in two strategic places. Benghazi, and the port city of Darnah, both located in Northeastern Libya.
We know this 2011 Libyan covert operation came to be known as “Operation Zero Footprint“, and fell under the military command authority of NATO not (important to repeat), NOT, the U.S. Military. (more…)