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The United States has attempted to claim that the only way to stop the so-called "Islamic State" in Syria and Iraq is to first remove the government in Syria. Complicating this plan are developments in Libya, benefactor of NATO's last successful regime change campaign. In 2011, NATO armed, funded, and backed with a sweeping air campaign militants in Libya centered around the eastern Libyan cities of Tobruk, Derna, and Benghazi. By October 2011, NATO successfully destroyed the Libyan government, effectively handing the nation over to these militants. 

What ensued was a campaign of barbarism, genocide, and sectarian extremism as brutal in reality as what NATO claimed in fiction was perpetrated by the Libyan government ahead of its intervention. The so-called "rebels" NATO had backed were revealed to be terrorists led by Al Qaeda factions including the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The so-called "pro-democracy protesters" Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was poised to attack in what NATO claimed was pending "genocide" were in fact heavily armed terrorists that have festered for decades in eastern Libya. Almost immediately after NATO successfully destroyed Libya's government, its terrorist proxies were mobilized to take part in NATO's next campaign against Syria. Libyan terrorists were sent first to NATO-member Turkey were they were staged, armed, trained, and equipped, before crossing the Turkish-Syrian border to take part in the fighting. 

CNN in an article titled, "ISIS comes to Libya," claims: The black flag of ISIS flies over government buildings. Police cars carry the group's insignia. The local football stadium is used for public executions. A town in Syria or Iraq? No. A city on the coast of the Mediterranean, in Libya.  Fighters loyal to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria are now in complete control of the city of Derna, population of about 100,000, not far from the Egyptian border and just about 200 miles from the southern shores of the European Union.  The fighters are taking advantage of political chaos to rapidly expand their presence westwards along the coast, Libyan sources tell CNN. Only the black flag of Al Qaeda/ISIS has already long been flying over Libya - even at the height of NATO's intervention there in 2011.  ISIS didn't "come to" Libya, it was always there in the form of Al Qaeda's local franchises LIFG and AQIM - long-term, bitter enemies of the now deposed and assassinated Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi.

House Speaker John Boehner and his cronies removed North Carolina Congressman Walter Jones from the House Financial Services Committee in late 2012, as part of a purge that removed Republicans who were not all in for Wall Street -- and for Boehner's brand of "service" to the industries that are supposed to be regulated by Congress -- from the one panel with the power to hold bankers and brokers to account. But Jones, who had opposed bank bailouts and favored Wall Street regulation, did not go quietly. He spoke up about the purge and made little secret of his sense that -- though he had split with Boehner on a number of issues -- his biggest "sin" in the eyes of the party leadership was his refusal to bow to the demands of big campaign donors. “This whole place is all about money. Money is more important than policy,” complained Jones, who has in recent years co-sponsored most major pieces of campaign-finance reform legislation in the House -- including a call for a constitutional amendment designed to restore the ability of federal, state and local officials to regulate campaign spending.

The congressman's bluntness did not go over well with the masters of the universe on Wall Street. So, this spring, they set out to purge Walter Jones from Congress altogether. They found a consummate DC insider with close ties to the financial-services industry, Taylor Griffin, and filled the challenger's campaign treasury with PAC checks from J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, as well as political powerbrokers like former Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour and Wayne Berman of the Blackstone Group. It did not stop there. Jones' independence extended far beyond debates over Wall Street bailouts and regulation. The Republican is a social and economic conservative -- make that a social and economic very conservative -- but he has repeatedly broken with the party establishment on issues of war and peace, privacy rights, trade policy and budgets. He even voted against proposals by the darling of Wall Street and the party establishment, Congressman Paul Ryan

Bush administration aides and apologists rushed in with public statements and "independent" expenditures to attack Jones for his opposition to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for his refusal to go along with moves that might lead to wars with Iran and other countries. Former Bush White House spokesman Ari Fleischer gave his enthusiastic backing to Griffin, as did former national security adviser Juan Zarate. Sarah Palin, one of the party's most consistent militarists, came in big for Griffin, who hailed her as an "old friend." A neo-conservative group, the Emergency Committee For Israel, spent at least $250,000 on ads that claimed Jones "preaches American decline." What Jones actually said was that, “Lyndon Johnson’s probably rotting in hell right now because of the Vietnam War, and he probably needs to move over for Dick Cheney.” At the same time, the wealthy champions of Ryan's crony-capitalist approach to budgeting were in with big money for TV ads and direct mail from the "Ending Spending Action Fund" -- a super PAC backed by billionaire businessman Joe Ricketts. By a lot of DC measures, Jones should have been doomed.

