Wasn't Syria one of the countries shrub named (among others) as being

[ChisolmTrailDem]

part of the "Axis of Evil"? Wasn't Syria one of the countries the Neocons wanted to engage?

My memory is rusty on this so any information is welcome but it looks to me like that may finally happen. I think Iran and N. Korea was on that list too?

[alsame]

1. Iran, Iraq and

North Korea were the three. But no doubt he would have invaded Syria also if Iraq hadn't become such a mess.

IMO, the neocons never intended to do anything about NK.

[valerief]

2. His Axis of Evil speech doesn't mention Syria.

http://edition.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/01/29/bush.speech.txt/

[fadedrose]

3. I have so many questions...

A while back the President was criticized by everyone for not arming rebels in Syria...who were the rebels? Sunis or Shiites? Intelligence didn't have them down as a threat.

Biden arranged something with Russia to stop Assad from using chemical weapons to gas his people, but we still wanted to get rid of Assad. All I heard was that it was rebels that Assad was putting down. Who is doing the killing? ISIS? Assad? or are they one and the same? Assad says no, but his actions don't conform...

Where did ISIS come in? Who started it, and who is their leader? And when's the first time we ever heard of it? I never heard of it until the disbanded army of Saddam went to Syria, and they are the ones who started ISIS. I've heard Saudi Arabia backs them.

I thought most of the Islamic nations were afraid of ISIS, so who is backing it? They cause more fear in everyone than any group in the past.

The Axis of Evil as described by Bush were No. Korea, Iraq and Iran. Syria was not a threat to anyone but herself, I think. If anyone knows how all this started, I got time....

[Igel]

5. Some answers. No links.

The rebels were a mix of "democracy activists" who were a mix of Sunni, Alawite, and Xian. ("Alawite" is a kind of Islam that at one point Shi'ites considered heretical, but which in the last 50 years or so has come by all to be considered Shi'ite enough to be considered fully Shi'ite.)

The rebels also included Sunnis, some arch-conservatives and some less conservative but who were tired of having a Shi'ite/Alawite government that looked out primarily for Alawites and the occasional Xian and Sunni. Their reasons were as much tribal as they were religious, since religion and tribal affiliation tend to line up. A few tribes are split, but I doubt any are split anywhere near 50-50. There are a variety of groups that are really conservative, just as there are secular groups (some socialist, some democratic, some more laissez-faire and some more collectivist). Al-Nusrah was one of them. ISIS/ISIL/IS was another. There were more.

Few Shi'ites were rebels, unless their "religious identity" was more Western and democratic. Really, all this talk of religion often (not always) has a strong cultural/civilizational overlay on it and speaks as much to cultural norms as it does to rites and rituals.

===========
Who's doing the killing? Everybody. Assad is trying to kill the rebels and drive them out. Various groups of rebels are trying to kill Assad's troops and supporters. Various groups of rebels are trying to kill each other. Even really conservative Sunni groups have been fighting it out.

===========
ISIS/ISIL/IS has one of these histories that is sometimes more aspirational than anything. It's like Menudo--figures change, goals change, location change, but the name lives on with little organizational memory.

It started during the Anbar rebellion during the Iraq War. Rebels in the West of Iraq fought against the US/Iraq Army (mostly Shi'ite). The "surge" and local opposition to the Islamists squelched it in Iraq. The tribes in that part of the country have strong ties--often tribal--with Sunni Arabs in E. Syria, so the Iraqi Islamists had help from Syrian Islamists. At some point part of them decided they'd form "ISIS," since they had an army and a territory: Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In the end, Assad, local Sunni tribal leaders, the US Army, and the Iraqi Army tamped down ISIS. Many of the fighters as well as the leaders faded into the background.

It was rejuvenated and reorganized under new management in the last few years, based entirely in Syria. It changed its name ISIL in English because "Syria" is too confusing a name. It means the current state of Syria, but it also means a rather larger area of territory. One of the meanings of "Syria" in English was that larger territory, which is what one of the meanings "Levant" has. I don't think the Arabic name changed. Until they just decided to claim universal jurisdication and said, "We are the Islamic State." The khalifa, the caliphate, in other words.

I forget the leader's name. He's a self-professed emir or military/political leader.

=======================
People have various ideas about who's backing the IS, many of them based on outdated information and an inability to acknowledge change.

In its early days when the Iraq War was being fought, it was an anti-Shi'ite organization. Look to the usual for funding sources: Saudi, Qatar. For them, the Iraq War was a proxy war between conservative Sunni states near Iran and Iran. Syria was an Iranian ally.

ISIL's financial information, or a lot of it, was found. It's mostly self-funded at this point. It sells some oil, collects taxes and levies fines. A lot of smuggling revenue. Some continue to assume, even faced with contradictory information, that it's still a whole-owned subsidiary of the Saudis and Qataris, even though it shows little sign of being under their control and is a direct affront to their political and religious doctrines. I can see them backing somebody they oppose, but only if it's serving their ends. There's an argument to be made that it might still be serving their ends, but I think it's a tough one to carry though. Plus there's the actual financial data itself that sort of makes the argument fairly irrelevant if not entirely moot. (Of course, we can always construct a conspiracy theory that says all the evidence is actually a cunning plan to mislead us. I personally think CTism should be considered one of the great faiths of mankind, up there with Xianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism. It would be #3, perhaps #1 for sheer numbers of fervent adherents.)

IS causes fear because it's organized, got some nifty toys, has proven often competent on the battlefield, and is mostly self-sustaining at this point. Declare that its current extent are its borders, give it a UN representative, and it's no better or worse a state than a dozen already-existing countries, and arguably far better than a handful. However, as a winner is appeals to Salafist losers, and shows no signs of wanting to be limited to its current extent.

