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islamic state
US Bombs Over 75 Targets in Syria After Assad Falls
"The Western press are waxing lyrical about the new Syria being born—but not a word on the U.S. and Israeli bombs falling from the sky," said Yanis Varoufakis.
Dec 09, 2024
U.S. military forces launched dozens of airstrikes on more than 75 Islamic State targets in Syria on Sunday after the fall of longtime Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid ongoing Israeli and Turkish attacks on the war-torn Middle Eastern nation.
According to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), warplanes including B-52 bombers, F-15 fighters, and A-10 ground attack aircraft "conducted dozens of precision airstrikes targeting known ISIS camps and operatives in central Syria."
CENTCOM called the strikes "part of the ongoing mission to disrupt, degrade, and defeat ISIS in order to prevent the terrorist group from conducting external operations and to ensure that ISIS does not seek to take advantage of the current situation to reconstitute in central Syria."
The U.S., "together with allies and partners in the region, will continue to carry out operations to degrade ISIS operational capabilities even during this dynamic period in Syria," CENTCOM added.
"The Biden administration ordering ongoing airstrikes is a disappointing sign that they have no intent on reversing their deadly policy of interventionism."
Responding Monday to the latest attacks on Syria by U.S. forces, Danaka Katovich, national co-director of the peace group CodePink, told Common Dreams: "We condemn the U.S. airstrikes in Syria. The U.S. has sowed chaos in Syria and the entire region for years and the Biden administration ordering ongoing airstrikes is a disappointing sign that they have no intent on reversing their deadly policy of interventionism."
U.S. and coalition forces have killed and maimed at least tens of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis during the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations as part of the anti-ISIS campaign and wider so-called War on Terror.
Commenting on the dearth of coverage of the strikes by the corporate media, prominent Greek leftist Yanis Varoufakis said on social media that "the Western press are waxing lyrical about the new Syria being born—but not a word on the U.S. and Israeli bombs falling from the sky."
"Is there no bottom to the moral void of the Western press?" he added.
Sunday's U.S. strikes came as al-Assad and relatives fled to Russia—where they have been granted asylum—amid the fall of the capital, Damascus, to rebel forces.
Also on Sunday, Israeli forces seized more territory in Syria's Golan Heights and ordered residents of five villages to "stay home and not go out until further notice" if they want to remain safe. Israel conquered the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights in 1967 and has unlawfully occupied it ever since. In 1981, Israel illegally annexed the occupied lands.
"We will not allow any hostile force to establish itself on our border," right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza—said in a video posted on social media.
Numerous Israelis celebrated the seizure on social media, while others cautioned against boasting about what is almost certainly an illegal conquest.
Meanwhile in northern Syria, Turkish airstrikes in support of Syrian National Army rebels—who are battling U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters in and around the Kurdish-controlled city of Manbij—reportedly killed numerous civilians along with dozens of militants.
In what it called a "horrific massacre," the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Monday that 11 civilians from the same family, including women and six children, were killed in a Turkish drone strike on the SDF-controlled village of Al-Mustariha in northern Raqqa Governate.
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Trump Condemned for 'Genocidal' Threat to Destroy Iran
"Trump's threat to blow Iran's largest cities and the country itself 'to smithereens' is an outrageous threat that should be widely condemned," said the National Iranian American Council.
Sep 25, 2024
Former U.S. President Donald Trump's threat on Wednesday to blow Iran "to smithereens" if he returns to power was condemned by a leading Iranian American advocacy group as "genocidal."
Trump—the 2024 Republican nominee—addressed a campaign rally in North Carolina on Wednesday after he was reportedly briefed about alleged Iranian assassination threats against him.
"If I were the president, I would inform the threatening country—in this case, Iran—that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens," he said to raucous applause. "We're gonna blow it to smithereens, you can't do that. And there would be no more threats."
Responding to the former president's remarks, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) said in a statement that "Trump's threat to blow Iran's largest cities and the country itself 'to smithereens' is an outrageous threat that should be widely condemned as psychotic and genocidal."
"Just like his threat to target 52 of Iran's most cherished cultural sites, Trump appears disturbingly willing to kill millions of Iranians who have no say over the actions of their authoritarian government," NIAC continued. "These remarks should be disqualifying for a man vying to once again be commander in chief and have sole authority over launching nuclear weapons with the power to make good on his horrifying threat."
"Likewise, we unequivocally condemn any Iranian threats that may be targeted at Trump or former officials," the group added. "Political violence must be rejected and prevented in all forms. Assassinations are a path to war and human suffering, as was demonstrated by the strike on [Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Maj. Gen.] Qasem Soleimani that engendered these threats, and risk further embroiling the region in violence."
