Inside Evan McMullin’s 10 years undercover in the CIA

MYTH 9: SEN. JOHN MCCAIN MET WITH ISIS:

Another wild claim bouncing around the Internet links ISIS and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a vocal proponent of escalating the U.S. response to the militants. It started with a photo McCain posted online of a meeting with Free Syrian Army fighters during a 2013 trip to Syria. The photo was later inaccurately framed as showing McCain meeting ISIS militants and posted on social media and conspiracy theory blogs. From there, speculation grew, suggesting McCain had a role in ISIS’ creation, and had a relationship with ISIS leader al-Baghdadi, with photoshopped images of McCain pinning a medal on the chest of the ISIS leader as evidence. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) propelled the McCain-ISIS conspiracy in an interview with The Daily Beast, saying, “Here’s the problem. He [Sen. John McCain] did meet with ISIS, and had his picture taken, and didn’t know it was happening at the time.”

The theory has been thoroughly discredited. According to The Washington Post’s fact-checker, “there is zero evidence that any of the men that McCain met with in Syria are linked to the Islamic State.” The rebels who were portrayed as ISIS fighters were, in fact, members of the Free Syrian Army, who oppose both ISIS and Syrian President Assad.

McCain rips claim he posed for photo with ISIS fighters

McCain’s camp pushed back hard, characterizing the VoteVets charge as a lie. The senator’s office noted that not only has the Obama White House come around to the idea of arming the Free Syrian Army, but former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said in an interview that the U.S. failure to help establish “a credible fighting force … left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled.”

And ISIS recently singled out McCain as “the enemy” and a “crusader” in a propaganda magazine.

“It is shameful that the liberal group VoteVets would completely fabricate this obviously false smear, but it just shows how far some of President Obama’s defenders will go to attack anyone who criticizes his failed foreign policy,” McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said.

In a meeting Thursday with The Arizona Republic’s editorial board, McCain said a Hezbollah-controlled newspaper in Beirut was the first to make unfounded accusations about the men in the photo.

One of the men with McCain is Gen. Salim Idris, who at the time chief of staff of the Free Syrian Army’s Supreme Military Council. He was removed from the post in February. Another is Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a Washington, D.C.-based group that encourages U.S. intervention on behalf of the moderate opposition and organized McCain’s visit. A third man who had been disputed in the past has since been identified “as one of the brigade commanders for the Free Syrian Army,” McCain said.

He was with the Northern Storm Brigade, a force affiliated with the Free Syrian Army that has battled ISIS, McCain’s office clarified.

“It’s foolishness,” but the false charge “just bangs around the Internet,” McCain said.

Asked by The Republic for documentation or a source for its claim that the McCain photo included ISIS militants, VoteVets could not provide any evidence, but did pass along an Aug. 18 Washington Post column by Souad Mekhennet that makes the point that some “factions” of the Free Syrian Army have joined ISIS. The column didn’t relate to anyone in the McCain photo.

“For years, Senator McCain couldn’t stop talking about the need to arm Syrian rebels, like the Free Syrian Army, which splintered with many ending up under ISIS,” Soltz told The Republic in an e-mailed statement. “When we say he took photos with ISIS fighters, we mean that he took photos with representatives of forces that he supported, many of which later became ISIS. It’s frightening to think what ISIS would be today, if John McCain had his way, and if we had sent even more weaponry their way.”

A representative of the Syrian Emergency Task Force called attempts to link the men in the photo to ISIS “fairly ridiculous.”

“None of those people worked for, or has since worked, ever, for ISIS,” said Joel Bombardier, a program officer with the task force.

And suggestions that the Free Syrian Army has been co-opted by ISIS in a major way are “absolutely not accurate,” he added.

“They actually are actively fighting ISIS in major cities,” Bombardier said.

Rand Paul Eats Up Hoax That John McCain Met With ISIS

The rumor that McCain met with ISIS in northern Syria in May 2013 has been proven false. As reported by The New York Times, pictures of McCain meeting with members of the Free Syrian Army—who have historically opposed ISIS—have been seized upon by conspiracy theorists and McCain skeptics, some of whom have gone as far as to photoshop McCain pinning a medal on the chest of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Emboldening believers is the fact that McCain sometimes misspeaks, like on Monday evening on Fox News, when he asked “Has Rand Paul ever been to Syria? Has he ever met with ISIS?”

In an effort to stake out a position that is at once in stark contrast to that of President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Paul seems to have found himself outlining a foreign policy that often eats its own tail. Paul opposes arming Syrian rebels, but his post-airstrike plan includes providing “technical support” to other local moderates from countries he has blamed for inadvertently arming ISIS. That said, Paul is uncertain that moderates have the capacity to effectively fight at all, calling that concept “mythical”; he says he does not support Assad, but believes any effort to undermine him is fundamentally misguided, and is what paved the way for ISIS, despite a lack of evidence to support the claim. In short: It’s all a little confusing; and the assertion that McCain was pictured with jihadists is just the beginning.

On Wednesday, according to a senior aide, Paul will appear on the Senate floor for an “extended speech” about “the folly” of arming Syrian rebels. But first, there’s a tussle with the senior senator from Arizona to take care of.

