Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Kurd soccer star joins ISIS

We're all just noting an Iraq Tweet tonight:



Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

 
Monday, December 15, 2014.  Chaos and violence continue, China wants in on the bombing, Germany wants to send troops, the US government wants to sell their losing as a victory for Haider, Haider just circumvented his oath of office (how long before Nouri uses that to try to displace him?), and much more.



By the end of the year, every country on the planet may be bombing Iraq.  Jeremy Bender (Business Insider) reports, "Wang Yi, China's foreign minister, has offered to help the Iraqi military defeat the militant group by providing support for ongoing air strikes. However, Chinese assistance would come unilaterally and outside of the framework of the US-led coalition against the Islamic State."  Press TV runs with an Iraqi source:

Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari says China has extended an offer to help Baghdad fight the Takfiri ISIL militants by carrying out its own airstrikes against the terrorists.
Jaafari stated that his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi made the offer during a UN anti-terrorism meeting in New York back in September, noting, however, that Beijing will not join the US-led military coalition against ISIL.

What will be left of the already suffering country as more bombs are dropped on it?

A crumbling infrastructure already existed before the 2003 invasion.  But that war didn't improve the infrastructure and Nouri al-Maliki's two terms as prime minister were noted for his refusal to initiate public works projects -- much needed public works projects.  If, for example, he had worked on the sewage and drainage issues, heavy rains might not result in standing water up to people's knees in the Sadr City section of Baghdad.

But there were no improvements and bombs dropped on Iraq won't improve anything either.

It's a status measure at this point, "Look at me, I bomb Iraq!"

The government of Iraq should be asking for security deposits and fees for those who want the 'pleasure' of bombing Iraq. The money could be put into a public works fund to address the serious issues in Iraq.



And on the ground in Iraq?

The British are coming! The British are coming!


Jason Hanna, Sweelin Ong and Yousuf Basil (CNN) report:

The United Kingdom will deploy hundreds of troops to Iraq in the coming year to train Iraqi and Kurdish forces -- the country's latest contribution to the fight against ISIS -- British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon told The Telegraph newspaper.

And other foreigners rush to go war crazy in Iraq, Christopher Dreier (WSWS) reports:


 The year began with the announcement by senior government politicians that Germany would have to take more responsibility in foreign policy. As the end of 2014 approaches, the intention is now to launch in Iraq a military operation that would violate all the constitutional restraints on such a move and serve as a precedent for the unrestricted use of German armed forces throughout the world.
On Thursday, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen and Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere resolved to present to the cabinet in the middle of next week a draft parliamentary mandate that allows for a huge expansion of the Bundeswehr (German army) deployment in Iraq.
According to a report in the Bild tabloid newspaper, the draft legislation provides for the posting of more than 100 armed German soldiers in the Kurdish region of Iraq. The combat troops are to be used there to train Kurdish military organisations at war with the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group.


As Germany's war machine gears up, so do peaceful Germans.  Anadolu Agency reports 4,5000 people turned out Saturday in Berlin to take part in demonstrations against Germany's deployment of troops to "Afghanistan, North Iraq and some African countries."



Three outlets attempted to grade the work or 'accomplishments' of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi today.  None did very well.


Reuters did the worst  and asserted he'd "swept away the divisive legacy of his predecessor."
All three offered as proof of accomplishment the oil deal between Baghdad and Erbil.
The Reuters piece came out of the US Embassy in Baghdad.  That was obvious reading it this morning but I've also confirmed it since.
That the US government would lie is hardly surprising.
I have no idea what Reuters gets out of it but I hope they got something big.
Here's reality and we've covered it before: The US government blocked the deal.
I am no fan of Nouri al-Maliki.  He's the forever thug and former prime minister.  
I loathe him so much I have to check my anger.
There's no plus or pleasure for me in noting that Nouri was encouraged not to make the deal.  The US government led him to believe they could assist him in opposing it.  They couldn't.
The White House didn't want the deal to go through.

A functioning press would be asking why that was.
They'd also start to notice how there's not effort to end the war just to widen it and how that effects markets. 
A functioning press would point out that war, these days and always, is much more than a bomb or bullet and note the pressure being brought on Iraq non-militarily isn't diplomatic but seems geared at 'liberating' Iraq's money as it's pushed towards 'stewardship.'
The White House blinked.
That's the reality.
Massoud Barzani is the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government and he's no Jalal Talabani.  The luckiest thing to happen to the Kurds was when the stroke took Jalal out of commission and his family lied to the Iraqi people in order to keep him from being replaced (and them from being the first family).
With Jalal out of the picture, who could the White House bribe?
Jalal's collapsible spine had been well oiled for years and years by US bribes.
Barzani wasn't 'favored nation' with the US government and wasn't the timid coward Talabani was.
He knew how to drive a hard bargain.
When Nouri and the US government attempted to seize the tanker of Kurdish oil off the coast of Texas?
Talabani would have blinked and fallen to his knees.
Massoud Barzani cast a wide net for legal opinions, found they had strong legal ground and refused to back down.  (The judge reconsidered her opinion and realized she was in the wrong.  A big blow to the White House but no one wants to tell that story either.)
Massoud Barzani and the Barzani family refused to back down.  They know this is the time to grab everything they can because the US government has to go along.
Without the Kurdish peshmerga, Iraq goes under to the Islamic State.
A year ago, even six months ago, when we pointed out that the Kurds could do what they wanted with their oil, that they had every right to demand their portion of the federal budget, etc, we were treated by two 'analysts' often quoted in the press as idiots.
We weren't idiots.  All that we said has come to pass.
Not because I'm a psychic but because I know how to get solid information and, when necessary, will even pay for it.  And I'd met the Talabanis and they were weak.  Meeting the Barzanis testified to that family's strength.  At some point, they might end up co-opted the way the Talabani family long ago was.  But for now, their goal has been the Kurds -- as a people.  And they've accomplished more in the last four years for the Kurdish people in Iraq than has been accomplished in the previous two decades.
That's why we've been able to note and, yes, chart the accomplishments while others -- that idiot Joel Wing -- were announcing the end of Massoud Barzani.
Barzani made a demand regarding the oil and refused to back down.  There was disagreement among Kurdish officials.  Hoshyar Zebari was not on board with it until February of last year and he didn't get on board strongly until the late spring.
But Barzani never blinked and now, as the US government runs around trying to get other countries to put boots on the ground (we'll tell you a little more on that in a moment), they couldn't afford to lose the peshmerge and if there wasn't an Iraq that could responds to the needs of the KRG, it was made clear that the peshmerga could be used solely to protect the northern provinces making up the KRG.
This had nothing to do -- the agreement on oil -- with Haider al-Abadi.
This had to do with the White House being forced to drop its longstanding objection.
It was a Barzani victory and a White House loss.  Naturally, the US government would rather try to sell it as a Haider victory.
Reuters notes:


He has dismissed dozens of top army and security officers appointed by former premier Nuri al-Maliki, announced a campaign against corruption in the military, ordered curbs on arrests without a judge's authorisation, and decreed the speeding up of the release of detainees when courts order them to be set free.

On the dismissals, Nouri went around the Parliament on actions like appointees in the military and did so because he was paranoid and feared a military coup.  So he put people in place who were grossly inept but hugely loyal to him.


