How a Real War on Terrorism Would Look and Why the US Isn't Fighting One

February 19, 2017 (Ulson Gunnar - NEO) - Since 2001, when then US President George Bush announced his "War on Terror," presidents and politicians both in the United States and among America's allies, have repeated this phrase and have done their utmost to convince the public that indeed, the West was fighting a "War on Terror."

Yet there is something disturbingly ambiguous about what exactly the "War on Terror" consists of, who it's being waged against and how it could ever possibly be brought to a successful conclusion.

It is also often referred to as the "Long War," and for good reason. America's ongoing occupation of Afghanistan is the longest armed conflict in US history. Additionally, US troops still find themselves in Iraq, some 14 years after the initial invasion and occupation of the state in 2003.

Because of the ambiguous nature of the "War on Terror," politicians have been given much room to maneuver their rhetoric, explaining why more wars must be waged, more liberties curtailed at home and more wealth and power channeled into fewer and fewer hands.

What's Really Behind Terrorism? 

The fanatics, weapons, supplies, vehicles and finances that grease the wheels of global terror do not merely spring forth from the pages of the Qu'ran, as bigots across the West insist.

Just like any national army, the army raised and wielded in the name of terrorism has several basic components. Examining these components reveals a very uncomfortable but somewhat poorly hidden truth.

In reality, fanatics must be indoctrinated. And they are, in Saudi-funded madras and mosque networks wrapping around the globe. In the United States and across Europe, these madrases and mosques often serve as both indoctrination centers and recruiting stations. They operate as such with the explicit knowledge, even cooperation of US and European security and intelligence agencies.

One such center can be found in Denmark at Grimh�jvej Mosque in Aarhus which openly serves as a recruiting station for militants meant to fight abroad in US-European backed wars in Libya, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. The government of Denmark openly collaborates with the mosque to integrate these individuals back into Danish society when they return.

The mosque in Aarhus is hardly an isolated example. Such mosques backed and protected by US-European-Saudi money and political influence dot the globe, feeding recruits into a global mercenary army carrying out proxy war and staging terrorist attacks whenever and wherever politically convenient.

Both Wikileaks and even the US' own Defense Intelligence Agency has released documents exposing the role both the West and Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar have played in the arming and funding of actual militants once they reach the battlefield.

Additionally, militants that have been indoctrinated, trained, armed, funded and battle-hardened by Western and Gulf sponsorship, return back to their respective nations where they are then cultivated for domestic operations. Terror attacks like those in Paris and Brussels, Berlin and elsewhere are carried out almost exclusively by militants US-European security and intelligence agencies have known about and even arrested but inexplicably released, allowing them to carry out their attacks.


What a Real War on Terrorism Requires 

It is often said that states like Russia, Syria and Iran exist as natural allies to the United States and Europe in the fight against terrorism. And that would be true if not for the fact that said terrorism is actually a deliberate product of US-European foreign policy. Were the West to truly wage a war on terrorism, it would already be deeply cooperating with these  nations on the front line against groups like Al Qaeda and the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

However, terrorism is waged as a means of fighting the West's proxy wars abroad, and to create divisive, paralyzing hatred, fear and hysteria at home.

Travel bans are created to intentionally stoke controversy and distract the public from the aforementioned reality driving  terrorism. As is evident in virtually all terror attacks carried out across the West, suspects are already know to security and intelligence agencies beforehand. These agencies simply need to stop them. Instead, they allow the attacks to take place, granting their respective governments political capital to channel more power into centralized hands.

While the US and Europe use terrorism as a function of foreign policy, they could not do it without their intermediaries in the Persian Gulf. Without the Saudis and Qataris serving as "handlers" for the West's terrorist legions, it is unlikely such legions could be raised to begin with.

Targeting, rather than embracing, even protecting these state sponsors of all aspects of terrorism, from indoctrination and recruitment, to training, arming and financing terrorism on the battlefield, would be another essential step in a real "War on Terror."

