Your trusted source

Press TV has conducted an interview with Scott Rickard, a former US intelligence linguist, from Atlanta, to discuss situation in the Middle East.

Press TV: Our guest in Washington basically is saying that the United States was basically taken off guard by the speed of ISIL. But we have seen this group now for a while operating in Syria and committing unbelievable crimes. Do you think that the United States was not expecting for the spillover to go from Syria to Iraq, and these parties, these entities such as ISIL that’s so well equipped and doesn’t seem to have much of a conscience, do you think that they are surprised that they actually cross over the border?

Rickard: Absolutely not. They were not surprised.This was an organization that was very well trained by intelligence communities, not just Americans, British, French, Jordanian, Turkish.
You have a large organization that’s been operating in that region for several years, that’s very well funded. I mean, one week to two weeks prior they had Susan Rice and also Barack Obama announcing that they’re going to give another 27 million dollars to “moderate rebels”.

I challenge anyone to show me a moderate rebel that shoots you in your face. There’s no such thing alive. These are individuals that have been highly trained for several years and have been pulled into these chaotic wars by the West through their intelligence communities, and put as mercenaries to go to war.

Their movements are very closely tracked - the movements of their equipment, the movements of their finances, the movements of their forces. There are so many drones flying around Iraq, Jordan and also Turkey that these guys cannot go anywhere without being monitored, and they’re being assisted in their movements with communications from the intelligence community in order to avoid Assad’s forces when Assad is trying to fight them.

Now these people obviously decided at one point they were going to go against the Kurdish Regional Government, because the Kurdish Regional Government wasn’t cooperating with Malaki, and he was also not being that cooperative with the West. There was a point at which I’m sure the military individuals, the Sunni generals that were overlooked, were very aware of this.

That particular region was producing quite a bit more amount of oil and was looking for better profits coming out of Iraq, so they were dealing directly with stolen oil and they were also dealing directly with Syrian oil that these ISIL individuals were getting control of - not a lot of oil in Syria but there was.

No, this is a complete cover screen, and the intelligence community is absolutely being dishonest with their political counterparts and certainly the media.

Press TV: In your perspective, which entities benefit the most from a destabilized Syria, a destabilized Iraq?

Rickard: Just as the other gentleman was saying, this absolutely benefits the American, British and Israeli imperialist control of the region. This is a region that has constantly been controlled by puppet regimes. Just what happened in Egypt recently is a good example of that with Sisi.

You also have the economic perspective of this. There are enormous amounts of natural resources that require a bit different types of transport. The transports across Syria are far more beneficial to the resources coming out of Iraq. Obviously going out through the Persian Gulf is comparatively quite difficult than to building a pipeline.

There’s availability of resources from that perspective in also geography in Syria where there’s not that kind of availability let’s say in Turkey because there’s already individuals and businesses setup that are making the profits from that.

By destabilizing and destroying Syria, it would create a new market for these insatiable appetites for finance and obviously military control, and you would see a much larger expansion of occupation other than just the Golan Heights.

It would basically be an occupation just like it’s an occupation of Iraq albeit through a puppet just like in Egypt, but there is a sense of occupation that would change in the sovereign state of Syria.

We can see clearly that the Syrian people do not want that. They’ve recently had a democratic vote that was by far in favor of keeping Assad in power.

Press TV: We seem to see an international connection, I mean we have trained by the CIA in Jordan, we have Saudi money, we have the Western countries that have sent in arms and money, we have Turkey giving support - major connection here in trying to actually promote ISIL. Now what? What does it take now to stop these forces in order to bring back stability to the region?

Rickard: That’s an excellent question. I think what’s important to frame out here is these are allies that have been working together for over 100 years. The groups that are supporting the ISIL and other terrorists conducting an inflicting chaos on not only Syria but other countries around the world, these are organizations that have worked in concert.

To say what can we do? I’m assuming you’re talking to people of this world because certainly our governments will not do anything. Our governments are architected and actually built and work as a compliant passenger with these military infrastructures and intelligence communities that are really directed and trained dogs that will hunt the stick until they come home with it. I’m referring to American military men, American intelligence, British intelligence, all of these individuals are very proud of what they do. They want to win. It’s a competition to them. You have a trained force in these countries…that has been basically sent to hunt.

As they’re hunting, the only thing that could really stop them are the people that control those hunters. The people in the countries where they have the opportunities to rise up and basically recognize these facts, that their countries have been out of control for decades, that’s the only way that they’re ever going to stop it.

Otherwise we’re going to be spectators to this horrific hunt where they’re going to try to drag Iran into another regional war against Iraq, and they’re going to be very successful because they’ll create so much chaos that it’ll create a horrific defensive posture for the Iranians on their northwestern borders.

Fortunately what we can do is continue to get the word out with great programs like Press TV, where people can hear honestly what’s going on in the world rather than their brainwashing that they’re getting on their regular news.