Trump ordered the January 2020 airstrike that killed Soleimani in Iraq. He also unilaterally withdrew from the so-called Iran nuclear deal and ramped up sanctions on Tehran, exacerbating Iran's economic woes.
While Trump is known for his boastful and sometimes empty claims, as president he also followed through on his 2016 campaign promise to "bomb the shit out of" Islamic State fighters and "take out their families," resulting in thousands of civilian casualties in countries including Iraq and Syria.
Although Trump often presents himself as the peace candidate, critics have warned voters not to be fooled.
"He's a liar. C'mon, you know he doesn't tell the truth at all," Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Calif.)—the only member of either legislative chamber who voted against authorizing the so-called War on Terror in 2001—said in a recent interview with The Nation.
"Just look at his record, who he cozies up to in terms of dictators," Lee added. "He wants more investment in the military budget. What his strategy is, is to create a more dangerous world."
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Secret Doc Exposes Flaws in Pentagon Claim That No Civilians Were Killed in al-Baghdadi Raid
"Over the past 20 years, the U.S. military has struggled with escalation of force and many civilians were killed when they were falsely viewed as a threat. This incident appears to be one of many such cases," said one expert.
Jul 21, 2023
A formerly classified document published Friday by NPR revealed how the Pentagon dismissed highly credible evidence of civilian deaths caused by the October 2019 U.S. assassination of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Syria.
In a raid hailed by then-U.S. President Donald Trump as "impeccable," U.S. special forces stormed al-Baghdadi's hideout just outside Barisha in Idlib province on October 26-27, 2019. Realizing he was cornered during the raid, al-Baghdadi detonated an explosive device, killing himself and two children he was carrying with him, according to U.S. officials.
For years, the Pentagon dismissed a December 2019 NPR report of a U.S. military helicopter attacking Syrian civilians in Barisha during the raid, killing two cousins traveling in a van and blowing the hand off a third man, claiming the victims were enemy combatants who ignored repeated warning shots.
NPR subsequently filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Pentagon and obtained a redacted copy of the military's erstwhile secret assessment of the raid.
The document revealed that:
- U.S. troops fired warning shots just seconds before helicopters opened fire on the victims' van, belying claims that the men demonstrated hostile intent by failing to stop or move;
- The Pentagon offered no solid evidence that the victims were enemy combatants;
- The military did not compile a recommended intelligence dossier to back its claim that the victims were "unlawful enemy belligerents";
- The Pentagon questioned the veracity of a survivor's account of the attack given to NPR—but did not interview the man; and
- The military dismissed credible evidence—including photos, reporting by NPR and other media, and assessments by NGOs including Airwars—that civilians were harmed in the raid.
"Over the past 20 years, the U.S. military has struggled with escalation of force and many civilians were killed when they were falsely viewed as a threat," Larry Lewis of the Center for Naval Analyses told
NPR. "This incident appears to be one of many such cases."
The raid's sole survivor, a 39-year-old laborer named Barakat Ahmad Barakat, told
NPR that the two men who were killed were his friends and that they were heading home after working at a local olive press. Barakat—who insisted he did not know that al-Baghdadi was hiding out in the area—said the U.S. airstrike took the men by surprise. They fled the van but came under renewed aerial attack.
"Suddenly I felt something hit us," he said. His friends, 27-year-old Khaled Mustafa Qurmo and 30-year-old Khaled Abdel Majid Qurmo, were killed. Barakat's right hand was blown off; his arm was later amputated. His left hand was also badly injured.
The U.S. military initially claimed that the army helicopters came under fire from the van. However, a formerly classified U.S. Central Command document previously published by NPR shows that the Pentagon acknowledged the claim was untrue.
The newly exposed document states that the military also "assessed secondary explosions emitted from the vehicle, indicating weapons and explosive devices were on board the panel van."
This was untrue, as was a similar claim made by the Pentagon following an August 2021 drone strike that killed 43-year-old Afghan aid worker Zamarai Ahmadi and nine of his relatives, including seven children, in Kabul during the chaotic days of U.S. withdrawal from a 20-year invasion.
The Pentagon often attempts to conceal or minimize civilian casualties caused by U.S. bombs and bullets, which have killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of civilians in more than half a dozen nations since the ongoing so-called War on Terror began after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
NPR's latest report on the al-Baghdadi raid comes as the Pentagon implements its Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP), a series of policy steps aimed at preventing and responding to the death and injury of noncombatants.
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