Keeping those people on would do nothing to help Iraq's failing military and it would also make it easier for Nouri to stage a coup.  And for those who didn't get that point when we made it this morning, from Tim Arango's latest report which went online this evening at the New York Times:
“Maliki is absolutely convinced that he will be back sometime in 2015,” said one Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid angering Iraqi officials.


Reuters spent a lot of time confusing statements by Haider with actual actions.
September 13th, found Haider declaring the Iraqi military would stop bombing civilian homes in Falluja (War Crimes, by the way).
Did those stop?

No.
They continue daily, they continue wounding and killing Iraqi civilians. 
Words aren't actions.  Words can be followed by action.  Words can also be followed by no action at all.

The editorial board of the Post and Courier also offered a grading of Haider -- and there big mistake?
The Iraqi government has also agreed that the roughly 3,000 American military advisers that President Obama has dispatched to Iraq will be immune from prosecution in Iraqi courts. 
You caught it, right?
No?

Let's drop back to the December 8th snapshot:

We ask that because last week the Associated Press was reporting:

The US has reached an agreement with Iraq on privileges and immunities for the growing number of troops based in the country, helping in the fight against the Islamic State (Isis) militant group, the new US ambassador said on Thursday.
Stuart Jones said prime minister Haider al-Abadi has given assurances that US troops will receive immunity from prosecution.

Yet now, NINA reports:

Prime Minister Dr. Haidar al-Abadi media office of Dr. Haider Abadi denied news which recently claimed that the Iraqi government would be granted immunity to US troops describing such a news as fabricated .
The office said in a statement today that the statements attributed to the US ambassador are baseless and exciting surprise .


All Iraq News also covers the story, "The Prime Minister, Hayder Al-Ebadi said Monday 'There is no immunity for any foreign fighter and I did not sign any immunity for any US soldier deployed in Iraq'."

It's amazing the AP filed multiple reports today but never got around to mentioning that their big news last week was now being called into question by statements the prime minister of Iraq is making.
It's strange because AP and other western outlets have continued to ignore those comments by Haider al-Abadi.
Let's note Human Rights Watch's alert from Saturday regarding Iraq:

Iraq’s prime minister should order stays of execution for one rival of former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and an associate of another. The death sentences were handed down after trials in which both defendants alleged they had been subjected to torture and denied access to lawyers during interrogation, highlighting Iraq’s urgent need for judicial reform.

On October 22, 2014, Baghdad’s Central Criminal Court sentenced Rasha al-Husseini, a secretary to former Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, to death on terrorism charges. The court’s judgment appears to be based entirely on al-Husseini’s confession. Her lawyers allege that security forces psychologically and physically tortured her. On November 23, the same court sentenced Ahmed al-Alwani, a former parliament member, to death on murder charges. Family members told Human Rights Watch they saw torture marks on him before his trial.

“Iraq’s judiciary is still handing down convictions in politicized trials, fraught with legal irregularities,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director. “Despite promises of reform, the government is sitting idly by while Iraq’s terribly flawed justice system sentences people to death on little or no evidence.”

Security forces arrested al-Husseini and about a dozen other Hashimi staff members in late December 2011. In March 2012, Human Rights Watch reported evidence that several of them had been tortured. One, a bodyguard named Amir Sarbut Zaidan al-Batawi, died about three months after his arrest. His body displayed signs of torture, including in several sensitive areas. The government denied the torture allegations and did not investigate.
There are many travesties.  Tim Arango offers a look at how Haider handled the recent decision to order the execution of Sunni politician Ahmed al-Alwani:

Mr. Abadi swung into action. He immediately contacted Sunni officials and Alwani tribe members, assuring them that there would be no execution. And he urged them to solve the matter by the tribal tradition of paying “blood money” to the families of the victims, two soldiers who were killed in a gun battle when commandos came to arrest Mr. Alwani last year.
[. . .]
In the Alwani case, for instance, Mr. Abadi gave private assurances to Mr. Alwani’s tribe and Sunni leaders that there would be no execution. Publicly, however, he supported the independence of the judiciary, saying he had no right to intervene. He even criticized a recent Human Rights Watch report that urged him to order a stay of execution and highlighted claims that Mr. Alwani, who has denied firing the weapon that killed the two soldiers, had been tortured and was refused access to lawyers.


I'm not really sure how that's a plus.  He could have issued a pardon, he could have rehauled the Iraqi justice system.

Instead, he took clandestine actions that spared one life while failing to address the real issues that leave so many Sunnis still facing executions for their political alliances.

I don't see why we applaud that.

It might be brave action on the part of someone from outside the system but from the person who is supposed to be heading the government?

Seems pretty weak.

And I hate to give Nouri fuel, but it's also sort of against the office itself.  Nouri never followed his oath but I'm sure he can grasp how the actions Tim Arango describes went against the oath of office.

In New Jersey today at Joint Base McGuire-Dix Lakehurst, US President Barack Obaa made a few remarks on Iraq:
In Iraq, local forces have held the line in some places and pushed back ISIL in other places. In Syria, our airstrikes are inflicting heavy losses on ISIL fighters and leaders. Because of you, we have blunted their momentum and we have put them on the defensive. And these terrorists are learning the same thing that the leaders of al Qaeda have learned the hard way: They may think that they can chalk up some quick victories, but our reach is long. We do not give up. You threaten America, you will have no safe haven. We will find you. And like petty tyrants and terrorists before you, the world is going to leave you behind and keep moving on without you, because we will get you. That's thanks to you.

Now, this campaign in Iraq will take time. But make no mistake, our coalition isn’t just going to degrade this barbaric terrorist organization, we’re going to destroy it. And because this isn’t just a military effort, we’re going to keep working with those in the Middle East who believe in tolerance and opportunity and peace, because that's what the region needs. These terrorists only know how to destroy. And we know how to do something bigger -- how to build the security and peace and justice that we can build with others. But none of that would be possible without you. That’s American leadership. That's the difference you make.

US troops.

Barack promised no troops would be on the ground in combat in Iraq.

Yet last week, Secretary of State John Kerry argued before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the promise remained but that the White House needed Congress to allow, in their write up authorizing the latest wave of the war, US troops to be on the ground in Iraq.


Why?

Unsaid by Kerry, unacknowledged by the White House, their efforts to get other countries to put troops on the ground in Iraq are being met with doubt and questions of why US troops aren't being sent into combat if that's what the White House believes in.

Reportedly, the hypothetical number of 10,000 is now being tossed around to foreign governments by State Dept officials -- 10,000 US troops that would be sent into combat.


Finally, Margaret Griffis (Antiwar.com) counts 101 dead from violence today with another 34 injured.







Posted by at

Sunday, December 14, 2014

Losers of the week


Last week saw us as the losers, We The People.

The Senate Torture Report makes clear how disgusting our government is, how depraved.

And how we accept it. 

People should be behind bars for what they did.

No one is.

And one hand washes the other.

They're all complicit at this point.

But no one gets charged with anything.


Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

 
Saturday, December 13, 2014.  Chaos and violence continue, the Islamic State shoots down a helicopter, the Yazidis have a hired gun paid for with US money, we examine Barack's non-plan yet again but this time focusing on the line of questioning provided by US House Rep Ted Poe, and much more.



