While the U.S. brags that it attacked a chemical weapons facility in Syria, witnesses claim that it actually destroyed a cancer research center.
The post Scientist Debunks US Claims—Releases Video Evidence US Bombed Syrian Cancer Research Facility appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Days after Israeli officials claimed Iran had no presence in Syria, Israel attacked an Iranian military base near Damascus.
Five-hundred fifty-eight days after targeting an ostensive headquarters of the Islamic State in Mosul, Iraq, the United States finally admitted to bombing a family home and killing a university professor and three family members, wounding at least two more — even though the coalition suspected mere hours after the attack the ill-begotten mission had snuffed out the lives of an innocent family.
Overnight from September 20 through 21, the U.S.-led coalition carried out an airstrike against a family home — putatively believed to be a strategic Islamic State target — killing four members of the Rezzo family and wounding others on scene.
Airwars reports, “University professor Mohannad Rezzo; his 17-year old son Najib Mohannad Rezzo; his brother Bassim’s wife Miyada Rezzo and their 21-year old daughter Tuka Rezzo” perished together, as bombs intended for Islamic State leaders instead heedlessly destroyed a family.
But, unironically, it took until April Fool’s Day 2017 for U.S. officials to concede the coalition’s heinous error.
“This report was opened and a credibility assessment completed in 2015. However, the report was never officially closed or reported publicly. I do not know why that was,” Colonel Joe Scrocca, Director of Public Affairs for the Coalition, told Airwars. “The case was brought to our attention by the media and we discovered the oversight, relooked [at] the case based on the information provided by the journalist and family, which confirmed the 2015 assessment, and officially closed the report in February.”
Asked by Airwars how the coalition managed to mistake a family home for the headquarters of one of the most insidious, barbarous, terrorist organizations in operation, an unidentified spokesman spartanly stated,
“ISIS uses many different types of structures to plan its terrorist activities. Many of which are residential homes taken from the people of Iraq and Syria.”
While indeed welcome news, for the Rezzos and their loved ones the tepid acknowledgement of wrongdoing dismisses over a year and a half demanding their deceased family members not be posthumously falsely described as fighters, militants, or anything other than the innocent, extremist-condemning people they were.
“For eighteen months, we have been fighting for this admission of a mistake, for our loved ones to be counted as civilians,” Professor Zareena Grewal told Airwars from New York. “It is a small relief to have the US government concede that this airstrike was a mistake, that they mistakenly targeted the residential homes of a family that opposed ISIS. It is also deeply frightening because this case is an indictment of the quality of US intelligence.”
Grewal, an associate professor of American and religious studies at Yale University and the author of “Islam is a Foreign Country: American Muslims and the Global Crisis of Authority” and “Is the Quran a Good Book?” excoriated the imprecision with which the coalition murdered members of his family in an editorial for the New York Times on October 4, 2015 — just days after the tragedy.
“The American-led air campaign did not hit a weapons storage facility belonging to the Islamic State, or ISIS, as one local report claimed,” Grewal asserted. “In a secluded part of Mosul that locals call ‘the Woods,’ the empty government warehouse, which the Islamic State briefly occupied until January, remains untouched. Instead, the strike hit two homes nearby, killing my husband’s cousin, Mohannad Rezzo, a university professor; his 17-year-old son, Najeeb; and their beloved German shepherd, Sinbul.
“Mohannad’s wife, Sana, survived the explosion, which flung her, burned, from her second-floor bedroom to the driveway below. Mohannad’s older brother, Bassim, also narrowly survived, but his wife, Miyada, and their 21-year-old daughter, Tuka, did not. Bassim’s pelvis and leg were shattered in the attack and require surgery, but it is his emotional pain that consumes him.”
Grewal’s candid description of the hopelessly ill-conceived airstrike provide intimate, insider context for civilian casualties resulting from U.S.-supported actions — the physical actuality of which too frequently is dismissed in the sterile headlines and paragraph-long articles by the American corporate press.
Major Genieve David, spokeswoman for the United States Air Force Central Command, confirmed to Grewal at the time that officials were made aware of a “civilian casualty allegation” the day following the ill-fated airstrike. CENTCOM planned to assess whether a “formal investigation” would be warranted — but, apparently, left Grewal and surviving family members in the lurch without acknowledging the avoidable error, much less offering apology, for more than 18 months.
“Today’s official recognition of this airstrike having killed civilians has been a long time coming, and should have been made public previously,” stated Azmat Khan in an email to Airwars. “It is also a searing reminder of the immense difficulty families face in getting the loss of their loved ones recognized, even in cases in which there is ample evidence of civilian loss.”
