US Launches Surveillance Flights Over Syria: ISIS Eliminates Syrian Air Defenses

Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post

Right on schedule and as many researchers, including myself, predicted, the Western-backed and engineered rise of ISIS across Iraq and the most likely staged Foley beheading video is now being used as justification for the violation of Syrian airspace, itself only the precursor to “targeted airstrikes” inside Syria.

According to the New York Times, the Obama administration authorized surveillance flights over Syrian airspace over the weekend. Defense officials stated Monday evening that the US military is sending both manned and unmanned (drones) surveillance flights over Syrian territory. The drones will also be joined by U-2 spy planes.

Interestingly enough, the New York Times admits that the surveillance flights are the “precursor to potential airstrikes” in its own report on August 25, “Obama Authorizes Air Surveillance Of ISIS In Syria.”

In yet another example of imperialist arrogance and lack of respect for Syria and the rest of the world, the administration stated that it did not intend to notify the Assad government of the surveillance flights.

As Mark Landler and Helen Cooper wrote for the New York Times. “The flights are a significant step toward direct American military action in Syria, an intervention that could alter the battlefield in the nation’s three-year civil war.”

Syrian officials responded on Monday by stating that any airstrikes against ISIS must be coordinated with the Syrian government or the strikes will be seen as a violation of Syria’s sovereignty and an act of aggression. Syria, however, did express willingness to work with the United States and other interested parties in the possibility of engaging in coordinated and targeted airstrikes against ISIS locations.

Still, the Obama administration made clear that it had no interest in working with the secular Assad government and that it would act unilaterally if the decision to use military action was reached. In other words, Washington re-affirmed its positions that the wishes of sovereign states will continue to be ignored. In this position, Washington also unintentionally reveals that the Syrian government, not ISIS, is the real target of NATO and US military airstrikes.

As Landler and Cooper write,

Mr. Obama met Monday with Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and other advisers to discuss options, but the White House said Mr. Obama had not yet decided whether to order military action in Syria. The White House made clear that if the president did act, he had no plans to collaborate with Mr. Assad or even inform him in advance of any operation.

[…]

While the Syrian government has the capability to partly defend its airspace from American warplanes, American fighter jets can fly close to the border and fire on targets in Syria using long-range precision weapons.

The American military could also jam Syria’s air-defense systems by sending signals that would make it difficult or impossible for radar to pick up American fighter planes entering Syrian airspace. Such a move would give fighters a limited amount of time to hit ISIS targets or camps before leaving Syria. The military could also use B-2 stealth bombers, which are almost invisible to radar, or could fire at stationary targets in Syria using Tomahawk cruise missiles, launched from ships at sea.

Thus, the surveillance flights and certainly any flights conducting airstrikes over Syrian territory should be viewed as a provocation at best. In reality, airstrikes conducted over Syrian territory constitutes an invasion.

Note that, while Syrian Foreign Minister Muallem stated that Syria is open to coordination to combat the ISIS terrorists, he also stated that “Any violation of Syria’s sovereignty would be an act of aggression.” In addition, when asked whether or not Syria would shoot down planes violating Syria’s airspace, Muallem answered “”That could happen if there was not prior coordination.” Muallem added that Syria was seeking cooperation and coordination in order to prevent such a scenario.

Airstrikes Are Actually Directed At Assad

Yet, despite all the browbeating by the Western media suggesting that any targeted airstrikes would be strikes against ISIS, the truth is that the airstrikes are actually aimed at the Syrian government.

The United States has allowed ISIS to conquer Iraqi territory so as to justify the eventual invasion of Syria in addition to the reinvasion of Iraq. Indeed, any deployment of American troops, airstrikes, or any other type of US military force, will necessitate a battle against ISIS inside Iraq as well as “cross-border” strikes against the organization in Syria. Such “cross-border” strikes would likely be met with apathetic support from the American people since any restraint regarding borders will be presented and then viewed as placing “handcuffs on the troops.”

Make no mistake, however, any military action taken across the border inside Syria will not be taken for the purposes of eliminating ISIS. The truth is that such military action will be nothing more than a backdoor attempt at establishing the “buffer zone” that NATO so ardently desired early on in the Syrian conflict. With the establishment of this “buffer zone,” a new staging ground will be opened that allows terrorists such as ISIS and others the ability to conduct attacks even deeper inside Syria.

ISIS Is Controlled By NATO

It is important to point out that the Islamic State is not some shadowy force that emerged from the caves of Afghanistan to form an effective military force that is funded by Twitter donations and murky secretive finance deals. IS is entirely the creation of NATO and the West and it remains in control of the organization.

