Max Blumenthal Retweeted
I'll trust Seymour Hersh any day.
Shane Bauer? At best, he's an idiot who got lost walking around north Iraq. At worst, he's CIA and was instigating trouble then (instigating trouble with Iran). Either way, I don't trust him one bit.
Scum. And that's why he works for the hideous MOTHER JONES. Used to be a great outlet. Now it's just an organ for the centrists in the Democratic Party. It's not left at all.
Okay, here's Chris Hedges on the state of the US:
and here's the link:
The two political parties are one party—the corporate party. They do not debate substantive issues. They each support the expansion of imperial wars, the bloated military budget, the dictates of global capitalism, the bailing out of Wall Street, punishing austerity measures, assaulting basic civil liberties through wholesale government surveillance and the abolition of due process, and an electoral process that has cemented into place a system of legalized bribery. They battle over cultural tropes such as abortion, gay rights and prayer in schools. We elect politicians based on how we are made to feel about them by the public relations industry. Politics is anti-politics.
The Republican Party built its political base in these culture wars around Christian fascists, nativists and white supremacists. The Democratic Party built its base around those who supported workers’ rights, multiculturalism, diversity and gender equality. The base of each party was used and manipulated by elites. The Republican Party elites had no intention of banning abortion or turning America into a “Christian nation.” The Democratic Party elites had no intention of protecting workers from predatory corporatism. Everyone was sold out. The ascendancy of a populist right, dominated by racists and bigots, is the inevitable product of the corporate coup d’état, Saul said. He warned we should not be complacent because of President Trump’s imbecility. Trump is immensely dangerous. “The insipid,” Thomas Mann wrote in “The Magic Mountain,” “is not synonymous with the harmless.”
“How could a civilization devoted to structure, expertise and answers evolve into other than a coalition of professional groups?” Saul asked in “Voltaire’s Bastards.” “How, then, could the individual citizen not be seen as a serious impediment to getting on with business? This has been obscured by the proposition of painfully simplified abstract notions which are divorced from any social reality and presented as values.”
“The rational elites, obsessed by structure, have become increasingly authoritarian in a modern, administrative way,” he wrote in another section of the book. “The citizens feel insulted and isolated. They look for someone to throw stones on their behalf. Any old stone will do. The cruder the better to crush the self-assurance of the obscure men and their obscure methods. The New Right, with its parody of democratic values, has been a crude but devastating stone with which to punish the modern elites.”
All despotic regimes, Saul said, carry out their final battle for control by contending against public officials and government bureaucrats, the so-called deep state, which views the rise to power of demagogues and their sleazy enablers with alarm. These traditional courtiers, often cynical, ambitious, amoral and subservient to corporate power, nevertheless engage in the decorum and language of democracy. A few with a conscience win minor skirmishes to slow the rise of tyranny. Despots see these courtiers and democratic institutions, no matter how anemic, as a threat. This explains the assaults on the State Department, the Justice Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education and the courts. Despots use their appointees to undermine and destroy these institutions, mocking their existence and questioning the loyalty of the professionals who staff them. The reviled and neutered public employee surrenders or walks away in despair. Last year, the entire senior level of management officials resigned at the State Department. Resignations continue to bleed the diplomatic core, as they do at other agencies and departments, and last week included James D. Melville Jr., the U.S. ambassador to Estonia, and Susan Thornton, the nominee to be assistant secretary for East Asian affairs.
“For the President to say the EU was ‘set up to take advantage of the United States, to attack our piggy bank,’ or that ‘NATO is as bad as NAFTA’ is not only factually wrong, but proves to me that it’s time to go,” Melville said in the post that announced his resignation.
Once a process of deconstruction is complete, the system calcifies into tyranny. There remain no internal mechanisms, even in name, to carry out reform. This corrosive process is being played out daily in Trump’s Twitter rages, lies, smears and the barrage of insults he levels against public servants, including some of his own appointees, such as Attorney General Jeff Sessions, as well as institutions such as the FBI.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Monday, July 2, 2018. Chaos and violence continue as yet another
location holding ballots is attacked, ANTIWAR.COM reports May saw triple
digit deaths in Iraq, Emma Sky appears not to have read her own book,
and much more.
Tuesday, July 2nd, Iraq is to begin partial recounts of the ballots from the May 12th election.
"From now and until a new Parliament is in place, Iraq will be in a constitutional vacuum," ALJAZEERA notes.
Again. And violence continues to plague Iraq including a bombing which took place yesterday. AFP explains, "A suicide bombing yesterday targetting a warehouse in Kirkuk where ballot boxes from Iraq’s May elections were stored wounded 19 people, days before a vote recount, a security source said."
Tuesday, July 2nd, Iraq is to begin partial recounts of the ballots from the May 12th election.
"From now and until a new Parliament is in place, Iraq will be in a constitutional vacuum," ALJAZEERA notes.
Again. And violence continues to plague Iraq including a bombing which took place yesterday. AFP explains, "A suicide bombing yesterday targetting a warehouse in Kirkuk where ballot boxes from Iraq’s May elections were stored wounded 19 people, days before a vote recount, a security source said."
An explosion near a ballot storage site in Iraq's Kirkuk two days before a court-mandated manual recount kills at least one and injures 20 but leaves the election material undamaged, officials say trtworld.com/middle-east/bl…
Hamza Mustafa (ASHARQ AL-AWSAT) adds, "This is the second incident of its kind, where the warehouses of ballot
boxes in Rusafa, Baghdad, were set on fire on June 10, in an attempt to
influence the electoral process, including challenging the results
announced by the Electoral Commission, before the parliament decided to
freeze its work and appoint judges from the Supreme Judicial Council.:
The May 12th elections found Shi'ite cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr in first place, followed by the head of the Shi'ite militias Hadi al-Ameri, followed by current prime minister Hayder al-Abadi. Slowly, the three have come together to form a post-election alliance.