Khan and fellow investigative journalist, Anand Gopal, worked doggedly for more than a year with various members of the victims’ family to compel the United States to take responsibility and clear the Rezzo family name.
“There is still information that the Coalition has refused to provide us,” Khan continued, “for example, the kind of aircraft and munitions used in this airstrike, as well as the reason why the Rezzo family homes were hit. We are also still awaiting the results of our Freedom of Information Act requests for the government’s own investigations into this incident.”
Wholly uninvolved parties have been slain in shockingly high numbers in airstrikes carried out by the U.S. coalition in Iraq and Syria — two military theaters, among others, which have received the staunch support of the Trump administration in the form of additional troops, supplies, and, frighteningly, greater latitude for aggressive actions.
To wit, the U.S. Military’s Combined Joint Task Force for Operation Inherent Resolve claims a striking 229 people were killed essentially without justification in Iraq and Syria last month, during coalition efforts to extinguish Da’esh (Islamic State) control in the region.
However, being a notorious underreporter of its own wrongdoing, those figures don’t approach the actual travesty committed, in part, thanks to American taxpayer dollars.
Airwars determined that, as of the 30th, coalition airstrikes against supposed terrorists had instead slaughtered no less than 1,472 noncombatant civilians residing in the two long-fraught conflict zones during the month of March, alone — more than seven and a half times the 196 innocents killed throughout the same month last year.
“This is worse than anything we have ever seen from the coalition, and it’s up there with the levels of allegations we saw against Russia a year ago,” observed Airwars’ Chris Woods. “Something is shifting — a lot more civilians are dying, and it’s happening on Donald Trump’s watch.”
Indeed, it seems the new administration only amplified the beating of war drums so favored by the previous — leaving even more families like the Rezzos to grieve when directly affected by a battle royal against the Islamic State many of them have at least loosely supported.
While the U.S. coalition ultimately admitted wrongdoing in the killing of a family, the uptick in bombings and the butchery of civilians continues at an untenably reckless pace — thanks, in part, to lack of public backlash. Beyond the corporate press relegating the murders of civilians in the Middle East to mere footnotes, pro-U.S. Military propaganda claims airstrikes almost always hit intended targets.
Grewal, however, has experienced the reality — and wishes the tragic number of errant bombings and scores of civilian victims would garner appropriate scrutiny and condemnation, as he stressed,
“The claim that our military air strike campaigns are precise is a dangerous and bloody myth.”
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It has now been over 14 years since United States forces invaded Iraq — and the conflict shows no indication a resolution is even in sight.
Mosul, Iraq — Reports coming out of Iraq this week are downright terrifying with local media reporting up to as many as 230 innocent civilians slaughtered in US coalition airstrikes — in a single night.
According to the Kurdish media company, Rudaw, 137 people – most believed to be civilians – died when a bomb hit a single building in al-Jadida, in the western side of the city on Thursday. Another 100 were killed nearby.
As the British Telegraph reports, the casualties were “mostly women and children,” and “were pulled from three adjoining houses in the Jadida neighbourhood of west Mosul overnight Wednesday and into Thursday morning, according to witnesses.”
“There was so much bombing, and so many deaths,” an elderly woman said of the strikes.
“Pieces of human flesh were flying in all directions.”
According to Antiwar, Central Command said that they were “aware of the loss of life” and were carrying out “further investigation,” while insisting that all of their strikes against Mosul overnight “comply with the Law of Armed Conflict.”
Centcom also reported that “military forces conducted nine strikes consisting of 67 engagements coordinated with and in support of the government of Iraq against ISIS targets.”
Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker, reporting from Erbil in northern Iraq, said fighting in the area had intensified in the last few days.
“For more than a week there was a stalemate as Iraqi forces struggled to advance on the Old City, but in the last few days, the fighting has intensified.
“There are air strikes and ISIL is also using civilians homes with civilians in them. People have been caught in crossfire and targeted by ISIL … The shelling is indiscriminate,” said Dekker.
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“There is no safe passage out of the city. Civilians are literally everywhere.”
Reports from civilians in Mosul say ISIS fighters are employing tactics such as establishing fighting positions on the rooftops of apartment buildings. These buildings are occupied by innocent civilians and are also the targets of US coalition strikes.
“ISIS made us keep our door open, so they could get onto the roofs at any time. They even broke down the walls between houses so they could move around,” a local resident told RT.
“There were so many killed in the airstrikes, rockets, and mortars… Our entire neighborhood is in ruins. There are maybe ten houses still standing. The children are traumatized. When the jets start flying, they start crying,” another woman said.
