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All right.
So let me start by reintroducing our good friend Joe Lauria.
Welcome back.
How are you doing?
I'm fine, Scott.
How are you doing?
Good deal.
I'm doing good.
Appreciate you joining us here.
Everybody, you know, Joe, for many years wrote for the Wall Street Journal and a lot of other major papers, United Nations correspondent in New York.
For the most part, he's now writing freelance, oftentimes for consortium news dot com.
And right now he is in Irbil in Iraqi Kurdistan still correct.
That's correct.
All right.
What's the latest?
The latest is people here and this is from a source at the U.N. say that the operation that has been long in the works to liberate Mosul from the Islamic State is planned for around October 15th, mid-October, 10 to 15 October, 15 October is what I'm hearing.
And that would be, of course, the Iraqi army from the central government and the Peshmerga here with U.S. air cover.
The other thing that I've learned from someone who has contacts within Mosul is that many of the residents there are reporting that they no longer see the great numbers of Daesh or Islamic State militants who normally are out in full force imposing their extremely extreme version of Sharia law.
For example, if they see you smoking a cigarette, you could lose your head.
Literally.
They're not around anymore.
They're rarely seen every once in a while and people don't know what's going on there.
Now, if you put these two things together, you come up with the idea that the Islamic State knows this attack is coming around October 15th and they may well have deserted the city already or have begun to evacuate.
If we look at the operation in Fallujah in June, I believe it was, and also in a town called Kayaya, which was just last month, the Islamic State fought a little bit and then they left.
They left the town and let the Iraqi army just enter it, take it over.
So this might be what is happening in Mosul, which is extremely interesting if that's the case.
I can't confirm it.
I'm still working on some other sources I know who have contacts inside Mosul.
To see if they're all people there are saying the same thing.
And if that's the case, this operation might go a lot easier than was expected.
There was a lot of fears that there would be mass human casualties from aerial bombardments by the US and street fighting, house to house fighting by the Iraqi army and the Peshmerga.
That might be no longer on the cards, which would be a welcome thing.
But there are other problems, of course, that could come about, even if there is an easy occupation, reoccupation of Mosul.
Wait, let's get to those other problems in a second, because I can think of a few myself and I know you got some.
Let's talk a little bit more about what maybe this means, what it might mean that the Islamic State, basically the street cops, are all missing.
Is there any real indication or is it still just a shrug?
Nobody really knows.
Is it just as likely maybe that they're off to get a little bit more training and indoctrination for we have a real street fight with the American special forces and the Peshmerga coming up?
And so forget policing the citizens of Mosul.
We need you to get in military mode here because we got a big battle coming up.
Or is it that they've left the city?
Well, if that's the case, I think they could probably train people in rotation.
They don't have to pull everyone off the street, train them all at once.
They've been ruling this city pretty much the same way, as far as I understand, for two years now, which is very heavily policing people in the streets and enforcing what they think is Islam.
Their disappearance is unusual, let's put it that way, if in fact that's the case.
Again, I'm still trying to confirm this, but if they're gone, I don't think they would all be pulled out to be trained.
But of course, I don't know that.
Who knows how they do things?
That's a possibility.
Well, they're running out of places to run to, right?
I mean, this is why after Fallujah and Ramadi, we thought, well, maybe they will stay and fight for Mosul is because where the hell are they going to go now, Raqqa?
Well, that's an interesting thing you raised, because I don't think we could talk about this story without also talking about Syria.
There's no border between Syria and Iraq anymore, and the area is controlled by Islamic State.
It's their declared state.
So the Syrian border is 180 miles from Mosul.
You could drive that in three hours, right?
They could be inside Syria.
Raqqa is 290 miles away, five hours, like between New York and Richmond, Virginia, about that distance.
Why would they go there?
Could they go there?
Could they be housed there?
Well, if you look at what's going on in Syria right now, it has become even much more complex than this war has been and much more dangerous right now.
There have been a number of developments in the last week or so, which have really changed the whole character of the war in Syria right now.
And if you combine that with what I'm saying now about Mosul, you may come to the conclusion that the U.S. is not unhappy with getting the Islamic State to go into Syria from Iraq.
Throughout this whole war on the Islamic State, which began in the summer of 2014 and happened, Obama announced his air war when the ISIS fighters came within a few miles of the city I'm in right now.
