This is not about ISIS. This is about whether the Iraqi military has the capability and, more importantly, the will to face up with ISIS, they've had some successes, the military has. This is a setback. It's going to take years to figure out who will prevail.

Robert Baer

Categorized in : World

Bethlehem was God with us, Calvary was God for us, and Pentecost is God in us.

Robert Baer

god-with-us bethlehem oneness

If you want prisoners to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear – never to see them again – you send them to Egypt.

Robert Baer

egypt disappear want

The CIA is an incompetent bureaucracy, generally.

Robert Baer

incompetent cia bureaucracy

Destroying Iraq was the greatest strategic blunder this country has made in its history. Unless we change course, there's every reason to believe the Iraq War will end up changing the United States more than it will ever change Iraq.

Robert Baer

war believe country

There is a tendency in any conflict, especially in a democracy, to fight the enemy you can, not the enemy you should.

Robert Baer

democracy fighting enemy

The first suicide bombing that entered my consciousness was the Beirut embassy bombing. It was very personal. I'd been in the embassy and I knew most of the people in the station who were killed in the bombing. So you take the personal aspect of it and the mystery of who the bomber was and the fact that a small group of people could drive us out of a country that was absolutely key to the United States, and what was behind this... The fact that they've been able to hide the embassy bombers' identities for all these years tells me we're up against a very capable movement.

Robert Baer

suicide country people

The US have dealt with Iran. I'm not saying attack it; I'm saying we should have taken it seriously. The Iranian connection to 9/11 is much stronger than the Iraqi one ever was. That was the big lie: That Saddam had something to do with 9/11 - not the WMD - the connection between Saddam and bin Laden. We were spun on that and we were spun on the famous Prague meeting between Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence, which was a complete lie. Both the CIA and the FBI came out and said that never happened.

Robert Baer

stronger taken lying

I take my own experience and other assassinations through history and get a lot into the drone program, which doesn't work, as well.

Robert Baer

drones program wells

I truly believe that if torture had worked and there was a case to be made for it, we would see that on the front pages of the American press.

Robert Baer

pages made believe

My take on the torture thing and even drones is: If we're going to get into assassination and torture, the second question is the morality, but the first is the effectiveness of it.

Robert Baer

drones effectiveness firsts

I don't trust American intelligence. You look at the torture report from the Senate: People inside the CIA are saying that it doesn't work, and we're getting the information not from torture, but simply from questioning people.

Robert Baer

information people looks

Did bin Laden act alone, through his own al-Qaida network, in launching the attacks? About that I'm far more certain and emphatic: no.

Robert Baer

launching als certain

It seems to me it's always the evil we refuse to see that does us the greatest harm.

Robert Baer

harm evil doe

Egypt is the next domino to fall and, as they say, so goes Egypt so goes the Middle East.

Robert Baer

egypt middle-east fall

Sam Clovis is what the FBI does for a living. It stops espionage. To do that, they run confidential informants into the suspects.

Robert Baer

top-news

Anybody who supported the government will probably be executed within the next 24 hours, their families will be driven out. It will be a bloodbath over the next couple of days. All the soldiers who were captured will be executed.

Robert Baer

world

It would be Sunni against Shia, who knows what that would provoke ?

Robert Baer

world

What's clear to me is ISIS is enduring and will continue to endure.

Robert Baer

world

I think Ramadi's probably lost for a long time, and other parts of Al-Anbar province, as well.

Robert Baer

world