Tian Shaohui (Xinhua) reports:

 Insurgents shot down an Iraqi army helicopter and killed the two pilots aboard during clashes in Salahudin province in north of Baghdad, a provincial security source said on Saturday.
The crash occurred on Friday near the town of al-Mu'tasim, just south of the city of Samarra, some 120 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, during the battles between the Iraqi security forces and Islamic State (IS) militants around the al-Mu'tasim, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

In addition to that attack on Friday, Margaret Griffis (Antiwar.com) reports 169 people died from violence across Iraq yesterday.

Which shines a light on the lies told to the US Congress this week. Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  This was covered in Tuesday's snapshot,  Ava covered it at Trina's site with "Ground Hog Day (Ava)," Wally at Rebecca's site with "Barack wants war all over the world (Wally)" and Kat with "John Kerry, damn liar."  Wednesday, the State Dept's Brett McGurk testified before the House Foreign Affairs Comittee and we covered it in Wednesday and Thursday's snapshot (and will continue covering it later in this snapshot).  Tuesday, the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Operations and Organizations held a hearing and we covered it in the Wednesday snapshot (and noted it elsewhere repeatedly).

The Tuesday Subcommittee hearing was an embarrassment and we've called out Subcommittee Chair Barbara Boxer and Ranking Member Rand Paul.  We've largely ignored the others -- the spook, the hired gun, all of them.


The hired gun?

When news of Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar broke, at this site we were for air drops of food and water and medical supplies for the thousands trapped on the mountain by the Islamic State and we were against bombings.  We built our case around the plight of the Yazidis historically.  We ignored one person, one woman, except to offer a Tweet by a journalist of the Cry Baby.


Cry Baby may not have been a fair call when she was speaking before the Iraqi Parliament and shooting out the tears.  It may have been fair.  We didn't call her that then but I did think it.

And Cry Baby went on to become a hired gun.  Early on in August we noted the Yazidis had no US p.r. firm but that they were being used in the US in an effort to promote wider war on Iraq.

Let's also note the bitchiness of Yazidi speakers in Iraq.

Iraqi Christians were being attacked and killed and when the Yazidis ended up trapped on the mountain, a number of them started whining to the press that Iraqi Christians got all the attention.

Iraqi Christians get very little attention in the mainstream media.  When the western press does cover them, it's usually because they're taking up arms in Iraq to protect themselves.


Whether it's true or not, bias charges are better left to others.

When there are at least two groups under attack and one of them whines the other gets more attention -- true or not -- it looks petty and bitchy.

And here's a little more reality for the Yazidis, Christians are a larger group in the world and when you start whining that Iraqi Christians are getting more attention -- especially when they're not -- you risk pissing off a lot of people who will no longer help you amplify your issues.

And while outsiders can say that Palestinians get far more attention, for a Yazidi to write that also looks petty and bitchy -- so maybe Cry Baby shouldn't have written this post?


Cry Baby.

Again, we've only previously noted her in a journalist's Tweet.  And that was due to a request and due to it being pointed out that she was a woman, "you run a pro-women, feminist site and you haven't noted her."


We should probably name cry baby, I don't think she was named in the journalist's Tweet, just identified as a Yazidi who was a Member of Parliament.  We did name her when she was in a helicopter crash.  Her name is Vian Dakhil.

And since her tearful performance -- and I am calling it a performance -- she's attracted foreign money but no one wants to talk about that.

No one wants to question how this woman's everywhere all the sudden.

She was at the hearing on Tuesday, she was speaking to the Woodrow Wilson Center, at John Cabot University, she's just been everywhere outside of Iraq.  And the reason is she's now a hired gun to promote war and she's represented by a public relations group.

And as I listened to her spin at Tuesday's hearing, I knew all of that but thought, "There's so much more to focus on."  Then she started making the media circuit.

First off, know your facts or don't appear before Congress.

She's lucky she appeared before Boxer and Paul who are so eager for war that they also don't care about the facts.

Before the Subcommittee she tried to present herself as the voice of the Yazidis.

She is not.

Some Yazidis bill themselves as that and that alone.

Others bill themselves as Kurds.

That split alone, forgetting everything else, means she cannot speak for all Yazidis.

Equally true, she's not from the city with the biggest concentrations of Yazidis (that would be Shekhan followed by Sinjar -- she is from Mosul originally and then moved to Erbil).

At the hearing, she made one ridiculous statement after another.  Here's one example:

Since the invasion of the so-called Islamic State in June 2013, I have been working tirelessly to bring attention to the plight . . .

It was January, at the start of the year, when the Islamic State seized Falluja.  And the Islamic State was in Iraq prior to that.   As a member of the Iraqi Parliament and as a member of the KDP, she's actually supposed to speak for all of Iraq and should know these basic facts.  Added: April 8, 2013 is when the press begins -- world press -- acknowledging the Islamic State is in Iraq. They were there prior to April.


It was an awful hearing and we would have ignored her but then she went on NPR's Here and Now and NPR highlights this section of her remarks regarding what the US needs to do:

 “They first started out with a great mission and attack on ISIS, and that made us very happy. That was only for one week. After one week, they stopped. They suspended airstrikes and we were kind of surprised. We were looking to see why they were suspended for a while, and we’re hoping to understand why.”
“What is really urgently needed right now, there are five women and children being held by ISIS and we really need assistance right away to help them be free and run away from ISIS. Plus humanitarian aides are mostly needed at the moment for those refugees who ran away from ISIS and made a way to get to the shelters. We’re here to tell the people in the United States that this is what we are living through right now in Iraq, and that’s what we need your help with at the moment.”


We've been nice.

Maybe too nice.

Maybe I've baby-ied?


Here's some harsh truths.

You claim to have 500,000 Yazidis, ma'am, there are no more than 30,000 Islamic State members in Iraq.

Maybe you should stop traveling to other countries to speak and do media appearances to advocate for war and instead return to Iraq, pick up a gun, urge your fellow Yazidis to take up arms and address the problem yourself.

If that sounds harsh, well your request for US forces on the ground due to five people being held sounds stupid and insane.

Worse yet, it also sounds cowardly.

Stop coming to the US demanding US troops and start using your position as a Member of the Iraqi Parliament to advocate for action from your own country's troops.

Call me harsh, call me a bitch, call me the c-word, I don't care.

The reality is there are international incidents.  For example, an attack on an Olympics game, on an international conference, etc. would fall under that and would prompt an international response.

Kidnappings?

When Frank Sinatra Jr. was kidnapped, the US government did not go whining to Canada, Mexico or England for help.


Here, we didn't buy into the need to send US troops to another country to "Save Our Girls" (none of which were Americans) and I don't buy into sending US troops into Iraq for 5 or 50 kidnap victims.

That's a matter for the Iraqi government -- and if it can't address these issues, then it's a matter for the Iraqi people to demand a new government.

