US can’t be trusted in fight against ISIL: Analyst

The US-led coalition purportedly battling ISIL in Iraq and Syria cannot be trusted to lead the fight against the terrorist group, an international lawyer and political commentator says.

Barry Grossman, who is based on the Indonesian island of Bali, made the remarks on Thursday during an interview with Press TV while commenting on a report by The Guardian which says that the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq brought al-Qaeda to the country and created other terrorist groups, such as al-Nusra Front and ISIL.

The article written by Seumas Milne said that US and Western habit of playing with terrorist groups was “recalibrated during the occupation of Iraq, when US forces led by General Petraeus sponsored an El Salvador-style dirty war of sectarian death squads to weaken the Iraqi resistance.”

It added that “US and Western policy in the conflagration that is now the Middle East is in the classic mould of imperial divide-and-rule,” where US forces bomb one set of militants while backing another.

“The Guardian report, understood together with the documents and verified background information it is based on, stands as irrefutable proof that the US and the UK have not only been actively supporting the same team as the regional elements they like to call al-Qaeda, but also that both the UK and US were well aware in 2013 that Sarin gas attacks attributed to the Assad forces, at the very least, were as likely as not carried out by US/UK allies in Syria,” Grossman said.

“This material also establishes that the US and UK provided training, logistical support and a secret supply of ‘arms on a massive scale’ to the same terrorist elements which the US-led coalition claims to be fighting,” he added.

“Of course with Senator John McCain who long ago stating publically that everybody in Washington and Virginia supported ISIL except President Obama, this further hard evidence in effect only confirms what many analysts have long claimed,” he stated.

“The public must surely now understand that, at the very least, the US has been knowingly advancing a duplicitous policy since at least 2012 of providing training, weapons, and tactical support to the very same terrorist elements it claims publicly to be fighting, while knowing full well that doing so would lead to the establishment of the ISIL at the expense of Iraq and Syria,” the international lawyer noted.

“Bearing in mind the extremely sophisticated and well resourced nature of the US security apparatus, openly backing terrorist elements while clearly knowing that doing so would almost certainly lead to the establishment of the ISIL, must be understood as clear evidence that in fact the US and the UK intended this to happen, as contemplated by contingency plans long in place both in Israel and the US,” he pointed out.

“This can only mean that either the US security and political apparatus is divided into two hostile camps with the dominant camp comprising rogue elements acting independently of the executive branch, as suggested by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Report on the CIA or, alternatively, the US establishment in pretty much conspiratorial fashion, now routinely claims to the US public to be doing one thing while in fact it is knowing doing precisely the opposite,” he observed.

“Either way, it is clear that the US-led coalition in Iraq cannot be trusted to lead the fight against ISIL,” Grossman concluded.   

GJH/GJH

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk