That really captures Barack and his level of maturity, if you ask me.
Jason Hirther also captures Barack -- in "Obama's Propaganda Presidency" (Dissident Voice):
Take, for instance, the recent news that, once again, for the umpteenth month in a row, the unemployment rate has dropped. This happy turn of events was accompanied by the heart-warming news that President Obama has launched “Promise Zones” in five cities that his economic policies have helped “fast track” to destitution. Thus, a cursory glance at the headlines—all anyone has time for these days, right?—is enough to instill the garden-variety commuter with enough cautious optimism to plough through another day of alienating work. One imagines the Man in the Grey Flannel Suit cruising down the pavements of Manhattan, stupendous grin across his face, Times tucked under his arm, chest swollen with American pride. Or—perhaps I’ve mistakenly lifted a phenotype from another time. Perhaps today we should substitute the Man in the Coarse Cotton Hoodie, striding broadly down the gum-spackled sidewalks of Gotham, a crumpled Post beneath his elbow, a suspicious glare scanning the street for crazies. Nevertheless…
Water cooler chatter notes the rising employment numbers, then quickly turns to important development on The Walking Dead, before the drones dispatch themselves back to their cubicles to eyeball the Excel grids surging across their monitors. Alas, all is seemingly well in America, if not ideal.
Meanwhile, Obama progressives and White House inner circle congratulate each other on another PR coup, snowing the public for one more week. (One thought does occur: that the administration believes its own rhetoric, a chilling notion, but one not without its theoretical basis: evolutionary biologists have posited that the best liars are those who believe their own lies. It makes them more convincing since—according to their inner voice—there’s nothing to hide.)
Okay, let's move over to Third. As always, Dallas worked on the edition and so did:
The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.
And the content?
Ned Parker. Only Ned Parker could get us to agree to link to filthy POLITICO.
Glen Ford.
Jim goes over the edition.
By all means, hold the US government accountable for the Iraq War but what the hell's with pretending England didn't also start that war?
Ava and C.I. zoom in on how TV continues to run off audiences.
We look at After Hours.
And he brings the bitchy with him.
If only Barack had had the foresight.
All the reasons this is wrong.
The protests continue despite Nouri's attempts to stop them.
Workers World repost.
UK Socialist Worker repost.
And a look at the week's best.
So there you go. Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Tweet of the day:
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Iraq: before and after democracy was imposed by the West. Let's hope they realise how lucky they are. (via
@MPACUK) pic.twitter.com/fkY3ku47TS
Mohammed Ansar
As more eyes turn to Iraq internationally, Michael Holmes (CNN -- link is video and text) observes:
The government of Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki was supposed to usher in a political era of
inclusion and reconciliation. His critics say those first days after the
American departure were a signal of opposite intentions that have
continued to this day.
The Sunni minority that
had ruled Iraq via the iron fist of Saddam Hussein was at the political
and social mercy of al-Maliki's Shia-dominated government. Today, they
say, "inclusiveness" never materialized, Sunnis have been marginalized
and resentment has festered in a divide-and-conquer political climate.
As one local put it, "It's like if you're against us, you're a terrorist
and we'll arrest you."
And the Sunnis are correct. US President Barack Obama backed Nouri for a second term as prime minister even though Nouri's State of Law came in second to Ayad Allawi's Iraqiya. As Ned Parker explained in "Who Lost Iraq?" (POLITICO) last week:
It was the April 2010 national election and its tortured aftermath that sewed the seeds of today’s crisis in Iraq. Beforehand, U.S. state and military officials had prepared for any scenario, including the possibility that Maliki might refuse to leave office for another Shiite Islamist candidate. No one imagined that the secular Iraqiya list, backed by Sunni Arabs, would win the largest number of seats in parliament. Suddenly the Sunnis’ candidate, secular Shiite Ayad Allawi, was poised to be prime minister. But Maliki refused and dug in.
And it is here where America found its standing wounded. Anxious about midterm elections in November and worried about the status of U.S. forces slated to be drawn down to 50,000 by August, the White House decided to pick winners. According to multiple officials in Baghdad at time, Vice President Joseph Biden and then-Ambassador Chris Hill decided in July 2010 to support Maliki for prime minister, but Maliki had to bring the Sunnis and Allawi onboard. Hill and his staff then made America’s support for Maliki clear in meetings with Iraqi political figures.
And the US government brokered The Erbil Agreement to give Nouri the second term. This was a power-sharing agreement, a legal contract, one that US officials told the leaders of Iraq's political blocs would have the full backing of the White House.