In fairness to Vian Dakhil, for decades now, the US government has presented itself, as Phil Ochs put it, as the "Cops of the World:"


We pick and choose as please, boys
Pick and choose as please
You'd best get down on your knees, boys
Best get down on your knees
We're hairy and horny and ready to shack
And we don't care if you're yellow or black
Just take off your clothes and lay down on your back
'Cause we're the cops of the world, boys
We're the cops of the world
Our boots are needing a shine, boys
Boots are needing a shine
But our Coca-Cola is fine, boys
Coca-Cola is fine
We've got to protect all our citizens fair
So we'll send a battalion for everyone there
And maybe we'll leave in a couple of years
'Cause we're the cops of the world, boys

And having presented that way, it's understandable that some around the world will wrongly assume the US military is just one 911 call away.
But that's not reality.
Nor is it reality that Vian Dakhil is speaking for most Iraqis.
However many Yazidis Vian Dakhil speaks for, the reality is that Shi'ite cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr speaks for many more and he is among the Iraqi leaders who are saying the US military needs to be out of Iraq.  In addition, the highest ranking Catholic leader in Iraq again this week decried the US' assault on Iraq noting that the bombings were not helping anyone.  As Ines San Martin (Curx Now) reported earlier this week:


The top Catholic official in Iraq says the current US-led bombing campaign will not dislodge the radical Islamic State, and he is pleading for a stronger response from the international community to ensure Christians can remain in the region.
“Bombing is also killing people, destroying the infrastructure, houses, schools, churches,” said Patriarch Louis Sako, head of the Chaldean Catholic Church.

So Vian Dakhil's remarks are really not typical.


You are hearing them in the western media and you are hearing her in Congress because a right-wing group is now bankrolling her and the call for greater war on Iraq.

There was a story this month about how Yazidis in the US were calling for greater war on Iraq.  That story was shopped around to at least six journalists who passed on it because it was propaganda.  Sadly, not everyone has ethics so two did write it up.

We've long defended the Yazidis here -- in part because they were wrongly characterized by the western press in the early days of the Iraq War as "devil worshipers" -- but we'll do less of that now.

That's too bad because the Yazidi people are not responsible for the money that is now supporting MP Vian Dakhil or for the other p.r. efforts being made.

But the fact that some levels of self-appointed leadership are now engaged in propaganda means all stories are suspect and I don't have the time to check them out with friends.  So the Yazidis will still be noted but far less than what we once did.

And the reality will always be, for any country whose citizens are kidnapped, you need to work that out on your own.  If your country can't handle a kidnapping, it needs a new government and needs it desperately.

The US government should stop the bombings immediately and focus all attention on helping the Iraqi officials arrive at a political solution which allows all Iraqis to be included and which promotes an Iraqi identity.

Instead, we're stuck with bombings passed off as a 'plan.'

There is no plan.

That was obvious in the hearings this week.

And we're going to focus now on yet another Congressional exchange, this one from the Wednesday House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.

 US House Rep Ted Poe:  Ambassador would you say that the administration is at war with ISIS or not?

 Brett McGurk: Congressman, having seen it up close, I would say that we are at war -- at war with ISIS.

 US House Rep Ted Poe:  It  seems to me that our strategy is two-fold or maybe three-fold at this point.  Send aid to different groups -- countries.  There's sixty something countries that I understand are in the co-alition to fight ISIS.  One is to do airstrikes as the chairman has mentioned.  The success of those airstrikes depends upon who you're talking to.  I do not believe they have been quiet as successful as we had hoped they would be.  The other is to take Syrian moderate rebels -- vet, train and equip them to go back to Syria and defeat ISIS.  How many of those people have been vetted, trained and equipped and sent back to Syria to fight ISIS.

 Brett McGurk: Congressman, again I have to say it's a DoD program and it's --

 US House Rep Ted Poe:  It's none!  Correct, Ambassador?

 [Cross talk]

 US House Rep Ted Poe:  I mean, you're the Ambassador.  You're represent the State Dept, the United States.  We're at war with this country -- we're at war with ISIS.  You can't tell me politically whether we have armed -- vetted, armed and trained anybody yet and sent them back to fight in Syria  --

 Brett McGurk:  No

 US House Rep Ted Poe:  -- in ISIS.  You can't answer that question?

 Brett McGurck:  No, I think I can answer that question.  I did answer it.  The answer right now is: No.  And --

 US House Rep Ted Poe:  So none.

 Brett McGurk:  d-designed -- It was designed to be a longterm program and we hope

 US House Rep Ted Poe: I understand Ambassador, just a second --

 Brett McGurk:  We hope --

 US House Rep Ted Poe:  Now you wait a minute.  I'm asking the questions, you give the answers.  The answer is, 'We have not trained any.'  And none of them are back over there. Meanwhile ISIS is beheading people and committing all kinds of atrocities.  But our plan -- if I understand our strategic plan -- it's to help aid, it's to drop bombs -- it's to train mercenaries to go back and fight ISIS in Syria -- none of which have been trained.  How long is it going to take before we get all these people that are being trained back in Syria to fight?  How long do you think that it will take?

 Brett McGurk:  Well Congressman, the program is to train 5,000 per year.  And the training, we hope, will start in March.

 US House Rep Ted Poe:  So a year from March?

 Brett McGurk:  And the program is to build --

 US House Rep Ted Poe:  A year from March?

 Brett McGurk:  -- about 5,000 by then.  And we have to be very careful --

 US House Rep Ted Poe:  Excuse me, Ambassador, I'm not clear.

 Brett McGurk:  And we have to --

 US House Rep Ted Poe:  Will it be 5,000 in March that will be trained?  Or will it be a year from March -- 2016 -- before we have those 5,000 fighters that we send back to Syria?

 Brett McGurk:  It's 5,000 trained per year.  And part of the reason is the vetting standards.  And we're being very careful about this.  But we're not sitting on our hands --

 US House Rep Ted Poe:  Excuse me, Mr. Ambassador,

 Brett McGurk:  -- a lot of things in parallel.

 US House Rep Ted Poe:  Excuse me, Mr. Ambassador, answer the question.  Is it 5,000 in 2016?  In March?  That's our hope?  To have them trained by then?
Brett McGurk:  The training, we hope, will begin in March.  So it's --

 US House Rep Ted Poe:  But it will take a year to train 5,000 people?

 Brett McGurk:  Yes, that's right.

 US House Rep Ted Poe:  So March of 2016?  Then we have a plan.  Then we have fighters.  Then we send them to Syria.  There's no telling what ISIS can do in that year and however many months it is.  Does the United States have some other strategic plan other than arming these folks that aren't going to show up until 2016 dropping bombs -- that are marginal, whether they've been successful -- and helping with military aid to some of these coalition countries?  Is there a strategic plan overall that you know about in the State Dept?

 Brett McGurk:  Yes.  The train and equip program is one small element of an over all campaign.  And this is a multi-year campaign.  And phase one -- Phase one is Iraq.  What we're doing in Syria right now is degrading ISIL's capacity.  And every time that we have had a local force on the ground that we could work with -- and Kobani's a good example of this or a Free Syrian --

 US House Rep Ted PoeReclaiming my time.  What are we doing in Syria right now?  I mean people are dying in Syria  and the calvary isn't showing up until 2016 the way I understand it.  Is that correct?

Brett McGurk: Those trained and equipped units are not the only units on the field that we could work with in Syria, Congressm--

 US House Rep Ted Poe:  Who else are we working with in Syria?