Yet from President Bush to President Obama and now during the administration of US President Donald Trump, the US and its European allies continue to coddle the regimes in Riyadh and Doha, rather than taking any measures whatsoever to disrupt this terror pipeline.

While the US remains in Afghanistan allegedly to "fight terrorism," it refuses to take even the most basic steps to dismantle the ideological, political and financial structures in the Persian Gulf fueling that terrorism.

A final means of combating and defeating "terrorism" would be to educate the public of just how small a minority is actually involved in it, isolating those groups exploiting and perverting ideologies from the vast majority who practice these ideologies constructively.

Instead, US and European demagogues work ceaselessly to lump all of Islam into the "terror" basket, creating tension and hostility on both sides of an essentially manufactured strategy of tension. Instead of draining emotional and political resources from those seeking to recruit disillusioned individuals, the West is ensuring them an endless supply.

A real "War on Terror" is clearly not being waged. Nothing presented by President Trump before or after his campaign victory in 2016 indicates a real war is about to be waged. In fact, much of what has been done thus far, has simply been the placing of additional bricks on a very predictable path toward the infinite horizon of this "Long War."

Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine �New Eastern Outlook�.

Gladio Again: Germany Could've But Didn't Stop Berlin Attacker. Why?

January 22, 2017 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - According to German broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW), German security and intelligence agencies were particularly familiar with the Berlin attacker, Anis Amri, long before he plowed a large truck into a Christmas market, killing 12 and injuring many more.

In an article titled, "All the cracks that Berlin suspect Amri slipped through," a now familiar litany of excuses are peddled before audiences in a bid to explain why the suspect wasn't stopped, weeks, months, even years before he carried out his attack, as soon as it became apparent he was both violent and a danger to society.

DW's article admits:

The suspect first caught authorities' attention in November 2015, when he unwittingly told an informant for the investigative police unit (BKA) in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia that he wanted to "do something in Germany," according to a document obtained by the daily S�ddeutsche Zeitung. He also claimed that he could get an AK-47 for an attack.

The article claims that from that point onward, Amri was "watched" by German agencies. DW also admits:

Further, he was apparently aggressively seeking an opportunity to undertake an attack in Germany. Information pointing to his dangerous potential became so overwhelming that authorities designated him a threat last February. 

DW then reports:

All information was then handed over to the Berlin public prosecutor's office. The suspect was observed from March on. He raised no suspicion in the months that followed, and authorities stopped surveilling him in September.

In December, Amri would carry out his deadly attack, just as attackers in France and Belgium did after being surveilled - in some cases  for years - before being allowed to drop off security and intelligence agencies' radars just ahead of their respective, deadly attacks.

Germany's weak excuses for not apprehending a man who openly admitted he sought to acquire weapons and take human lives echo similarly convenient excuses provided by the French government following a string of fatal attacks across its territory.

Paris has claimed a lack of resources to process the large number of potential terrorists returning from battlefields France itself has helped send arms, fighters, and other forms of material support to on behalf of terrorist organizations and their allies.

Germany's excuses might seem plausible if not for the fact that virtually every terror attack that has unfolded  not only in Germany, but across all of Europe follows a similar pattern where suspects are surveilled, questioned, entrapped, even arrested and released multiple times, before ultimately carrying out spectacular, politically convenient attacks across Europe.

Another "Gladio"

Such purposeful negligence matches another chapter in Europe's more recent history - that during the Cold War in which NATO security and intelligence agencies maintained a myriad of pan-European terrorist organizations of every imaginable variety, used to assassinate political opponents, carry out deadly and spectacular terror attacks, and otherwise use violence, fear, and intimidation to manipulate both public perception and political outcomes during elections in respective states.