Erbil was under attack, and people fled here.
Many have not come back.
There used to be a lot of Westerners living here, and the Turks, the places, you know, not the place Sam was before.
But they were pushed back by the U.S. and by the Peshmerga, back into Mosul where they've been.
So the U.S. has been intent on getting Daesh out of Iraq.
We've seen now the progression from various towns that have been taken in the north, Sinjar, for example, by the Peshmerga, Fallujah, as I mentioned, by the Iraqi army.
Getting into Syria, however, we have seen a pattern where the U.S. hasn't had a very questionable war effort against this group.
Yeah.
We used to joke back in 2012 and 13 when they were starting to talk about using drones again in Iraq to fight against what was then called the Islamic State of Iraq, just the group Al-Qaeda in Iraq, leftovers, basically.
And we would joke that, look, Al-Qaeda in Iraq, bad.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq, in Syria, good.
So let's just use the drones to chase them over the border into Syria where they can make themselves useful, serving the favored policies of Israel, Saudi, Turkey, and the Democrats.
Exactly.
That's what I think may be going on here.
They may be leaving to go into Syria, where we've seen a huge change in what's happening on the ground there.
And it goes back to the ceasefire that the Russians and the Americans, I should say not the Americans, but the State Department and the Russian government concluded, Lavrov and Kerry had a deal.
This was openly defied by Ashton Carter, the defense secretary.
He was against it.
You know, in a government where a president, a real president is running things and not a lame duck guy who's caring about his legacy right now, he could be fired for that kind of insubordination.
But it went beyond words.
There seems to be more and more evidence.
Let's just put two and two together.
And this attack on those 80 Syrian soldiers in Deir ez-Zor, which was right on the seventh day of the ceasefire that killed 80 Syrian soldiers, put an end to the ceasefire.
Pentagon makes war decisions.
I don't think Lavrov was in favor of that.
And the fact was that this, again, ended the ceasefire.
And then it caused a stir.
And then a day or two later, we had this attack on the convoy that was immediately blamed by Russia, blamed on Russia by John Kerry and the Security Council, with Lavrov sitting across them.
This was during the general debate of the UN General Assembly last week.
Of course, Kerry had no evidence to prove that Russia had done this, except some, you know, social media and eyewitnesses.
That's the same social media that Kerry has relied on, on the chemical attack in Damascus in August 2013, and on this Ukraine shooting down of the Malaysian plane.
So Kerry, again, has no evidence.
Lavrov called for an investigation in that meeting, rejected by the U.S.
Kerry then threatened to cut off talks with the U.S., and Lavrov made a statement that he can no longer trust the United States, can no longer trust Kerry.
And Kerry says in that meeting that the reason why Lavrov says he can't trust the U.S. is because they bombed, they sabotaged this ceasefire, and the Pentagon is doing one thing and the State Department is doing another.
And because the U.S. has not followed through on their declared intention to separate their rebel moderate, so-called moderate fighters, from al-Nusra, which is the al-Qaeda branch in Syria.
And Kerry turned the whole thing on its head.
He started saying, well, we can't separate the forces because they're being bombed.
But, I mean, the reason that, by the Syrians and the Russians, the reason they're being bombed is because the forces haven't been separated.
So Syria has lost complete patience, and Russia has lost complete patience.
And they have gone absolutely bananas in eastern Aleppo now.
The bombardment has been ferocious, as everyone knows, because this is all the corporate media in the West, in America and in Europe, is giving, is this Aleppo.
Aleppo's been turned into Sarajevo, a complex, very complex war, boiled down to one place where the bad guys are killing people for no reason at all.
And this is what Aleppo has become.
And so we've seen, I think they've definitely gone overboard.
Russia feels betrayed by the United States.
Syria's absolutely pissed off at their soldiers being killed.
So everything is collapsing right now.
Now, as I said, it's a little bit like what the Israelis did in Gaza.
They're using, apparently, bunker-busting bombs on civilian neighbors, because you can never know exactly what's going on.
But there's definitely intense bombardment, and a lot of civilians are being killed.
Maybe hospitals have been.
They want to wipe out eastern Aleppo, is what's been controlled for two years or more by al-Rasham and al-Nusra, and ISIS is on the outskirts.
