The myth of ISIS falls apart without getting close to any conspiracy theories, wild or otherwise.
Today, the Fars News Network reported from Iraqi sources that an American Apache helicopter was shot down dropping supplies to ISIS forces near the western regions of Anbar Province. The photo below depicts the event:
What’s wrong with this picture?
There are a few things wrong with this picture. The helicopter shown is a UH10 from as early as 1957. Thousands are flown around the world, you can buy one on Ebay. The photo lacks a date time stamp. It also lacks things like information that could identify the origin and background of who flew it, where it came from, even the most basic forensic common sense.
Where is the pilot? What was the cargo? Let’s see the whole photo, where this was actually taken as the portion shown is obviously a crop of a much larger photo. Is this New York City? It could be. What we have is an amazing lack of curiosity here.
Last week Fars reported two British transport planes being shot down during supply operations for ISIS. No pilots or wreckage, no tail numbers, no evidence whatsoever exists of this other than the claim. Are we being told that a two transport aircraft can crash and everyone within 500 miles won’t drive there looking for bags of cash, Rolex watches or other goodies?
Then again, supposedly hundreds of ISIS vehicles have been destroyed by the US bombing campaign, each with VIN numbers on hundreds of parts. The FBI and Interpol can easily track each vehicle, not only with nearly any part but there are other ways as well.
There are international conventions that govern the sale of black market or stolen vehicles and parts. Every vehicle manufactured enters a database and most major parts are serial numbered and registered as well with all sales and transfers recorded and entered for global access.
Even with GPS disabled, all newer vehicles have electronic ignitions which can be tracked. All put out radio signals unless Faraday shielding is used. A modern vehicle leaks electromagnetic energy like a flashlight in a darkened room.
Perhaps Toyota doesn’t want to explain how a thousand of its trucks shipped to Israel were modified and transported across Jordan. Israel and Netanyahu are above any law, now Jordan is claiming the same thing.
Is this, perhaps, why Jordan is now the heroic ally of the right wing extremists in America whose heart reached out to ISIS and their friends in Kiev? Let’s take a quick look at some things nobody thinks of.
I was in Damascus recently, a capitol of a war torn nation. Though Damascus is an hour from Beirut by highway, many things, like meat for instance, aren’t that available. I noted the same thing in Iraq at the height of the war. Life was rice, beans and occasional frozen chicken unless you were US military, drinking polluted river water sold to the troops by Halliburton and $30 per gallon.
What we are saying is simple; getting supplies in and out of a warzone is nearly impossible, in the real world anyway, but are we in a “real world?”
Let’s go back to the bombing campaign. There are hundreds of trucks blown apart all over Iraq and Syria. The US has access to most of them as does Iraq and Iran. Does anyone look at who put on the bumper guards, who welded the plates to support the weapons in the beds? Does anyone test the gasoline to see where it was refined?
If we can track vehicles, even though we don’t, we can also fingerprint each vehicle, finding who built it, who modified it, what tools were used, what welding materials, what parts. Everything can be tracked down to a source.
Nobody wants to do this. Why? Are they afraid of what they will find? Let’s talk fuel.
Oh, you didn’t know there were no gasoline refineries anywhere around? You see, in the most regions of the world, gasoline is sold in plastic milk containers and hauled around in pickup trucks. For years, all gasoline used in Kurdistan and Northern Iraq was smuggled in from Turkey?
In the south, it call came by tanker truck from Jordan. There is reason to believe that is still going on, right here in the open for everyone to see, on roads with dozens of government checkpoints.
US forces in Jordan help monitor these roads, these checkpoints, and are somehow distracted whenever shipments to ISIS cross the border. We wonder why hundreds of American military commanders have been fired recently? Is this starting to come into focus?
The US destroyed all refineries within the ISIS region on the first two days of the bombing campaign.
Here is what we do know:
Across Syria and Iraq many are profiting supplying the Islamic State. More in Jordan and Israel and doing the same. In Turkey, doing business with ISIS is now a major economic sector.
Treason and collusion with the enemy on behalf not only of Syrians, Iraqis, etc. is widespread. Moreover, Americans, Brits and others are also involved. Yes, there really are supply flights but it is time we “got real.” America has full air supremacy over the entire Middle East. Yesterday, the Israeli’s reported that the US had threatened to destroy their air force if they tried to attack Iran while the US was negotiating. If the US could shoot down the Israeli Air Force, downing a helicopter or transport plane would be nothing.
Let’s take a look at other options as well, particularly intelligence. In 2014 I met with Iraqi officials about available intelligence against ISIS in particular the regions of Mosul and south into Anbar Province. We offered OCULUS systems, these are “roll on” platforms for C130 aircraft that are capable of things we can’t even begin to discuss, including finding IED’s but also certainly tracking all operational movements of ISIS.
Israeli companies offered advanced communications interception equipment, some with capabilities we can’t even begin to discuss. Stating that these would totally blind ISIS operations is an understatement.
We also offered to demonstrate advance EMP weapons that would halt any electronics, vehicles, generators, phones, anything over an area we are also not able to discuss but saying “very large” is an understatement.
The US is supposed to have even more advanced equipment. What we aren’t seeing is the simple things like people asking questions about where gasoline comes from or how ISIS can drive a hundred miles down a two lane road and never be seen by satellites, drones or surveillance aircraft. Doesn’t the NSA listen to everything? Maybe ISIS is speaking “pig Latin,” something the NSA can’t decipher.
Has anyone thought of where Toyota trucks come from or how mounting a quad 25mm anti-aircraft gun in the back of a truck isn’t something you can do without advanced capabilities. Has anyone mentioned that one of these guns fills a 20 foot container? Then again, how did someone sneak an entire containers ship filled with vehicles into Jordan or Turkey and then transport thousands of armored “technicals” hundreds of miles?
Then again, where does the gasoline come from? Why do the trucks have no serial numbers, no VIN numbers, no numbers on anything? Why is it no one asks anything?
How do thousands of Jihadists fly around the world, how do they get into Turkey when a tourist is questioned for 20 minutes at the Istanbul airport. Turkey has a massive bureaucracy, a huge army, vast intelligence services and nobody goes in or out of Turkey, nothing crosses Turkey. Turkey isn’t a joke, if Erdogan didn’t want Jihadists going through, they would easily be stopped.
Has anyone looked at a map? Doesn’t anyone notice that you can’t get from North Africa, where many Jihadists originate, to Jordan, Syria or Iraq without transiting through Israel?
Then again, we come back to Jordan. We know Jordan allowed the CIA to train ISIS fighters though the CIA claims, according to the Wall Street Journal, that they didn’t know they were training the wrong people.
There is a reason questions aren’t asked, not by the press, not by the US and certainly not by any of the nations in the region. Nobody wants the answers. ISIS is big business and keeping this war going is making endless millions for some very powerful people.
We could have the same discussion about Boko Harum as well, how people who wish to return to the Middle Ages use satellite telephones. Who pays the bills? I don’t have a sat phone. The answer is simple, don’t believe any of it.
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
