THIS JUST IN! THE FEAR SETS IN!

BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE

CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O WANTS AIR FORCE ONE FOR FOUR MORE YEARS.  WITHOUT IT, HOW WILL HE AND SHE-HULK BE ABLE TO TRAVEL?

BUT AFRAID THAT HE MIGHT BE KICKED OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE, BARRY O IS BRINGING OUT HIS A-GAME.  OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, HE WILL BE EVERYWHERE INCLUDING THE TONIGHT SHOW, MTV AND PROBABLY PARTYING WITH LINDSAY LOHAN IF HONEY BOO BOO WON'T HAVE HIM.

SAID BARRY O TO THESE REPORTERS THIS MORNING, "I AM THE CLOSEST THING AMERICA HAS TO ROYALTY!  I AM, WHY I AM AND AMERICAN PRINCESS!  THEY CAN'T GET RID OF ME!"


FROM THE TCI WIRE:

Defense Video & Image Distribution System has the strangest story about how Col Matthe Riordan is leaving Iraq and Lt Col Kim Thomas.  And the photo is confusing as well -- it shows people in what appear to be US army uniforms.  But how could that be?

 

Fact checking last night's debate between US President Barack Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney, one outlet after another declared all US troops were out of Iraq, all troops had left.  So, as Joni Mitchell sings, "Help me, I think I'm falling . . ."  And the confusion just continues as Simon Rogers (Guardian) posts a chart from the US Army listing the US Army Deployments in 2012 -- this year.  If all US troops left Iraq at the end of 2011, then surely Iraq did not make the list of "Top 10 Countries" in 2012 for deployment, right?

 

Wait, there it is! Number five on the list of deployments with a little less than 20,000 US troops.  How can that be?  How can we have thousands of US troops in Iraq?  Didn't they all just tell us last night and this morning that all US troops left Iraq at the end of 2011?  How many are present?  Click on map, on Iraq (yes, geography can be hard -- especially for the US press) and you get the number 18,400 ("In 2012 there were 18,400 Army personnel deployed in Iraq"). 

 

So, CNN, you're wrong when you declare all "left Iraq in December 2011." 

 

And, Shashank Bengali (Los Angeles Times), you're wrong when you state: "The last U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq in December." 

 

And also on the dunce list, Susan Cornwell and Lucy Shackelford (Reuters) who maintain:  "The last U.S. troops pulled out of Iraq last December, ending a war launched in March 2003.

 

Why were they and so many others who've been silent for so long finally talking about Iraq?  Because it was a topic that came up last night when Bob Schieffer moderated a debate between the Democratic and Republican party presidential candidates -- President Barack Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney.  Covering the exchange,   Glenn Kessler (Washington Post) observed,  "Romney's right -- Obama did try to get a status of forces agreement, but could not get an agreement with the government of Iraq. So now he stresses the fact that he has removed all troops from Iraq, while knocking Romney for supporting what he originally had hoped to achieve."  Also weighing in on Barack's deception is the editorial board of the New Jersey Star-Ledger:

 

The claim is true. The problem is that Obama wanted to keep 10,000 troops on the ground in Iraq as well. He later cut that number to 5,000, and wasn't able to keep even that contingent in place only because his attempts to negotiate an agreement with the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ended in failure. Obama had insisted on a guarantee that the remaining U.S. troops would be immune from criminal prosecution in Iraq, a demand that Maliki refused.

So for Obama to paint Romney as a die-hard combatant in Iraq was beyond misleading. It was a stunt. And given the emotions that still surround the troubled U.S. occupation, and the fact that Obama clearly knew he was being dishonest, he wins the whopper.

 

 

Grace Wyler (Business Insider) also points out, "Romney is actually correct on this point. The status of forces agreement -- put into place in 2008, before Obama took office -- called for a full U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq by the end of 2011. When that time came, the Obama administration tried to work out an extension of the agreement with the Iraqi government that would have kept an unspecified number of U.S. troops (likely between 3,000 and 5,000) in the country to train Iraqi security forces."  John Glaser (Antiwar.com) offers that Barack was dishonest due to the fact that the truth "conflicted with his attempts to claime he ended the war in Iraq."  Jeremy Hammond (Foreign Policy Journal) observes that, in the Iraq exchange, "Romney was being honest and Obama was, well, lying."  From Hammond's analysis:

 

While Obama is fond of taking credit for ending the war in Iraq, in fact, the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) under which all U.S. combat troops were withdrawn at the end of 2011 was signed on November 17, 2008, under the Bush administration. Obama was critical of the SOFA, his publicly stated position being that the troops should be withdrawn sooner. "In contrast," the New York Times noted at the time, "President-elect Obama had campaigned under a promise to withdraw all American combat brigades from Iraq by May 2010".

Obama not only did not keep that promise, but his administration sought since as early as September 2010 to obtain a new agreement with Iraq under which 15,000 to 20,000 combat troops would remain beyond the deadline at the end of 2011; but "Obama insisted that it could only happen if Maliki requested it", wrote investigative historian and journalist Gareth Porter, since the White House "was worried about losing support from the Democratic Party's anti-war base as Congressional mid-term elections approached". The Wall Street Journal similarly pointed out that "Mr. Obama could face a political backlash at home if he doesn't meet his campaign pledge to bring troops home from Iraq", and by April 2011, the U.S. had dropped the number of troops it sought to keep in Iraq down to 10,000. The discussions over a new agreement "face political obstacles in both countries," the Journal also noted, "and have faltered in recent weeks because of Iraqi worries that a continued U.S. military presence could fuel sectarian tension and lead to protests similar to those sweeping other Arab countries".

 

 

None of the fact checkers bothered to acknowledge what  Tim Arango (New York Times) reported September 26th:

 
Iraq and the United States are negotiating an agreement that could result in the return of small units of American soldiers to Iraq on training missions. At the request of the Iraqi government, according to General Caslen, a unit of Army Special Operations soldiers was recently deployed to Iraq to advise on counterterrorism and help with intelligence.

 

 

In one of the debates better moments, Mitt Romney declared:

 

We don't want another Iraq, we don't want another Afghanistan. That's not the right course for us. The right course for us is to make sure that we go after the - the people who are leaders of these various anti-American groups and these - these jihadists, but also help the Muslim world.

And how do we do that? A group of Arab scholars came together, organized by the U.N., to look at how we can help the - the world reject these - these terrorists. And the answer they came up with was this:

One, more economic development. We should key our foreign aid, our direct foreign investment, and that of our friends, we should coordinate it to make sure that we - we push back and give them more economic development.

Number two, better education.

Number three, gender equality.

Number four, the rule of law. We have to help these nations create civil societies.

 

 

 

Mark Leon Goldberg (UN Dispatch) points out, "Mitt Romney was almost certainly referring to the Arab Human Development Report. This is a groundbreaking study organized by the United Nations Development Program that gives regional scholars a platform to write dispassionate, self critical assessments of the Arab world's progress on a myriad of social development indicators. This includes indices like literacy rates; internet access; maternal mortality rates; primary school enrollment; adolescent fertility rates; higher educational attainment; among others."

 

RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot" "The only thing worse than the debate itself (Ava and C.I.)" "Iraq: If the bombs don't kill you, the rats might" "666 Park Avenue" "The debates are over" "New rules for not wasting time" "revenge" "Embarrassing NPR" "The ones who always make excuses for him" "The debate, The Nation, and more" "The Good Wife" "The grown ups" "Fringe, Isaiah, Jerry White, Afghanistan" "Feel their pain" "THIS JUST IN! DISAPPOINTMENTS?"