Called "Operation Gladio," it would be described by the New York Times in a 1990 article titled, "EVOLUTION IN EUROPE; Italy Discloses Its Web Of Cold War Guerrillas," as:

In Europe's new order, they are the spies who never quite came in from the cold, foot soldiers in an underground guerrilla network with one stated mission: To fight an enemy that most Europeans believe no longer exists. Theirs is a tale of secret arms caches and exotic code names, of military stratagems and political intrigues. At best, their tale is no more than a curious footnote to the cold war. The question is if, at worst, it could be the key to unsolved terrorism dating back two decades.

The New York Times would also reveal:

The focus of the inquiry is a clandestine operation code-named Gladio, created decades ago to arm and train resistance fighters in case the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies invaded. All this week, there have been disclosures of similar organizations in virtually all Western European countries, including those that do not belong to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. 

The New York Times would also describe how Gladio was used to manipulate public perception, use the specter of fear regarding communism after staged terror attacks to coerce populations to vote in governments of Washington's liking, and essentially frame opposition groups for violence the US and NATO were carrying out with their own terror cells.


The real question is - are there similar networks being created and perpetuated by Western intelligence agencies today, to fill both the ranks of foreign mercenary armies everywhere from Libya and Yemen, to Syria and the borders of Iran - as well as manipulate and impose fear upon the populations of Western states at home?

Spectacular terrorist attacks like those in Paris, Brussels, and Berlin have certainly proven themselves potent events for swaying public opinion regarding political support of particular parties and candidates, as well as fomenting support for wars abroad against "Muslim" nations. There is also the inescapable fact that the very terrorists the West poses as fighting at home are armed, funded, and backed either directly by the West abroad, or through the West's closest allies in the Middle East - namely Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

While it is tempting for people to fall into the false debate crafted in this newly forming "Cold War," the lessons of history should teach us that not all is what it appears to be. And when absolutely every terror attack is carried out by suspects deeply intimate with Western security and intelligence agencies, both at home and in Western-sponsored wars abroad, tempting "clashes of civilization" narratives should be replaced with the prospect of Gladio's inglorious return to Western political calculus.

Additionally, the next time agencies are told to "stop watching" a suspect, perhaps it would be in their best interest to watch them twice as closely, as well as those telling them to "stop watching."

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine �New Eastern Outlook�.    

Ohio Attacker: What They Really Mean by "Influenced by Islam"

November 29, 2016 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - Somali immigrant Abdul Razak Ali Artan is alleged to have carried out an attack, injuring 11 until he was eventually shot dead by police.

Alleged alternative media platform, Breitbart News, immediately set to work to link the attack to "Islam" and "refugees" in articles like, "Ohio State Attacker Posted Anti-US Screed to Facebook Movements Before Attack."

It mirrors similar, cherry-picked journalism Breitbart used to cover another attack carried out by a Somali-American in Minnesota earlier this year, in a wider campaign both Breitbart, and a larger segment of the establishment's right cover are engaged in to reintroduce the Bush-era "clash of civilizations" narrative into the alternative media.

Yet neither Abdul Razak Ali Artan's status as an alleged "Muslim" nor his being a Somali refugee had anything to do with his alleged radicalization.

The US and its Allies Radicalized Abdul Razak Ali Artan 

"Radical Islam" is a synonym for the legions of armed terrorists and ideological extremists cultivated by the United States and its Saudi and Qatari allies since the 1980s. Forming up organizations including Al Qaeda itself and its offshoots including Jabhat Al Nusra in Syria and the self-proclaimed "Islamic State" (ISIS), these terrorists and ideological extremists have fought the proxy wars of the West and their allies from the mountains of Afghanistan to the shores of Libya, and everywhere in between.

These legions of terrorists and ideological extremists have also played an integral part in justifying the construction of an unprecedented, Western-wide domestic police state that , while predicated on "fighting terrorism," has been utilized to wage war on all enemies, foreign and domestic, of Western special interests.


