BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE
"WRONG ON BOTH COUNTS!" DECLARED WHITE HOUSE PLUS-SIZE SPOKESMODEL JAY CARNEY TODAY TO THE CHARGES FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY ROBERT GATES MAKES OF JOE BIDEN IN HIS NEW BOOK.
"THE VICE PRESIDENT HAS NOT BEEN '
WRONG ON NEARLY EVERY MAJOR FOREIGN POLICY AND NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUE OVER THE PAST FOUR DECADES'," CARNEY INSISTED, CONTINUING, "AND THERE ARE MANY OTHER REASONS WE DON'T LET HIM PICK WHERE WE GET LUNCH."
"WRONG ON BOTH COUNTS!" CARNEY HUFFED.
ASKED ABOUT GATES TERMING BIDEN A "
MAN OF INTEGRITY," CARNEY REPEATED, "WRONG ON BOTH COUNTS! AND I DON'T KNOW WHY GATES HAD TO BRING GENDER INTO IT!"
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
This wave of violence was kicked off by Nouri's forces storming the home
of an MP in Anbar and when Osama al-Nujaifi attempted to lead an
investigation into Nouri's actions that left six people dead, al-Nuajifi
was prevented from leaving Baghdad.
This and so much more really going on in Falluja gets ignored.
Kieran Kelly (Dissident Voice) reports:
The Iraqi government has declared
that Fallujah has fallen entirely into the hands of “Al Qaeda and
Daash”. This follows over a month of US and Iraqi PR campaigning in the news media
touting Al Qaeda’s ambitions to carve out an emirate in the region. It
also comes just days after the revelation that the regime in Baghdad has
received hellfire missiles and drones from the United States for the stated purpose of fighting Al Qaeda in the last month.
Behind the scenes, however, Shafaq News reports
that some government sources admit that the claims are a deliberate
deception. One source describes the government stance as: “Deliberate
confusion in the information and attempts to create a dangerous
atmosphere in the city to be dealt with in a militarily way in every
way,” but in reality, “Fallujah and even other cities are still
experiencing quieter days than before”. By citing Al Qaeda and linking
it to the brutal terrorist mass-murder campaign as well as alleged
ambitions to create an entire state, the Iraqi government may be working
towards justifying unleashing high levels of military violence on
Fallujah, but who really is controlling Fallujah?
Instead of focusing on real issues like Kieran Kelly, everyone seems to be defocusing.
NewsBusters is a right wing media watchdog. They often do good
work. They often are outright stupid. Kyle Dreenen's worship of Bully
Boy Bush is as embarrassing as Media Matters worship of Barack Obama.
If Dreenen focused less on rescuing his heart throb
and more on doing media criticism, he could have nailed Brian Williams.
The first quote he offers from Williams is, "US fighting forces are
gone from Iraq. But as so many predicted when President Bush chose to
go to war there after 9/11, the fighting has started up again." Well,
they're not gone, US forces remain in Iraq and Barack's too damn stupid
to make that a talking point which allows the right-wing to clobber him
with 'you pulled all the forces out of Iraq!'
But the important sentence is that second sentence.
If you were opposed to the Iraq War and speaking out before it started
-- I was -- then that second sentence is startling: "But as so many
predicted when President Bush chose to go to war there after 9/11, the
fighting has started up again." We were the voices that were silenced
by NBC, by ABC, by CBS, by CNN, and by MSNBC -- though screamed at and
derided, we got a better hearing on Fox than anywhere else. We were the
voices
Cokie Roberts dubbed "none that mattered."
Yet now Brian Williams wants to note us? (And NewsBusters, you're
right-wing critique of Williams is that if all these voices were saying
it ahead of the war, why weren't they on the media. You should be
accusing Williams of attempting to re-write history.)
Bully Boy Bush started the illegal war (with the help of his powder puff
gal squad Tony Blair and John Howard). In 2006, the Iraqi Parliament
wanted to name Ibrahim al-Jaafari to a second term as prime minister.
The White House refused to allow that to happen. Nouri had no militia
and, most importantly, he had an intelligence dossier that insisted he
was easily manipulated and controlled. So he was installed as the US
puppet. The paranoia that made him so easy to trick also made him
prone to attacks on the Iraqi people. In 2010, the Iraqi people voted
and Nouri's State of Law lost to Ayad Allawi's Iraqiya. Iraq should
have been free of the despot. But Samantha Power and Susan Nuclear Rice
argued that Nouri must have a second term. Barack idiotically agreed.
So the Iraqi people watched as the US government created a legal
contract, The Erbil Agreement, that gave Nouri a second term despite the
votes.
