War on Isis: Flood of jihadi volunteers to Syria 'unstoppable', warns Turkish Prime Minister
Once again Patrick Cockburn gets the Independent front page to parade his lies about Syria. Moderate opposition forces "do not exist", try telling that to those fighting on the Southern Front, in the eastern Ghouta, in Aleppo, in Kobane and so forth. And the extent to which he is a tired old phrasemonger is evident when he says that "the armed opposition is increasingly dominated by Isis and by the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra," if there were no moderate opposition forces they would completely dominate. And ISIS are not part of the opposition to Assad of course, but completely opposed to it. Assad's genocide is reduced to, "In Syria, Isis is benefiting from the disarray and internecine hatreds of its opponents."
He lets the Turkish prime minister make some points, particularly correcting the lie that Turkey supports ISIS, part of the general campaign to muddy the waters and prevent any focus on removing Assad. But the headline and Cockburn's focus are on the jihadi tide being unstoppable, and thus the Turkish denials barely relevant. Cockburn skates over the fact that the Americans have shifted ever-further away from getting rid of Assad, in clear distinction to Turkish policy. Cockburn claims on the one hand that it is the Shia militias that have had greatest success against ISIS in Iraq, but on the other hand that only the non-sectarian Iraqi army could convince Sunnis of their good will. The gyrations involved in obscuring the contradiction between this, and promoting alliance with the sectarian murderers in Syria are clear.