Asked by The Daily Beast about Paul using the palling-around-with-terrorists rumor to attack him, McCain huffed: “I can’t believe Rand is still repeating this stuff, which came from a Hezbollah newspaper in Lebanon! He’s getting his information from Hezbollah. It’s outrageous…I don’t know if Rand is dishonest or misinformed…I met with the Northern Storm and Gen. Idriss, who was the head of the Free Syrian Army. Most of the guys in that picture are dead now, killed by ISIS. It’s just ridiculous.”

It wasn’t just a Hezbollah newspaper in Lebanon. The lie was also printed by the liberal blog Wonkette, and a version of the lie—this one claiming the Free Syrian Army is working with ISIS—appeared on the conspiracy theory-friendly rag Infowars.com.

Mouaz Moustafa—executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, which represents the moderate opposition in Washington—reiterated McCain’s point: “I’m incredibly surprised that a United States sitting senator is spreading a rumor that is completely baseless. It is very ironic that the biggest enemies of ISIS are being called ISIS by people who simply do not know the facts. When it comes from a United States senator, it is quite disturbing.”

Paul and McCain do not exactly have a history of slumber parties and hair-braiding. In 2013, after Paul’s 13-hour filibuster over U.S. drone policy ahead of the confirmation of CIA Director John Brennan, McCain called him a “wacko bird” (McCain later apologized). Not long after, Paul first criticized McCain for having his “picture taken with some kidnappers.” This summer, McCain charged that Paul is “part of a wing of the party that has been there prior to World War I, that is a withdrawal to ‘Fortress America.’”

Try as He May, John McCain Can’t Shake Falsehoods About Ties to ISIS

Senator John McCain was one of the earliest advocates of American military action against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. So it has been vexing for Mr. McCain to be battling persistent — and false — Internet rumors that he not only helped invent the group but also knows its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the Muslim world and America’s latest Public Enemy No. 1.

The rumors are based partly on images of a Syrian fighter who resembles Mr. Baghdadi, seen in photographs with Mr. McCain — some originally posted on Twitter by the senator — during his visit in May 2013 to northern Syria. He met members of the Free Syrian Army, an insurgent group that opposes ISIS and that President Obama, in a speech Wednesday on his new strategy for battling ISIS, has vowed to strengthen.

Nurtured by conspiracy blogposts, social media and photo-altering tricks, the false rumors of Mr. McCain’s relationship with ISIS have taken on a life of their own. One doctored photo shows the senator, an Arizona Republican, pinning a medal on Mr. Baghdadi’s chest.

Last month the rumors received new vitality when a left-leaning American veterans group asserted that the senator had posed for photographs “with ISIS militants.” The rumors were further bolstered with the news that an American recruit to ISIS shared the senator’s surname. And on Wednesday in Iran, where many people already believe ISIS is an American plot to destabilize their country, the state television asserted that Senator McCain was an ISIS cohort. As proof, it showed one of the photographs.

Brian Rogers, Mr. McCain’s communications director, was not amused. The man who was misidentified as Mr. Baghdadi in the photographs, Mr. Rogers said Thursday, was a commander of the Northern Storm Brigade, a group linked to the Free Syrian Army. Mr. Rogers declined to identify him by name, saying he feared for the man’s safety.

Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a Washington-based group that helped to arrange the senator’s visit, said all of the people who appeared in those photographs were at risk. When ISIS published the first issue of its magazine, Mr. Moustafa said, it featured one of the photographs and proclaimed, “We have to cut all these people’s heads off.”

On Aug. 19, the same day that ISIS released an Internet video depicting the beheading of James Foley, an American journalist, the group VoteVets.org asserted that Mr. McCain’s demands for strong action against ISIS was hypocritical. In a fund-raising email, the VoteVets chairman, Jon Soltz, an Iraq war veteran, wrote that while Mr. McCain had visited Syria, “he paused for some photos — including some with ISIS militants.” The senator’s office reacted angrily, calling the assertion an “obviously false smear.”

Mr. Soltz could not be reached on Thursday for comment, but a representative of the group responded by referring to Mr. Soltz’s emailed statement at the time to The Arizona Republic: “When we say he took photos with ISIS fighters, we mean that he took photos with representatives of forces that he supported, many of which later became ISIS. It’s frightening to think what ISIS would be today, if John McCain had his way, and if we had sent even more weaponry their way.”

Mr. McCain’s efforts to blunt the impact of the photographs took another unforeseen twist a few weeks later, when American intelligence officials confirmed that a 33-year-old Minnesota man named Douglas McAuthur McCain, an ISIS recruit, had been killed by a rival Syrian insurgent group. To the rumor-driven Arab media, the coincidence of the surname was a smoking gun.

“The stuff was already irrationality in motion,” said Mr. Moustafa. “Then a guy actually named McCain joins ISIS. It added fuel to the fire.”

@Nanny G: Your Creeping Sharia links have questionable credibility. I’d have to research their research- and frankly don’t have enough time and interest at the moment.

The history of the Free Syrian Army is far more complicated; and in the early days, it was not overrun with jihadis and Islamists; but the fact that we and the West did not quickly jump on their bandwagon for active support for their movement against Assad pretty well forced them to do what we all do- the enemy of my enemy is my friend– and align with those willing to fight and support them against their number one cause for existing: Fighting Assad.

And it’s for the very reason that those fighting in their ranks have been suspect that the Obama Administration did not involve itself more deeply and more actively in supporting and funding (the arming and training and funding has been extremely limited) the opposition. There are just too many groups involved and the Administration has been more cautious than irresponsible.