Then came the end of the SOFA and Barack bungled that as well. Because,
let's be honest, he's so damn stupid. I'm glad he is, I'm glad the
bulk of US troops are out of Iraq. But the SOFA fell apart because
Barack didn't understand the difference between rule and letter of the
law. Exiting Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had attempted to educate
Barack on SOFAs but to no use. New Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta
thought he had conveyed the realities to Barack but he hadn't. Then
again, maybe Barack wasn't stupid, maybe he just didn't want a large
number of troops in Iraq either?
Regardless what was agreed to and could have been implemented to keep
around 9,000 to 15,000 US troops in the country was set aside. A number
of forces remained in Iraq after the drawdown (which the press billed
as a "withdrawal" and of course he sent in Special-Ops in the fall of
2012. Today, only
Ewen MacAskill (Guardian) can note, "The CIA, which retained a presence in Iraq after the 2011 US troop
withdrawal, is reported to be involved in helping with co-ordination of
intelligence as well as targeting Hellfire missiles. In addition, there
are 200 US military advisers left after the withdrawal."
As long as he continues to lie about that, he'll continue to be attacked for it.
Michael Crowley (Time magazine) leads the attack today by noting candidate Barack's promises:
“We will need to retain some forces in Iraq and the region,” Obama said. “We’ll continue to strike at al-Qaeda in Iraq.”
Obama made the point repeatedly: “In ending the war, we must act with more wisdom than we started it,” he said a month earlier. “That is why my plan would maintain sufficient forces in the region to target al-Qaeda within Iraq.”
And in a February 2008 primary debate, moderator
Tim Russert pressed Obama on whether there were any circumstances that
would lead him to re-escalate in Iraq: “Do you reserve a right as
American president to go back into Iraq, once you have withdrawn?”
Russert asked.
“If al-Qaeda is forming a base in Iraq, then we will have to act in a
way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad,” Obama
responded.
Six years later, even with al-Qaeda showing alarming strength in Iraq
— and across the border in Syria — nobody thinks Obama will “go back
into Iraq” anytime soon. As Secretary of State John Kerry put it Sunday: “This is a fight that belongs to the Iraqis.”
There are two huge mistakes the US government made with Iraq beginning
in 2003. The first was Bully Boy Bush's decision to invade. The second
was Barack Obama overruling the votes of the Iraqi people to give Nouri
a second term.
Violence continues with a
stun bomb in Basra, the
Iraqi Air Force bombing Anbar,
military helicopters bombing Ramadi, and more. And what may be most appalling is how little any of this is understood. The editorial board of the
Journal Democrat offers "
Editorial: Let Iraqi fight this war" and while their conclusion may make sense, their reasoning doesn't.
Are we retroactively stupid?
The editorial board is: al Qaeda!!!!
In real time it was called "insurgents." It's as though their minds
have turned to mush. And if we could acknowledge the reality that Anbar
has always been a zone of resistance, we might be able to better
understand what is taking place right now instead of reducing it to the
comic book nature of 'al Qaeda.'
What's going on in Iraq?
Here's how the Libertarian
Ed Krayewski (Reason) describes it:
You’d be forgiven if, while looking at recent headlines about
Iraq, you thought it was the aughts again. Fallujah, the site of
some of the most intense fighting during the U.S. war in Iraq, is
again at the center of political violence in that country. Over the
weekend, the city
fell to Al Qaeda-linked fighters who declared an
independent Islamist state there. Iraq’s prime minister Nouri
al-Maliki, in power since 2006, has urged residents in Fallujah to
fight back. Neighboring Iran, meanwhile, has
offered to help expel Al Qaeda from the city while last month
Iraq turned to the United States,
requesting it send drones and missiles to help battle the Al
Qaeda-linked Islamists. Seventy-five Hellfire missiles
reportedly arrived in Iraq on December 19, and drones were
supposed to be on their way, too. The fighting in Fallujah was a
culmination of a year of increasing political violence in Iraq.
The periodical is called
Reason so is it really too much to suppose they might use reason?
Nouri picked a fight last week and -- at least initially -- he's lost.
He's now demanding that the people of Falluja do what he could not. In
what world is that acceptable?
Do they have Hellfire missiles, these residents of Falluja?
He's already made the residents victims of collective punishment --
collective punishment is a War Crime -- and now he's not saying, "We
will rescue you," he's screaming, "Fix my mess!!!"
ABC News Radio adds:
Ross Caputi, a former Marine who fought in the second battle for the
city and is now an outspoken critic of U.S. intervention in Iraq, told
ABC News recently that he’d watched his friends die there “for the
purposes of regime change and furthering business interests friendly to
the Bush administration.”
“[Now] Iraqis will die there to further the interests of [Prime Minister Nouri] al-Maliki’s government,” he said.