In the days following the crash of Russian Metrojet Flight 9268, which mounting evidence suggests was felled by an ISIS bomb, many U.S. intelligence and security officials weren’t panicking about the so-called Islamic State unleashing a new campaign of attacks on civilian airliners. Instead, they were wondering how the bombing might hurt Vladimir Putin, and potentially help the United States. Ever since Putin started dropping bombs on militants in Syria, officials have privately been arguing that the Russian leader committed a major strategic blunder, and that his intervention in Syria would weaken both his military and his reputation and likely ignite a backlash from Islamist militants, who have attacked inside Russia in the past.One U.S. intelligence official, speaking prior to the airliner crash, called the Russian campaign in Syria “Putin’s folly.”Now, six U.S. intelligence and military officials told The Daily Beast that they hoped an ISIS attack on Russian civilians would force Putin to finally take the gloves off and attack the group, which the U.S. has been trying to dislodge from Iraq and Syria for more than a year, without success.

“Now maybe they will start attacking [ISIS],” one senior defense official smugly wondered last week. “And stop helping them,” referring to ISIS gains in Aleppo that came, in part, because the group took advantage of Russian strikes on other rebels and militant outfits.Since the plane crashed, Russia has struck two ISIS-controlled areas in Syria: Raqqa and Palmyra.“I suppose now he’ll really let ISIS have it. This should be fun,” one senior intelligence official told The Daily Beast.

Canada’s electronic surveillance agency is covertly monitoring vast amounts of Canadians’ emails as part of a sweeping domestic cybersecurity operation, according to top-secret documents. The surveillance initiative, revealed Wednesday by CBC News in collaboration with The Intercept, is sifting through millions of emails sent to Canadian government agencies and departments, archiving details about them on a database for months or even years. The data mining operation is carried out by the Communications Security Establishment, or CSE, Canada’s equivalent of the National Security Agency. Its existence is disclosed in documents obtained by The Intercept from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The emails are vacuumed up by the Canadian agency as part of its mandate to defend against hacking attacks and malware targeting government computers. It relies on a system codenamed PONY EXPRESS to analyze the messages in a bid to detect potential cyber threats.

Last year, CSE acknowledged it collected some private communications as part of cybersecurity efforts. But it refused to divulge the number of communications being stored or to explain for how long any intercepted messages would be retained. Now, the Snowden documents shine a light for the first time on the huge scope of the operation — exposing the controversial details the government withheld from the public. Under Canada’s criminal code, CSE is not allowed to eavesdrop on Canadians’ communications. But the agency can be granted special ministerial exemptions if its efforts are linked to protecting government infrastructure — a loophole that the Snowden documents show is being used to monitor the emails. The latest revelations will trigger concerns about how Canadians’ private correspondence with government employees are being archived by the spy agency and potentially shared with police or allied surveillance agencies overseas, such as the NSA. Members of the public routinely communicate with government employees when, for instance, filing tax returns, writing a letter to a member of parliament, applying for employment insurance benefits or submitting a passport application.

Chris Parsons, an internet security expert with the Toronto-based internet think tank Citizen Lab, told CBC News that “you should be able to communicate with your government without the fear that what you say … could come back to haunt you in unexpected ways.” Parsons said that there are legitimate cybersecurity purposes for the agency to keep tabs on communications with the government, but he added: “When we collect huge volumes, it’s not just used to track bad guys. It goes into data stores for years or months at a time and then it can be used at any point in the future.” In a top-secret CSE document on the security operation, dated from 2010, the agency says it “processes 400,000 emails per day” and admits that it is suffering from “information overload” because it is scooping up “too much data.” The document outlines how CSE built a system to handle a massive 400 terabytes of data from Internet networks each month — including Canadians’ emails — as part of the cyber operation. (A single terabyte of data can hold about a billion pages of text, or about 250,000 average-sized mp3 files.)

An email hacked from the private Gmail account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, is raising new questions about when President Barack Obama found out about Clinton’s private email server. In a March 7, 2015 interview with CBS News’ senior White House correspondent Bill Plante, Obama said he hadn’t been aware of Clinton’s use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state until “the same time everybody else learned it through news reports.”

On Tuesday, WikiLeaks’ highlighted a March 7, 2015 email found in its archives of Podesta’s emails, writing: “Clinton campaign panics after Obama misleads public over Clinton emails.”

