Last night, at the sole discretion of President Barack Obama, the United States officially entered the Syrian civil war and launched attacks in that sovereign nation. The president had neither obtained authorization from the U.S. Congress, nor permission from the Syrian state's current government.

The offensive, launched in secret on , included a mix of fighter jets and bomber aircraft, accompanied by a barrage of ship-launched Tomahawk missiles, confirmed Pentagon press secretary John Kirby.

Military commanders intended to strike as many as 20 targets in the operation, primarily belonging to the Islamic State group, or "ISIS." The U.S. began attacking that group on August 8th, 2014 - but in Iraq, not Syria.

While the U.S. Congress recently voted to provide armaments to Syrian rebels, it did not vote for direct military strikes. Nonetheless, President Obama acted without reservation and said he would not hesitate to commit more attacks in the future.

The next weapon in the fight against Islamic extremists in the Middle East might be Vladimir Putin. The Russian president discussed with his Security Council on Monday potentially contributing to fighting ISIS, according to Russian news agencies. The council "exchanged opinions on possible forms of cooperation with other partners on a plan to counter Islamic State in the framework of international law," Interfax quoted a Kremlin spokesman as saying.


The United States has been trying to build a broad coalition to thwart ISIS militants in Syria and Iraq, but Russia has not been part of the conversation. "The anti-ISIL coalition is not a club party - we do not expect any invitations and we are not going to buy entry tickets," said Ilya Rogachev, an official in Russia's Foreign Ministry said last week. But Russia is a supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose regime is trying to stave off an insurgency that has included ISIS fighters.

ISIS could potentially threaten Moscow directly, too. The group's ranks include Muslims from Russia's North Caucasus region, who have been waging their own insurgency in the mountainous region following two wars between Moscow and separatists in Chechnya.

Authored by Glenn Greenwald, originally posted at The Intercept,

The U.S. today began bombing targets inside Syria, in concert with its lovely and inspiring group of five allied regimes: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Jordan.

That means that Syria becomes the 7th predominantly Muslim country bombed by the 2009 Nobel Peace Laureate - after Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Iraq.

The utter lack of interest in what possible legal authority Obama has to bomb Syria is telling indeed: empires bomb who they want, when they want, for whatever reason (indeed, recall that Obama bombed Libya even after Congress explicitly voted against authorization to use force, and very few people seemed to mind that abject act of lawlessness; constitutional constraints are not for warriors and emperors).

It was just over a year ago that Obama officials were insisting that bombing and attacking Assad was a moral and strategic imperative. Instead, Obama is now bombing Assad's enemies while politely informing his regime of its targets in advance. It seems irrelevant on whom the U.S. wages war; what matters it that it be at war, always and forever.

Six weeks of bombing hasn't budged ISIS in Iraq, but it has caused ISIS recruitment to soar. That's all predictable: the U.S. has known for years that what fuels and strengthens anti-American sentiment (and thus anti-American extremism) is exactly what they keep doing: aggression in that region. If you know that, then they know that. At this point, it's more rational to say they do all of this not despite triggering those outcomes, but because of it. Continuously creating and strengthening enemies is a feature, not a bug, as it is what then justifies the ongoing greasing of the profitable and power-vesting machine of Endless War.

If there is anyone who actually believes that the point of all of this is a moral crusade to vanquish the evil-doers of ISIS (as the U.S. fights alongside its close Saudi friends), please read Professor As'ad AbuKhalil's explanation today of how Syria is a multi-tiered proxy war. As the disastrous Libya "intervention" should conclusively and permanently demonstrate, the U.S. does not bomb countries for humanitarian objectives. Humanitarianism is the pretense, not the purpose.

The Ukrainian Defense Minister Valerii Geletei is hardly a credible figure.

Not only did he recently declare that Russia had threatened the Ukraine with nuclear strikes, he even told a Ukrainian journalist that Russia had already executed two tactical nuclear strikes on the city of Lugansk (apparently to explain why the Ukrainian forces had to retreat from there). The Junta later denied the story and blamed it on the journalist who first published it.

Despite these antics, Geletei nonetheless caught the world's attention when he promised the Ukrainian Rada that the Ukraine would retake Crimea and organize a victory parade in Sevastopol. The Rada (Ukraine's parliament) greeted that promise with a standing ovation.

The truth is that this will never happen. Here is why:

The United States' recklessly aggressive posture towards Russia and China has put them in a position where they are wondering when Washington will attack them, an American political commentator says.

Don DeBar, an anti-war activist and radio host in New York, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Monday while commenting on a retired US Navy admiral's assertion that the US should keep its nuclear weapons in European countries in the wake of Russian activities in Ukraine.

"Withdrawing our relatively few weapons would be the absolute wrong signal at this moment," former NATO chief James Stavridis said last week.

DeBar said that "the United States is playing a very dangerous game with Russia, and with China, by the way, but particularly with Russia."

"Aside from the decision that was made long time ago to implement the so-called missile-defense [system] in Europe and to move NATO up to the borders of Russia, and even aside from the overthrow of the Ukrainian government that took place with the backing of the United States earlier this year, and the civil war, the war that's have been going on in Ukraine on the border of Russia now for six months or more, and even despite the obvious determination of Russia to stand up at this point and say enough and no further, the United States now is contemplating or has announced its intensions to bomb targets in Syria in the face of the Syrian government's sovereignty basically," he added.

Two US senators say the ISIL terrorist group "poses a direct threat to the United States" and have blamed President Barack Obama for the crisis that the group has created in Iraq and Syria.

Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham wrote in the National Review on Monday that the rise of ISIL is the result of Obama's refusal to attack Syria last September.