If the aim of ISIS is to maximize civilian casualties by manipulating the US military into striking these targets, that, they have done. If their aim was to reduce the airstrikes, they have failed.
However, if we examine the mission of ISIS more closely, the former is far more likely.
The mission of ISIS is to create a rift in society in which there are extremists and everyone else. The want to eliminate the ‘gray zone’ — the area in which different religions and cultures peacefully coexist — by any means necessary. By using civilians as human shields, knowing that US forces will bomb them anyway, this tactic plays right into their strategy.
The men, women, and children who watched their father, mother, son, or daughter explode right before their eyes this week, as a US bomb destroyed their home, will undoubtedly foster resentment toward the West. This approach is the most powerful recruiting tool the terrorist regime has.
READ MORE: The Greatest Threat Ever, to Life on This Planet. The US Government.
As the Free Thought Project has previously reported, the West, in their constant bombardment, interference, meddling, and policing of the world, has fostered a breeding ground for terrorism. Indeed, America’s foreign policy, alone, since 9/11, has created a million Osama bin Ladens — all funding and arming of ISIS excluded.
Sadly, the military industrial complex shows no signs of slowing its cancer-like growth.
As long as Americans keep buying the lies spewing from the warmongering tyrants in power, nothing will change. As long as Boobus Americanus continues to believe “It’s our freedom they hate,” death and destruction will rain down — until there is nothing left.
(BIJ) In an unprecedented intensification of America’s counter-terrorism operations in Yemen, the US has confirmed it carried out 20 strikes across three central provinces.
The strikes, which were carried out in the early morning, targeted fighters from the regional arm of al Qaeda, known as AQAP, their equipment and infrastructure, in the Yemeni provinces of Abyan, al Bayda and Shabwah, according to a press release from the US Department of Defense.
Pentagon Spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said in the statement that the strikes were conducted in partnership with the Government of Yemen, and were coordinated with President Hadi.
The statement made no mention of how many people were killed and injured – neither AQAP fighters or civilians. However Yemeni officials told AFP seven people died in two of the strikes.
The attacks come a month after a botched US special forces raid ended in the deaths of 25 civilians, including nine children under the age of 13 as revealed by the Bureau, and a US Navy SEAL. Earlier this week, a Pentagon official told NBC News that the Pentagon did not dispute these numbers.
US Special Forces descended on Yakla village in Bayda province on January 29 with the hope of capturing key intelligence on AQAP.
While President Donald Trump has said it was successful in this regard, a US defense official told CNN that the latest strikes, which it reported were both air and drones strikes, had been planned for some time and were not the result of any intelligence gathered in the raid.
The latest strikes are a considerable increase in military activity in Yemen. The bombardment is a break from the steady pace of strikes in recent years, with the US carrying out an average of three strikes per month last year and never going above two strikes in a single day.
The US was routinely conducting multiple strikes a day in 2012 during its efforts to expel AQAP from its stronghold in Abyan province. The province was the scene of heavy clashes between the Yemeni military and AQAP fighters – AQAP had taken advantage of the political unrest with the Arab Spring in 2011 to gain control of several towns.
But even then, the highest number of confirmed strikes on a single day at any point of the Abyan offensive was four.
In total, the Bureau has recorded at least 186 US air and drone strikes, and special forces raids, since the first in 2002. At least 853 people have been killed, 158 of them reported to be civilians, according to Bureau data.
by Jessica Purkiss, Jack Serle / Creative Commons / Bureau of Investigative Journalism / Report a typo
(ANTIWAR) The first reported civilian casualties of the US-backed invasion of the ISIS capital of Raqqa occurred this week in the nearby village of al-Heisha, just 40 km north of the city, where a US airstrike hit a large number of civilians.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported 20 civilians killed in the attack and 32 others wounded, again all civilians. The Pentagon has confirmed that it conducted the strikes that were reported in the area to have caused the casualties.
The Kurdish YPG and its affiliate force, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), however, insisted the Syrian Observatory’s report was made up by ISIS, and that there were only ISIS fighters in the village. They also claimed that any civilians killed were “human shields,” even though they’d already denied any of them were present in the first place.
Locals from within the village say that those who were able fled, but many were forced to remain when ISIS fighters arrived and wouldn’t let anyone else go. ISIS had brought heavy weapons into the village, which apparently precipitated the strikes.
This article (US Airstrike Kills 20 Civilians in Syria) by Jason Ditz, originally appeared on AntiWar.com and was used with permission. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.
The Pentagon is denying involvement.