In the original email sent shortly after the CBS interview aired, Josh Schwerin, spokesperson for Hillary For America, Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, alerted Jennifer Palmieri, the campaign’s director of communications, about Obama’s statements. Schwerin wrote: “Jen you probably have more on this but it looks like POTUS just said he found out HRC was using her personal email when he saw it in the news.” The email also includes a link to a March 7, 2015 tweet from Katherine Miller, a political editor at Buzzfeed. “I have some questions here,” she wrote about Obama’s statement.

Just months after the FBI launched an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, Democratic Party operatives made a generous donation to the political campaign of the wife of the FBI official who would eventually oversee that investigation. The FBI ultimately cleared Clinton of any criminal wrongdoing, creating the impression that the Democrats may have bribed the Bureau to keep their nominee out of trouble. According to a report published Monday by The Wall Street Journal, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a long-time associate of the Clintons, helped funnel over $675,000 of donations into the 2015 Virginia state Senate campaign of Jill McCabe, the wife of Andrew McCabe, who is now the deputy director of the FBI. Of the total, $467,500 came directly from Common Good VA, McAuliffe’s PAC, while an additional $207,788 came out of the coffers of the Virginia Democratic Party, over which McAuliffe exerts almost total control. Devlin Barrett, a Wall Street Journal reporter who covers the Justice Department, noted that Andrew McCabe was promoted as deputy director after the donations were made. He added: “Mr. McAuliffe and other state party leaders recruited Dr. McCabe to run, according to party officials. She lost the election to incumbent Republican Dick Black.” According to Barrett, the donations represented about one-third of Jill McCabe’s total campaign war chest.

A man with a kid in arm runs towards the camera. The kid's face is heavily colored, but it looks otherwise fine. On the lower left we see the back of a man with a "White Helmets" logo on his vest. Dust in the background. Always dust or smoke. A bunch of men looking very busy but are they actually doing anything? That would be a lucky by-chance photo shot for any normal photographer. Even in country where rubble from a fresh bombing may be around some near corner. But this is a typical "White Helmets rescue kid" propaganda picture. The photo above is, except for maybe the old rubble, likely completely staged. There the 43 similar pictures below the fold to demonstrate that. Just ask yourself: Could all these very similar by-chance pics, taken within about a year, be real? Really?

The pictures above all look astonishingly similar: rubble, dust or rather haze from a smoke grenade in the background, dusted/greasepaint bloody kids who have no visible trauma, the rescuer with the kid moving towards the camera. Dramatic, high quality scenes which do get distributed by news agencies and published again and again by major "western" media. Isn't it an amazing fortune that so many kids get rescued alive by the "White Helmets", without any serious wounds visible, just moments after bomb impacts? This week after week? With all the same attributes in each picture? No photo editor at any of the big media ever wondered about that? These staged photos are part of the war propaganda against the Syrian people and their government. The "White Helmets" take and distribute these photos. They also distribute lots of "kids rescued from rubble" videos. We wrote about those a month ago: Other typical features of these movies, see this one, are smoke (grenades) in the streets, dramatic but small open fires nearby, dust or some red color on the children's face or arms. The camera is often used in a hectic, intentionally amateurish first person view, a style extensively developed in the 1999 horror clip Blair Witch Project. Sometimes sounds of additional "bomb impact" bangs or screaming/wailing women are added. The "White Helmets" are part of the (anti-)Syria Campaign. "Kid rescued from rubble" is their standard shtick. They are financed with some $60+ million from your taxes by the U.S., the UK and other governments. Such money will buy a lot of good cameras and props and will pay for many actors and extras.

