The so-called Islamic State, a brutal terrorist group also known as ISIS, seized 2,300 U.S. military Humvees and other weaponry from Iraq’s U.S. taxpayer-funded armed forces in Mosul, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi admitted in a TV interview over the weekend. ISIS militants then paraded the captured U.S. military equipment, reportedly worth over $1 billion, through the streets of the city. They then proceeded to use the American Humvees to lynch and burn Iraqi troops — many of whom had dropped their U.S. supplies and fled — before putting the vehicles to work in suicide bombings and other attacks. One of them was used on June 1 in a suicide strike in Baghdad that killed some 45 people.
In a Sunday interview with Iraqiya state-run television, the new U.S.-backed Iraqi prime minister admitted that his government’s forces lost the gear. “In the collapse of Mosul, we lost a lot of weapons,” al-Abadi acknowledged, referring to the overrunning of the city by ISIS forces last summer amid the mass-desertion of U.S.-backed Iraqi government forces. “We lost 2,300 Humvees in Mosul alone.” Depending on how the Humvees were outfitted — grenade launchers, machine guns, extra armor —the price tag could have been well over $1 billion. According to media reports from last year, ISIS militants may have also seized the helicopters that were displayed during an ISIS parade with the captured Humvees.
More recently, ISIS reportedly seized dozens of U.S. military vehicles — tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery pieces, and more — after taking over the city of Ramadi last month. Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren told the Associated Press that an estimated six tanks, six artillery pieces, even more armored personnel carriers, and around 100 “wheeled vehicles like Humvees” were lost to ISIS. It would have been “preferable” if Iraqi forces had destroyed the equipment before fleeing the city, Colonel Warren said. But “in this case,” that did not happen. Nor did it happen in Mosul last year, or in many instances before that.
But the problem goes much deeper than ISIS “seizing” U.S. weapons. Aside from the U.S.-backed Iraqi military, ISIS has plenty of other sources for U.S. taxpayer-funded weapons — jihadist Syrian “rebels” being armed and trained by Obama, the Islamic regimes in Obama’s “anti-ISIS” coalition, and more. “We are buying weapons from the FSA,” ISIS fighter Abu Atheer was quoted as saying by Al Jazeera, referring to the Obama-supplied “Free Syrian Army” jihadists fighting the Syrian regime. “We bought 200 anti-aircraft missiles and Koncourse anti-tank weapons. We have good relations with our brothers in the FSA. For us, the infidels are those who cooperate with the West to fight Islam.”
However, the supposed “blunder” of “losing” U.S. military equipment to ISIS, a regular occurrence, barely scratches the surface of the problem. Among other concerns, ISIS itself was armed and trained by Obama’s own “anti-ISIS” coalition, according to top U.S. officials such as Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey. When asked whether he knew of any major Arab allies that support ISIS in a Senate hearing last year, for example, General Dempsey responded: “I know of major Arab allies who fund them.”
Biden, meanwhile, demolished several key lies promoted by the administration about the wave of U.S.-armed Islamic terrorists sweeping across the Middle East. “The fact is, the ability to identify a moderate middle in Syria, um, was, uh — there was no moderate middle,” Biden admitted last year, exploding the administration’s propaganda about arming and training “moderate” jihadists. Speaking at Harvard, he noted that members of Obama’s “anti-ISIS” coalition — the Islamist rulers of Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and more — “poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad; except that the people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and Al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.”
“Where did all of this go? So now what’s happening? All of a sudden everybody’s awakened because this outfit called ISIL [ISIS], which was Al Qaeda in Iraq, which when they were essentially thrown out of Iraq, found open space in territory in eastern Syria, work with Al Nusra who we declared a terrorist group early on,” Biden added. “And we could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them.” Of course, he did not mention the role of the CIA and the State Department in the process, but that has been well documented by countless sources, as The New American has been reporting for years.
Late last month, a lawsuit by Judicial Watch forced the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to release documents including explosive information on Western support for ISIS for the assault on the Syrian regime. “The West, Gulf countries [the Islamic regimes ruling Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, etc.], and Turkey support the Syrian opposition,” it explains, adding that, as The New American reported at the time, al-Qaeda supported the Syrian uprising from the beginning as well. “There is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist [fundamentalist Islam] principality in Eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.” (Emphasis added.)
Commenting on the latest admission by Iraqi Prime Minister al-Abadi, Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity Executive Director Daniel McAdams noted that it is hardly the first time. “Whenever there is a problem anywhere in the world, the first thing U.S. lawmakers and Beltway foreign policy experts do is urge the U.S. to send weapons,” he said, citing Libya, Ukraine, Syria, and the Kurds as recent examples. “The track record of such a policy is obvious for all to see. If anyone is still confused, ask a Libyan or a Syrian Christian about it. Yet the failed approach continues to be the cornerstone of US foreign policy.”
All of the scheming is great for the “military-industrial complex (which funds most of the Beltway think tanks),” McAdams continued. However, for American taxpayers and the innocent victims targeted with U.S. military weapons being showered on groups and governments around the world, it has been a disaster — not to mention the absurd fact that, as former State Department official Peter van Buren was quoted as saying, the United States is “supplying all sides in the conflict.” “Has there been a more reckless policy in the history of foreign policy than the one the US is pursuing in Iraq and Syria, purportedly to defeat ISIS?” McAdams asked.
The escalating Western-fueled horror show unfolding across the Middle East — genocide of Christians, rivers of blood, routine beheadings, global jihad, and more — represents, in large part, the fruit of lawless U.S. foreign policy in the region. It is time for Congress to obey the U.S. Constitution and adhere to the non-interventionist advice of America’s Founders.
Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is normally based in Europe. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU. He can be reached at [email protected].
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Top Syrian Rebel Group Merges With Al-Qaeda in Iraq
Obama’s “Anti-ISIS” Coalition Built ISIS, Biden Admits
Obama and UN Created Terror State in Libya
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Obama Helped ISIS in Syria, Now Fights It in Iraq
