Our Man in Tikrit
According to Reuters, Iraqi security forces and Shi’ite militia fighters (with the support of Canadian special forces and US weapons, trainers and air strikes) are presently engaged in a major assault to retake the Iraqi city of Tikrit from ISIS. Until recently, the western media rarely mentioned the figure commanding these forces.
His name is Major General Qasem Soleimani, and he’s the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds Force. This creates an embarrassing situation for Obama because the US still officially designates Soleimani as a terrorist for his alleged role in a 2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US
Given all the saber rattling against Iran by congressional Republicans (cheered on by Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu), the US media has been loathe to acknowledge that Iran has been spearheading the offensive against ISIS in both Iraq and Syria. In Syria, Soleimani is widely credited with helping President Bashar al-Assad turn the tide against rebel forces and recapture key cities and towns.
The US political elite prefers to spoon feed Americans the cartoon version of US foreign policy, in which Americans only go to war against evil doers. For this reason, they have greatly downplayed the role of Soleimani and other Iranian military “advisers” in the battle against ISIS. A recent explosion of interest in General Soleimani on Twitter and Facebook has forced them to come clean.
According to the BBC, this isn’t the first time Soleimani has aided US military efforts in the Middle East. In 2001, he provided military intelligence to the US to support its invasion to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan, and in 2007 in participated in US-led talks in Baghdad over the deteriorating situation in Iraq.
As best I can ascertain, Soleimani has been a prominent figure in containing Iraqi sectarian violence since 2011
He has commanded Iranian forces active in the Syrian civil war since the latter half of 2012.
photo credit: www.yjc.ir
The Most Revolutionary Act 
Reblogged this on Will the real reality please stand up!.
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Who is friend? Who is foe? What a convoluted world we live in!
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Rosaliene, I think the problem arises when the US tries to persuade people that their wars are a simple matter of good vs evil. If they told the truth and admitted that they declare war to preserve US control over scarce energy resources, the allies they choose would make perfect sense.
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One more reason for Australia to stay out of it. Chaos everywhere.
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Well, the great news is that Australia is about to send more military ‘advisers’ to Iraq. Even if they stay ‘behind the fence’, I would not exactly call this staying out of it. Australia participates in the chaos one way or another. And so it goes.
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Agreed. New Zealand should also stay out of it. Our prime minister has sent off 50+ special forces and advisers to Iraq without Parliamentary approval. If he had put it to Parliament, it would have been voted down. The only explanation John Key gave for sending NZ troops is that we’re “part of the club.” He didn’t say which club exactly. I suppose he meant the club of English-speaking white European supremacists.
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It’s worth noting that General Soleimani, Iranian President Rouhani, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad have never, and probably will never, become filmed addressing any committees of the United States Congress on the Middle East’s violence, or interviewed on western corporate, primetime media. Why? Because the truth about the Middle East would change/correct the perceptions of literally billions of human beings around the Earth.
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The melodrama of our so-called democratic government is just that – it has nothing to do with actual US foreign policy, or increasingly domestic policy.
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