The Syria Campaign was created by Purpose Campaigns LLC. The company fabricates and runs for you any world-wide "grass root" movement you would like. With Purpose LLC or other such companies involved, big dollars will buy you big effects. How about an automated Twitter campaign to spread anti-Shia sectarianism? Someone paid for it and here it is. The "White Helmets" campaign demonstrates the amazing manipulation potential such companies and their high paying customers have.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has been accused of being a traitor by activists after publicly rejecting calls for a boycott of Israel.His unambiguous statement, made in the aftermath of Nelson Mandela's death, has fuelled a bitter debate on the legitimacy and efficacy of sanctions over Israel's treatment of Palestinians.However, Abbas distinguished between Israel's borders and its settlements in Palestinian territories. "We do not support the boycott of Israel. But we ask everyone to boycott the products of the settlements."His comments infuriated the boycott movement, which after Mandela's death has been boosted by comparisons with the anti-apartheid campaign in South Africa and the decision last week of the American Studies Association (ASA) to boycott Israeli academic institutions.The boycott movement claims it is on a roll, citing a recent EU prohibition against giving grants or funds to bodies with links to settlements, a warning by the British government that firms risk damaging their reputations if they have dealings with Israeli enterprises across the Green Line, and the decision by a Dutch company to sever links with the Israeli water company, Mekorot.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, set up in 2005 by more than 170 Palestinian civil society organisations, expects next year "to cross even higher thresholds in its drive to isolate Israel, just as South Africa was isolated under apartheid", said Omar Barghouti, one of its founding members.The ASA's decision was "fresh evidence that the BDS movement may be reaching a tipping point on college campuses and among academic associations", he added. Two other US academic bodies – the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association and the Association of American Asian Studies – have also backed the boycott movement.

Samia Botmeh, a lecturer at Birzeit university in the West Bank and a leading member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, said restricting a boycott to settlements was to focus on the consequences, rather than the origins, of the occupation.

Liberal billionaire Tom Steyer, a friend and donor to Obama and Clinton, is hiring an army of more than 50 political operatives in a major campaign to help Democrats get control of the U.S. House this year and “remove Trump from power.” “Need to Impeach” Founder Steyer, 60, announced Thursday that he is hiring a team of 50 political and communications strategists to coordinate his campaign. While Steyer launched his $20 million campaign to impeach Trump last year, he has now promised to double that amount and also spend $30 million on 2018 House races through his super PAC, NextGen America. “The team, including 50 staff members, is adding thousands of new supporters to the impeachment movement each day, creating a digital army of activists who are mobilizing to take back the House of Representatives in the 2018 election and remove Trump from power,” read a Thursday statement from “Need to Impeach.” Separately, House Democrats announced Thursday that they plan to target as many as 101 Republican-held congressional seats this year, the most in a decade.

Nonetheless, even Obama’s former top adviser, David Axelrod, has condemned Steyer’s campaign to impeach Trump, saying the effort is too much, too soon. In November, Axelrod tweeted: “Steyer impeachment ads seem to me more of a vanity project than a call to action. It is – at least at this point – an unhelpful message. If imepachment becomes a political tool, it will be as damaging to our democracy as the degradations @realDonaldTrump has inflicted on it.”

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has said his organisation is preparing to publish more emails Hillary Clinton sent and received while US secretary of state. Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is under FBI investigation to determine whether she broke federal law by using her private email in sending classified information. A new WikiLeaks release of Clinton emails is likely to fan a controversy that has bedevilled her campaign and provide further ammunition for Donald Trump, her Republican presidential rival, who has used the issue to attack her. Assange’s comments came in an interview on ITV’s Peston on Sunday. “We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton … We have emails pending publication, that is correct,” Assange said.He did not specify when or how many emails would be published. WikiLeaks launched a searchable archive in March of 30,322 emails and email attachments sent to and from Clinton’s private email server while she was secretary of state. The 50,547 pages of documents are from 30 June 2010 to 12 August 2014, and 7,570 of the documents were sent by Clinton, who served as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. Assange, a trenchant Clinton critic, said she was receiving constant personal updates on his situation.

Assange said it was highly unlikely that the US attorney general, Loretta Lynch, would indict Clinton. “She’s not going to indict Hillary Clinton, that’s not possible. It’s not going to happen. But the FBI can push for concessions from a Clinton government,” he said.

His attacks on Clinton may be dismissed as highly partial, but the email controversy continues to dog her. An internal report last month found she had broken several government rules by using a private server rather than more secure official communication systems. The 78-page investigation by the inspector general of the state department singled out several previously unknown breaches while Clinton was secretary of state, including the use of mobile devices to conduct official business without checking whether they posed a security risk.

As Russia continues airstrikes in Syria, a fight is brewing between members of Congress and U.S. intelligence agencies over what lawmakers were told about the Russian military operations, and when.The House Intelligence Committee, which oversees the CIA and other spy agencies responsible for tracking the Russian military buildup in Syria, is “looking at possible problems in the timely provision of information to Congress,” a congressional staff member told The Daily Beast. Three other officials confirmed that the inquiry—which is not a formal investigation—is underway and that lawmakers have been talking to intelligence officials about whether their reports to Congress accurately predicted when the Russian air strikes would begin and that they would target rebel groups fighting the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

U.S. intelligence officials fired back that they had provided lawmakers with warnings about Russia’s intentions to begin military operations in Syria, including in the weeks before airstrikes began in late September. “Any suggestion that the intelligence community was surprised by Russia’s military support to the Assad regime is misleading,” a senior intelligence official told The Daily Beast. Members of Congress had access to intelligence reports on the movements of Russian aircraft into Syria as well as the buildup of ground troops and could read them anytime they chose, another official said.