But Nouri used this contract to secure a second term in November 2010 and refused to then implement the concessions he agreed to in the contract to get the second term.
And the White House?
They played dumb.
Nouri stalled on implementing The Erbil Agreement. Then came the summer of 2011 and Iraqiya, the Kurds and Moqtada al-Sadr all began publicly demanding that Nouri implement The Erbil Agreement as planned. He refused to. He's still refused to. He's a liar who never keeps his word.
From December 2006 to July 2011, Robert Gates was the US Secretary of Defense. Tony Capaccio (Bloomberg News) gets Gates' opinion on Iraq today:
Maliki “has turned out to be far less inclusive and more of a sectarian leader then we had hoped” after the U.S. “handed the Iraqis a golden opportunity in 2009, 2010,” Gates said today in an interview in New York. “Since then, he’s really been sort of antagonistic towards the Sunnis in a kind of unrelenting way.”
Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq also points the finger at Nouri. David Kenner (Foreign Policy) reports:
Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq -- a former member of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party before being expelled in 1977 -- told Foreign Policy that the government in Baghdad was using al Qaeda as a pretext to crack down on its political opponents. Marginalization of Sunni Arabs, Mutlaq added, was leading to their radicalization. And even as he deplored the U.S. invasion for being the root cause of Iraq's problems, he called on Washington to intervene in Iraqi politics to save the country from disaster.
"Yes, I do blame [the Americans]," he said. "And I expect them to do some changes in Iraq now. Not necessarily through military operations, but through political pressure and economic pressure on Iraqi politicians, to make sure that Iraqis feel that they are equal in their own country."
Now might be a good time to remember when Saleh al-Mutlaq last gave an interview to a US news outlet. We need to drop back to December of 2011 for that. Arwa Damon and Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) reported:
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is amassing dictatorial power as U.S. troops leave the country, risking a new civil war and the breakup of the nation, his deputy warned Tuesday.
Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq told CNN that he was "shocked" to hear U.S. President Barack Obama greet al-Maliki at the White House on Monday as "the elected leader of a sovereign, self-reliant and democratic Iraq." He said Washington is leaving Iraq "with a dictator" who has ignored a power-sharing agreement, kept control of the country's security forces and rounded up hundreds of people in recent weeks.
[. . .]
"America left Iraq with almost no infrastructure. The political process is going in a very wrong direction, going toward a dictatorship," he said. "People are not going to accept that, and most likely they are going to ask for the division of the country. And this is going to be a disaster. Dividing the country isn't going to be smooth, because dividing the country is going to be a war before that and a war after that."
Remember how Nouri responded to that? Dropping back to December 17, 2011:
Like Tareq al-Hashemi, Saleh al-Mutlaq is a member of the Iraqiya political slate. Dar Addustour is reporting that the homes of al-Hashemi and al-Mutlaq as well as the home of Rafi Hiyad al-Issawi have been surrounded by "tanks and special forces." Dr. Rafi Hiyad al-Issawi was the previous Deputy prime minister (2007 through 2010). He was the head of Falluja General Hospital prior to that and he is currently the Minister of Finance. Like the other two, al-Issawi is a member of Iraqiya.
And from the December 19, 2011 snapshot:
Late Saturday night online (Sunday in print), Liz Sly (Washington Post) noted that the 'government' in Iraq is "unraveling faster than had been anticipated Saturday." Really? All in one day. Well, no, not in one day. She continued, "In recent days, the homes of top Sunni politicians in the fortified Green Zone have been ringed by tanks and armored personnel carriers, and rumors are flying that arrest warrants will be issued for other Sunni leaders."
That's how Nouri responded to criticism just two years ago. Let's wait and see if he handles it any better today.
Today the Washington Institute for Near East Policy's Michael Knights argues at USA Today:
Providing counter-terrorism advisors and air support during crises such as the present one does nothing to invalidate President Obama's claim to have ended the U.S. military occupation of Iraq. No "boots on the ground" should not be taken to extremes. And if a post-occupation Iraq cannot openly ask for help from its recent occupier, this should not stop the U.S. from occasionally pursuing terrorists in Iraq when they become vulnerable. After all, is al-Qaeda in Iraq any less threatening than al-Qaeda's ideologues in Pakistan, where America risked undermining the government of a nuclear-armed Islamic state to kill Osama bin Laden without the host government's permission?
Joining in the arm-arm-Iraq chorus, the editorial board of the Middleton Press insists:
Critics worry that Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government might turn U.S. weapons on perceived foes in the Sunni tribal ranks; given the increasingly sectarian style of his rule, that’s a legitimate fear. That’s why the Obama administration should make its military aid explicitly conditional on a new political effort by Maliki for a rapprochement with Sunnis. Sunni leaders, who dominated during the long reign of Saddam Hussein, have also been slow to adjust to their minority status. But Maliki is in charge and must take the initiative.
