News Release

Myths About Syria and Iraq War

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CHARLES GLASS, charlesmglass at yahoo.com, @CGlassArticles
Glass was recently in Syria. He was ABC News Chief Middle East correspondent and authored the book Tribes with Flags: Adventure and Kidnap in Greater Syria. He just wrote the piece “In the Syria We Don’t Know” for the New York Review of Books.

REESE ERLICH, rerlich at pacbell.net
Erlich’s newest book is just out — Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect, (foreword by Noam Chomsky). His most recent piece is “10 Myths About Obama’s Latest War,” which states: “In justifying air attacks on Syria on Sept. 23, President Barack Obama said, ‘We will not tolerate safe havens for terrorists who threaten our people.’

“I saw firsthand the tens of thousands of Yazidis forced to flee Islamic State fighters. IS is a vicious, un-Islamic, ultra-right-wing group that poses a real threat to the people of Syria and Iraq. But those people will defeat IS, not the U.S., whose motives are widely questioned in the region. IS poses no more of a terrorist threat to the American people than al-Qaida and its offshoots.

“In fact, within a matter of weeks, the Obama administration admitted that IS posed little terrorist threat to the U.S. mainland and focused instead on a heretofore-unknown group that the U.S. calls Khorosan. Now evidence is emerging that the Khorosan threat was exaggerated in order to justify expanding the bombing to Syria.”