BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE
FADED CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O REFUSES TO RELEASE TO THE PUBLIC THE COSTS OF ALL HIS FUNDRAISING TRIPS ON BEHALF OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
"LET THEM EAT CAKE! OR SOME WELFARE CAKE EQUIVALENT! A PRICE TAG CAN'T BE PUT ON MY JOY," INSISTED BARRY O TO THESE REPORTERS TONIGHT.
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
As for boots on the ground, they really aren't part of Barack's 'plan' thus far (yes, there are US soldiers on the ground in Iraq, Barack splits hairs and pretends otherwise). On Meet The Press yesterday, Barack's national security advisor Susan Rice insisted that there would be no change to the plan in that regard, "The president has been very plain that this is not a campaign that requires or even would benefit from American ground troops in combat again. The Iraqi prime minister, the government of Iraq have said very plainly, they don't want American troops in combat. We are there to help build up the Iraqi capacity to sustain their territory and to hold their ground. "
So what is the plan?
To bomb and continue bombing. Maybe throw in a couple of prayers for success.
There is nothing else at present.
Which is why Barack should never have started bombing Iraq to begin with.
It was never going to solve anything. But once the bombing started, all talk of a political solution was set aside as war was treated as a game and bombs as toys by the White House.
It's really accomplished nothing.
On Meet The Press, NBC News' Richard Engel offered this evaluation of the 'plan:'
The Iraqi army is in no better shape now than it was when it collapsed. The new Iraqi government is not instilling confidence in the people. It is not instilling confidence in the armed forces. The U.S. spent years and years and billions of dollars to build the Iraqi army, only to watch it collapse and hand over so many of its weapons.
So it is completely unrealistic to think that now, with a little bit of outside help and a lot of American good will, that the army is going to fundamentally change and the Iraqi government, which is really just a reshuffle of the same characters, is going to fundamentally change and suddenly inspire the Iraqi people to be behind it.
Of the Iraqi military, Fareed Zakaria (CNN's Global Public Square) offers, "Billions of dollar poured into it, because it was based on the idea that there was an Iraq, that there was a nation that there would be a national army for. Maybe we need a different strategy, which is to stand up sectarian militias, Shia militias, Sunni militias. They already exist. And the Kurds have their Peshmerga, that model. Send them into fight in their areas, not in other areas where they would be regarded as a foreign army."
Meanwhile, Peter Symonds (WSWS) notes, "Haditha is reportedly the only major town in Anbar still firmly in government hands. Since the beginning of the month, ISIS forces have captured a series of towns including the provincial capital of Ramadi." The fall of city after city in Iraq has become almost as much a daily staple in the news cycle as the never-ending violence. In terms of today's abandoned base and takeover, Al Jazeera notes:
Al Jazeera's Imran Khan, reporting from Baghdad, said that ISIL's takeover puts nearby towns including Amiri under threat.
"Amiri is a very key town, that is where the main supply line from Anbar province into Baghdad and the rest of the south of the country goes from," he said.
The fall of the base comes as residents of the area flee to other parts of Anbar. BBC News reports:
As many as 180,000 people have fled fighting between Iraqi forces and Islamic State (IS) militants in and around the city of Hit in western Anbar province, the UN says.
The civilians - many of whom were already displaced - have headed east towards the war-torn city of Ramadi.On the topic of refugees, UNHCR notes Mohammed Ali of Syria and that "He is one of more than 2,500 Kurdish Syrians from Kobane to have made the crossing since Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government opened the border to refugees last Friday, with the authorities predicting that tens of thousands more could arrive in the coming weeks."
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