BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL AID TABLE
CRANKY CLINTON'S STILL IN THE MIDST OF HER E-MAIL SCANDAL AND A NEW DETAIL HAS EMERGED.
REACHED FOR COMMENT, VALERIE JARRETT DECLARED TO THESE REPORTERS, "BEHIND EVERY BITCH THERE'S ANOTHER ONE."
Wednesday the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held an important hearing on Iraq and the Authorization for the Use of Military Force that US President Barack Obama has requested. We've covered the hearing in the Wednesday and Thursday snapshots and will cover it later in this one. But for now, let's note what Ranking Member Robert Menendez stated as the hearing was coming to a close.
Ranking Member Robert Menendez: Finally, I do hope that we can get to a point to find the right balance and that's not easy in this proposition to give you an AUMF that gives you the wherewithall to degrade and defeat ISIL but by the same token doesn't provide an open-ended check. And I think that the real concern here is for some of us who lived under shock and awe and were told that Iraqi oil was going to pay for everything and saw a lot of lives and national treasure spent, that even well intentioned efforts can move in a totally different direction. And this is the most critical vote that any member of the Congress will take which is basically a vote on war and peace and life and death.
As if to underscore the points he was making Wednesday, CBS News reported Friday:
A U.S. soldier at an Iraqi training base was injured by gunfire directed at the base, marking the first time an American soldier has been wounded by fire from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports.
A Pentagon spokesman told Martin that the soldier received superficial wounds to his face after the incident, which occurred Wednesday at 3:00 a.m. Iraqi time.
National Iraqi News Agency adds, "The Spokesman of the Pentagon said that this is the first time that a US soldier wounded are carried out on the ground, since the United States began training Iraqi forces as part of coalition efforts to defeat the IS organization." All Iraq News quotes the Pentagon spokesperson, Steve Warren, stating that "US soldiers returned fire."
Oh, what a beautiful city
Oh, what a beautiful city
Oh, what a beautiful city
Twelve gates to the city
Hallelujah
There are three gates in the east
And three to the west
There's three to the north
And three to the south
There's twelve gates to the city
Hallelujah
-- "Twelve Gates To The City," traditional song recorded by Carly Simon on her Christmas Is Almost Here
Twelve Gates To The City, and 12 days to reach Tikrit.
That's how long it's taken the Baghdad-Tehran alliance. On Thursday, the 12th day of the operation, they finally reached Tikrit. Apparently, there was no direct path so they had to take stop overs, possibly they traveled Jet Blue via Miami.
Thursday, All Iraq News reported that Khalid al-Khazrji (Deputy Chair of the Local Security Committee) was insisting, "The Iraqi forces have completely controlled over Tikrit."
Oh, the lies and the liars.
Like Khaled al-Obeidi. Thursday, National Iraqi News Agency reported that Defense Minister al-Obeidi declared that the battle for Tikrit "will be today and will be a decisive battle."
Didn't happen.
But Iran and Baghdad's Shi'ite forces had finally made it to Tikrit.
And?
Jean Marc Mojon (AFP) didn't seem to grasp what he reported on Friday morning:
Iraqi forces on Friday battled jihadists making what looked increasingly like a last stand in Tikrit but the Islamic State group responded by vowing to expand its "caliphate".
Thousands of fighters surrounded a few hundred holdout IS militants, pounding their positions from the air but treading carefully to avoid the thousands of bombs littering the city centre.
The bulk of Islamic State fighters had left, only a "few hundred" remained and that was still too much for the combined might of Baghdad and Tehran.
Offering a more clear-eyed assessment on Friday was Saif Hameed (Reuters) who reported:
The offensive to retake Tikrit appeared to stall on Friday, two days after Iraqi security forces and mainly Shi’ite militia pushed into Saddam Hussein’s home city in their biggest offensive yet against the militants.
A source in the Salah Al-Din Operations Command said Iraqi forces would not move forward until reinforcements reached Tikrit, of which the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) still holds around half.
Using guerrilla warfare tactics, the militants have turned the city into a labyrinth of home-made bombs and booby-trapped buildings, and are using snipers to halt their progress.
Adam Rawnsley (War Is Boring) notes that, "in a sign of Tehran’s growing military presence in the Iraq, Iranian weapons were a nearly ubiquitous sight in images and videos coming out of the offensive to take the mostly Sunni city." Yamei Wang (Xinhua) adds that Friday saw at least seventy-two security forces injured and another 26 killed.
RECOMMENDED: "Iraq snapshot"
