Edit 12/20/2018: This conspiracy theory remains as absurd as it did when I first posted in 2014, however if it were completely false it should have fallen apart by now, or the political establishment should, at least have starter behaving more rationally, since there's overwhelming amounts of academic research to show that they know how to. However, instead things have continued to become even more insane, especially with the election of Trump which could have easily been avoided if the mainstream media had reported fairly on rational candidates instead of limiting their coverage to incredibly corrupt candidates from both parties, rigging the Democratic nomination for Hillary, even though the public hated her and she was the only one that could lose to Trump.
Now that Trump is suddenly ordering the rapid withdrawal of troops the entire establishment is expressing outrage; except for peace protesters, who have done a much better job keeping track of all the lies that lead us into one war after another. I'm no fan of Trump and I'm not going to give him brownie points for withdrawing troops, even though it's the right thing to do, but just because I don't like Trump doesn't mean I'm going to join the establishment defending one war after another based on lies.
When I first posted this article I speculated that it might be part of a controlled disclosure effort along with the selective disclosure of PRISM which as I pointed out below is just another name for ECHELON which wasn't news at the time; and speculated about the possibility that it might somehow be connected to Philip Corso's claims that he shared technology originally obtained from aliens that crashed at Roswell or other locations. Since then there haven't been conclusive disclosures to confirm this but there has been a steadily increasing amount of insanity which might make it a little more likely as I pointed out more recently in Dude, We've Been In The Rabbit Hole Or Twilight Zone All Along! If this isn't the case there still has to be an explanation for all the insanity that has been going on and we shouldn't support one war after another based on lies when we can't get reliable news coverage from the traditional media, even if it means being on the same side as Trump on one issue.
Although I wasn't aware of it at the time I posted this article, and most people probably still aren't aware of it there are some indications that James Foley (journalist, Wikipedia) may have had ties to espionage organizations, which they refer to as intelligence organizations for propaganda purposes, all along. His Wikipedia article indicates that he comes from the same wealthy area where Mitt Romney has his Winnipesaukee beach home, he started out as a temporary teacher, or perhaps I should say apprentice teacher, at Teach For America, which has close ties to elite corporate school reform efforts controlling the education of the working class; went on to work for USAID, Stars and Stripes, often working closely with the military and his brother was also in the military.
If there was a fringe "Wag the Dog" conspiracy going on this might indicate ties to the CIA, since these organizations are often closely tied to the CIA. Even without a conspiracy to fake a war in Syria he could still have ties to the CIA raising the possibility that he might have been caught as a result of these potential connections.
Even if most of this is false there's still something insane going on and we should still stop jumping from one lie after another that contributes to wars based on lies.
Trump orders rapid withdrawal from Syria in apparent reversal 12/19/2018
Anti-War Voices: Of Course Trump Should Withdraw US Troops From Syria... and Afghanistan and Yemen and Iraq and... 12/19/2018
CODEPINK Applauds Trump’s Decision on Syria Withdrawal 12/19/2018
I’m not completely ruling out an ISIS Wag the Dog Hypothesis but it would have to be huge and absurd if it were true. In order for this to be faked it would need the cooperation, at least tacitly, of an enormous amount of news organizations and even many of the critics of the administration.
However this isn't enough to indicate that it should be completely ruled out from a factual point of view; although it would seem to be enough to indicate that it should be so close that it virtually out of the question, except for one problem.
If people pay enough attention to the official version of the truth as it has been presented by the commercial media it is almost as absurd as an ISIS Wag the Dog Hypothesis where Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro manufacture a war in Hollywood that never takes place.
When the official version of the truth is almost as absurd as the fringe conspiracy theorists it might be time to take a closer look and sort out the details before coming up with a more rational explanation, perhaps different from either version, although it might include details from both.
The person that conducts these beheadings looks like a comic book character; and the response by the administration is equally absurd. They spend their time saying they don't have a strategy but Obama can hardly let that interfere with his game of golf.
Joe Biden may want the public to think that he's taking this seriously but he seems to be watching to many movies when he says, "We will follow them to the gates of hell until they are brought to justice. Because hell is where they will reside. Hell is where they will reside," This also seems to be the way they might respond to problems like this in comic books.
According to Nancy Snow the scariest part is how well their propaganda is working; however a closer look might indicate that she is at least partly right although I can't help but wonder if this propaganda is working better for ISIS or if it is working better for the warmongers in the US government and in the media that are trying to find an excuse to escalate military action and maintain a permanent state of war.