Last week, Priyanka Boghani (PBS' FRONTLINE) filed a report which included reactions from various US and British voices:
Ryan Crocker, a career diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2007 to 2009, noted that Sadr campaigned on some of the issues that are most pressing to Iraqi voters. If Sadr’s alliance is the one to deliver on those issues, Crocker said, “We can certainly put up with a little anti-U.S. rhetoric if it brings the country generally to a much better place in terms of long-term stability.”
Some experts, however, say pragmatism may win over posturing when it comes to Iraq’s future relationship with the U.S.
Emma Sky, who served as a governorate coordinator in the transitional government of Iraq set up by the coalition in 2003-2004, and as a U.S. military adviser in Iraq in 2007-2010, said she expected there would be more calls for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq as the country formed a new government. “But given what happened after all U.S. troops pulled out at the end of 2011,” she said, referring to the swift rise of ISIS, “there may be some pragmatic Iraqi voices that propose a contingent remain to advise and assist.”
Sadr and Amiri “both view the U.S. as a negative actor in Iraq, in so far as the U.S. is looking to pursue its interests at the expense of what they would see as Iraq’s interests,” Renad Mansour, a fellow at Chatham House, an independent policy institute in London, told FRONTLINE. “But nonetheless, they both also realize that to become statesmen, and to play politics, you can’t have an explicitly inflammatory or antagonistic policy against the U.S.”
Emma Sky's basically saying "Angel, please don't go."
I'm out of my mind
And it's only over you
People think I'm crazy
But they don't know
Thought love had failed me
But now, they're watching it grow
Angel, please don't go
I miss you when you're gone
They say I'm a silly girl
Thought love had failed me
But now, they're watching it grow
Angel, please don't go
I miss you when you're gone
They say I'm a silly girl
But I'm not a fool
People say they know me
But they don't see
My heart's your future
Your future is me
Angel, please don't go
I miss you when you're gone
They say I'm a silly girl
People say they know me
But they don't see
My heart's your future
Your future is me
Angel, please don't go
I miss you when you're gone
They say I'm a silly girl
-- "Only Over You," written by Christine McVie, first appears on Fleetwood Mac's MIRAGE
Yes, Emma, you are being a silly girl.
What exactly do you think US forces could have done to stop the rise of ISIS?
As documented here in real time and as observed by you in your book THE UNRAVELING, ISIS rose in Iraq due to then-prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's persecution of Sunnis.
I'm not sure how you think US forces stop that.
The day after the drawdown (not a full
withdrawal), Nouri immediately orders tanks to begin circling the homes
of Sunni politicians in Baghdad. Days later, he will declare Iraq's
vice president Tareq al-Hashemi (a Sunni) to be a "terrorist." His
storming of the homes of Sunni politicians will resort in the murder of
the brother of a Sunni politicians.
Exactly what do you think
Do they storm Nouri's home?
Do they take him off in chains?
When Nouri begins attacking Sunni protesters, what
do US forces do? When he attacks (and kidnaps) reporters who dared to
cover the Sunni protests, what are US forces to do?
These and so many other actions are being carried out not by recognized terrorists but by the head of the Iraqi government.
What are US forces, were a huge number still in Iraq, to do?
I believe we're both aware that Iraq's descent
into further madness was ensured when Barack Obama refused to back the
results of the 2010 election, when he overturned the votes of the Iraqi
people and used The Erbil Agreement to give a second term to Nouri
al-Maliki.
And while we can wonder what might have been for
Iraq had their votes actually counted, the reality remains that if
Barack had pulled all US troops out of Iraq in 2011 (he didn't) or left
20,000 to 30,000 behind (as Nouri al-Maliki wanted) or maintained a
force of 125,000, there's little that US forces could have done in 2012
besides try to topple Nouri al-Maliki.
Is that what was wanted?
That falls on Barack again. Not only did he
install Nouri in 2010 (via The Erbil Agreement) to a second term, he
pressured Jalal Talabani to short circuit the 2011 attempt to vote Nouri
out of office.
I don't really grasp what US forces on the ground in mass numbers during any of this could have achieved.
US policy under Barack, up until June 2014, was to
support Nouri al-Maliki non-stop and look the other way. Long before
2010 arrived, it was known that Nouri was torturing in secret prisons
and jails, known and reported. That didn't matter.
The goal was never democracy. It was: Who can get this oil & gas law passed?
Remember those 'benchmarks'?
Remember how the Democrats in Congress demanded them?
Remember how, with few exceptions, they then ignored them except for progress on the oil & gas one?
(US House Rep Lloyd Doggett did not ignore them but he was soon the only member fighting for them to be utilized.)
So the issue is not -- and never was -- US troops drawing down in Iraq.
I think it's highly dishonest for Emma Sky to now
walk away from her book in an effort to argue that US troops should stay
in Iraq.
In other news, Margaret Griffis (ANTIWAR.COM) counts up the deaths for last month:
During the month of June, at least 772 people were killed,
executed, or found in mass graves. Another 294 were wounded. The number of
fatalities is less than half the number of fatalities reported last month. At
least 1,906 people were killed or found dead, and 265 more were wounded during
violent attacks in May.
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