LEAVE IT TO FADED CELEBRITY BARRY O TO TRY TO BLUFF HIS WAY THROUGH A MEETING.
TRAVELING TO VATICAN CITY, BARRY O MET WITH THE POPE.
"I'M A GREAT ADMIRER," BARRY O B.S.ED BEFORE HAVING TO ADMIT HE HADN'T READ POPE FRANCIS' EVAGNELII GAUDIUM. WHEN THE POPE GAVE HIM A COPY BARRY O INSISTED HE WOULD READ IT "WHEN I AM DEEPLY FRUSTRATED."
"TRANSLATION," HE SNARKED AS HIS MOTORCADE PULLED OFF, "WHEN MONKEYS FLY OUT MY BUTT!"
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
Let's start with the big lie from US President Barack Obama today. Speaking in Brussels today, as he attempted to sell war on Russia, Barack declared that what's going on in Ukraine is nothing like the illegal war in Iraq and the illegal war was benign and helpful:
It is true that the Iraq War was a subject of vigorous debate – not just around the world, but in the United States as well. I happened to oppose our military intervention there. But even in Iraq, America sought to work within the international system. We did not claim or annex Iraq’s territory, nor did we grab its resources for our own gain. Instead, we ended our war and left Iraq to its people and a fully sovereign Iraqi state could make decisions about its own future.
It was not a subject of vigorous debate in the US. Those of who spoke out were told to "shut up." If you wanted to hear an argument against going to war on Iraq, your best chance was catching Janeane Garofalo or Michael Moore on Fox News. Fox would attack the guests, so praise for Janeane and Michael for going into the lion's den -- but they would allow the guests to express their views.
Elsewhere, people were just shut out. And worse. We've noted the journalist who left the Dallas Morning News and is at another daily today but remembers full well that orders went out to attack the anti-war critics. Sheryl Crow was attacked and slandered by the paper, said to be unworthy of her Grammy nomination. Why did the music critic write that? Why did she lie by arguing that instead of Sheryl being nominated a baby pop tart should have been nominated? Pop tart wasn't even eligible for a nomination because she had nothing to be nominated for -- the Grammy rules aren't secret and that includes the eligibility time period. She attacked Sheryl because she was under orders. In the local pieces, others were under orders as well. Which is how the local columnist attacked protesters in Dallas and compared their actions to treason. This was a hippie and a stoner. But he marched to the orders he was given.
I can do that on seven other daily newspapers, we're using the Dallas Morning News because its actions were in part an effort to continue to have the government allow it to skirt FCC regulations over ownership in local markets.
Yeah, Big Business profited from the Iraq War. The FCC was used to help sell the war and that is one of the many things that's buried today.
So Barack's a damn liar. There was no vigorous debate. A month before it started, in fact, the day after liar Colin The Blot Powell lied to the United Nations, "case closed" was the phrase the media began using.
Aaron Blake (Washington Post) reports on Barack's remarks and we'll note two comments to Blake's article:
Then get out, as requested by the puppet governor we installed.
And:
Sorry, but this has stunned me into speechlessness. Not one country sanctioned the US for invading a sovereign country on a phony pretext, destabilizing it, occupying it, setting up an American govt....
And not one country ever sanctioned the US for its torture of suspects.
The US doesn't need to annex that which it occupies and then controls through puppet regimes.
This was totally unwise.
Jason Ditz (Antiwar.com)
is on a streak this week. Yesterday he wrote something (we noted it in
the snapshot) that I've already nominated for "Truest statement of the
week" at Third and, writing today about Barack's nonsense remarks, Ditz cuts right through the nonsense:
“America sought to work within the international system. We did not
claim or annex Iraq’s territory,” Obama insisted, going on to praise
Iraq as a “fully sovereign state” that “could make decisions about its
own future.”
Which is to say the US forced a puppet government into power before it
left, despite Prime Minister Maliki losing the last election, and put in
place an election system so crooked that even the Maliki-appointed election commission resigned en masse yesterday rather than take part in April’s planned vote.
Barack's refusal to note the lies that the US government told to start the Iraq War is understandable when you think of all the lies he and others in the administration (Secretary of State John Kerry, for example) have told to try to sway the public to support a war with Russia.
Everything Barack said above was a lie.
It is true that the Iraq War was a subject of vigorous debate – not just around the world, but in the United States as well. I happened to oppose our military intervention there.
We've noted there was no vigorous debate. Equally true, his claim to oppose the illegal war? Only before it started. Once it started, he was on board. I know because he told Elaine and I that when he was running for the Senate (and we left the fundraiser immediately and didn't give his campaign a dime).
But even in Iraq, America sought to work within the international system.
Lie. The United Nations provided no approval of starting a war. The statement that a second resolution would be sought was dropped when the US government learned (by illegal spying on UN representatives) that they didn't have the votes necessary, they started the illegal war anyway.
We did not claim or annex Iraq’s territory, nor did we grab its resources for our own gain.
Actually, the US government did and does. The illegal war was about markets -- that includes the oil market. The illegal war 'opened' the oil wells in Iraq. The country's being polluted as it tries to pump out as much oil as possible. There are pools, lakes, of oil in Iraq, on the surface, polluting the land, ensuring that less and less of it can be used for farming. Iraq's giving the world cheap oil and, in the process, destroying itself.
Instead, we ended our war and left Iraq to its people and a fully sovereign Iraqi state could make decisions about its own future.
We already quoted Jason Ditz addressing the nonsense of a 'fully sovereign' nation. So let's deal with 'we ended our war and left Iraq to its people' instead.
The US drawdown out of Iraq was completed by the end of December 2011. The US military called it a drawdown, not a "withdrawal." It wasn't a withdrawal. Not only did every US service member not leave Iraq at that time (Ted Koppel was the only one to report this in December 2011), but approximately 15,000 US troops were re-positioned to Kuwait. And, almost a year later, at the end of September 2012, Tim Arango (New York Times) reported:
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.
Barack's such a liar and he gets away with it because so many embrace lies. We'll come back to that at the end of the snapshot. Right now we'll note the immediate effect of Barack's latest nonsense. Julianna Goldman and Mike Dorning (Bloomberg News) report, "As Obama spoke, U.S. stocks fell, erasing earlier gains, on investor concern that the conflict may escalate. The Standard & Poor’s 500 lost 0.3 percent to 1,859.76 at 3:19 p.m. in New York, after earlier climbing to within three points of its record closing level reached March 7. "
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