Iraq

"People who have spoken truth to power get retired," raged McCain, "all you have to do is look at a map of the Middle East in 2009 and then compare it to a map of today," to see an utterly failed strategy..." adding - as perhaps a veiled threat - "there’s a level of dissatisfaction among the uniformed military that I’ve never seen in my time here."

The “war on terror” was a hoax. Americans were deceived by policymakers, who are pursuing a hegemonic agenda. The American people were too trusting and too gullible and, consequently, Americans were easily betrayed by Washington and by the presstitute media. The populations of the eight countries and Washington’s vassals are stuck with the consequences of Washington’s evil, vicious, and illegal actions. And Americans are stuck with the police/spy state and militarized police who murder three Americans each day and brutalize countless others.

If the PKK steps up its attacks on the Erdogan regime, how will Ankara reconcile that with Washington's move to place ground troops with the group's Syrian sister organization and what will that mean for two air forces that are flying from the same base at Incirlik?

With oil exports to Europe having slipped from 13% of Saudi's total to just 10% in the last six months, The FT reports, the de facto leader of OPEC has slashed its Official Selling Price (OSP) to Europe in an effort to regain market share. Saudi lowered its OSP for its Arab light crude grade in Europe by $1.30 a barrel for December, taking its discount to the weighted average of the North Sea Brent benchmark to $4.75 a barrel - the largest discount since February 2009... directly going after Russia's customer base.

Just as one US carrier was leaving the middle east, another widely feared and respected geopolitical superpower was set to replace US carrier presence in the Middle East in the ongoing war against "ISIS" - France.

Russia set to retailiate "heavily and militarily"...

Unnamed Lebanese sources claim US spec ops are now operating near Latakia, and while we must consider the source, that would mean direct combat between American troops and Iranian ground forces is virtually a foregone conclusion and would also help to explain why the Pentagon has reportedly sent in the dogfighters to patrol the skies. 

Why is the price of oil so low now? In fact, why are all commodity prices so low? We see the problem as being an affordability issue that has been hidden by a growing debt bubble. As this debt bubble has expanded, it has kept the sales prices of commodities up with the cost of extraction (Figure 1), even though wages have not been rising as fast as commodity prices since about the year 2000. That period is ending as the productivity of additional debt is falling.

Ahead of US spec ops deployment in Syria, the US is sending F-15C Eagle twin-engine fighters to Turkey, suggesting The Pentagon is preparing for aerial combat with the Russian air force. 

These are not problems that can be glibly dismissed with a few well-chosen words, as most politicians are inclined to do. Nor will the 2016 elections do much to alter our present course towards a police state. Indeed, it is doubtful whether the popularity contest for the new occupant of the White House will significantly alter the day-to-day life of the average American greatly at all. Those life-changing decisions are made elsewhere, by nameless, unelected government officials who have turned bureaucracy into a full-time and profitable business.

"The manhaj [method] of destruction, sowing and stirring dissension and corruptions, confusing efforts, making takfir [branding as an infidel] upon those who disagree with them, then this is a manhaj of a feeble and failure [person] who has no perfection except ruin,"

In the latest example of Washington playing catch up in the global "war" on terror PR battle, “officials familiar with the matter” have told WSJ about a concerted effort to cut off the flow of dollars to ISIS. Allegedly, the US became concerned about the amount of hard currency being shipped to Iraq over the summer. The problem: the requested amounts didn’t seem to be consistent with the country’s economic fundamentals and so, the US cut off Iraq’s access to dollar funding, nearly plunging the country into crisis.

There are a multitude of fuses affixed to dozens of powderkegs and little kids with matches are on the loose.

"There's no point in other countries getting together and deciding about a system of government and the head of that state. This is a dangerous innovation which no government in the world would accept being imposed on itself. The solution to Syria's problem is elections."