Press TV
August 17, 2014
America’s ISIL threat claim is ‘dishonest ploy’ to justify intervention
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An American peace activist says US counterterrorism officials’ claim that the ISIL terrorist group poses a clear and immediate threat to the United States is a “dishonest and disingenuous ploy” to justify the military intervention in Iraq.
Rick Rozoff, manager of the Stop NATO International Network, made the remarks during a phone interview with Press TV on Saturday.
On Thursday, US counterterrorism officials told reporters that new strategies are urgently needed to counter the surging ISIL threat.
“We’re seeing an expansion of its external terrorist ambitions,” one US counterterrorism official said. “As its capabilities grow, it has attracted thousands of foreign extremists — some of whom are going home to start cells. As it carves out territory [in Iraq], it wants to go beyond that and do attacks outside.”
Rozoff said, “This is sleight of hand on the part of the White House in the first place that has been used over the past decades to justify the US military intervention/the US aggression.”
He also said that it is “ludicrous” that the US and its allies support “an armed insurrection within a nation” while insisting the groups they themselves armed pose a threat to the West.
“Nothing occurring in northern Iraq — as tragic and violent as it is — in any way presents a threat directly or even indirectly to the United States,” Rozoff stated.
“This is, I believe, making the military intervention by the US more palatable to the domestic audience in America,” he noted.
He went on to say that for the US “to claim that it is fighting terrorism, when it is one of the main supporters of exactly that, is another act of duplicity on behalf of the White House, on behalf of the US government.”
“You know, people would be well-advised to take what the US government says with a grain of salt and investigate these matters on their own.”
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