21st Century Wire says…
“Oceana has always been at war with Eurasia.”
-1984
The internet is a blaze with reports that ISIS mortars have hit the US Embassy compound in Baghdad. The question now is, was it really ISIS, or is it just another installment in a CIA-driven propaganda war?
Reports began circulating on Tuesday that ISIS had “taken credit” for a mortar attack hitting the US Embassy in Baghdad. Alleged ISIS supporters/fighters began Tweeting:
“Four rockets strike Green Zone in #Baghdad; helicopters hovering over the Green Zone; ambulances heading that way after strikes!!”
Was this really ISIS, or someone else? Who really runs ISIS? How do the public, or non-CIA US officials for that matter, know whether or not masked terrorists and Twitter avatars are who they say they are? With a US State Department that’s proven its already heavily reliant on Twitter for its intelligence updates, this question is critical.
Al-Mustakillah news agency, a London-based Tunisian news channel, reported the story on Wednesday, citing a “security source”. They stated, “On Tuesday night the US Embassy was hit with three rockets. They were fired from a park area in the Dora district [in southern Baghdad],” the agency’s source said.Al-Sumaria TV also reported a shelling incident in Baghdad’s international ‘Green Zone’.
So far, only social media reports can verify either mortar, or missile attacks hitting the embassy. After the initial barrage of Tweets, the narrative began to draw back (see tweets below), with one user posting: “2 mortars fell close to the #US embassy”.
To date, no major mainstream or foreign news outlet has picked up on this alleged ISIS news flash.
Adding to the confusion, with so much media hype from the mainstream right during the run-up to November’s key US Senate midterm election, it’s been harder to tell ISIS fact from fiction.
Only three short weeks ago the media was drenched in reports that the ‘Islamic State’, or ISIS army, had somehow infiltrated Baghdad’s suburbs in Abu Ghraib, and were “just eight miles” from Baghdad’s international airport we were told, and with RPG’s and missiles “that can shoot down a plane”.
Ten days earlier, another alleged incident took place, reported by the Washington Post, that ISIS had been ‘lobbing rounds’ into the International Zone:
“On Oct. 1, four mortar shells struck inside the Green Zone, a fortified area in central Baghdad filled with foreign embassies and government buildings, according to a U.S. Embassy security official, who declined to be identified. The rounds fell a few hundred yards from the U.S. Embassy and followed another mortar attack a week earlier, he said.”
Wait… but then it was only a ‘misfire’:
“Brig. Gen. Saad Maan, spokesman for Baghdad Operations Command, confirmed that mortar fire had hit inside the Green Zone but said the shells landed on “empty space without any buildings.” He declined to give further details but said an investigation was underway to determine its source. He stressed that there have been no further incidents.”
Was it really another ‘misfire’? With a target as large as the US Embassy, it’s impossible to miss. Was it something else then? A drill? Or was it a Pentagon media stunt designed to generate headlines for ‘more boots on the ground… a false flag event ?
There are political and financial forces within America that are hell-bent on squeezing public opinion enough get a green light for US troops in Iraq (and possibly Syria too), by painting the White House as inept when it comes to ‘tackling ISIS’.
Driving that media blitz on “ISIS Taking Baghdad, is none other than Reagan era operative turned right-wing media pundit, ‘Retired’ Col. Oliver North (photo, below), infinitely experienced, clandestine warlock of Iran-Contra fame.
As a skilled media propagandist, North certainly knows how to spin a story for his bosses. He’s been crowing recently about fear of ISIS taking over Baghdad:
“They know Baghdad. They’ve lived in Baghdad,” North said of an alleged ISIS attack. He added, “They are at the gates of Baghdad. They’re coming for us”.
NORTHERN EXPOSURE: Once a CIA operative, always a CIA operative – a now a right-wing radio shock jock.
Seeing Oliver North pushing talking points that beg for more US intervention should come as no surprise.
The majority of the sensational ISIS rhetoric has recently been coming from America’s NeoConservative quarters, most notably from Capt. Al Shimkus, a retired Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, who claims that ISIS terrorists will use “human carriers” by intentionally infecting themselves with Ebola in West Africa, before transporting the deadly virus via passenger airliner. Other politicians struggling for attention, like former US Senator Scott Brown, were saying it too.
Make no mistake, this is a propaganda war. With the amount of ISIS faux news and false images and information coming out of ISIS public relations office and Washington and Israeli propaganda outlet known as SITE, one needs to to extra cautious about vetting ISIS social media claims.
Back on June 15th, the US State Department announced that was partially evacuating the embassy in Baghdad due to the initial ISIS scare, and said it would station a small contingent of US troops there for protection.
OCCUPATION ZONE: Photo of the US Embassy in Baghdad during construction in 2007 (Photo: Cryptome.org)
To call it an ’embassy’ is a bit of an understatement – the outrageous scale of the complex is because it’s a forward operations base in the Middle East for the Pentagon and the CIA.
The US Embassy compound, located across the Tigris river in Baghdad, is the largest embassy in the world costing an estimated $750 million to build, and houses somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 staff and security personnel depending on what operations US military and intelligence agencies are running in the region at any one time.
The embassy compound is larger than Vatican City, and within its walls, contains residential apartments, a full swimming pool and athletics complex, a retail food court, shopping mall with national chain stores, a cinema, fine dining, and even a bank, where embassy staff do their financial transactions.
In addition to this, the embassy has a number of subterranean levels where the majority of essential services and operations are based.
Despite the impressive media and military push to make ISIS the world’s number one global threat, the narrative is wearing thin quicker than Washington would like to admit. Even formerly loyal corporate mainstream media information disseminators are bailing from the party line, now admitting to millions of readers: “Suspicions Run Deep in Iraq That C.I.A. and the Islamic State Are United“.
Meanwhile, here are the original reports coming out of Baghdad…
On Tuesday the Islamist militant group took credit for a mortar attack against the embassy in Baghdad. The group bragged about the attack on social media, claiming that there were likely casualties.
“Four rockets strike Green Zone in #Baghdad; helicopters hovering over the Green Zone; ambulances heading that way after strikes!!” one ISIS militant noted on Twitter. Just one day before the alleged attack, retired Lt. Col. Oliver North claimed that sources in Iraq believed ISIS was planning a “major attack” against the embassy in Baghdad.
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READ MORE ISIS NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire ISIS Files