The phrasing of the villains message seems to serve the propaganda purposes of the US warmongers very well but if his message was a little more to the point it might not work quite so well.
"I’m back Obama, and I’m back because of your arrogant foreign policy towards the Islamic state, because of your insistence on continuing your bombings and … on Mosul Dam, despite our serious warnings. You Obama, have but to gain from your actions but another American citizen. So just as your missiles continue to strike out people, our knife will continue to strike the necks of your people." Complete article
If he had said that just like wars throughout history that "we will keep killing your people as long as you keep killing our people" then it might not have been quite so dramatic but it gets right to the point and it would demonstrate how absurd and foolish the permanent state of war is. The family of Steven Sotloff certainly seems to have a good point when they say, "The murder of an innocent man for the perceived crimes of the nation in which he was born makes absolutely no sense." But they fail to explain, or even consider why the crimes of our government should merely be considered "perceived crimes." Should the family members of those that are killed by the bombs being dropped by the US government be shocked by her portrayal of these crimes as being merely "perceived crimes;" would they be shocked if the opposition referred to the killing of Sotloff as a "perceived crime."
I don't mean to sound unsympathetic to the Sotloff family but nor do I mean to sound unsympathetic to the other victims that are routinely referred to as "collateral damage;" the more important issue should be how to end this permanent state of war so that the victims on both sides don't have to continue paying the price for decisions made by political leaders that remain out of harms way so they're not held accountable for their actions.
A Wag the Dog hypothesis certainly would be absurd and judging by Occam's Razor, "the simplest answer is most often correct," however the media has been presenting a long list of absurd stories for years and some of these official versions simply don't make sense when they're scrutinized, although some of these seem incredibly silly and hardly worth much attention. This includes the absurd story about Vladimir Putin steeling a super-bowl ring which is allegedly worth $25,000 and had a lot of sentimental value to Bob Craft although from a practical point of view it has little or no value that isn't based on hype. If Putin and Craft were concerned about maintaining their power and keeping billions of dollars that they probably didn't earn it clearly wouldn't be in their best interest to rub their silly disputes in the noses of those that often have a hard time paying for food.
Another more important story which is absurd, yet passed off as fact was the claim that three hikers thought the border between Iraq and Iran would be a good tourist destination; it is hard to imagine how reasonably well informed people could come to this conclusion and even more difficult to understand why hardly any consideration was given to this foolish decision. Regardless of why they decided that the border of a country at a permanent state of conflict with the United States dating back at least to when the United States used the CIA to overthrow their democratically elected government in the fifties and when the U.S. supplied both sides with weapons prolonging their war in the eighties, they had plenty of video of themselves at that time goofing around in a bamboo patch that served as great propaganda for months to comes and little or anything was done to question this.
Absurd things being passed off as reality without question is quite routine especially when it comes to politics. Before George Bush was elected it was quite clear that he was an incompetent clown to people that knew about him; if the establishment that wants to present us with a choice of leaders wanted to convince us to support them couldn't they have come up with a more credible candidate than that? If that wasn't absurd enough in 2010 they came up with an incredibly large number of so-called "tea party candidates" that they presented to the public and a few of them even won.
Why can't they do a better job coming up with candidates that at least seem reasonable?
A Wag the Dog Hypothesis is certainly absurd and highly unlikely but so is the fact that they can't come up with a better version of truth than this to present to the public. So it isn't that hard to imagine why someone like Mark Crispin Miller, who is usually quite rational, might ask, What’s up with these “beheadings”? They certainly seem fake, and so does an enormous amount of other activities that the government and the media is constantly coming up with, while failing to address many of the most important issues including the destruction of the environment and epidemic levels of poverty and inequality.
Rational researchers are often stereotyped so they might appear like some of the more fringe conspiracy theorists including some not quite as rational as Mark Crispin Miller, like Alex Jones and Before It was News in an attempt to discredit them; however in some cases even though a large portion of the material that Alex Jones, Allen West, and Before It Was News comes up with has problems, and usually seems so absurd that they can't possibly be right, they sometimes get some to the details right that the government is trying to avoid addressing. Therefore it would be inappropriate to dismiss their theories, including the following, in their entirety even if some aspects of them are out of the question.