As Tony Cartalucci writes in his article “Implausible Deniability: West’s ISIS Terror Hordes In Iraq,”

Beginning in 2011 – and actually even as early as 2007 – the United States has been arming, funding, and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and a myriad of armed terrorist organizations to overthrow the government of Syria, fight Hezbollah in Lebanon, and undermine the power and influence of Iran, which of course includes any other government or group in the MENA region friendly toward Tehran.

Image: ISIS corridors begin in Turkey and end in Baghdad. [image credit: Land Destroyer]

Billions in cash have been funneled into the hands of terrorist groups including Al Nusra, Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), and what is now being called “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” or ISIS. One can see clearly by any map of ISIS held territory that it butts up directly against Turkey’s borders with defined corridors ISIS uses to invade southward – this is because it is precisely from NATO territory this terrorist scourge originated.

ISIS was harbored on NATO territory, armed and funded by US CIA agents with cash and weapons brought in from the Saudis, Qataris, and NATO members themselves. The “non-lethal aid” the US and British sent including the vehicles we now see ISIS driving around in.

They didn’t “take” this gear from “moderates.” There were never any moderates to begin with. The deadly sectarian genocide we now see unfolding was long ago predicted by those in the Pentagon – current and former officials – interviewed in 2007 by Pulitzer Prize-winning veteran journalist Seymour Hersh.

Hersh’s 9-page 2007 report, “The Redirection” states explicitly:

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

“Extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam” and are “sympathetic to Al Qaeda” – is a verbatim definition of what ISIS is today. Clearly the words of Hersh were as prophetic as they were factually informed, grounded in the reality of a regional conflict already engineered and taking shape as early as 2007. Hersh’s report would also forewarn the sectarian nature of the coming conflict, and in particular mention the region’s Christians who were admittedly being protected by Hezbollah.

While Hersh’s report was written in 2007, knowledge of the plan to use death squads to target Middle Eastern countries, particularly Syria, had been reported on even as far back as 2005 by Michael Hirsh and John Barry for Newsweek in an article entitled “The Salvador Option.”

Regardless, Cartalucci states in a separate article, “NATO’s Terror Hordes In Iraq A Pretext For Syria Invasion,”

In actuality, ISIS is the product of a joint NATO-GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] conspiracy stretching back as far as 2007 where US-Saudi policymakers sought to ignite a region-wide sectarian war to purge the Middle East of Iran’s arch of influence stretching from its borders, across Syria and Iraq, and as far west as Lebanon and the coast of the Mediterranean. ISIS has been harbored, trained, armed, and extensively funded by a coalition of NATO and Persian Gulf states within Turkey’s (NATO territory) borders and has launched invasions into northern Syria with, at times, both Turkish artillery and air cover. The most recent example of this was the cross-border invasion by Al Qaeda into Kasab village, Latikia province in northwest Syria.

Cartalucci is referring to a cross-border invasion that was coordinated with NATO, Turkey, Israel, and the death squads where Israel acted as air force cover while Turkey facilitated the death squad invasion from inside its own borders.

ISIS Attack On Taqba Airbase – The Precursor To A NATO Attack On Syria

Keeping in mind that ISIS is controlled and directed by NATO and Western intelligence, the fact that the death squads have recently focused on the Taqba Airbase in Raqqa province is significant. Particularly when viewed in context of the recent “debate” taking place in front of the American public by the Obama administration on whether or not to engage in targeted airstrikes inside Syria.

For those who may not see the pattern – while the United States and NATO deliberated engaging in targeted airstrikes in Syria and the Syrian government subsequently states its opposition to those attacks and its intentions to shoot down the planes delivering those strikes if they do not coordinate with the Syrian government, death squads have effectively eliminated the air defense capability of the Syrian government in the east of the country.

After all, the Pentagon even stated that one of the biggest threats to an airstrike operation in Syria is the Syrian government’s air defenses. Thanks to ISIS, those air defenses no longer exist in the east of Syria.

This was the end game of the ISIS battle to take over Taqba from the start – eliminate air defenses so that the NATO powers can launch airstrikes against the Syrian military and thus freeing up a launching pad for the terrorists to conduct attacks even deeper into Syria.

With the James Foley beheading video being largely understood as a staged propaganda ploy as well the fact that ISIS and its related terrorist organizations are funded, directed, and trained by the United States and NATO, it is imperative that the American people speak out and oppose the impending strike on Syria.

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Brandon Turbeville is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University and is the author of six books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, and The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria. Turbeville has published over 300 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.