The 40,000 Yazidis stranded on the mountain. That was the pretext for US military intervention in Iraq, as set out by President Obama last Thursday. The air war was commenced, and officials were talking up sending ground forces for “rescue” operations as recently as this afternoon.
But a funny thing happened when the US “advisers” got to Mount Sinjar. There weren’t 40,000 starving Yazidis stranded there. In fact, the indications are that there never were, and the Pentagon quickly dropped the “rescue” plan.
What happened? It turns out there were Yazidis already living on the top of the mountain, and while there were some refugees who fled up there, the humanitarian crisis was never what it was made out to be, and an influx of Kurdish PKK fighters from Syria quickly broke the overblown siege.
The Pentagon is trying to manage the narrative by simply saying the rescue mission “appears unnecessary,” but the fact that it was used to start a US war remains, and the State Department is doubling down, trying to spin the lack of a crisis as vindication of the war.
“President said we’re going to break the siege of this mountain, and we broke that siege,” bragged Brett McGurk on Twitter, neglecting to mention that the siege was largely mythical in the first place. The Pentagon wasn’t nearly so daring as to take credit for solving a crisis that didn’t exist.
Instead, the Pentagon is combing the countryside of northwestern Iraq, where their former casus belli was before it so rudely evaporated, and looking for other crises that they might use as a justification for continuing and escalating the war.
Officials seem to be totally ignoring the obvious question: where the false story of a massive Yazidi crisis came from in the first place. In that regard, there are no easy answers, though the obvious beneficiaries of the new US war are the Kurdish Peshmerga, which are suddenly getting flooded with Western arms to fight ISIS, and eventually, to fuel their secession.
The administration just seems grateful that they got an excuse to start a war they’ve been chomping at the bit for, and even if the excuse didn’t exactly pan out, they’ll quickly find another.
Holy moly, we've got us a 'Gulf of Tonkin Incident' all over again.
So the whole thing turned out to be fake.
Another Gulf of Tonkin Incident indeed.
Evenworse in Britain where they have not bothered to deny it at all !
And the servile media played along broadcasting the lies without question as always.
But it's soooo much work to actually investigate for themselves. I'm sure super-reporter Richard Engel was just down the road with his steno pad and loves to ride along with the HEROES…
Time to let Iraq go.
I bet they are getting their intelligence from Mossad, and you should see the conservatives getting their underwear in a bunch about genocide, humanitarian crisis, ethnic cleansing. Wonder what they were saying about the four hundred plus children killed in Gaza by Israel.
Surely there are still other whales-to-save? To rescue from the Japs? State could still rescue drones from wedding parties, for example…
How ignorant can you be!!! I am an American Yazidi and my entire town of 450 families fled to the mountains leaving everything behind. My sister and five children were stranded for more than three days. Not to mention all of the beheadings of men and children and rape of women and girls. Shame on you for publishing such article. And I cannot believe that there are people in the US that are believing such article. ISIS must be stopped or else they’ll be at our doorsteps next.
Then it must be true… I hear there'll be an opening at State when the press chase Ms. Harf from the room in tears when no one believes the talking points she throws out for daily consumption.
Sounds like you need to go back home and defend your family, instead of asking the American tax payer to do it.
What air force or navy will ISIS use to "be at our doorsteps next"? A sane immigration policy, which would have kept you out as well, would end any threat from ISIS.
They'll be at doorsteps how?
The problem with being the major power is almost everyone with a conflict on the boil wants to get you involved. The Kurds needed weapons so how do they get them, and some air cover?
Gee, I have no idea.
At least the Pentagon went public and said it was apparently a local ruse and the 'emergency' has been much overblown.
How many times now is it that some MENA region rebel army has cynically screamed to get a western intervention air force along with western funded bombs, missiles and fuel for it, to strike their enemies?
Wasn't it the FSA (after Libyan rebels got it) who did it the last time? And is the FSA not the same group who had the gall to directly threaten the West that if they did not get western air cover, and protection from Damascus's air force, that they would invite in and join forces with Islamic extremists instead?
And did they not do exactly that, and then many of the former FSA combined forces with the extremists to generate ISIL / Islamic State?
So now the Kurds want a bite of the free weapons cherry and a free air force, while having already split off from Iraq?
Did not the former FSA recipients do the very same thing to Syria's Capital? How is Bagdad different again? The Kurds won't combine against Bagdad though will they?