“For several years, the Intelligence Community has provided regular assessments of Russia’s military, political, and financial support to the [Assad] regime,” Brian Hale, a spokesperson for the Director of National Intelligence, said in a statement. “In recent months, the Intelligence Community tracked and reported Moscow’s determination to play a more direct role in propping up Assad’s grip on power, including its deployment of offensive military assets to Syria. While these events unfolded quickly, the IC carried out its responsibilities with equal agility.”The pushback from officials underscored how sensitive the agencies are to allegations of “intelligence failures” and in particular being behind the curve about Russia’s international ambitions and the rise of extremists groups in the Middle East. The Defense Department is also investigating allegations that senior intelligence officials at the military’s Central Command manipulated intelligence reports to paint a rosy picture about the U.S.-led air campaign against the so-called Islamic State, widely known as ISIS, in Iraq and Syria.

Pentagon officials have concluded that hundreds more trainers, advisers and commandos from the United States and its allies will need to be sent to Iraq and Syria in the coming months as the campaign to isolate the Islamic State intensifies. In meetings with President Obama’s national security team in recent weeks, military officials have told the White House that they believe they have made significant progress in the fight against the Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria, administration officials said. But to deal a lasting blow to the extremist Sunni militancy, also known as ISIS and ISIL, they believe that additional forces will be needed to work with Iraqi, Kurdish and Syrian opposition fighters on the ground in the two countries. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage U.S. Relies Heavily on Saudi Money to Support Syrian RebelsJAN. 23, 2016 U.S. Revamping Rebel Force Fighting ISIS in SyriaSEPT. 6, 2015 Obama Administration Ends Effort to Train Syrians to Combat ISISOCT. 9, 2015 In the past, the Pentagon’s requests for additional troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan have been met with skepticism by Mr. Obama, and his aides have said he has resented what he has regarded as efforts to pressure him. But the rise of the Islamic State has alarmed the White House, and a senior administration official said Thursday that the president is willing to consider raising the stakes in both Iraq and Syria.

A top Army commander on Monday ordered that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl face a court-martial on charges of desertion and endangering troops stemming from his decision to leave his outpost in 2009, a move that prompted a huge manhunt in the wilds of eastern Afghanistan and landed him in nearly five years of harsh Taliban captivity. The decision by Gen. Robert B. Abrams, head of Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., means that Sergeant Bergdahl, 29, faces a possible life sentence. That is a far more serious penalty than had been recommended by the Army’s investigating officer, who testified at the sergeant’s preliminary hearing in September that prison would be “inappropriate.”

According to Sergeant Bergdahl’s defense lawyers, the Army lawyer who presided over the preliminary hearing also recommended that he face neither jail time nor a punitive discharge and that he go before an intermediate tribunal known as a “special court-martial,” where the most severe penalty possible would be a year of confinement.

Monday’s decision rejecting that recommendation means that Sergeant Bergdahl now faces a maximum five-year penalty if ultimately convicted by a military jury of desertion, as well as potential life imprisonment on the more serious charge of misbehavior before the enemy, which in this case means endangering the troops who were sent to search for him after he disappeared.Sergeant Bergdahl has been the focus of attacks by Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign, and it is far from clear that General Abrams’s decision will temper their criticisms.Donald J. Trump, for one, has called the sergeant a “traitor” who should be executed, while Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has vowed to hold hearings if the sergeant is not punished.

President-elect Donald J. Trump said Friday that he was likely to abandon the American effort to support “moderate” opposition groups in Syria who are battling the government of President Bashar al-Assad, saying “we have no idea who these people are.”In an interview with The Wall Street Journal that dealt largely with economic issues, including his willingness to retain parts of the Affordable Care Act, he repeated a position he took often during his campaign: that the United States should focus on defeating the Islamic State, and find common ground with the Syrians and their Russian backers.“I’ve had an opposite view of many people regarding Syria,” Mr. Trump told The Journal. “My attitude was you’re fighting Syria, Syria is fighting ISIS, and you have to get rid of ISIS. Russia is now totally aligned with Syria, and now you have Iran, which is becoming powerful, because of us, is aligned with Syria.”His comments suggest that once Mr. Trump begins overseeing both the public support for the opposition groups, and a far larger covert effort run by the Central Intelligence Agency, he may wind down or abandon the effort. But there are in fact two wars going on simultaneously in Syria.

