... Syria. As the situation kept deteriorating, at some points in 2012 the CIA began helping U.S. allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar vet and identify rebels moderate enough to recommend them for military support and Obama secretly authorized both covert ... ... conflict—it killed about 1,400 people—and confirmed publicly by several major Western governments (including that of the United States), Human Rights Watch, and later by the United Nations. As to who was the culprit, as I pointed out at the time, ...
... what will America do now?
Going forward, here’s what we can expect:
1.) America will try very hard to distance itself from the Gulf.
It’s amazing that it’s taken us so long to realize how much our money going into Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other Gulf states comes back to haunt us: though Joe Biden recently got in trouble for saying so, support for ISIS and other Islamic extremists and terrorists from very wealthy individuals motivated by the Saudi state-sponsored and ever-present-throughout-the-Gulf ...
... Obama has just made a rather lackluster speech to build popular support for an unpopular war that is trending toward becoming popular, which means congressional support for more defense spending.
Nobody can even agree on the name of the group the United States coalition is fighting. Obama calls it “ISIL”. The New York Times and USA Today call it “ISIS.” Others just call it “IS.”
Is’s all part of what an essay by Brookings, who work in Qatar among the private citizens who fund ISIS, calls the the “new Middle East Cold War”
ISIS, ISIL, IS has nothing to do with the Cold War. Use of the construct by the Brookings expert reflects a defensive position and the concern for fear ...
