"If you read the papers, there is no war, there are no wars, no ISIS [ISIL], no al-Nusra, no failed Minsk agreement with daily shelling, no carpet bombing in Yemen, no destroyed Saudi air bases, none of it is happening, none of it ever happened," Duff remarked with a touch of irony in his article for New Eastern Outlook.
Indeed, the US-led anti-ISIL coalition has something to hide, the expert underscored.
Duff reminded that a few days ago two US fighter bombers attacked the Aleppo power station and a separate transformer complex, plunging 2.5 million Syrians into darkness.
Surprisingly, this attack was not aimed at terrorists or a "regime," the US Marine combat veteran noted. In fact US warplanes targeted the key infrastructure of Syria's largest city. The attack resulted in the deaths of lots of peaceful civilians, "not only plant operators and engineers, but the usual 'collateral damage' that comes with all American attacks."
"One might wonder why America bombed a power plant when there might have been a wedding, funeral or school graduation ceremony to hit instead," Duff noted with a bitter sarcasm.
There is another story, "even more curious and telling than the others," that was not reported either. Duff narrated that Russians discovered a "mysterious bombed area" located in Syria in close proximity to the Jordanian border.
"There is an area where no one has 'officially' bombed, not the Americans, not the Russians or the Syrians either but an area that had been bombed, just the same, not once but dozens, perhaps hundreds of times, abandoned villages bombed over and over according to the Russian commander, 'as though someone had nothing else to do'," the US Marine combat veteran underscored.
"You know, many had wondered how, after 6,000 American 'sorties' flown against ISIS, so little damage was done? Were they all flown against 'nowhere' because 'someone had nothing else to do?'" Duff asked.
So, what is really going on in the region? Who is fighting whom?
Alas, there's the rub, the US Marine combat veteran pointed out: "90% of the air attacks are inside Turkey itself and 100% are against Kurds."
Turkey bombed PKK (the Kurdistan Workers' Party) militants and even YPG (Kurdish People's Protection Units) volunteers, who fought together with the US-led coalition against ISIL. Remarkably, Washington said nothing in response.
"Today, pitched battles are being fought across Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Cameroon, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Libya with 'skirmishes' across Israel/Palestine, Lebanon and much of the breadth of Africa. Not one article in a major publication in the US even mentioned one of these nations, not even anecdotally," Duff emphasized.