 Brett McGurk:  Well we're working right now in Kobani with a number of elements.  We're killing about a 100 fighters a --

 US House Rep Ted Poe:  Who are these people that we're working with

 Brett McGurk:  Well Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga thanks to a deal we worked out with the Turks to open up a corridoor to the Kurdistan Region  --

 US House Rep Ted Poe:  Are they working in Syria or are they working in Iraq?

 Brett McGurk:  In Syria we've brought the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga from Iraq to Kobani.

 US House Rep Ted Poe:  Last question, I'm sorry I'm out of time, last question: Are we going to put more boots on the ground, American military, in the Middle East to defeat ISIS?

 Brett McGurk:  Uh, the president's policy is not to put combat forces on the -- on the ground in Iraq.  But we have advisors --
US House Rep Ted Poe:   Be careful.  Middle East.  I'm not going to talk about Iraq. In the Middle East.  Are more Americans going over to the Middle East to fight ISIS?
Brett McGurk:  We have about 30,000 troops in the region now but uh --

 US House Rep Ted Poe:  Are more Americans going over to the Middle East to fight and defeat ISIS?  Other than what's already there?
Brett McGurk:  Right now I think we have a pretty large substantial deployment  force in the Middle East. I don't see the need for more right now.  But again, I need to defer to my DoD colleagues.
US House Rep Ted Poe:  Because you don't know.  I yield back.



That's part of the 'plan'?

That's how Barack Obama plans to address things?  With forces who will arrive ready in March of 2016?

No wonder his 'plan' will take years.


A general note in closing, if you're sending things that aren't about Iraq to the public e-mail account, I'll work them in if I can and only if I can.  We focus on Iraq and we focus on veterans.  If you're article isn't about that it may or may not get noted.  If you think, X number of years ago, you called something right then maybe you should write something new and not just send me your piece (on something not about Iraq and not about veterans) from X number of years ago.









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Friday, December 12, 2014

Stalker

Stalker airs on CBS each Wednesday.

I'm running behind this week but there was a great episode this week.

In fact, the show gets better every episode.

It's quickly become my favorite show.

And in terms of long running elements, boy did it pay off.

First up, Maggie Q's stalker?

She asked Janice for some help and Janice came through and then some.


She taunted the man and he tried to strike her so they got him for assaulting a police officer.

But that's not going to keep him away forever and his look said he was going to destroy Maggie Q's character so this is really going to get interesting.

And Dylan McDermott?

His son overheard his mother talking and knew Dylan was his father.

In the end, the mother decided not to keep them apart and invited Dylan over for dinner.

It was a nice scene of both father and son awkward, sitting on the couch, attempting to get to know each other by playing a video game.




Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

 
Thursday, December 11, 2014.  Chaos and violence continue, more lies to sell the current wave of the Iraq War continue, Senator Carl Levin exposed one of the lies that sold the 2003 invasion, and much more.


To sell Barack's latest wave in the never-ending Iraq War, liars strip events from the narratives, they remove and omit facts.  It wasn't always that way.  To start the illegal war in 2003, liars added details, fake ones, that (falsely) linked Iraq to the 9-11 attacks on the United States.

It was one false link, it was many.

We'll turn to Crapapedia for this example of Chris Hedges writing for the New York Times and promoting a false link in what can only be termed "government propaganda":


 Most significant was a November 8, 2001 front page story about two former Iraqi military commanders who claimed to have trained foreign mujahedeen how to hijack planes without using guns.[17] Hedges quoted a man he believed to be an Iraqi general as saying, “These Islamic radicals… came from a variety of countries, including Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, Egypt and Morocco. We were training these people to attack installations important to the United States. ” The two defectors also asserted there was a secret compound in Salman Pak facility where a German scientist was producing biological weapons.[18]
According to Mother Jones, “The impact of the article... was immediate: Op-eds ran in major papers, and the story was taken to a wider audience through cable-TV talk shows. When Condoleezza Rice, then George W. Bush’s national security adviser, was asked about the story at a press briefing, she said, ‘I think it surprises no one that Saddam Hussein is engaged in all kinds of activities that are destabilizing.’” As late as 2006, conservative magazines like The Weekly Standard and National Review continued to use the story to justify the invasion of Iraq.[19]

It later surfaced that the story was “an elaborate scam.” The defector Hedges quoted, who identified himself as Lt. General Jamal al-Ghurairy, was actually a former sergeant, and the real Ghurairy had never left Iraq. Hedges said that he had taken the story at the request of Lowell Bergman of Frontline, who wanted the defectors for his show but could not go to Beirut for the interview.


That was only one lie.


Today another lie was exposed.


Senator Carl Levin's office issued the following:

Thursday, December 11, 2014
WASHINGTON – Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, today plans to introduce into the Congressional Record important new information about how Bush administration officials misled the nation in advance of the Iraq War, and called on CIA Director John Brennan to fully declassify an important 2003 CIA cable.
Levin will introduce a letter he received from CIA Director John Brennan, declassifying for the first time some details of a March 2003 CIA cable warning the Bush administration against references to the allegation that Mohammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, had met before the attacks in Prague, Czech Republic, with an Iraqi intelligence officer. He also introduced a translated excerpt from a book by the former head of Czech counterintelligence, describing U.S. pressure to confirm that the meeting took place. In fact, no such meeting occurred. And he called on Brennan to fully declassify the CIA cable.
Following is Levin’s Senate floor speech on the matter, as prepared for delivery:
Mr. President, I want to speak for a few moments about one of the most significant events in my 36 years as United States Senator, the war in Iraq. I want to speak about important historical records crucial to our understanding of why we went to war against Iraq in 2003. I want to enter into the public record recent revelations not yet made public. And I make one more public call for a key document to be made fully public.
I will begin by renewing a request to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan. It is a request I have also made to his predecessors: I ask Director Brennan to declassify fully a March 13, 2003 CIA cable debunking the contention that 9/11 hijacker Mohammad Atta had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence official named Ahmad al-Ani.
Earlier this year, Director Brennan wrote to me, refusing, as did his predecessors, to fully declassify the CIA cable. But in his letter to me he makes public for the first time a few lines from that document. While this is a significant addition to the public record, and I will discuss that in a moment, it is still not the full cable, and I am calling on him to declassify and release the full cable.
Now, in order to understand why I am making that request, we need to return to early 2003.
On March 6, 2003, just two weeks before U.S. troops would cross the Iraqi border, President Bush held a prime-time televised press conference. In that press conference he mentioned the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks eight times, often in the same breath as Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. There was a concerted campaign on the part of the Bush administration to connect Iraq in the public mind with the horror of the Sept. 11 attacks. That campaign succeeded. According to public polls in the week before the Iraq war, half or more of Americans believed Saddam was directly involved in the attacks. One poll taken in September 2003, six months after we invaded Iraq, found that nearly 70 percent of Americans believed it likely that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. Americans who believed in a link between Iraq and 9/11 overwhelmingly supported the idea of invading Iraq. Of course, connections between Saddam and 9/11 or al Qaeda were fiction.
America’s intelligence community was pressed to participate in the administration’s media campaign. Just a week after the President’s prime-time press conference, on March 13, 2003, CIA field staff sent a cable to CIA headquarters, responding to a request for information about a report that Mohammad Atta, the leader of the Sept. 11 hijackings, had met in 2001 with an Iraqi intelligence official in the Czech capital of Prague. In stark terms, this CIA cable from the field warned against U.S. government officials citing the report of the alleged Prague meeting.
Yet the notion of such a meeting was a centerpiece of the administration’s campaign to create an impression in the public mind that Saddam was in league with the al Qaeda terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. On multiple occasions, including national television appearances, Vice President Dick Cheney cited reports of the meeting, at one point calling it “pretty well confirmed.” Officials from Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, who set up a sort of rogue intelligence analysis operation, briefed senior officials with a presentation citing the Prague meeting as a “known contact” between Iraq and al Qaida.
Now, why am I bringing up a CIA cable from more than a decade ago? Isn’t this old, well-covered terrain? No, it isn’t. This is about giving the American people a full account of the march to war as new information becomes available. It is about trying to hold leaders who misled the public accountable. It is about warning future leaders of this nation that they must not commit our sons and daughters to battle on the basis of false statements.
Mr. President, there is no more grave decision for a nation to make than the decision to go to war. And there is no more important issue for every member of Congress than the decision to authorize the use of military force. A decision to authorize force is a decision to unleash the might of our armed forces – the strongest military on the planet. It commits the men and women of our armed forces to fight, and perhaps to die, on the battlefield. The decision to go to war must be careful, considered, and based on the facts.
Such careful consideration was tragically absent in the march to war in Iraq.
Here is what the Vice President said on December 9, 2001, in an interview on “Meet the Press:” “It’s been pretty well confirmed that he [Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.”
Far from “pretty well confirmed,” there was almost no evidence that such a meeting took place. Just a single unsubstantiated report, from a single source, and a mountain of information indicating there was no such meeting, including the fact that travel and other records indicated that Atta was almost certainly in the United States at the time of the purported meeting in Prague.
It was highly irresponsible for the Vice President to make that claim. Calling a single, unconfirmed report from a single source “pretty well confirmed,” as he did on Dec. 9, 2001, was a reckless statement to make on such a grave topic as war, in the face of overwhelming doubt that such a meeting occurred.
Yet Vice President Cheney’s reckless statements continued, even as evidence mounted that there was no Prague meeting. In September 2002, he said Atta “did apparently travel to Prague on a number of occasions. And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official.”
The Vice President made those statements in the face of a then-classified June 2002 CIA assessment that said the alleged meeting was “not verified,” called the information about it “contradictory,” and described assessments of Iraqi cooperation with al Qaida terror plots as “speculative.” The Vice President made those statements in the face of a July 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency analysis, which reported that there was no evidence that Atta was in the Czech Republic at the time. He made those statements despite a Defense Intelligence Agency memorandum in August 2002 rejecting the claims by a rogue intelligence analysis shop at the Pentagon that the meeting was an example of a “known contact” between Iraq and al Qaida.
That brings us to the March 13, 2003 cable. Mr. President, it is unfortunate that I cannot fully lay out the contents of that cable, because much of it remains classified. But as the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2006 “Phase II” report indicates, it appears that the cable was sent in response to a request from headquarters at Langley for comment on the claim that Atta and al-Ani had met in Prague because the White House was considering a reference to a Prague meeting in a speech. At that time, according to then-CIA Director George Tenet’s memoir, the CIA had been given a draft of a speech by Vice President Cheney containing assertions about connections between Iraq and al Qaida. Tenet writes in his memoir that he had to object to the President that the speech went “way beyond what the intelligence shows. We cannot support the speech and it should not be given.”
Mr. President, the text of this cable and the information surrounding it was almost entirely redacted by the CIA from the Intelligence Committee’s 2006 Phase II report. A number of us objected to that redaction at the time the report was made public; indeed, the Majority Leader introduced legislation which I cosponsored that would have declassified the cable, legislation Republicans blocked. At the time of the report’s release, I joined several members of the Intelligence Committee, including Ranking Member Rockefeller, Senators Feinstein, Wyden, Bayh, Mikulski and Feingold, in concluding that the administration’s decision to keep the contents of the cable classified “represents an improper use of classification authority by the intelligence community to shield the White House.”
In the years since I have sought declassification of the March 2003 CIA cable on numerous occasions. Twice, in 2011 and 2012, I wrote to then-CIA Director Petraeus asking him to declassify the cable. Then in February 2013, I asked Director Brennan during his confirmation hearing whether he would contact the Czech government to ask if they would object to declassification of the cable, and he responded, “Absolutely, Senator, I will.”
Despite his commitment, I heard nothing from Director Brennan for some time. Finally, in March of this year, more than a year after his public commitment to me, I received a letter from Director Brennan. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Director Brennan’s March 13, 2014, letter to me be entered into the record.
The letter contains no indication that he had asked the Czech government for its view, as he committed to do. But Director Brennan’s letter includes, and therefore finally declassifies, this very clear statement from the cable: “[T]here is not one USG [counterterrorism] or FBI expert that … has said they have evidence or ‘know’ that [Atta] was indeed [in Prague]. In fact, the analysis has been quite the opposite.”
Again, that cable was sent to CIA headquarters on March 13, 2003 – a week before our invasion of Iraq. But the Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, continued to suggest the meeting may have taken place. He said the following about the meeting on “Meet the Press” on September 14, 2003 – six months after CIA received that cable: “We’ve never been able to develop any more of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don’t know.” Here is what he told the Denver Post newspaper on January 9, 2004: “We’ve never been able to collect any more information on that. That was the one that possibly tied the two together to 9/11.” Here is what he told CNN on June 17, 2004: “We have never been able to confirm that, nor have we been able to knock it down. We just don’t know.”
Mr. President, those statements were simply not true.  We did know. We did know that there was no evidence that such a meeting had taken place. We did know there was ample evidence it did not take place. We did know that there was, as the CIA cable says, “not one” government expert who said there was evidence that Atta met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague. The Vice President recklessly disregarded the truth, and he did so in a way calculated to maintain support for the administration's decision to go to war in Iraq.
There is a second recent revelation about how the “Prague meeting” progressed from unsubstantiated report to justification for war. It comes from Jiri Ruzek, who headed the Czech counterintelligence service on and after 9/11. Mr. Ruzek published a memoir earlier this year, which we have had translated from Czech. It recounts the days after the terror attack, including how his nation’s intelligence services first reported a single-source rumor of a Prague meeting between Atta and al-Ani, how CIA officials under pressure from CIA headquarters in turn pressured him to substantiate the rumor, and how U.S. officials pressured the Czech government when Czech intelligence officials failed to produce the confirmation that the Bush administration sought.
Mr. Ruzek writes, “It was becoming more and more clear that we had not met expectations and did not provide the ‘right’ intelligence output.” Mr. Ruzek goes on: “The Americans showed me that anything can be violated, including the rules that they themselves taught us. Without any regard to us, they used our intelligence information for propaganda press leaks. They wanted to mine certainty from unconfirmed suspicion and use it as an excuse for military action. We were supposed to play the role of useful idiot thanks to whose initiative a war would be started.”
That’s chilling. We have a senior intelligence official of a friendly nation describing the pressure that he and other Czech officials were under to give the Bush administration material it could use to justify a war.
When it came to the most serious decision a government can make – the decision to commit our sons and daughters to battle – the Bush administration was playing games with intelligence. The full, still classified cable includes critically important, relevant information, and it has been redacted and denied to the public in order to protect those in the Bush White House who are responsible.
The March 13, 2003, cable is an invaluable record in helping the American people understand how their elected officials conducted themselves in going to war. Continuing to cloak this document with a veil of secrecy, revealing a few sentences at a time, allows those who misled the American people to continue escaping the full verdict of history. It deprives the American people of a complete understanding of how we came to invade Iraq. In his letter to me, Director Brennan writes, “I understand that your principal concern is that the historical record be as complete as possible regarding this period in our history, and on this point we are in agreement.”  But Director Brennan’s apparent refusal to do what he has committed to do – to ask the Czech government if it objects to release of the cable – now takes on the character of a continuing cover-up.
Mr. President, I believe decision-makers should have to face the full, unadulterated, unredacted truth about their decisions. The American people should know the full story – not just so we can understand the decisions in 2002 and 2003 that took us to war, but as a warning to future leaders against the misuse of intelligence and the abuse of power.