How does that work?
How do conditions placed on Nouri work?
In his first term, which began in 2006, he took an oath to uphold the Iraqi Constitution. That Constitution includes Article 140 which calls for a referendum and census to be held on Kirkuk by the end of 2007. He refused to do that.
Then, in 2010, he wanted a second term the voters didn't give him so the US brokered The Erbil Agreement -- a legal contract. He used it to get his second term and then refused to honor his contractual promises -- which included, yes, implementing Article 140.
In February 2011, he insisted that if protesters would leave the streets, he would end corruption in 100 days. 100 days came and went. No end to corruption.
When he became prime minister for the second time, he was supposed to assemble a Cabinet. In fact, that's the only condition to move from prime minister-designate to prime minister. But Nouri never did that. In fact, he still hasn't. Back in July, 2012, Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) observed, "Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has struggled to forge a lasting power-sharing agreement and has yet to fill key Cabinet positions, including the ministers of defense, interior and national security, while his backers have also shown signs of wobbling support." True then and still true.
You might think if the country was gripped by violence, Nouri would finally get around to filling those positions but you'd be wrong.
So I'd love to know how the editorial board of the Middleton Press thinks they can impose conditions that Nouri will follow since he's failed to follow every condition (including the White House benchmarks) and every law previously.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies' Anthony H. Cordesman offers an assessment of Nouri today:
He has refused to honor the Erbil power-sharing agreement that was supposed to create a national government that could tie together Arab Sunni and Arab Shi’ite, and he has increased tensions with Iraq’s Kurds. As the U.S. State Department human rights reports for Iraq, Amnesty International, and the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) make all too clear; Maliki’s search for power has steadily repressed and alienated Iraq’s Sunnis on a national level. It has led to show trials and death sentences against one of Iraq’s leading Sunni politicians including former Vice President Taqris al-Hashimi, who has been living in asylum in Turkey since being convicted nad sentenced to death in absentia by an Iraqi court. It has shifted the promotion structure in the Iraqi Security Forces to both give the Prime Minister personal control and has turned them into an instrument he can use against Sunnis.
Al Qaeda in Iraq - nor its recent incarnation the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) - has not risen up as a rebirth of the opposition the U.S. faced in 2005-2008. In spite of attempts by the Maliki government to label virtually any major Sunni opposition as terrorists, the steady increase in that opposition orginated primarily in the form of peaceful and legitimate political protests against Maliki’s purges of elected Iraqi Sunni leaders, and a regular exclusion of Sunnis from the government – including the Sons of Iraq in areas like Anbar. It came because Maliki used the Iraqi Security Forces against segments of his own population in the name of fighting terrorists and extremists. It came because of the failure to use Iraq’s oil wealth effectively and fairly – resulting with an economy that the CIA ranks Iraq 140th in the world in per capita income. The opposition to Maliki's government also resulted from corruption so extreme that in December 2013 Transparency International ranked Iraq the seventh most corrupt country in the world, with only Libya, South Sudan, Sudan, Afghanistan, North Korea, and Somalia ranking worse than Iraq in terms of corruption.
Nouri's word is useless. He's refused to ever keep it and he is the root cause of violence in Iraq. Furthermore, if the editorial board of the Middletown Press needs a condition, here's a condition:
Consistent with U.S. law and policy, the Department of State vets its assistance to foreign security forces, as well as certain Department of Defense training programs, to ensure that recipients have not committed gross human rights abuses. When the vetting process uncovers credible information that an individual or unit has committed a gross violation of human rights, U.S. assistance is withheld.
That condition? Happens to be a US law. It's the Leahy Amendment, names after Senator Patrick Leahy. In spit of that law, people are advocating for the US government to continue to arm a despot who regularly uses weapons on the Iraqi people.
The violence continue in Iraq today. One of the targets? The new Falluja Chief of police Col Mohammed Alewi took over his position yesterday. Today, National Iraqi News Agency reports his home was bombed. NINA also notes a western Mosul bombing left three police members injured, a Baquba bombing left a police member and a civilian injured, 1 Iraqi soldier was shot dead in Kirkuk, a Baghdad car bombing left 2 people dead and thirteen injured, an Adhamiya Corniche car bombing claimed the life of 1 person and left nine injured, a south Mosul roadside bombing left six construction workers injured, an eastern Baghdad car bombing left 1 person dead and ten more injured, and a downtown Baghdad car bombing claimed 5 lives and left thirteen more injured.
