The Media Says The US Just Liberated Mosul: Here's What Really Happened

Authored by Darius Shahtahmasebi via TheAntiMedia.org,

The mainstream media appears to be celebrating ISIS’ recent defeat in Mosul, albeit with some reservations. The media is largely using the word “liberation,” which indicates the people of Mosul have been freed from a monstrous force by a friendly, benevolent one.

In reality, the “liberation” of Mosul paints a dark, horrifying picture of America’s foreign policy when one realizes how ISIS took hold of Mosul in the first place.

As Anti-Media in summarized in September of last year, the U.S. allowed ISIS to gain control of Mosul quite deliberately:

“In June 2014, ISIS crossed the Syrian border into Iraq, effortlessly taking the strategic oil-rich cities of Mosul and Baiji and almost making it as far as Baghdad. Amid the terror group’s frightening victory, they uploaded images and footage of drive-by-shootings, large-scale death marches, and mass graves (following the mass executions of Iraqi soldiers).

“ISIS militants claimed massive quantities of American military equipment, including entire truckloads of humvees, helicopters, tanks, and artillery as their own. This was no secret to Washington, or even the world, as the militants photographed and recorded themselves and publicly flaunted their activity on social media.”

Was there a good reason the American military sat on its hands despite knowing full well that this was going on? As Anti-Media explained further:

“What did the U.S. do in response? Nothing. In spite of all the American bases in Iraq and the government’s ability to perform all manner of illicit activity — including assassinating Muammar Gaddafi in Libya using a drone that was flown out of Sicily by a pilot who operated the vehicle from a naval base in Nevada‚ the U.S. couldn’t do anything to stop ISIS rapid advancements. Was there a problem preventing the U.S. military from conducting air strikes? Clearly not, as the U.S. had been launching drone strikes in Pakistan at around the same time ISIS advanced.”

The U.S. allowed ISIS to gain this significant portion of territory before moving into Iraq with an air war that was designed to pave the way for a segued operation into Syrian territory. The U.S. couldn’t justify an intervention into Syria without going into Iraq first, and this was quite clearly the underlying intention of this operation the whole time, as evidenced by the U.S.’ obsession with the Syrian conflict throughout both the Obama and Trump administrations.

Since the U.S. moved back into Iraq in 2014, the U.S. has dropped 84,000 bombs in Iraq and Syria up until the end of May 2017. As Counterpunch explains, this is nearly three times the number of bombs and missiles dropped on Iraq during  George W. Bush’s “Shock and Awe” campaign in 2003.

Monitoring group Airwars’ currently estimates that the minimum number of civilians killed by the U.S.-led coalition’s campaign in Iraq and Syria has reached roughly 4,354 since the operation began in 2014. The number is likely higher, but we will never know the exact total because up until a month ago, the U.S. only had two personnel investigating casualties in Iraq and Syria full time.

Under President Trump, the number of bombs being dropped increased rapidly after Trump gave complete control to the military generals on the ground to call in airstrikes with little oversight. One such air raid in Mosul saw close to 300 civilians die, and the fact that the strike had been called in by Iraqi forces on the ground demonstrates the immense amount of scope that Trump has delegated to call in airstrikes with little regard to international law and the principle of proportionality.

The battle for Mosul also drew in Iran-backed Shia militias, who have been known to terrorize Iraq’s Sunni population (including torturing civilians). No one doubts that ISIS is a brutal and abhorrent group, but the people who are supposedly “liberating” the local population — whether it’s the U.S. military, the Iraqi armed forces, or the various militia on the ground — appear to be no better.

Now that these Iran-backed militias have firmly planted themselves in Iraq, the U.S. is left with an ultimate dilemma of how to kick them out and counter Iran’s expanding influence. In all seriousness, the battle for Mosul is only paving the way for further occupation and laying the groundwork for America to pursue its regional ambitions in its never-ending quest to confront Iran.

According to the U.N., more than 742,000 Iraqis have fled the battle in Mosul, with approximately 10,000 new civilians fleeing every day. For a country that hates refugees, the U.S. certainly plays a significant role in creating an endless supply of them.

And for those civilians still trapped in the city, their lives will never be the same.

As Airwars explains:

“According to city officials, as much as 80 per cent of West Mosul has been completely destroyed. Civilians still emerging from the battlefield are often bloodied and starving – traumatised by Iraqi and Coalition bombardments; and by atrocities commited [sic] by ISIS.

“According to reporters accompanying Iraqi forces, the stench of death is everywhere in the Old City – with civil defence officials reporting that as many as 4,000 bodies still remain unrecovered in the rubble. It is likely to be many months before the full death toll is known.”

That is quite the liberation. Even if Mosul really has been “liberated” by the U.S.-backed coalition, no one seems to be talking about the fact that ISIS was only able to conquer strategic areas like Mosul under the safety of the Obama administration’s policies. Leaked audio of former Secretary of State John Kerry when he was a senator confirmed the U.S. was watching ISIS grow, and in turn, the hoped this would bring Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the negotiating table (you can listen to the full audio here).

You can’t target a group as an enemy in one location and view it as a useful proxy army in another. Indeed, ISIS was always a useful proxy force for the anti-Assad coalition, as Kerry admitted.