One is against the Islamic State, in which the United States is supporting 30,000 Syrian-Kurdish and Syrian-Arab fighters, who last weekend announced they were opening a new phase of the battle, beginning to encircle the ISIS capital in Raqqa. There are roughly 300 United States Special Operations forces on the ground assisting these militia. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The second effort is in support of rebels fighting Mr. Assad. The C.I.A. covert program is by far the largest conduit of support, providing antitank missiles to rebels fighting the government. That is the program that Mr. Trump seems most intent on ending. If the United States pursues that line, “We end up fighting Russia, fighting Syria,” Mr. Trump told The Journal.The argument for ending the support may be bolstered by the fact that, as a matter of survival, those opposition groups have entered into battlefield alliances with the affiliate of Al Qaeda in Syria, formerly known as Al Nusra. This has had the effect of allowing Mr. Assad and Russia to argue that they are attacking Al Qaeda, and the United States should aid them in that effort. Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged that argument during his ultimately failed effort to reach a deal for a cease-fire and an ultimate settlement.Mr. Trump’s the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend logic is consistent with what he said during the campaign. “I’m not saying Assad is a good man, ‘cause he’s not,” he told The New York Times in an interview in March, “but our far greater problem is not Assad, it’s ISIS.”

But it also takes a position that will gratify President Vladimir V. Putin, because it suggests that rather than pressure Russia to end its support of Mr. Assad, a Trump administration will get out of Mr. Putin’s way.

The intelligence pros said killing certain ISIS leaders might not diminish the group and that airstrikes might not be working. The bosses didn’t like those answers—not at all.Senior intelligence officials at the U.S. military’s Central Command demanded significant alterations to analysts’ reports that questioned whether airstrikes against the so-called Islamic State widely known as ISIS were damaging the group’s finances and its ability to launch attacks. But reports that showed the group being weakened by the U.S.-led air campaign received comparatively little scrutiny, The Daily Beast has learned. Senior CENTCOM intelligence officials who reviewed the critical reports sent them back to the analysts and ordered them to write new versions that included more footnotes and details to support their assessments, according to two officials familiar with a complaint levied by more than 50 analysts about intelligence manipulation by CENTCOM higher-ups.

In some cases, analysts were also urged to state that killing particular ISIS leaders and key officials would diminish the group and lead to its collapse. Many analysts, however, didn’t believe that simply taking out top ISIS leaders would have an enduring effect on overall operations. “There was the reality on the ground but it was not as rosy as [the leadership] wanted it to be,” a defense official familiar with the complaint told The Daily Beast. “The challenge was assessing whether the glass was half empty, not half full.”Some analysts have also complained that they felt “bullied” into reaching conclusions favored by their bosses, two separate sources familiar with analysts’ complaints said. The written and verbal pressure created a climate at CENTCOM in which analysts felt they had to self-censor some of their reports.

Army General Lloyd Austin came under withering bipartisan criticism on Wednesday when he testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that after spending at least $43 million over a 10-month period, the U.S. had trained only nine fighters to confront ISIS in Syria. Senators were dumbfounded that the nearly year-long effort had produced such paltry results, calling it “a joke” and “an abject failure.”

While Russia is withdrawing most of its forces from Syria, they could be deployed there again in a matter of hours if such a need arises, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated. He added that the Russian bases in Syria are well-protected.

“Of course, if such a need arises, Russia can, in several hours, build up its forces in Syria to a size capable of dealing with an escalating situation and use the entire range of means at its disposal,” Putin said.“We wouldn’t like that. A military escalation is not our choice. We hope the parties involved would show common sense and that both the government and the opposition will stick to the peace process,” he added.Putin was summarizing the results of the Russian five-month-long anti-terror campaign in Syria at a solemn ceremony in Moscow.

