BULLY BOY
PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID
TABLE
KILLER BARRY O IS IN HOT WATER FOR HIS SEXISM. THE MAN WHO GOT AWAY WITH CALLING FEMALE REPORTERS "SWEETIE" AS WELL AS MULTIPLE SEXIST ATTACKS ON HILLARY, DECIDED TO TRY TO PROVE HE WAS A REAL MAN BY REDUCING A FEMALE ATTORNEY GENERAL TO A PIECE OF MEAT.
PLAGUED BY NEVER-ENDING RUMORS ABOUT HIM AND FORMER "BODY MAN" REGGIE LOVE AS WELL AS RUMORS OF PAST DAYS IN A GAY CHICAGO BATH HOUSE, KILLER BARRY O TRIES REALLY HARD TO LOOK MANLY.
BEING BULIMIC AND SMOOTH OF CROTCH, IT'S A TOUGH BATTLE.
SO KILLER BARRY USES HIS DRONES AS A PENIS SUBSTITUTE.
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
Where Barack Obama flips the middle finger to the Iraqi people. Let's go back to Kitabat reports that Brett McGurk, a US State Dept advisor, dined with journalists at the American Embassy in Baghdad and declared that a majority government was fine and dandy. We mentioned The Erbil Agreement earlier. It's amazingly important and so rarely reported on by the western press which appears to have mistaken a major in whoring for one in journalism.
In March 2010, Iraq held parliamentary elections. They have a parliamentary government and the person with the most members in their 'Congress' is named prime minister-designate and given 30 days to form a cabinet. Not a partial cabinet. A full cabinet. You do that in 30 days or someone else named prime minister-designate.
The winner of the 2010 elections? Iraqiya headed by Ayad Allawi. It's a mixed political slate attempting to include of all Iraq. Iraqiya offers and embraces a national 'we are all Iraqis' identity. It is also the political slate that has female members of Parliament and not tokens. (Al-Fadhila's Susan Sa'ad is not a MP I would want to represent me but she's also not a token. One of the few non-Iraqiya female members who can make that claim.) In the 2009 provincial elections a thread in those results was that it appeared Iraqis were moving away from a (US-imposed) Sunni-Shi'ite split and going for a national identity. This was confirmed in the 2010 results when Nouri's State of Law was defeated by the new Iraqiya coalition (whose members were killed in the lead up to the election, whose members were barred from running by the Justice and Accountability Commission).
Nouri stomped his feet and demanded a recount. The results were the same.
It was now time for Nouri to step down and for a new prime minister to emerge via the process outlined in the Constitution.
But Nouri refused to allow that to happen. It's as though, in January 2009, Bully boy Bush announced he wasn't leaving the White House and Barack Obama wasn't going to be named president.
Nouri kept the country of Iraq in an eight-month political stalemate while he refused to step down as prime minister. He was only able to do that with the backing of the governments of Iran and the United States. Nouri is a White House puppet. He was first appointed by the Bush White House when they didn't want Ibrahim al-Jaafari to become prime minister in 2006. By 2010, Nouri's secret prisons, torture cells, corruption and much more were well known and documented. While Barack and others in the White House love to sneer at the Iranian government's alleged embrace of torture, their hands are just as dirty.
And the Iraqi people had gone to the polls. They had expressed their wishes and the votes were counted and then recounted. And yet the US that supposedly wanted to introduce 'democracy' to Iraq immediately pissed on democracy, pissed on the voters, pissed on the Iraqi Constitution.
During the eight month political stalemate, US officials repeatedly pressured the political blocs to let Nouri have a second term. No surprise, most said no and said no repeatedly. After it hit the eight month mark, US officials began telling the political leaders that Nouri was willing to go another eight months, that nothing would ever get done in Iraq. So why not be the adult in the room, give Nouri a second term as prime minister and, in exchange, we'll put your concerns on paper in a legally binding contract that Nouri will have to follow.
Their concerns? One example. Kirkuk is oil rich. Because it's oil rich, it's disputed. The semi-autonomous KRG in the north claims it and the Nouri's Baghdad-based government claims it. How do you solve who gets it? Well Iraq wrote and passed a Constitution in 2005. Article 140 explained how this would be addressed: A census and a referendum. Nouri took an oath in 2006 to obey the Constitution. He never implemented Article 140. Before you say, "Maybe he was busy," the Constitution mandates that Article 140 be instituted no later than December 2007. Nouri ignored the Constitution.
It is thought that a vore would see Kirkuk go to the KRG. So Nouri's delayed the vote, repeatedly ignoring the Constitution.
Okay, say US officials, we'll put it in writing, it'll be a binding contract and Nouri will have to honor it. [He wasn't honoring the Iraqi Constitution but he was going to honor a contract?] US officials did this with the leader of each political bloc to get them to agree that Nouri would get a second term. This is the US-brokered Erbil Agreement.