So that's a part of Aleppo under rebel control, where the western part of Aleppo has always been loyal to the government, has never been taken over.
So they want to, obviously Russia and Syria want to get Aleppo now, and they have decided to go full force there.
That has led to Samantha Power at the Security Council calling this Russian barbarism.
The foreign ministry spokeswoman in Russia responded by saying barbarism would look more like an invasion of Iraq in 2003 by the U.S.
And she and other western officials at the UN and elsewhere are calling this Russian war crimes.
So that's a serious charge and a serious venue.
Ban Ki-moon is joining in, of course, with the western position, saying that it's worse than a slaughterhouse what's going on.
It is not pretty.
This is where we are right now.
And now we see even more escalation in the words from the U.S.
Another thing, by the way, Power said that Assad cannot conquer his whole country.
Well, it's just how do you conquer your own country?
The Carter State Department the other day, the spokesman said, threatened that Russia, if they continue this, that insurgents will come and attack Russian cities and Russians will be killed.
And Carter is saying now they're not taking military action off the table against Russia.
There was also talk about giving manpads to these extremists, which the Saudis have been wanting to do forever, and the U.S. has stopped them from doing.
That would, of course, give them the opportunity to shoot down some aircraft.
Russian planes can fly above their range.
Not sure about the Syrians, certainly helicopters.
Other things would be off limits.
Manpads would escalate and change the nature of the war.
All right, slow down for a minute here.
Lots of stuff here.
That's where we are now.
Yeah.
So I'm saying you introduce the Daesh from Iraq into Syria could play into a new push for regime change to get Russia out of Syria.
Yeah.
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Well, OK, so first of all, what you say about the Russian and Syrian air war against the Al-Qaeda guys in East Aleppo, I mean, everything that the critics say about it, whether it's American government officials or anybody else, is basically correct.
Right.
I mean, there's no need to embellish the civilian casualties of the devastation where they really are going in and and, you know, basically leveling the place.
Not that that's any different necessarily than what the Americans are doing in the places where the Americans are bombing the Islamic State.
It's just the Americans aren't bombing Al-Qaeda, only the Russians are bombing Al-Qaeda.
But them in the Syrian army, I mean, there are civilians being completely, you know, obliterated in these attacks.
No.
Yes, I mean, it looks a little bit like Grozny, if you remember what happened in Chechnya.
Yeah, it's real ugly.
I mean, not that you were playing it down.
You said it is ugly.
But I just wanted to dwell on that point for just a minute here, because, you know, everybody always makes everything so black and white, where if you're against American intervention, well, then you must be for Russian intervention or whatever it is.
And yet, you know, there's a lot to be criticized about the way the Russians, the Iranians, Hezbollah and the Syrian army, especially, seems like the Syrian Air Force, have been waging this war, killing innocent civilians.
You have to separate tactics from the strategy.
And those are tactics that I'm criticizing now.
And they definitely both sides have used horrible tactics.
And there's enough there to charge war crimes, probably for a lot of different groups.
Well, there's just no question.
There's no question that they're the Syrian and Russian and allied forces are fighting against basically foreign terrorist mercenaries that have been sent by the CIA, the Saudis, the Turks and the Israelis after they give the medical treatment and send them back into Syria.
But they're living in civilian areas, so they're getting killed civilians as well, while they're trying to completely flatten the place to destroy them, because they need to be destroyed.
And that's the strategy.
Why is Russia in Syria?
You know, Obama says at the U.N. they're there to get their lost glory back.
And this nonsense that I've been reading in American newspapers for a year now, when Russia first intervened.
Now, listen, I'm sorry, I'm real short on time here, Joe.
Let me follow up with one more thing.
You mentioned the Toner thing, Mark Toner saying, hey, you know, these terrorists could attack cities inside Russia.
Did you take that to be a thinly veiled threat that we're going to use al-Qaeda against you guys?
Not necessarily.
You could read that into that.
You just be saying that, you know, the more you kill of them, they're going to come back and take revenge on you, which, of course, goes just as well for the West.
Right.
Why are they buying pirates in Brussels in New York?
Right.
So if he wasn't threatening them, he was at least admitting that Chalmers Johnson was right about the cause of 9-11.