Yesterday wasn't even the half-way mark but, according to Iraq Body Count, the number killed in violent attacks so far this month reached 420 on Sunday. AKE's John Drake Tweeted today:
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I counted at least 165 deaths and 330 injured in
#Iraq violence last week but true figure likely much higher.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Baghdad today.
The United Nations notes:
Voicing concern about the deteriorating security in parts of Iraq, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today urged all political leaders to unite against terrorism and work together to stabilize the country and stop the “senseless deaths of Iraqi women, children and men.”
“We agreed that the challenges facing Iraq require all political leaders to fulfil their responsibilities to ensure social cohesion, dialogue and progress over political obstacles,” Mr. Ban said, speaking alongside Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, following their meeting in Baghdad.
He also met with the Vice-President, the Foreign Minister, the Speaker of the Council of Representatives and President of the Independent High Electoral Commission.
“The people of Iraq are looking to their leaders for tangible benefits and a better future,” he added, noting that the parliamentary elections due to held in April are an “opportunity” to deliver on these legitimate expectations.
Urging Iraq’s leaders to address root causes of the current wave of unrest, ensuring that “nobody is left behind,” Mr. Ban encouraged measures to strengthen the country’s social fabric – through political participation, democratic processes and institutions, respect for the rule of law and human rights, and inclusive development.
Hamza Mustafa (Asharq al-Awsat) adds:
Maliki, meanwhile, dismissed calls for dialogue in the Anbar Province, saying that there could be no negotiations with insurgents linked to Al-Qaeda.
“Talk about dialogue in Al-Anbar is rejected because we do not hold dialogue with Al-Qaeda,” he said, adding that the conflict in Anbar had united Iraqis in their fight against the terrorist group.
Yeah, Nouri did just blow of Ban Ki-moon's statements. And that was actually key to the joint-press conference. AFP reports:
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Monday publicly rebuked UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's call for the country to halt executions while standing beside him at a joint news conference.
Despite widespread calls for a moratorium due to major problems with the country's criminal justice system, Iraq executed at least 169 people last year, its highest such figure since the 2003 US-led invasion, placing it third in the world, behind just China and Iran.
At Queerty, Iraq War veteran Rob Smith explains why you should buy his new book Closets, Combat, and Coming Out: Coming of Age as a Gay Man in the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Army.
Moving over to news of England and Iraq. RT reports:
The ICC has been urged to investigate the alleged war crimes of UK politicians during the Iraq conflict. A dossier detailing reports of sexual assault, torture and mock executions carried out by British soldiers in Iraq has been submitted to the Court.
The 250-page document entitled “The Responsibility of UK Officials for War Crimes Involving Systematic Detainee Abuse in Iraq from 2003-2008”, published by the German-based European Centre for Constitutional Human Rights, calls for "opening of an investigation” into the actions of senior British officials during the conflict.
Chris Harris (Euronews) adds:
The head of the British Army, General Sir Peter Wall, and former defence secretary Geoff Hoon, are among those reportedly named in a 250-page dossier alleging the abuse.
But current UK foreign secretary William Hague said the application should be rejected because the allegations are already under investigation or have been dealt with.
The dossier, which claims to represent more than 400 Iraqis, was submitted by Public Interest Lawyers. It is said to detail allegations, between 2003-2008, of beatings, electrocution, mock executions and sexual assault.
Felicity Arbuthnot (Dissident Voice) continues:
The document, lodged with the International Criminal Court at the Hague on Saturday (11th January 2013), “calls for an investigation into the alleged war crimes, under Article 15 of the Rome Statute” and is the result of some years of work by Birmingham-based Public Interest Lawyers and the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR.). The submission “is the most detailed ever submitted to the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor on war crimes allegedly committed by British forces in Iraq.”
In 2006 the ICC opined that “there was a reasonable basis to believe that crimes within the jurisdiction of the court had been committed, namely willful killing and inhuman treatment.” However, since the claims were less than twenty cases, prosecutors declined to mount an investigation.
Subsequently “hundreds of other claims have come to light, prompting consideration of the complaint now. It is the start of a process which could result in British politicians and generals being put in the dock on war-crimes charges.” The “pattern of abusive treatment by UK services personnel in Iraq continued over almost six years of military operations.” When is a crime not a crime, one wonders, when it is “only” in double figures?
Evidence is presented of “systematic use of brutal violence, that at times resulted in the death of detainees, while in the custody of UK Services Personnel.”
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