They also argued that ISIL was able to flourish because Obama did not leave behind a residual American force in Iraq in 2011, rejected the idea of training and arming Syrian rebels sooner, and decided not to order airstrikes against the group in Iraq last fall.

"As a result, the situation in Iraq and Syria has descended into a crisis that poses a direct threat to the United States. Worse yet, our options for countering this threat are fewer and far worse than they were just a few years ago," they wrote.

"If we fail to learn from the mistakes of the past few years - if we fail to pursue an aggressive, realistic strategy for victory, the ISIS threat will only grow stronger," they added, using another acronym for ISIL.

On Monday, the US and its allies started airstrikes against ISIL in Syria. The US military has already conducted some 174 airstrikes against ISIL targets in Iraq since mid-August.

The ISIL terrorists, some of whom have been trained by the US in Jordan and Turkey to destabilize the Syrian government, control Raqqa and sections of Aleppo in the north and Hasakeh in the northeast as well as most of Deir Ezzor in the east.

The terror group sent back its militants into Iraq in June, quickly seizing vast expanse of land straddling the border between the two countries.

The ISIL terrorists are notorious for carrying out horrific acts of violence, including public decapitations.

The Royal Mint has launched its own online bullion trading service in a bid to entice investors away from shares and into gold sovereigns.

In a move that could spark a new gold rush, customers anywhere in the world will be able to buy unlimited quantities of gold coins directly from the Mint.

The gold will be stored in the Mint's high-security vault and guarded by Ministry of Defence personnel. The initiative is designed to overcome some of the key objections to investing in physical gold,including worries about shipping, storage and finding a trustworthy broker.

Citing World Gold Council figures showing there might be £4bn worth of untapped demand for gold investment in the UK, Shane Bissett, the Royal Mint's director of commemorative coin and bullion, said: "The Royal Mint can help make this option a much more accessible opportunity. We want to help expand the bullion market in the UK, particularly as coins offer a relatively affordable introduction - and believe we are well placed to do so."

U.S. Army Gen. John F. Campbell, commander of U.S and NATO troops in Afghanistan, hailed the presidential power-sharing agreement announced Sunday as a major step toward clearing the way for a continued presence of U.S. and allied forces next year.

In a statement, Campbell congratulated Afghan President-elect Ashraf Ghani Ammadzai and rival Abdullah Abdullah on the deal to form a National Unity Government. Both candidates have committed to keeping coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Campbell also praised the Afghan National Security Forces for remaining neutral during the long and bitter dispute over the presidential election results.

"Their achievements, through two elections and protracted political uncertainty, are enormous," Campbell said in an email to Military.com. "We remain committed to assisting the Afghan National Security Forces as they continue to serve and secure the Afghan people."

Following announcement of the agreement, retired Adm. James Stavridis, the former NATO commander, tweeted that the pledges of Ghani and Abdullah to work together would translate into "a Bilateral Security Agreement to keep a residual force and avoid the mistakes of Iraq."

In a statement, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen urged Ghani and Abdullah to come to "the conclusion of the necessary security agreements with the United States and NATO as soon as possible."

For more than a year, the allies have been pressing for a Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) with the U.S. to keep troops in Afghanistan past the end of this year and a similar agreement with NATO, but current President Hamid Karzai refused to sign. Karzai has been in power since shortly after the U.S. invasion in 2001.

New intelligence has emerged warning Washington that its upcoming confrontation with the Islamic State may leave it blind to a more sinister and direct threat from a much lesser known terrorist group that has arisen from the ashes of the Syrian war.

Very little information is being released at the moment by anyone within American intelligence circles, but the group calling itself Khorasan is said by officials to have concrete plans for striking targets in the United States and Europe as a chosen modus operandi - more so than the Islamic State (IS), formerly known as ISIS.

David Copperfield is a CIA Contractor?

The crisis involving the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a Godsend to politicians, which is probably why the threat actually posed by the group is being hyped as it is while the White House and Pentagon continue to change the meaning of commonly used English expressions to enable the attacking of just about anyone anywhere. We are told that the United States will have a free hand in bombing Syria, an independent nation with which Washington is not at war. The Administration has warned that if Damascus attempts to defend itself from the air armada there will be consequences in the form of "retaliation," suggesting that the US would be striking back after being attacked. Oddly enough, my dictionary suggests that it would be the Syrians who would be retaliating, but one supposes that in the Emerald City everything is not as it seems and certain words have little or no meaning.

The welcome distraction afforded by ISIS means that the issue of Gaza, which was recently devastated by the Israelis, has largely disappeared from the mainstream media, enabling Benjamin Netanyahu to steal still more land on the West Bank for new settlements. And remember MH-17? Still a whodunit and nobody cares anymore.


Back here at home, the dispute over the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) torture, a hot button issue earlier this year, has also benefited, largely disappearing from sight. The meticulously researched Senate report, covering 6000 pages and including 35,000 footnotes, apparently concluded that torturing terrorist suspects was not only illegal under the United Nations Convention on Torture, to which Washington is a signatory, it was also ineffective, producing no intelligence that was otherwise unobtainable.

Since a "forgive and forget" forward-looking White House has already indicated that no one will ever be punished for illegal actions undertaken in the wake of 9/11, why is the torture issue important beyond the prima facie case that a war crime that was authorized by the highest levels of the federal government? It is important because of its constitutional implications and its impact on rule of law in the United States, which is again being flouted by the Administration in its rush to "destroy" ISIS, which is little more than a terrorist group du jour being exploited to terrify the American public. The constitutional issue, in its simplest terms, is that the CIA works for the president and when it operates without legally mandated oversight by the executive branch and judiciary it does so in defiance of separation of powers, making the Agency little better than a secret army run by POTUS.