It is extra-constitutional because it goes around the Constitution which clearly defines how someone becomes prime minister. For example, Nouri never formed a full cabinet. Back in July, Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) observed, "Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has struggled to forge a lasting power-sharing agreement and has yet to fill key Cabinet positions, including the ministers of defense, interior and national security, while his backers have also shown signs of wobbling support." Those positions were supposed to have been filled before the end of December 2010. They were not. They are still not filled. Nouri refused to fill them because once the Iraqi Parliament confirms a nominee, that nominee is autonomous. Nouri can't fire them, only the Parliament can. (Which isn't easy. Nouri's gotten Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi convicted of 'terrorism' and sentenced to death with the Baghdad courts he controls but he can't get Parliament to strip Tareq of his title.)
Because he was governed by The Erbil Agreement and not the Constitution, he didn't have to meet any requirements. And he trashed The Erbil Agreement. Immediately. A census was supposed to take place in Kirkuk the first week of December 2010. Nouri called it off, said it was postponed. It's never been brought up again. He was supposed to appoint Ayad Allawi to head an independent national security agency. Immediately after President Jalal Talabani named Nouri prime minister-designate, Nouri told Parliament that Allawi's position would have to wait. It's 'waited' ever since.
The US image in Iraq wasn't good before then. For obvious reasons (an illegal war that destroyed Iraq). Barack Obama's election meant that Iraqis thought a real change might be coming. They were hopeful. They no longer are. They have seen through Barack Obama and his 'withdrawal' which is actually more counter-terrorism US troops in Iraq today than at the start of 2012. (Not surprising because he told the New York Times he'd do that when he was first running for the presidency.) But what it mainly did was send the message to Iraqi political leaders that the US can't be trusted. For example, there is so much damage in the trust that did exist among Kurdish leaders. They now realize they will be screwed over every time. It didn't have to be this way.
Barack could have supported the will of the Iraqi people, the votes, the attempt at democracy. He refused to do so. Let's again note John Barry's "'The Engame' Is A Well Researched, Highly Critical Look at U.S. Policy in Iraq" (Daily Beast):
Washington has little political and no military influence over these developments [in Iraq]. As Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor charge in their ambitious new history of the Iraq war, The Endgame, Obama's administration sacrificed political influence by failing in 2010 to insist that the results of Iraq’s first proper election be honored: "When the Obama administration acquiesced in the questionable judicial opinion that prevented Ayad Allawi's bloc, after it had won the most seats in 2010, from the first attempt at forming a new government, it undermined the prospects, however slim, for a compromise that might have led to a genuinely inclusive and cross-sectarian government."
What The Erbil-Agreement put forward was a power-sharing government. This week, Brett McGurk announced that the US government now supports a majority-government. that's what Nouri has been insisting on all along. He couldn't accomplish that at the ballot box -- hell, he couldn't even win a term as prime minister at the ballot box -- but now the US is backing his power grab. This is major news and will have huge implications on the way the Iraqi people see the US.
Nouri went to Karbala today. Speaking alongside his political cronies, Nouri refused to take off his sunglasses. None of the over 16 people standing beside him required sunglasses but Nouri had to hide his eyes. He has to hide a lot. Alsumaria reports that he accused other political parties and slates of being terrorists. And what is a reach around to Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq, he declared that some political parties work to keep smaller ones from success. (al-Mutlaq is currently the leader of the National Dialogue Front which is a part of Iraqiya. al-Mutlaq and Nouri have gotten very tight as al-Mutlaq's leadership has fallen into question.) He also pushed his desire for majority government -- again, something the voters did not sign off on -- and declared it was the only way to end the "political impasse." Kitabat notes that he declared this is what has kept Iraq from moving forward. Parliamentary elections are currently supposed to take place in March of 2014. Nouri called for early elections and said the 2010 elections were marred by vote rigging. This is the piece of crap that the United States government has backed -- under Bush, under Barack. There's not a damn bit of difference between Bush and Barack except Barack can speak properly and Bully Boy Bush knew how to come off human (and not like the first place winner in a Leonard Nimoy competition).
Alsumaria reports that Brett McGurk has announced he will be entering discussions with various political leaders on how to solve the political crisis. Well it's "crises" -- not crisis. And the roots go back to the failure of Nouri to honor The Erbil Agreement and the failure of the US to keep their promise that they would ensure The Erbil Agreement would be honored. It's 2013. It's a little damn late, even if the US was trying to strong arm Nouri, for the 2010 contract to be honored (because come 2014, new parliamentary elections will be held). But why would any Iraqi politician expect either Nouri or the US government to be honest at this point? With their track record of lying over and over, why should Nouri or the US government be trusted?
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