Witnessing a wag the dog exercise in real time … 06/16/2014
Before It Was News: Tom Heneghan Explosive Breaking News: ISIS Totally Exposed! 08/31/2014
We’re falling for Obama’s ‘Wag the Dog’ moment, in Nigeria, says Col. Allen West 05/13/2014
This is especially true when considering there was another scare bout a threat from Syria almost exactly one year ago but the government wasn't the one warning us about the Islamic extremists at that time; instead they were warning us about the Syrian government and claiming that they had a sophisticated "Syrian Electronic Army" and that they were using chemical weapons. At the time the people that were trying to warn the public about the Islamic extremists in Syria were the fringe conspiracy theorists and the U.S. government was supporting the rebels and saying that they were trying to differentiate between the good rebels and the bad, but they didn't seem to be doing to good a job at it. It was almost exactly a year ago when I posted the following:
Syrian fear mongering may not be working! 09/03/2013
I guess we're supposed to panic and trust everything our government tells us again.
They've been throwing out an enormous volume of reports about how Syria has been using chemical weapons and they're the greatest threat since, well the last time they presented us the greatest threat ever and told us to trust them.
As usual the truth is the first casualty of war, at least in the mainstream media; and in some cases when they claim the alternative media outlets are unreliable they are right; but those who have paid attention can through them and at least find some things that we can rely on.
One thing that can be reliably determined is that at least since WWII all wars have been based on lies, like the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the claims of Iraqi weapons of Mass destruction, that haven't held up after the war was fought and in many cases the threat was actually a result of past activities by our own government like when we armed the Mujaheddin and Saddam Hussein. Complete article
Hermann Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.
Gustave Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. Hermann Göring quotes
The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose—especially their lives. Eugene V. Debs Canton, Ohio Anti-War Speech
I guess we're supposed to panic and trust everything our government tells us again.
They've been throwing out an enormous volume of reports about how Syria has been using chemical weapons and they're the greatest threat since, well the last time they presented us the greatest threat ever and told us to trust them.
As usual the truth is the first casualty of war, at least in the mainstream media; and in some cases when they claim the alternative media outlets are unreliable they are right; but those who have paid attention can through them and at least find some things that we can rely on.
One thing that can be reliably determined is that at least since WWII all wars have been based on lies, like the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the claims of Iraqi weapons of Mass destruction, that haven't held up after the war was fought and in many cases the threat was actually a result of past activities by our own government like when we armed the Mujaheddin and Saddam Hussein. Complete article
Hermann Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.
Gustave Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. Hermann Göring quotes
The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose—especially their lives. Eugene V. Debs Canton, Ohio Anti-War Speech
We're supposed to consider some of these conspiracy theorists fringe and unreliable but many of them were warning us about the same threat before the government, although at that time they didn't call themselves "ISIS;" actually the Islamic State still doesn't refer to themselves as ISIS or ISIL; that is apparently something that the media and the government came up with and only explained it briefly on a few occasions like the Rachel Maddow show while repeating the name over and over again without reminding the public that it isn't their actual name. Apparently ISIS is actually an Acronym for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
When they wanted an excuse to escalate the fighting in Syria a year ago the media came up with threats that weren't previously reported widely, if at all and since then doubts have come up about the. Now they're doing the same thing but instead of claiming the Syrian Government is a much bigger threat than previously reported about it is the Islamic State which they were downplaying a year ago. Chuck Hagel's claim that "ISIL is a sophisticated and well-funded a group as we've seen. They're beyond just a terrorist group. They marry ideology, a sophistication of strategic and tactical military prowess. They are tremendously well-funded. Oh, this is beyond anything that we've seen." sounds a lot like Colin Powell's speech before the U.N. and it doesn't seem any more credible.
How many times does our government have to cry wolf before people start to recognize their scare tactics?
Even if there is no absurd ISIS Wag the Dog hypothesis then there is still something seriously wrong with their version of the truth.
Info Wars reported, 'During an appearance on Fox News, General Thomas McInerney acknowledged that the United States “helped build ISIS” as a result of the group obtaining weapons from the Benghazi consulate in Libya which was attacked by jihadists in September 2012.' Some of these sources seem to have major credibility problems, but when they hold positions of power, now or in the past, they should be considered carefully since they're involved in the decision making process. It should also raise doubts about why so many people with credibility problems are in positions of power.
And additional confirmation seems to have come from Democracy Now, who says, 'a new report by a private British firm that monitors arms trafficking says military equipment provided by the United States and Saudi Arabia has fallen into the hands of Islamic State fighters. The firm examined rockets and small arms stamped "Property of the U.S. government" that appear to have been supplied to Shiite forces in Iraq during the U.S. occupation.' This is actually typical of U.S. foreign policy going back decades; the United States has almost always been the biggest arms supplier in the world and one time after another our country winds up fighting against the weapons we previously sold, often to people that used to be our allies.