###



Again, they added lies -- lots of them -- to sell war on Iraq in 2002 and 2003 and today they strip away reality as they attempt to resell it.

But while we're all encouraged to call out Bully Boy Bush, the Cult of St. Barack works overtime to ensure that the Christ-child is never called out.

Yesterday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing.  During it, a member offered a testimonial to the greatness:
US House Rep Gregory Meeks:  It's easy for many of us to be up here and think that it's simple.  We thought it was simple to get rid of Saddam Hussein.  We said that it would take just a few days.  In fact, we got on the ship that said Mission Accomplished a few days after shock and awe.  I am glad we are not being that simplistic about this.  The administration has been honest to say it will take years to get this done and to get it done right not based upon emotion, not based upon trying, just get it together so we can say rah-rah [. . .]


Testimonials and endorsements can be important.  But let's first see just what sort of person was slobbering over Barack.  Here's how CREW sees Meeks:


A swirling federal corruption probe into crooked charities associated with Rep. Meeks is just the tip of the iceberg in the congressman’s litany of ethical lapses.
Rep. Meeks has accepted numerous improper gifts while in office, including a below-market rate on a new home, major loans that he failed to disclose for years, and discounted rent on his district office.  He has also accepted at least six trips to Caribbean resorts from a non-profit backed by convicted financier R. Allen Stanford, on whose behalf Rep. Meeks may have sought a favor from the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.

  • Nine-term member of Congress representing New York’s 5th district
  • Under federal investigation for his ties to several corrupt non-profit groups, including one that lost track of thousands of dollars intended for victims of Hurricane Katrina
  • Previously named to CREW’s Most Corrupt in 2011 and 2012
  • One of four members of Congress from New York named to CREW’s Most Corrupt
  • Appeared in CREW’s Family Affair exposé


"It's complicated. It's going to take some time.  We're going to have to figure this out," declared Meeks but he wasn't talking about his legal strategy.

First thing Meeks might figure out is how to pronounce areas in Iraq.  Erbil can be spelled Arbil but no one pronounces it "EE-BRILL."

Nor does anyone say "KurDICKstan."

It's Kurdistan.

Gregory Meeks, please keep your dick out of Kurdistan.


Yesterday's House Foreign Affairs Committee may have actually been hugely revealing in a way no one noticed.


 US House Rep Albio Sires:  Can you talk a little about Camp Liberty and any of the abuses by the Iraqis.  I know you're on  the discussion.

 Brett McGurk:  Well I get a briefing on this every single day.  I get reports from the residents and also from the United Nations.  And as you know UN monitoring teams confirms to us about humanitarian supplies and the overall situation at the camp.  We look at it every single day.  My colleague Jonathan Winer who's our  senior advisor on the MEK resettlements.  He's in Albania today with a team, an interagency team with DHS represented as well -- representatives as well.  And we've gotten about 600 residents of Camp Liberty out of Camp Liberty and out of Iraq to safety over the past year and we're looking to increase that number this year and Albania has been very helpful in this regard.  And Jonathan Weiner has really done a heroic, courageous job of getting this moving.  And I think the new government will be even more cooperative. And we want to get all the residents of Camp Liberty -- as I've testified before -- out of Iraq to safety.  That is our goal and we're working with partners around the world to achieve that goal.  And right now Albania has been extremely cooperative and we should thank them for taking in hundreds of residents.  And the residents are assimilating quite well in Albania.  But Jonathan -- my colleague --  Mr. Winer is there addressing this issue right now, and I'm sure he'd very happy to follow up with you.



600?

Some outlets wrongly reported this year that Winer took his post in October of 2013 (here for Huffington Post getting it wrong)..

No.

He was first noted by the State Dept in a September 6, 2013 press statement by spokesperson Marie Harf:

Marie Harf
Washington, DC
September 6, 2013

We are continuing to follow with urgency the situation at Camp Ashraf in Iraq. The United States reiterates its condemnation of the horrific attack that took place on September 1 and we express our condolences to the families and friends of the victims.
We further reiterate our support for the United Nations Assistance Mission (UNAMI) and its efforts to conduct an independent fact finding investigation into this terrible event and to document what took place. We have called on the Government of Iraq to fully support UNAMI’s efforts to conduct a full investigation of its own and to help find and return to safety those who are missing. We insist that the perpetrators of this barbarous act be brought to justice.
We also note the troubling statements issued by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) praising the attack, and call on the Government of Iran to use whatever influence it might have with groups that may be holding missing persons from the camp to secure their immediate release.
Regarding the immediate situation at Camp Ashraf, we urge all parties to cooperate with a plan proposed by UNAMI to ensure the safe and secure relocation of the survivors to Camp Hurriya as soon as possible. Consistent with this plan, we call on the Government of Iraq to move expeditiously to enhance security structures within Camp Hurriya, pursuant to the plan discussed with UNAMI, and we call on the MEK to make all necessary preparations to move remaining residents at Camp Ashraf to Camp Hurriya in full cooperation with UNAMI. The United States stands behind the UNAMI efforts to resolve this crisis.
The State Department has appointed a Senior Advisor for MEK Resettlement, Jonathan Winer, to oversee our efforts to help resettle the residents of Camp Hurriya to safe, permanent, and secure locations outside of Iraq, in addition to those countries, such as Albania, that have admirably assisted the United Nations in this important humanitarian mission.



He's been 'on the job' since at least September 2013 and Brett's proud of him for finding homes in that time for 600 Ashraf residents?

Most people presented with approximately 3,000 people who needed to get out of country -- a life-or-death issue -- would work to successfully get them out in 90 days tops.  Check out previous evacuation efforts by the US is you doubt that.

But the White House is fine with it taking 15 months for Winer to relocate 600 people is acceptable?

At this rate, it will take over five years to relocate all the refugees -- over five years to do what previous administrations accomplished in 90 days.

No wonder Barack thinks his 'plan' (bombing Iraq) will require years to 'fix' things.

