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The United States special forces currently stationed in Iraq are engaged in fighting against the Islamic State group, several Kurdish Iraqi fighters have told the British newspaper The Guardian, contradicting President Barack Obama’s assertion that no U.S. personnel were in direct combat with the extremist group. According to The Guardian, none of the fighters with Kurdish Iraqi army, known as Peshmerga, were willing to publish their photos or video footage for fear of dismissal, but they allowed the newspaper's crew to watch the video and see the images on their cellphones.

A 29-year-old peshmerga fighter named Peshawa showed a video through his cellphone filmed just after dawn on Sept. 11, showing four Western-looking men in a battle against the Islamic State group in Iraq. “These are the Americans,” Peshawa said referring to U.S. soldiers. He added that such footage and other asserts that Washington has been involved directly in the fight against the Islamic State group.

President Obama announced in June last year the deployment of 3,500 U.S. special forces to Iraq in order to “advise and train” Kurdish fighters in their fight against the extremist group, according to the Pentagon, but denied that this was part of a boots-on-the-ground operation. “The joke going around here is there are no boots on the ground because they’re all wearing sneakers,” an unnamed western volunteer with the peshmerga, told the Guardian. Major Loqman Mohammed with the peshmerga force showed another video, dated 11 June,  where a U.S. soldier was  seen wearing the uniform and badge of a Kurdish counter-terrorism unit and walking with two dozen peshmerga fighters after several hours of fighting with Islamic State group militants in the village of Wastana and Saddam settlement.

This last month has seen a tidal wave of western propaganda regarding the “Siege of Madaya” in Syria. Some of the mainstream media efforts have centered around the use of old or fake photo images of starving children and residents in the small Syrian town of Madaya.The object of this western government-media-human-rights ring is to provide PR backing for ‘regime change’ in Syria by blaming this humanitarian disaster on Syrian president Bashar al Assad. Here are just a few exhibits of mainstream deception…

Terrorists in Syria, primarily ISIL are changing smuggling routes for oil from Syria to Turkey in an attempt to avoid Russian bombs. The Russian air forces in Syria have destroyed over 2,000 tanker trucks used for smuggling oil since Russia launched its air campaign in Syria. 

The Chief of Staff of the Russian General Staff Main Operations Department Sergei Rudskoy said on Friday that terrorist linked smugglers are changing logistics and laying new routes for crude oil smuggling to avoid Russian air strikes. The smuggling route is running from Syria’s oil-rich Deir Ez-Zor, controlled by the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS / ISIL Daesh) through the border settlements of Guna and Tell-Sfuk in Syria towards the communities of Mosul and Zaho in Iraq, he added. Convoys of tanker trucks reportedly follow the shortest route towards the Syrian-Iraqi border, which they cross in the area of the settlement of Tell-Sfuk. Rudskoy stressed that Turkey remains the final destination point of oil smuggling adding that oil is smuggled into Turkey through the checkpoint in the area of Zaho. Russian reconnaissance reportedly detects almost 12,000 fuel tanker trucks on the Turkey-Iraq border, especially in the area of the settlement of Zaho on the Turkey-Iraq border. The Zaho area is part of the eastern route used by the Islamic State terrorist organization for illegal oil trade, added Rudoski. The Chief od Staff of the Russian General Staff Main Operations Department noted:

“As of the moment of surveillance in the Zaho area, there were 11,775 fuel tanker trucks on both sides of the Turkish-Iraqi border. As many as 4,530 of them were on the territory of Turkey and 7,245 in Iraq.” Rudskoi presented enlarged photos of the area by grids, noting that specifically, there are 3,850 fuel tanker and large-duty trucks in Grid A on the Turkish side, with 200 of them moving towards the Iraqi border and the rest amassed in parking areas. Russia’s reconnaissance has also spotted 980 fuel tanker trucks in Iraq and 680 in Turkey in Gird B in close vicinity to the border, Rudskoi said. About another 4,900 fuel tanker trucks are amassed in Grid B and about 1,350 in Grid D, the chief of the Russian General Staff Main Operations Department said, adding that: “It is necessary to note that this checkpoint is used to transport oil extracted both in Iraq and Syria,” he added. Oil tank trucks continue moving from Syria to Turkey According to the official, heavy-load vehicles continue to move from Syrian territory to Turkey. “Oil tank trucks continue crossing the Syrian-Turkish border,”

The Syrian Arab Army and National Self Defense Troops, supported by the Syrian and Russian Air Forces established full control over the city of Palmyra and the ancient UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Syrian Arab Army on Sunday, announced that it had established full control over the city of Palmyra in Homs province, central Syria. The military wrested control over the city and the UNESCO World Heritage Site from the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS / ISIL / Daesh). The Army also established control over the Palmyra Airport east of the city and the Palmyra orchards southwest of the city and south of the ancient ruins and the citadel. Sporadic fighting in isolated pockets continues as the military is seeking out fighters ISIL units that either were left behind when the main body of the insurgents fled the city, or others who stayed behind to slow down the advance of the army. Engineers are in the torturous process of sweeping the entire region for mines, improvised explosive devices, and other hazards that were left behind.