The Russian president said Moscow was open in saying from the start of the operation that it was a limited campaign with a set deadline.“We have created the conditions for a peace process. We have established constructive and positive cooperation with the US and a number of other countries, with respectable opposition forces in Syria, which really want to end the war and find a political solution of the conflict. You, Russian soldiers, paved that way,” Putin told the Russian military personnel who took part in the campaign.He added that the Syrian Army, with Russia’s support, can now hold out against terrorist forces and take back terrorist-controlled territories.

Because it relatively poorly understood and under-reported in comparison to other more notorious terrorist groups, the Turkish-Uyghur terror network is perhaps more dangerous and of greater utility to the United States and its allies presently versus their increasingly exposed Al Qaeda legions. The genesis of modern Turkish-sponsored terrorism, like Al Qaeda, also originates from the Cold War. Part of the wider stay-behind networks known as “Gladios” created by NATO to allegedly fight Soviet forces in the event of a Soviet invasion and occupation of Western Europe, these terrorist groups were instead turned against the population of NATO member states and engaged in violence, terrorism, mass murder, and assassinations. A group of ultra-nationalists known as the “Grey Wolves” would be cultivated for this task within Turkey. In a 1998 LA Times article titled, “Turkish Dirty War Revealed, but Papal Shooting Still Obscured,” it would be reported that (emphasis added):

In the late 1970s, armed bands of Gray Wolves launched a wave of bomb attacks and shootings that killed hundreds of people, including public officials, journalists, students, lawyers, labor organizers, left-wing activists and ethnic Kurds. During this period, the Gray Wolves operated with encouragement and protection of the Counter-Guerrilla Organization, a section of the Turkish Army’s Special Warfare Department. Working out of the U.S. Military Aid Mission building in Ankara, the Special Warfare Department received funds and training from U.S. advisors to establish “stay behind” squads of civilian irregulars who were set up to engage in acts of sabotage and resistance in the event of a Soviet invasion. Similar Cold War counter-guerrilla units were created in every member state of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But instead of preparing for foreign enemies, these operatives often set their sights on domestic targets. Another LA Times piece titled, “Turkey’s Gray Wolves Nip at Heels of Power,” would reveal the extent of the Grey Wolves reign of terror (emphasis added): At the height of the Cold War, the army used the Gray Wolves as a violent counterweight to Turkish Communists. The party’s coffers swelled with secret contributions from the government.  By the late 1970s, the Gray Wolves had spun out of state control. Their paramilitary wing fought a campaign against leftist rivals that killed nearly 6,000 people. Ali Agca, who shot Pope John Paul II in a 1981 assassination attempt, is alleged to have been affiliated with the party.

The article would also reveal that despite this horrific past, the Grey Wolves and their political allies were still a very potent political force in Turkey. Today, the Grey Wolves function as a paramilitary wing of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which holds the third largest number of seats in Turkey’s parliament. As troubling as this should be to Turks who may find themselves on the receiving end of a politically powerful terrorist organization apparently tolerated, even sponsored by NATO for decades and in particular, supported by the United States, the Grey Wolves’ terrorism has branched out far beyond Turkey’s borders. NATO Gladio Goes Global  According to a 2009 New American Media report titled, “Behind the China Riots — Oil, Terrorism & ‘Grey Wolves’,” Turkey’s Grey Wolves have established militant training camps as far as China’s western Xinjiang region, helping produce violent terrorists who have carried out a series of deadly attacks across China. The report would state (emphasis added):

But now that Mr. Netanyahu has won after aggressively campaigning against a Palestinian state and Mr. Obama’s potential nuclear deal with Iran, the question is whether the president and prime minister can ever repair their relationship — and whether Mr. Obama will even try.On Wednesday, part of the answer seemed to be that the president would not make the effort. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage Win in Israel Sets Netanyahu on Path to Rebuild and Redefine GovernmentMARCH 18, 2015 Palestinian Leaders See Validation of Their Statehood EffortMARCH 18, 2015 Netanyahu Soundly Defeats Chief Rival in Israeli ElectionsMARCH 17, 2015 News Analysis: Deep Wounds and Lingering Questions After Israel’s Bitter RaceMARCH 17, 2015 In strikingly strong criticism, the White House called Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign rhetoric, in which he railed against Israeli Arabs because they went out to vote, an attempt to “marginalize Arab-Israeli citizens” and inconsistent with the values that bind Israel and the United States. The White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, told reporters traveling with Mr. Obama on Air Force One on Wednesday that Mr. Netanyahu’s statement was “deeply concerning and it is divisive and I can tell you that these are views the administration intends to communicate directly to the Israelis.”