Caputi's is a lone voice of honesty. More often we get the likes of
NPR's Larry Kaplow:
Yet again, Iraqi civilians are fleeing violence in Iraq's sprawling
western province of Anbar. Years of under-the-radar daily tension and
bloodshed has erupted into another al-Qaida surge and retaliatory Iraqi
government airstrikes.
I'm sorry, are you a liar or an idiot, Kaplow? Over 100,000 were
fleeing on Friday and they were fleeing the government attacks. Fighters
had not then seized control of Falluja (that would come Saturday).
Kaplow had his head up his ass as usual and missed that reality.
Lauren Hood (ITV News) offers
a video report on the battle in Ramadi including footage the Iraqi
government released of them attacking 'al Qaeda' -- two lone pick up
truck. Not even enough for a tailgate party but that qualifies for a
terrorist cell? Right-winger
Jonathan S. Tobin (Commentary)
is convinced that Americans are getting too friendly with Iran and
appears to be laying the preliminary groundwork for show trials to come. Left-wing
aymaan30 (allvoices) accepts the ready made construct but at least has the sense of mind to note:
Iraq needs a representative democracy and it won’t be realized unless Nouri al-Maliki stops Shia-appeasement and Sunni marginalization.
Moreover, if the United States continues to support a Shia-controlled
Iraq and ignores the Sunni marginalization, the march of Iraq into the
pit of religious theocracy and sectarian bloodshed would continue.
Simply
developing a holistic strategy to isolate the al-Qaeda would be a
palliative gesture. At the same time, Hellfire missiles and drones are
not going to solve this problem. In fact, these moves will make it
worse.
But it's weapons and weapons, billions of dollars worth of weapons.
Amaani Lyle (DoD's American Forces Press Service) quotes Army Col Steven Warren declaring today, "We're expediting delivery of 10 operational ScanEagles for part of the
original purchase, as well as an additional four nonoperational
ScanEagles, which will be sent to help facilitate maintenance of the
original 10." Yes, that must be the answer. After all, the US government has
only
provided Iraq with $14 billion in weaponry and training since 2005.
You might think, "$14 billion? Doesn't the country just have something
like 32 million people? What the heck?" Indeed. The problem isn't a
lack of weapons or not enough weapons, the problem is a non-inclusive
government which continues to penalize and terrorize Sunnis.
In
yesterday's snapshot, I noted we'd come back to Monday's State Dept press briefing by spokesperson Marie Harf:
QUESTION: Just to follow up on that, there’s been strong
criticism of the performance of president – or Prime Minister Maliki
towards the uprising in Anbar long before ISIS showed up. How do you
guarantee that all these weapons that you’re giving to him to fight ISIS
is not going to be used against his political opponent?
MS. HARF: In terms of what we’re selling to the Iraqi Government?
QUESTION: Yeah. All the assistance that he’s been asking them to combat ISIS --
MS. HARF: Well, it’s to the Iraqi Government. It’s not to any
one person in the Iraqi Government. I should be clear about that.
Obviously, we’re close partners with them. We work together on all these
issues. I have no indication that anything we have given them is being
used in any nefarious way. I’m happy to check with our folks.
No, it's not 'to the Iraqi Government.' It's too Nouri al-Maliki.
The US government brokered The Erbil Agreement to give Nouri a second
term as prime minister. In that contract, the other political blocs
went along with a second term in exchange for a power-sharing
government. That did not happen. Nouri didn't keep his word and the US
government did not demand that he keep his word. In addition, failure
to nominate people to head the security posts were a power grab on
Nouri's part. Add in that the country's without a president. For 13
months now, Jalal Talabani has been in Germany. He's not well enough to
hold office and the Constitution has yet again been ignored.
This all goes to the fact that there is no Iraqi government, there is only a despot named Nouri who has been put in charge.
As has too often been the case in the last few years,
The Economist has a better grasp of the issues than most outlets:
But the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham has also flourished because
there has been passive acceptance by Iraqi Sunnis who believe their
government and security forces are against them. The Iraqi army is so
unpopular in Anbar that in the summer it withdrew to the outskirts of
the cities, adding to the lack of security that allowed extremists to
regroup.
Mr Maliki, a Shia, has largely marginalised Iraq’s Sunni
minority, ignoring the demands of protests over the past year. Iraqi
prisons full of young Sunni men, in some cases arrested along with their
wives and children, political exclusion and lack of economy
opportunities have fuelled ongoing protests in Anbar and other Sunni
areas. The final straw came on December 30th when the Iraqi army tore
down a protest camp in Ramadi, later arresting a prominent Sunni parliamentarian.
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THIS JUST IN! COLOR HIM KITTY KELLEY!"
اعلام الربيع العراقي 