Palmyra is of significant strategic importance for the Syrian  military. The region between Palmyra and the “ISIL capital” Raqqa consists largely of open desert land, dotted by individual hills. The theater gives the advantage to the Syrian Army, for several reasons. The Syrian Arab Army has superior artillery power, especially after Syria received new Russian artillery pieces.

Thirteen years ago, the intelligence community concluded in a 93-page classified document used to justify the invasion of Iraq that it lacked "specific information" on "many key aspects" of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs.But that's not what top Bush administration officials said during their campaign to sell the war to the American public. Those officials, citing the same classified document, asserted with no uncertainty that Iraq was actively pursuing nuclear weapons, concealing a vast chemical and biological weapons arsenal, and posing an immediate and grave threat to US national security. Congress eventually concluded that the Bush administration had "overstated" its dire warnings about the Iraqi threat, and that the administration's claims about Iraq's WMD program were "not supported by the underlying intelligence reporting." But that underlying intelligence reporting — contained in the so-called National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that was used to justify the invasion — has remained shrouded in mystery until now.

The CIA released a copy of the NIE in 2004 in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, but redacted virtually all of it, citing a threat to national security. Then last year, John Greenewald, who operates The Black Vault, a clearinghouse for declassified government documents, asked the CIA to take another look at the October 2002 NIE to determine whether any additional portions of it could be declassified.The agency responded to Greenewald this past January and provided him with a new version of the NIE, which he shared exclusively with VICE News, that restores the majority of the prewar Iraq intelligence that has eluded historians, journalists, and war critics for more than a decade. (Some previously redacted portions of the NIE had previously been disclosed in congressional reports.)

For the first time, the public can now read the hastily drafted CIA document [pdf below] that led Congress to pass a joint resolution authorizing the use of military force in Iraq, a costly war launched March 20, 2003 that was predicated on "disarming" Iraq of its (non-existent) WMD, overthrowing Saddam Hussein, and "freeing" the Iraqi people.A report issued by the government funded think-tank RAND Corporation last December titled "Blinders, Blunders and Wars" said the NIE "contained several qualifiers that were dropped…. As the draft NIE went up the intelligence chain of command, the conclusions were treated increasingly definitively."

The Obama administration is now accusing Russia of cyber-crime and trying to disrupt the US presidential election. The claim is so far-fetched, it is hardly credible. More credible is that the US is reeling from Putin’s stunning humiliation earlier this week. Since June, US media and supporters of Democrat presidential contender Hillary Clinton have been blaming Russian state-sponsored hackers for breaking into the Democratic party’s database. It is further alleged that Moscow is stealthily trying to influence the outcome of the election, by releasing damaging information on Clinton, which might favor Republican candidate Donald Trump. Russia has vehemently denied any connection to the cyber-crime charges, or trying to disrupt the November poll. Now the Obama administration has stepped into the fray by openly accusing Russia. «US government officially accuses Russia of hacking campaign to interfere with elections», reported the Washington Post. This takes the row to a whole new level. No longer are the insinuations a matter of private, partisan opinion. The US government is officially labelling the Russian state for cyber-crime and political subversion.

Predictably, following the latest allegations, there are calls among American lawmakers for ramping up more economic sanctions against Russia. While US intelligence figures are urging for retaliatory cyber-attacks on Russian government facilities. Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov derided the US claims as «rubbish». He noted that the Kremlin’s computer system incurs hundreds of hacking attempts every day, many of which can be traced to American origin, but Moscow doesn’t turn around and blame the US government for such cyber-attacks. There are several signs that the latest brouhaha out of Washington is a bogus diversion. As with previous Russian-hacker claims by the Democrats and US media, there is no evidence presented by the Obama administration to support its grave allegations against the Russian government. Assertion without facts does not meet a minimal standard of proof. When reports emerged in June – again through the Washington Post – that the Democrat National Committee (DNC) was hacked by Russian agents, the allegation relied on investigations by a private cyber security firm by the name of CrowdStrike. The firm is linked by personnel to the NATO-affiliated, anti-Russian think tank Atlantic Council. Again no verifiable evidence was presented then, just the word of a dubious partisan source.