And with Mr. Netanyahu’s last-minute turnaround against a Palestinian state alongside Israel, several administration officials said that the Obama administration may now agree to passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution embodying principles of a two-state solution that would be based on the pre-1967 lines between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip and mutually agreed swaps.Most foreign policy experts say that Israel would have to cede territory to the Palestinians in exchange for holding on to major Jewish settlement blocks in the West Bank.

Such a Security Council resolution would be anathema to Mr. Netanyahu. Although the principles are United States policy, until now officials would never have endorsed them in the United Nations because the action would have been seen as too antagonistic to Israel.Continue reading the main story “The premise of our position internationally has been to support direct negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” a senior White House official said. “We are now in a reality where the Israeli government no longer supports direct negotiations. Therefore we clearly have to factor that into our decisions going forward.”

I’ve been on the road for days, and a few more Clinton emails have thudded down from the Wikileaks heavens revealing deliberations about Israel inside the Clinton braintrust. Some day we will put together a leatherbound edition with morocco covers of Clinton’s Israel emails, but for now we’re just trying to chase the latest. And these three are stunners because they baldly expose the importance of Israel to donors and the party establishment. First, there was this amazing email thread among top strategists from May 2015 about revising Clinton’s talking points in her speeches at rallies and fundraisers in the weeks before she officially launched her candidacy. You just gotta read these comments as they fall. The conversation started out on a bunch of different talking points, but everyone quickly turned to Israel, and the public and private messaging.

Jake Sullivan, foreign policy aide: “Would add a sentence on standing up for our allies and our values, including Israel and other fellow democracies, and confronting terrorists and dictators with strength and cunning.” Mandy Grunwald, media advisor: “I thought this was largely for her TP [talking points] with public events not fundraisers. Do we need Israel etc for that?” Sullivan: “We def need the etc. I think good to have Israel too.” Joel Benenson, pollster and chief strategist: “Why would we call out Israel in public events now? The only voters elevating FP at all are Republican primary voters.” Robby Mook, campaign manager: “I’m w Joel. We shouldn’t have Israel at public events. Especially dem activists.” Sullivan: “I won’t fall on sword over Israel but we need more than climate in that paragraph.” Dan Schwerin, speechwriter: “What about this as a base, and then she can drop in Israel when she’s with donors: “Fourth and finally, we have to protect our country from the global threats that we see, from terrorists to dictators to diseases – and the ones that are still over the horizon. We have to assert confident American leadership to shape global events rather than be shaped by them. That includes taking on global warming and those who continue to deny that it exists. And it means always standing up for our allies and our values, especially our fellow democracies.” Mook: “I’m fine with that.” Benenson: “Good.”

That’s a smoking gun email. It says just what Stephanie Schriock of Emily’s List and J.J. Goldberg said at J Street earlier this year, the role of Jewish donors on the Democratic side is “gigantic” and “shocking.” And those Jewish donors are seen as pro-Israel all the time, by folks who study politics. But meantime, Robby Mook says just what we’ve been saying here for a couple of years: the lobby has lost the Democratic base on Israel. Young Dems, people of color, women — they’re more sympathetic to Palestinians than Israelis. Don’t mention Israel with dem activists. So the system really is rigged. They don’t want to hear from the people on this.

The day after U.S. President Donald Trump initiated construction of a border wall and proposed a 20 percent tax on Mexican imports, Mexicans turned to social media to launch their own boycott campaign against U.S. goods. On Thursday the hashtags #AdiosStarbucks (“Goodbye Starbucks”) and #AdiosProductosGringos (“Goodbye Gringo Goods”) began trending in Mexcio as thousands promised to buy local and boycott U.S. consumer goods in response to Trump’s anti-Mexican policies. “We’re a country that has everything, we are rich in meats, all of the basic goods we have in Mexico,” Maria Guadalupe told EFE. “We don’t need to import anything.”

Financial advisor Jesus Bravo said that while Mexico’s commercial relations with the U.S. are important, there’s no reason why Mexicans can’t look to deepen ties with other countries, adding that a boycott campaign which hurts U.S. companies could force Trump to realize that, “commercial wars only end with agreements, with good policies.”

The restaurant chain Papa Guapa announced Thursday that they will stop using U.S. products and base their menu on Mexican produced goods “to reactivate a self-sustaining economy.” Days earlier several large Mexican corporations and municipalities announced they would no longer buy vehicles from companies which leave Mexico under pressure from Trump.