All these waring rebel groups are taking us for dull fools, it's a smorgasbord of free weapons for the squeakiest wheel, so they can then ratchet up their separatist war-lord ways.
And are any of these groups worth 2-cents, let alone worth saving via giving them billions in free Western paid for weapons and a free air force cover service for their little sand pit? I guarantee you that as soon as they're 'saved', they'll start fighting with someone else.
Seen Libya lately? Did you notice that just yesterday they had their hands out once again begging for more aid and military support to go fight someone 'badderer' than they?
What a bonanza, eh? What a lark! Not one of these groups seems to want peace and not one of them is willing to do what's necessary to obtain it and maintain it, and we are paying their bills and being their sugar daddy.
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Kurdistan Workers' Party
Designation as a terrorist group
The PKK has been placed on the terrorism blacklists of Turkey and a number of allied governments and organisations.
The military alliance NATO has declared the PKK to be a terrorist group; Turkey has been a member of NATO since 1952, and fields the group's second-largest armed contingent. Closely tied to NATO, the European Union—which Turkey aspires to join—officially lists the PKK as having "been involved in terrorist acts" and proscribes it as part of its Common Foreign and Security Policy. First designated in 2002, the PKK was ordered to be removed from the EU terror list on 3 April 2008 by the European Court of First Instance on the grounds that the EU failed to give a proper justification for listing it in the first place. However, EU officials dismissed the ruling, stating that the PKK would remain on the list regardless of the legal decision. Most European Union member states have not individually listed the PKK as a terrorist group.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_Workers%27…
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So, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks makes-good, via some secret never-defined redemptive act of goodness, so all is forgiven and waved aside, and now they get free western bombing services and home delivered free advanced British arms and training?
Is that any wiser than arming and training the former FSA/ISIL militants and rebels? Did they too stop making war at some point? Is the way to hell always have to be paved with our good intensions?
I forget sometimes that black is now the new white and up is the new down and bankrupt is the new rich, and torturing innocent people is the new standard in moral decency.
Heck, I must this all wrong, after all my reference points for sanity and basic good judgement have all been systematically undermined and erased before my very eyes, so most likely it's just me who thinks these arrangements reek of suppurating despair after a haughty stroll into a minefield?
State Department quite adept at solving phony crises, not so good at real crises; EG; Clueless Kerry on Gaza slaughter. "Brits not even denying phony crisis"; if the Brits had to deny each story they release, each story would consist of; Part 1; the story; Part 2; the denial.
The story never made much sense to me. Every report quoted a different number of refugees. At least one report on CBC Radio One claimed 100,000 people were dying of thirst and hunger, but never bothered to tell us where they all came from.
I also thought it strange that no TV news reports showed aerial footage of tens of thousands of dying refugees. I should think that would be front and center of a campaign to sell another "humanitarian" war.
And why would refugees flee to a mountain with no food, water, or shelter? Were they herded there by ISIS? If so, wouldn't that have been loudly proclaimed by the war mongers?
We can't be responsible for the consequences if you insist on keeping up this critical thinking.
Maybe they'll find Saddam's long lost WMD on Mt Sinjar too.
They know they're up there but the goats ate the treasure map.
Many good comments, and good article here. I too was highly skeptical of the rescue of refugees on the mountain top thesis. Seemed very theatrical but without any independent verification. Why and how would so many people flee to the top of a barren or nearly so mountaintop? That's more people than all but the largest US college football stadiums hold. How would so many peasant villagers congregate in an inhospitable place?
I've seen a few TV shots of refugees, but not thousands, and that could be from anywhere. The reporting (such as it was) was mere echo chamber stuff. With google and live sat imaging, why didn't we see aerial photos of these huddled masses?
Why no doubt some of these people are likely to be persecuted, or have been, the narrative of this fake crisis seemed all too familiar. Just another set of lies to dupe the masses into supporting some new military attack…
This whole narrative looks like a ruse to get US troops into Iraq. The war planners couldn't be bother to put any effort into concocting a credible story, and just fed this one to the media. The USG is totally unconcerned about any blowback. They create a minimal narrative cover that the media picks up and runs with, even alternative media like AntiWar.com got sucked in. The American public hears "humanitarian aid" and "Iraq" through all the other noise, and the government implicitly gets a pass to get involved in another war.
What this and other events underscores, is that we have entered a world of international lawlessness. Major powers and minor powers with major power backing act with impunity, committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, financial crime …
The world has become a very dangerous place.