Essentially, the U.S. allowed ISIS to gain control of large swaths of Iraq and Syria so they could justify interventions in these war-ravaged nations.

As far as the people of Iraq are concerned, there is only one winner here: the military-industrial complex, which secured massive years-long contracts to make, supply, and drop over 84,000 bombs on a territory that never should have been in the hands of ISIS in the first place.

Trump Administration Stops Disclosing Iraq And Syria Troop Deployments In Bid To "Surprise" ISIS

The Trump administration has stopped disclosing material information about the size and nature of the U.S. commitment to military action in Iraq and Syria, including the number of U.S. troops deployed in either country, in a bid to "surprise" the Islamic State with the number of US troops in the region the LA Times reports.

Earlier this month, the Pentagon quietly dispatched 400 Marines to northern Syria to operate artillery in support of Syrian militias that are cooperating in the fight against Islamic State, according to U.S. officials. That was the first use of U.S. Marines in that country since its long civil war began. In Iraq, nearly 300 Army paratroopers were deployed recently to help the Iraqi military in their six-month assault on the city of Mosul, according to U.S. officials.

The decision appears to be making good on Trump’s promise as a candidate to insist on more of an “element of surprise” in battle tactics.

“In order to maintain tactical surprise, ensure operational security and force protection, the coalition will not routinely announce or confirm information about the capabilities, force numbers, locations, or movement of forces in or out of Iraq and Syria,” said Eric Pahon, a Pentagon spokesman.

While neither of those deployments were officially announced prior to their implementation, Gen. Joseph Votel, the top US commander in the Middle East did acknowledge the additional troop presence in Syria to the House Armed Services committee on Wednesday.

“They have deployed,” Votel said, adding that there were likely more troops headed for deployment. “We have recognized that as we continue to pursue our military objectives in Syria, we are going to need more direct all-weather fire support capability for our Syrian Democratic Force partners,” Votel told the committee. “We have not taken our eye off what our principle mission is, which is to advise and assist and enable our partners... Help our partners fight, but not fight for them.”

A representative of Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) confirmed that “routine” troop deployment announcements will stop under Donald Trump as US forces want the Islamic State terrorists to be the “first to know about any additional capabilities the Coalition or our partner forces may present them on the battlefield.”

Under the Obama administration, Pentagon policy was to announce conventional deployments after they occurred. That administration even took the unusual step of revealing in 2015 that 200 special operations forces — whose missions often are classified — had been sent to Syria. That’s now changed, according to Pentagon officials.

“The coalition commander’s intent is that ISIS be first to know about any additional capabilities the coalition or our partner forces may present them on the battlefield,” Pahon said, using an acronym for Islamic State.

Ned Price, National Security Council spokesman under President Barack Obama, criticized the new approach of Trump"s administration not to share such crucial details with Americans. “The position of the Obama administration was that the American people had a right to know if servicemen and women were in harm’s way,” Price told the LA Times. “It’s truly shocking that the current administration furtively deploys troops without public debate or describing their larger strategy.”

Currently 5,262 US troops are authorized to be in Iraq, a US military official told the Military Times last Thursday. Another 503 are authorized to be in Syria by Washington. What makes the deployment complicated is that such an authorization has not been granted by the capital Damascus, which considers the US presence an illegal invasion. The US officials further noted that the real numbers may be way larger as those figures fail to reflect those servicemen who are sent to Iraq and Syria on so-called temporary “non-enduring” missions. There are roughly 1,000 US special operations forces, Marines and Army Rangers in Northern Syria today – and that number might soon grow even larger.

Commenting on a Fox News report that the Pentagon is sending two units – comprising 200 to 300 soldiers in total – from the 82nd Airborne Division"s 2nd Brigade Combat Team (2nd BCT) to Iraq, Pahon told the Military Times, that there was no plan to announce the temporary deployment because it will last less 120 days and will not count against the authorized number of American troops in the country.

* * *

Meanwhile Operation Inherent Resolve has released its latest Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) Monthly Civilian Casualty Report, which admitted 9 additional civilian deaths caused by the US-led coalition – five in 2017 and four more from 2015. The Pentagon has reported receiving 41 new reports of possible civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria during the month of February 2017. The report said the coalition completed the assessment on 17 reports, while a total of 43 inquiries are still open and are being probed.

Out of 17 assessed reports, the coalition dismissed twelve as “non-credible” while five were assessed to be “credible.”

Despite numerous human rights organizations’ reports of the mounting civilian death toll in Mosul, Iraq, the US-led coalition claimed it received only 15 credible reports of incidents in which civilians were killed by the time US-coordinated Iraqi forces who freed Eastern Mosul in February.

“In Mosul, Iraq, since the start of operations to liberate the city on Oct. 17, 2016, to the liberation of the East side of Mosul on Feb. 18, 2017, the total number of reports of possible civilian casualties was 37. The total number of credible reports during this time period was 15,” the US-led coalition said, without specifying how many civilians were killed in these incidents.

The Pentagon said that in total from August 2014 to February 2017, the coalition conducted a total of 18,645 strikes that included 42,089 separate engagements accidentally killing 229 civilians. Meanwhile, rights groups and activists such as the UK-based monitoring group Airwars, believe the number could be more than 10 times higher.