Also, as Mark Crispin Miller points out, in More questions about those “beheadings,” additional questions have been raised by at least two sources about who it was that even kidnapped James Foley, previous sources, including "Business Insider" which is a more traditional media source, have claimed he was actually kidnapped by groups loyal to the Syrian government. If this is the case how did he wind up in the hands of ISIS? And, perhaps, more important why isn't the traditional media even addressing this problem? Actually that one might be easy since they don't seem to address many of the most important issues very well at all, but it should still be considered a major problem when the highest profile media outlets are hardly even trying to do a good job.
The claim that James Foley's beheading video may have been staged separately from his death: expert is spreading so fast that many other outlets even the New york Daily News are considering it, which seems to make a possibly Wag The Dog hypothesis slightly less unlikely although it would still be hard for most rational people to believe without fact checking. The traditional media still portrays this as a chilling piece of propaganda for ISIS, but if the target audience is English speaking people, then it is almost certainly a much more effective piece of propaganda for those that want to demonize ISIS as an excuse to maintain a permanent state of war. It is hard to imagine how this would help earn sympathy for ISIS although it will be quite helpful when trying to incite hatred against them.
William Lewis does a good job describing how The media and government is Selling Fear and Lies to Control the Publicon a variety of different issues; and cynical as it sounds there has been a long history of doing those while those that benefit from it remain far away from the fighting and often seem out of touch with the majority of the public except when it comes to studying how to manipulate them.
If, on the other hand, in the unlikely case where there actually is some kind of Wag the Dog version of the truth it would require help from a lot of sources including some that are more credible than either the traditional media or the fringe conspiracy theorists. This would include the reporters from the Global Post which actually does a much better job covering the news than the traditional commercial media although they weren't as widely known until the first beheading of their journalist James Foley. When the Egyptian revolution took place the traditional media was taken by surprise and one of the reporters on MSNBC even asked one of the protesters, on live TV, how they were able to organize this uprising without anyone knowing. The protester acted with surprise and said he didn't know and that they were trying to get the attention of the media for months to get them to report on it. At that time one of the news outlets that actually did report on it before the traditional media was taken by surprise was Global Post.
This should make more people wonder why the best reporting is often presented, to a small percentage of the public while the traditional media presents their reporting in an incredibly incompetent manner to the vast majority of people and is constantly catering to the shallowest hype that will keep people distracted even if they don't fully trust it.
By the time such a hypothesis could be considered viable it would have to explain a lot of problems that would come up in the debate and the theory would only get bigger, probably much bigger and it might even involve other unsolved mysteries, including the incompetent method that the Edward Snowden disclosures was covered without even mentioning the fact that ECHELON was disclosed long before Prism and it had all the same characteristics as I explained in Is “Prism” news? or is it ECHELON? In that post I raised doubts about the claim that the claim that NSA's Prism program began after 9/11/2001 since ECHELON was reported months earlier in 60 minutes and years earlier by other sources, and even wen so far as to speculate about the possibility that some of our rapidly developing technology might have been partially a result of "reverse engineering;" as suggested by Philip Corso. Appropriate use of Occam's Razor might indicate that this hypothesis is highly unlikely; however without reviewing the details or considering the other related unsolved mysteries it would be inappropriate to completely rule it out as many pseudo-skeptics often do.
As much as I try to be as rational as I can, with what I have to work with, when the material the government and the traditional media gives us becomes so absurd that it is hard to believe the only thing that seems rational is to think all the different stories through carefully and fact checking them before coming to final conclusions and that probably isn't going to happen too quickly. The following are some articles that might be related although they might do more to confuse the issue, temporarily than to solve it.
Rachel Maddow: Fox News’ Lt. General Thomas McInerney Comes Out As A ‘Birther’
Ret USAF General Warns of Possible 9/11/14 Coming
Evidence exposing who put ISIS in power, and how it was done.
Reddit: Foley video with Briton was staged, experts say
Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi: Foley video with Briton was staged, experts say
ISIS to the Rescue: Amid NATO's failures in Ukraine, America's terrorist mercenaries threaten war with Russia
British Newspaper: Experts Agree Foley Beheading Video Was Staged After Internet Sleuths Expose
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