So I'll take it.
That's right.
That's correct.
That's right.
You can put it that way.
One more thing was you said that Ashton Carter, the secretary of defense, had even brought up and said something about options on tables for strikes against Russian targets.
What was that?
Well, because I miss military option is not, you know, not off the table that he was talking about.
What Russian planes over Syria?
Yeah.
But I don't think that he meant the U.S. directly attacking them.
I'm talking about maybe these man pads.
You know, I'm not sure he just spoke very vaguely about that.
You know, they have to stop Russia and the military option is not off the table.
So these are just words right now.
But it's getting really intense.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I mean, the average the average American, Joe, you know, pardon the pun, might look at this and go, well, wait a minute.
So the Russians are bombing Al Qaeda and ISIS.
And so, wait, what's our problem with them again?
But the American average American is not saying that because they don't get this half the other side of the story.
They still think this is Syria 2011 when some some unarmed people are protesting and evil Assad is killing them.
And even from the beginning, we could do a whole show on that about exactly what happened on those first days.
Yeah.
Well, right now, this is a totally different country in a different war.
And Russia intervened to defend a government that is being attacked by these foreign mercenary terrorists, as you mentioned.
For the most part, they have taken over this war.
And I have to point out, there's a very interesting article on Conservative News right now by Alistair Cook, a foreign British diplomat, which he's quoting a Green Beret who's saying that they are not training, that they are sabotaging these Green Berets are sabotaging the training of the of the jihadis in of the so-called moderate rebels in Syria because they know they're going to be jihadis anyway.
And he lays out how the CIA and the State Department have totally different aims right there.
And Obama, Obama has really believed in this moderate rebel stuff.
This article claims.
And the CIA all along didn't care about fighting ISIS.
They are working together with al-Nusra.
This is Brennan's war.
And Brennan is very close to the Saudis, as we know, who are, you know, obviously behind al-Qaeda and have been for some time.
So we've got totally contradicted two U.S. policies in Syria.
And the one that's taking precedence right now is the CIA and the Pentagon one, which is to ratchet up pressure against Russia and to maybe increase the armaments of these rebels, not to separate the fighters, and to accuse them of war crimes, say that the rebels are going to, terrorists are going to come into Russia, Russians will be killed.
This is where we're at right now.
So if you introduce these ISIS fighters from Syria into Iraq or into Syria, I'm sorry, from Iraq into Syria, and the CIA is not interested in fighting ISIS because the goal is regime change.
Well, and then once we get a regime change, then we'll have to go to full scale war against, you know, Ayman al-Zawahiri ruled Damascus, too.
They want to drive Russia out.
I don't think the U.S. wants a war with Russia and Syria.
They want them out of there.
And if these kinds of talks about accusing them of war crimes, accusing them, saying military options aren't off the table, is to try to get the Russians to perhaps declare some kind of victory in Aleppo and then say, well, you know, we're cutting, if you recall, Putin did this about six, seven, six months ago.
He said, OK, we've achieved our aims and now let's go to Geneva.
So they maybe want to do that again and really pull out this time.
Yeah.
Well, the hawks aren't done, man.
I was just watching some neocons the other day talking about, well, what we need to do is go to full scale war against Syria.
And then don't worry, the Russians' calculus will change once we do that.
And they'll back down.
They wouldn't dare.
Let's just go ahead and escalate and not worry about what might happen, according to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which, of course, is an adjunct of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Well, if there's any grownups in the room who want to avoid a nuclear war, it might be Russia and they might back down.
I mean, they want to defeat terrorism in Syria and then defend Syria because this these terrorists obviously are threatening Europe and threaten Russia.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm so late.
I got to go.
All right.
If anybody hears this, your article will be posted on Consortium News.
What's it called?
The new one?
Uh, my title now is, well, we didn't even talk about this aspect of it.
Is there an October surprise in Mosul?
How this could help Obama's legacy and Clinton's candidacy?
Yeah.
All right.
Well, we'll have to follow up.
All right.
All the best.
OK.
Thank you very much, Joe.
All right.
That's Joe Lauria, everybody.
Freelance journalist.
U.N.
Joe on Twitter.
You can follow him there.
Thank you for reporting for us today out of Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan.
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My email address is Scott at Scott Horton dot org.
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