Back then the Russian scare story, for that’s what it was, served as a useful diversion from far more important issues. Such as the 19,000 emails released from the DNC database showing that the party chiefs had preordained Clinton’s presidential nomination over her Democrat rival Bernie Sanders. Much-vaunted «US democracy» was exposed as a fraud, and so the Washington establishment quickly went into damage-limitation mode by smearing Russia. It was the whistleblower site Wikileaks, run by Australian journalist Julian Assange, that released the embarrassing emails. It had nothing to do with Russia. Assange has since hinted that his source was within the Democrat party itself. This is where it gets really explosive. Assange has vowed to release more emails that will prove that Clinton as Secretary of State back in 2011-2012 masterminded the supply of weapons and money to Islamist terror networks in Libya and Syria for the objective of regime change. Furthermore, Assange says that the emails prove that Clinton lied under oath to Congress when she denied in 2013 that she was had any involvement in facilitating arms to the jihadists. Assange has said that Wikileaks is going to publish the incriminating emails on Clinton’s alleged gun-running to terrorists this month. If the evidence stands up, Clinton could be prosecuted for perjury as well as treason in aiding and abetting official terrorist enemies of the US.

While Trump's Twitter activity from yesterday continues to drive media and political outrage, especially in the UK, and with the focus of the frenzied coverage being that the president retweeted a far-right U.K. leader's "anti-Muslim videos", there is actually something much more interesting concerning the context to the “Muslim Destroys A Statue Of Virgin Mary” video. That particular video shared by the president is from 2013 and shows a Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander named Omar Gharba destroying a Virgin Mary statue as the group invaded a Syrian Christian town. In a geopolitical and deeply ironic twist demonstrating the absurdity and contradictions of US foreign policy, the radical Islamist commander was actually supported by the United States at the time as part of the FSA, which the media and US government deemed "moderate".  So a sitting US president shared a video which reveals a Syrian "rebel" fighter committing war crimes who was part of one of the very groups backed by the CIA as official US policy under the Obama administration. Of course it is likely that Trump himself is not fully aware of this, yet the astounding geopolitical irony in this should not be missed, even as public outrage is reduced to merely discussing "anti-Muslim bigotry" and whether or not Trump is being "presidential".

nd while multiple media outlets, for example NPR, continue to claim the videos are "unverified" and "have no context" or are of "murky origins" (as the Washington Post wrongly claims), this particular video especially was widely shared and discussed among the world's top Syria analysts and Middle East scholars at the time. The video was taken in 2013 and shows the Wahhabi cleric and FSA commander smashing the Christian statue in connection with the US-backed group's prior attack on Yakubiya in Idlib province. The book, The Islamic State: Combating The Caliphate Without Borders, authored by counter-terrorism experts Yonah and Dean Alexander, gives his full name as Omar Gharba al-Khojji and like vast numbers of FSA fighters he eventually jointed ISIS (some online sources alternately list his name as Omar Raghba).

akubiyah was a mostly Christian village principally comprised of Armenian Orthodox and Catholic churches which after being taken over by the FSA was subsequently held by ISIS. The local Christians saw no distinction between the invading FSA and ISIS fighters as it was primarily the US-backed FSA which began massacring Christians and looting churches. Even the US government funded Voice of America news had this to say based on an interview with a Christian survivor: Christian refugees described to VOA the execution of a half dozen of their co-religionists in the northwestern village of al-Yakubiye, in Idlib province, by Sunni Muslims aligned with the Western-backed Free Syrian Army. Rahel, a 45-year-old former teacher, said, “Al Nusra didn’t come to our village; the people who came were from villages close by, and they were Free Syrian Army.”   ...Nearly a third of Syria’s Christians, an estimated 600,000, have fled the country. Before the war, Christians accounted for about 10 percent of Syria’s population of 22 million. And The Daily Beast also confirmed at the time that "nearly all Christians have fled [Yakubiyah] after half a dozen were executed with their heads chopped off and about 20 more were kidnapped" by the US sponsored FSA. Furthermore, an October 2013 report in Arabic media confirmed that, Terrorists belonging to al-Nusra front broke into homes in Yakubiyah in Syria's Idlib province, killed a Chrisitan man and destroyed a Virgin Mary statue. Upon arrival at a house that had the statue of virgin Mary, Wahhabi cleric, Omar Gharba' carried the statue of the Virgin Mary after it was taken over by militants from the "Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL) and broke it by throwing it on the ground. He stated that he and his fellow Wahhabis won't tolerate any form of worship except strict Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia.   "God willing, Only God will be worshipped in the land of the Levant," the terrorist who destroyed the statue said, noting that "no other idol will be worshiped after these days . We won't accept but the religion of Allah and the Sunnah of our Prophet Mohammed bin Abdullah." In 2012 and 2013 Omar Gharba's name appeared somewhat frequently in Western news reports as he was interviewed on a few occasions and presented as a "moderate" rebel, for example by BBC Arabic in 2012. The below video is one such example of Omar Gharba insisting that he and his fellow FSA militants would be tolerant and respectful of Christians and other religious minorities should they inherit power by toppling the Assad government  - though he was subsequently outed as the destroyer of the Virgin Mary statue, as the edit of the video interview makes clear.