Photo Credit: Reuters By David D. Kirkpatrick.
The United States has conducted an escalating campaign of deadly airstrikes against the extremists of the Islamic State for more than a month. But that appears to have done little to tamp down the conspiracy theories still circulating from the streets of Baghdad to the highest levels of Iraqi government that the C.I.A. is secretly behind the same extremists that it is now attacking.
“We know about who made Daesh,” said Bahaa al-Araji, a deputy prime minister, using an Arabic shorthand for the Islamic State on Saturday at a demonstration called by the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr to warn against the possible deployment of American ground troops. Mr. Sadr publicly blamed the C.I.A. for creating the Islamic State in a speech last week, and interviews suggested that most of the few thousand people at the demonstration, including dozens of members of Parliament, subscribed to the same theory. (Mr. Sadr is considered close to Iran, and the theory is popular there as well.)
When an American journalist asked Mr. Araji to clarify if he blamed the C.I.A. for the Islamic State, he retreated: “I don’t know. I am one of the poor people,” he said, speaking fluent English and quickly stepping back toward the open door of a chauffeur-driven SUV. “But we fear very much. Thank you!”
The prevalence of the theory in the streets underscored the deep suspicions of the American military’s return to Iraq more than a decade after its invasion, in 2003. The casual endorsement by a senior official, though, was also a pointed reminder that the new Iraqi government may be an awkward partner for the American-led campaign to drive out the extremists.
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Liberal Editor Says ISIS ‘Not A Legitimate Threat’
By Al Weaver.
Left-wing talking head Katrina vanden Heuvel said Sunday on ABC’s”This Week” that ISIS is “not an immediate threat to this country,” a point later disputed in the roundtable segment by Wall Street Journal foreign affairs columnist Bret Stephens. Vanden Heuvel, the editor of the liberal news outfit The Nation, also said that America should go about combating ISIS through “regional diplomacy” or a “political solution.”
“The president articulated what I think is a pretty good foreign policy organizing principle: don’t do stupid stuff…He resisted military strikes in Syria last august. He said at West Point in May that our biggest mistakes have been willingness to rush into military adventures without thinking through the consequences.”
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Photo Credit: Andrea Bruce for The New York TimesU.S. Suspects More Direct Threats Beyond ISIS
By MARK MAZZETTI, MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and BEN HUBBARD.
As the United States begins what could be a lengthy military campaign against the Islamic State, intelligence and law enforcement officials said another Syrian group, led by a shadowy figure who was once among Osama bin Laden’s inner circle, posed a more direct threat to America and Europe.
American officials said that the group called Khorasan had emerged in the past year as the cell in Syria that may be the most intent on hitting the United States or its INSTALLATIONS overseas with a terror attack. The officials said that the group is led by Muhsin al-Fadhli, a senior Qaeda operative who, according to the State Department, was so close to Bin Laden that he was among a small group of people who knew about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks before they were launched.
There is almost no public information about the Khorasan group, which was described by several intelligence, law enforcement and military officials as being made up of Qaeda operatives from across the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa. Members of the cell are said to be particularly interested in devising terror plots using concealed explosives. It is unclear who, besides Mr. Fadhli, is part of the Khorasan group.
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