Regarding domestic terrorism in particular, it has been revealed that many "foiled" terrorist attacks have simply been Western security services entrapping and leading along suspects toward the execution of terrorist attacks. Often, at the last minute, firing pins are removed from weapons, and inert substances swapped with real explosives to avert successful attacks before dramatically arresting the suspects.

In other incidents, successful attacks are carried out by suspects long-known to security agencies, some of whom have known ties to terrorist organizations and are known to be involved in terrorist activity, but are otherwise inexplicably allowed to operate freely until carrying out their attacks.

Whether a "foiled" attack or a successful bloodbath, increased powers are transferred to Western governments while populations are further distracted and divided along religion, race, and politics, and indifference toward wars fought abroad grows.

The US Sought the Rise of ISIS 

And while Breitbart attempts to insinuate ISIS may have influenced Abdul Razak Ali Artan, it should be remembered who cultivated and ultimately created ISIS as a strategic asset in the first place.

 A Department of Intelligence Agency (DIA) memo first published in 2012 (PDF) admitted:

If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist 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, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran). 

The DIA memo then explains exactly who this "Salafist principality's" supporters are (and who its true enemies are):

The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime.

It has been through a torrent of billions of dollars worth of weapons, supplies, and US-NATO trained terrorists that have sustained ISIS' fighting capacity over the last several years. When a Syrian-Russian-Iranian coalition began shutting down the Turkish-Syrian border over which the summation of ISIS' supplies crossed, Turkey organized and implemented a US-backed invasion of a "buffer zone" within Syrian territory to ensure the last supply corridor remained opened.

Image: ISIS terrorist wielding a US-made TOW anti-tank missile near Palmyra, eastern Syria.

Saudi Arabia and neighboring Qatar's state sponsorship of not only armed terrorist organizations, but also indoctrination centers established around the world is the other variable unmentioned by the likes of Breitbart in the "radicalization" equation.

These centers, which could easily be differentiated from legitimate mosques by honest journalism and investigations by local law enforcement, their funding traced, and their facilities closed down, are instead used as recruiting centers - often right in the center of Western nations - to fill the ranks of Al Qaeda and ISIS, as well as manage and exploit extremists when they eventually return home. In addition to operating physical centers, they also produce an immense amount of propaganda used online, over radio waves, and on TV to attract and "radicalize" recruits.

If Abdul Razak Ali Artan was influenced by ISIS and Saudi-Qatari propaganda, or inspired by the deadly exploits of terrorists waging war abroad, who is to blame but the state sponsors of ISIS and those nations who prop up the Saudi-Qatari regimes - a terrorist organization and two nations that would not even exist without the immense and constant supply of political support, cash, and weaponry provided to them both from abroad?

Image: Shoulder-to-shoulder, literally, with Saudi state sponsors of terrorism, America's "right" attend a rally in support of armed terrorist front, Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) which kidnapped and killed US military officers, US civilian contractors, and hundreds of Iranian civilians. Many of these characters are regularly interviewed and their views promoted by Breitbart.

It is not "Islam" or "being Somali," that allegedly incited Abdul Razak Ali Artan - if "ISIS" played a role in his "radicalization" - it was a toxic, geopolitically-motivated ideology created for the sole purpose of filling the ranks of a global mercenary force - not to achieve "Islamic hegemony," but to augment America's existing hegemony and threaten the influence, even the existence of America's global competitors.

Perhaps the most tragic irony of the establishment's attempt to retrench its talking points within the alternative media through cognitive infiltrators like Breitbart is that the majority of the Islamic World is victim to, not benefiting from such extremism. It is the sons and daughters of  Muslims serving on the front lines fighting extremists in cities like Aleppo, the edge of Damascus, and across Libya and Iraq.