By the way, Brett may be impressed with Winer's work but he's likely the only one.

Not only is 600 a ridiculously small number, Winer's position isn't important enough in the eyes of the State Dept.



As Domani Spero (Diplopunidit) noted May 22nd, State Dept spokesperson Jen Psaki declared in a press briefing:

Jonathan Winer, who you also may know, visited Tripoli in February in his role as Special Coordinator for Libya and met with a variety of Libyan and international partners, and he’s working closely with Ambassador Satterfield and our NEA team.


Spero pointed out:

 Jonathan Winer, the new Special Coordinator for Libya was previously appointed by the State Department as Senior Advisor for MEK Resettlement in 2013.  In that capacity, he was tasked with overseeing USG efforts to help resettle the residents of Camp Hurriya to permanent, and secure locations outside of Iraq. He also previously served as chief counsel and principal legislative assistant to then Senator Kerry for 10 years and was a DAS at INL.


Again, Brett may be impressed but the State Dept and White House felt it was such a nothing assignment that they tasked him to be Special Coordinator for Libya as well.


As to Barack and his ridiculous 'plan,' it does not take years.

Even Meeks can't be such an idiot to believe that nonsense.

Iraq needs a political solution -- even Barack has said that.

A political solution dissolves support for the Islamic State as well as indifference to fighting it -- they are not the same thing.  There are Sunnis who support the Islamic State in Iraq because of the targeting of Sunnis.  There are Sunnis who look the other way due to the targeting of Sunnis.  A political solution that truly includes the Sunnis -- which means ending the targeting -- makes it impossible for the Islamic State to operate freely.




Martin Chulov (Guardian) reports on the Islamic State today.  Excerpt:

Abu Ahmed was an essential member of the earliest incarnation of the group. He had been galvanised into militancy as a young man by an American occupation that he and many like him believed was trying to impose a power shift in Iraq, favouring the country’s larger Shia population at the expense of the dominant Sunnis. His early role in what would become Isis led naturally to the senior position he now occupies within a revitalised insurgency that has spilled across the border into Syria. Most of his colleagues regard the crumbling order in the region as a fulfilment of their ambitions in Iraq – which had remained unfinished business, until the war in Syria gave them a new arena.
He agreed to speak publicly after more than two years of discussions, over the course of which he revealed his own past as one of Iraq’s most formidable and connected militants – and shared his deepening worry about Isis and its vision for the region. With Iraq and Syria ablaze, and the Middle East apparently condemned to another generation of upheaval and bloodshed at the hands of his fellow ideologues, Abu Ahmed is having second thoughts. The brutality of Isis is increasingly at odds with his own views, which have mellowed with age as he has come to believe that the teachings of the Koran can be interpreted and not read literally.

His misgivings about what the Islamic State has become led him to speak to the Guardian in a series of expansive conversations, which offer unique insight into its enigmatic leader and the nascent days of the terror group – stretching from 2004, when he met Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Camp Bucca, to 2011, when the Iraqi insurgency crossed the border into Syria.


Zach Beauchamp (Vox) sums up Chulov's report, "In other words: without the Iraq war and American prisons there meant to detain possible terrorists, ISIS as we know it wouldn't exist."


Liars like Senator Barbara Boxer want to pretend that atrocities happened in Syria but not in Iraq.

Atrocities happened in Iraq.  We'll leave Syria for someone that follows Syria.

And in the face of the disappearing of Sunnis -- via execution and via vanishing into the prisons -- the Sunni community was not silent.  They were thrilled, for example, when Nouri lost the 2010 elections.  But Barack Obama demanded Nouri get a second term (and the US brokered The Erbil Agreement that gave loser Nouri a second term).  They voted and they won but their votes didn't count.

Then their representatives and other politicians attempted another means to justice: A no-confidence vote on Nouri.

This would have removed Nouri as prime minister in 2012.

Iraqiya's Ayad Allawi, Shi'ite cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr, Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani and others all came together for this effort.

And the White House, specifically Vice President Joe Biden, leaned hard on Iraqi President Jalal Talabani to bury the effort.  (Talabani declared he had the power to remove people's names from the petition even if they admitted they signed it.  He had no such power.)

So they'd used their votes, the ballot box.

And then their votes were overturned.

They'd turned to their political leaders and the leaders used a Constitutional measure to attempt to remove Nouri only to see Jalal Talabani invent a 'power' that didn't exist to destroy the petition (his only legal role was to officially present the petition to Congress).

So now their politicians couldn't help them.

They then took to the streets and protested continuously for over a year.

They were targeted by Nouri and his thugs.

Some were followed from protests to their homes in an effort at intimidation.

Some were seized and beaten.  Some were seized and killed.

Some were wounded at protests.

Some were killed at protests.

The most infamous example of that was the  April 23, 2013 massacre of a peaceful sit-in in Hawija when Nouri sent his federal forces storming in.  Alsumaria noted Kirkuk's Department of Health (Hawija is in Kirkuk)  announced 50 activists have died and 110 were injured in the assault.   AFP reported the death toll rose to 53.  UNICEF noted that the dead included 8 children (twelve more were injured).


Even after that massacre, it would take Barack over a year to finally stop supporting thug Nouri.

Even after that massacre, Iraqis would continue to protest.

They'd been denied redress via the ballot box, they'd been denied justice when their elected officials attempted to seek it.

Now their protests were being ignored and Nouri was calling them "terrorists" and as 2013 ended and 2014 began, his forces began attacking protests as Nouri insisted -- publicly, on Iraqi television -- that he would burn the sites down with the protesters in them.

And Barbara Boxer wants to pretend Sunnis weren't victims, weren't targeted?

Some Sunnis are loudly and publicly opposed to the Islamic State.

But some Sunnis have joined them and many others have decided to turn their eye away because of the Iraqi government's targeting, hunting, killing, imprisoning of Sunnis.

The US government can drop all the bombs from planes that they want for as many years as they want.

It's not a 'plan.'

It's also not the answer to how you remove support for the Islamic State.

And until you remove support -- direct or complicit -- you can't remove the Islamic State from Iraq.


And Iraq may have a new prime minister -- Haider al-Abadi -- but Sunnis continue to be killed, Sunni civilians, by the Iraqi government.

Iraqi Spring MC Tweeted the most recent civilians -- including children -- killed with the never ending bombing of residential neighborhoods in Falluja -- and these bombings are the Iraqi military bombing the homes of Falluja -- Falluja being a Sunni dominant city.











Until you admit what's happened in Iraq, especially what's been done to the Sunnis (most notably in the last four years, but actually since the 2003 invasion), you're never going to get to peace because you're lying and aiding the violence by doing so.



Margaret Griffis (Antiwar.com) counts 182 violent deaths across Iraq.  And Cedric and Wally offered:

  • Cedric's Big Mix
    Happy baby will still find time to cry
    8 hours ago
  • The Daily Jot
    THIS JUST IN! BABY GETS HIS TOY!
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    • Their joint-post notes that Barack's authorization for war on Iraq passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (on party lines -- and this means it now moves to the full Senate floor -- if it's not voted on before the next Congress is sworn in, it would automatically die and need to be re-introduced in order to be voted on).
















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