That is all.

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. Syria was one of the Neo cons targets

as described in their Project for a New American Century,

According to retired NATO Secretary General Wesley Clark, a memo from the Office of the US Secretary of Defense just a few weeks after 9/11 revealed plans to "attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years", starting with Iraq and moving on to "Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran." In a subsequent interview, Clark argues that this strategy is fundamentally about control of the region's vast oil and gas resources.
Much of the strategy currently at play was candidly described in a 2008 US Army-funded RAND report, Unfolding the Future of the Long War (pdf).

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/aug/30/syria-chemical-attack-war-intervention-oil-gas-energy-pipelines

Had to do with oil....countries with oil, OR pipelines routes OR potential "chokepoints" of oil transport.

2 of the most important Middle East chokepoints are the Strait of Hormuz between Oman and Iran, which Iran can and has threatened to block,
and Bab el Mandab, which is between Dijoubi and Yemen.
remember how we "helped" Yemen when Al-Quada conveniently showed up there?

those 2 chokepoints are on opposite sides of the Middle East.

and most crucially, there is an Island in the Indian Ocean which was turned into a military base....called Diego Garcia.
Sits below the Arabian Peninsula, from whence subs and planes and ships can be launched.
British took it from the Maldives, removed the population, and set up a military base, which it shares with USA,


When ever US activities are in the news, I head for the maps.
War is about geography and resources.

Here are some links in case you are interested...a look at the maps is quite revealing.

World Oil Transit Chokepoints ( by the Energy Dept.)
http://www.eia.gov/countries/regions-topics.cfm?fips=wotc&trk=p3

has maps and describes areas of concern on the globe.

[ChisolmTrailDem]

6. That's it! Thank you, dixiegrrrrl! I knew it had something to do with the Neocons and

PNAC. Thank you so much!

Now, I just saw on Weekends w/ Alex Witt that "there are growing indications that U.S. mission against ISIS in Iraq my be creeping towards Syria following the brutal execution this week of America journalist James Foley. The White House is taking a much more agressive posture toward ISIS and Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said yesterday that the U.S. would not be bound by borders in the fight against the terrorists."

Switch to video excerpt of Rhodes' comments yesterday:

"You heard the President say that we will be relentless against ISIL and we will do what's necessary to protect and Americans and see that justice is done for what we saw was the barbaric killing of James Foley. So we're actively considering what is going to be necessary to deal with that threat and we're not going to be restricted by borders..."

Here is what Ben Rhodes had to say:

So, there you have it, on an early mid-day Saturday while the nation recreates, it looks as if we've been put on notice; it looks as if we're going into Syria.

The propaganda for war in Syria is on. The momentum is building for going into Syria and it's President Obama that is going to lead us there.

ETA: As I'm watching the rewind on this report, it was followed by a segment that asks if ISIS is a threat inside the U.S. Of course the response from the guest was: yes.

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. And current events are just following the blueprint of this:

a 2008 US Army-funded RAND report, Unfolding the Future of the Long War

You can download the pdf here:
http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG738.pdf

read, then watch as events unfold.
Highlights:

"Divide and Rule focuses on exploiting fault lines between the various Salafi-jihadist groups to turn them against each other and dissipate their energy on internal conflicts. This strategy relies heavily on covert action, information operations (IO), unconventional warfare, and support to indigenous security forces... the United States and its local allies could use the nationalist jihadists to launch proxy IO campaigns to discredit the transnational jihadists in the eyes of the local populace... US leaders could also choose to capitalize on the 'Sustained Shia-Sunni Conflict' trajectory by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes against Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world.... possibly supporting authoritative Sunni governments against a continuingly hostile Iran."

the report concluded that doing so might work in western interests by bogging down jihadi activity with internal sectarian rivalry rather than targeting the US:

"One of the oddities of this long war trajectory is that it may actually reduce the al-Qaeda threat to US interests in the short term.
The upsurge in Shia identity and confidence seen here would certainly cause serious concern in the Salafi-jihadist community in the Muslim world, including the senior leadership of al-Qaeda. As a result, it is very likely that al-Qaeda might focus its efforts on targeting Iranian interests throughout the Middle East and Persian Gulf while simultaneously cutting back on anti-American and anti-Western operations."

And THIS explains why we are targeting Assad..he won't play with us, he wants to play with Russia:
Assad pursued negotiations for an alternative $10 billion pipeline plan with Iran, across Iraq to Syria, that would also potentially allow Iran to supply gas to Europe from its South Pars field shared with Qatar. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the project was signed in July 2012 - just as Syria's civil war was spreading to Damascus and Aleppo - and earlier this year Iraq signed a framework agreement for construction of the gas pipelines.

The Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline plan was a "direct slap in the face" to Qatar's plans.
No wonder Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, in a failed attempt to bribe Russia to switch sides, told President Vladmir Putin that "whatever regime comes after" Assad, it will be "completely" in Saudi Arabia's hands and will "not sign any agreement allowing any Gulf country to transport its gas across Syria to Europe and compete with Russian gas exports", according to diplomatic sources. When Putin refused, the Prince vowed military action.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/aug/30/syria-chemical-attack-war-intervention-oil-gas-energy-pipelines

[ChisolmTrailDem]

8. It's just a big, fucking game board to TPTB, eh dixiegrrrrl? So infuriating and so discouraging

and to know that President Obama is moving the pieces around the board is...arrrrgggh!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

9. Bogeymen. We never run out of Bogeymen to frighten us into feeding the MIC.