Meanwhile, Breitbart's editors sit comfortably at home, fulfilling US communication strategist Cass Sunstein's dream of infiltrating and disrupting the alternative media - diverting attention away from the real money and power driving terrorism, and instead implicating Islam - as if US-made TOW anti-tank missiles were summoned from the pages of the Qu'ran, and not delivered from an armory in Saudi Arabia, stocked by their American allies - including those Americans who regularly appear in Breitbart interviews.

Incoming US National Security Adviser to Fuel, not Fight Terrorism

November 21, 2016 (Ulson Gunnar - NEO) - The incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump already includes a long and growing list of controversial characters, controversial not because they represent a major departure from the policies of US President Barack Obama, but precisely because they represent uninterrupted continuity of agenda instead.

Other reports have mentioned the inclusion of highly problematic figures from among Washington's Neo-Conservative establishment, but President-elect Trump's national security adviser, retired US Army general, Michael Flynn is perhaps the most symbolic of all in signaling a continuity of agenda regarding US foreign policy.

Flynn was appointed in April of 2012 by US President Barack Obama as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). It was during this time the US was already deeply involved in semi-covert intervention in the Syrian conflict, after having decimated Libya in 2011 with direct US military intervention.

It was also during Flynn's time at the DIA, August 2012 in fact, that a now notorious memo was circulated (PDF) regarding the anticipated rise of what it called a "Salafist principality" in eastern Syria, and how it could be used as a strategic asset against what it called the "Syrian regime."  The DIA's anticipated "Salafist principality" would later be named the "Islamic State" (IS) and did indeed seize territory in eastern Syria where it remains dug-in to this day.

Flynn's Plan on Terror Resembles the Perpetual War Bush and Obama Fought 

It is indeed troubling that incoming President-elect Trump has chosen an Obama-era DIA director to serve in a more senior position still, and that this DIA director presided over the organization when it not only knew of IS' impending arrival on the geopolitical stage, but sought to encourage its arrival and use it as a strategic asset with which to fight the secular government in Damascus.

Flynn either didn't know just how literal US policymakers were in using IS as a strategic asset, or was complicit in the US' doing so.

What's perhaps more troubling is Flynn's alleged plans to fight and defeat terrorism.

In a recent Business Insider article titled, "Trump's new national security adviser outlines his controversial plan to defeat terrorism," it states:

President-elect Donald Trump's newly appointed national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, has outlined his plan to defeat terrorism extensively in recent months.

Business Insider continues, reporting:

"If we cannot criticize the radical Muslims in our own country, we cannot fight them either in America or overseas," Flynn wrote in the book's conclusion. "Unless we can wage an effective ideological campaign in the United States, we will not be able to defeat the jihadis on foreign battlefields, because we will not understand the true nature of our enemy."

The article also reports:

Flynn has also emphasized the need for looser rules of engagement for US soldiers in the Middle East and for a new intelligence-driven strategy. He wrote about "attacking the enemy alliance" � Russia and Iran � and strengthening the US' own alliances.

Flynn fails to make any mention of state sponsors of terrorism, namely Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, which might in fact fall under Flynn's plans for "strengthening the US' own alliances." Indeed, Flynn's new plan to defeat terrorism, is neither new, nor an actual plan to defeat terrorism.

Instead, it is a plan to further perpetuate an artificial clash of civilizations between the West and what is called "radical Islam," but which is actually ideological indoctrination sponsored by America's closet Persian Gulf allies as a means of building an almost inexhaustible army of militants deployed against governments the US itself seeks to overthrow and replace.

Perhaps the only thing that will change with President-elect Trump's arrival in the White House is the narrative used to explain why the United States continues to ignore Saudi Arabia and Qatar's role in perpetuating terrorism, completely side-step the role the US plays in exploiting militant organizations as strategic assets and why the Trump administration fully plans to continue wars designed and initiated under both Bush and Obama's administrations.

With Flynn's inclusion in a suspiciously familiar-looking administration congealing around Trump, it appears that the American people didn't truly vote for a new executive in the White House, but rather a new narrative used to sell the same old policy as before, a policy merely emanating from the White House but clearly devised and dictated from well beyond it.

Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine �New Eastern Outlook�.

Confirmed: "Draw Mohammed" Contest Attackers Were Managed by FBI

UPDATE: Readers should backtrack to CNN's 2015 coverage of the Garland, Texas shooting to see just how badly they are being deceived. As readers watch CNN's video coverage and read the article, they must keep in mind that the FBI had been in contact with the suspects for years, and encouraged them to carry out the attack.

August 7, 2016 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - To some the 2015 shooting in Garland Texas at a "Draw Mohammed" contest organized by state-sponsored agitators seemed all too convenient.

The protest was meant to prove Muslims were irrational and violent, and amid the protest two armed men did indeed attack, both killed by police who were already on the scene.

The event was meant to reinforce the narrative that Islam is an irrational and dangerous ideology, that Muslims pose a danger to America and the West in general, and that both Islam and Muslims should be actively resisted culturally, politically, and militarily.

It was the culmination of years of agitation through networks maintained by Washington politicians and policymakers, particularly those who have - ironically - not only engineered America's various and unending wars begun during the so-called "War on Terror," but who have also armed and funded some of the most dangerous terrorist organizations on Earth via America's Persian Gulf allies.

Now it is revealed that not only was the protest organized by politicians and organizations associated with Washington, but the shooting was as well.

The two suspects were being directed by undercover FBI agents, one of which reportedly told one of the shooters shortly before the attack to "tear up Texas."

The Daily Beast in its article, "FBI Agent Apparently Egged on �Draw Muhammad� Shooter," would report that:

Days before an ISIS sympathizer attacked a cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, he received a text from an undercover FBI agent. 

�Tear up Texas,� the agent messaged Elton Simpson days before he opened fire at the Draw Muhammad event, according to an affidavit (pdf) filed in federal court Thursday.

The Daily Beast would also report:

That revelation comes amidst a national debate about the use of undercover officers and human sources in terrorism cases. Undercover sources are used in more than half of ISIS-related terror cases, according to statistics kept by the George Washington University Program on Extremism, and civil liberties advocates say some of those charged might not have escalated their behavior without those interventions. 

This latest development regarding the 2015 incident reveals how the entire event and attack were organized by the state for the expressed purpose of creating fear, hysteria, and division within American society. It is very likely that similar attacks both in the United States and across Europe are also the work of concerted efforts by Western governments to manipulate public perception.

Image: Islamophobe Pam Geller with pro-war Neo-Con John Bolton.

The toxic climate created by a phenomenon known as "Islamophobia" is helping the West justify an increased police state at home and wider wars abroad. It is also playing a role in helping to radicalize Muslims sorely needed to fill the ranks of the West's militant fronts in nations like Syria where they are being used to target and overthrow governments obstructing American special interests.

Despite the rhetoric, there are approximately 1.6 billion Muslims on Earth today, meaning that if even 1% were truly as they are characterized by state-sponsored propaganda - as violent fanatics bent on global conquest - that would constitute an army of some 16 million strong - or in other words - an army larger than all of the military forces of the industrialized world combined.

In reality, the number of extremists is extremely low - a fraction of 1% of the total global Muslim population - and the vast majority of these extremists are indoctrinated by US-Saudi funded and facilitated "madrases," trained, funded, and armed by US and its Persian Gulf allies, and "coincidentally" waging war on all of the West's enemies - ranging from the now toppled government of Libya to the current governments of Syria and Iraq, as well as even Russia and China.

Those feeding into Islamophobia - then - are in fact aiding and abetting the cycle of violence, ignorance, and fear that keeps viable the West's use of terrorism as a geopolitical tool both at home and abroad. It is particularly ironic that the "radical Islam" many Westerners are now paralyzed in fear over, is in fact a creation of the modern Western state, springing out of Washington-based policy papers, not the pages of the Qu'ran.