BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL AID TABLE
NEW FROM MATTEL, THE SPOILED BABY GIVE ME EVERYTHING DOLL.
SPOILED BABY GIVE ME EVERYTHING DOLL CAN RUN FOR CONGRESS OR TRY OUT FOR THE LEAD IN THE NEXT 50 SHADES FILM.
SHE CAN DO ANYTHING BECAUSE SHE'S NEVER ACHIEVED ANYTHING.
MATTEL NOTES THE DOLL COMES WITH A STRONG GRIP AND WILL GRAB ANYTHING PUT IN HER HANDS.
Michael Knights is steaming mad. And he takes his crazy to FOREIGN POLICY:
On Jan. 21, the newly minted commander in chief raised his oft-repeated mantra that the United States might have offset the costs of the Iraq War by somehow seizing Iraqi oil. Six days later, he signed an executive order banning Iraqi nationals from entering the United States for 90 days and Iraqi refugees from entering for 120 days. The banned persons initially included thousands of translators and other Iraqis who risked their lives by serving alongside U.S. troops in Iraq.
Thousands?
No.
As Trudy Rubin (PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER) explained last week:
By now you probably know that Trump's claim that a mere 109 visa-holders were affected was nonsense. At least 60,000 U.S. visas were canceled, causing chaos for foreign students, academics, high-tech workers, doctors who serve rural America, family members of U.S. citizens, and tourists. That's beside green-card holders - permanent U.S. residents - who were originally included in the ban (most were eventually permitted to enter).
What you may not know is that the ban included Iraqis who held Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) issued to interpreters who helped the U.S. military. Thank heavens the Trump administration was shamed (and pressed by the Pentagon) into revising that decision. However, that affected relatively few Iraqis, since the SIV program ended in 2014; only 19 such visas were issued during the last three years, according to the State Department (around 500 cases are still in process).
What you may not know is that the ban included Iraqis who held Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) issued to interpreters who helped the U.S. military. Thank heavens the Trump administration was shamed (and pressed by the Pentagon) into revising that decision. However, that affected relatively few Iraqis, since the SIV program ended in 2014; only 19 such visas were issued during the last three years, according to the State Department (around 500 cases are still in process).
And what you probably don't know is that many other Iraqis who risked their lives helping Americans are still excluded by the ban.
Around 500 cases are still in process.
Knights goes with "thousands." And forgets to note that the program ended in 2014 so these 500 cases should have had already been ruled on by the previous administration.
But what do facts matter when you're wagging your war-on at the country as it drips pre-death?
Michael writes:
The good news is that the United States is not swimming against the tide of Iraqi politics. On the contrary, it has aligned itself with the political and religious mainstream. Most Iraqis don’t want their country to be controlled by outsiders. They want sovereignty, choices, and leverage.
This is not what Iran offers. Iraqi nationalists — whether they are Shiite moderates like Abadi, U.S.-trained special forces soldiers, Sunni Arabs, or even homegrown Shiite radicals like Moqtada al-Sadr — know that it would be curtains for them as soon as the Iranian-backed factions took over Baghdad. Meanwhile, the Shiite religious leadership in Najaf is looking down the barrel of an Iranian gun. When the country’s preeminent Shiite religious authority, the 86-year-old Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, passes away, there will be a fierce scramble for spiritual leadership of Iraqi Shiites, and Iran will play hardball for this ultimate prize.
The semiautonomous Iraqi Kurds, America’s oldest allies in Iraq, can also look forward to a new confrontation with the Iraqi government if Tehran’s proxies take over Baghdad. Just as the theocracy in Tehran constantly vents its special hatred for Iran’s Kurds, so too will the IRGC try to place Iraqi Kurds under the hammer of an oppressive state.
The United States has a much less prescriptive vision that’s far more attractive to Iraqis: Brett McGurk, the U.S. special envoy for the anti-Islamic State coalition, has called for “functioning federalism,” power sharing between ethnosectarian blocs, and a negotiated settlement over the future status of Iraqi Kurdistan between Baghdad and the Kurds. At heart, Washington wants a strong and sovereign Iraq so that the United States can reduce its presence without ceding the country to Iran.
So Brett's calling for what former Vice President Joe Biden called for when he was a member of the US Senate?
And has Michael Knights forgotten how badly that went over?
First, it was that the US was trying to destroy Iraq.
Then you have people of all sects speak out against federalism.
Federalism may be a good idea -- it may not be.
But that's something for the Iraqi people to determine -- not Brett McGurk, not Michael Knights.
Though some Shi'ites were for it, the loudest argument against it came from Shi'ites who, because they are the majority population, don't see the need to split up Iraq or its resources.
As for aligning itself with the political and religious mainstream?
When?
When did the US do that?
When the US government installed exiles who fled their country for decades and only returned after the foreign invaders ran Saddam Hussein out of Baghdad?
Those chickens?
Time and again, the US has backed tryants because, in the words of disgraced US Ambassador to Iraq Chris Hill, "Iraq needs a strongman."
That's why, when the Iraqi people voted Nouri out as prime minister in 2010, Barack Obama nullified the votes (with The Erbil Agreement) and gave Nouri a second term.
And, Michael Knights, you know damn well how that turned out.
Currently, the US has installed Hayder al-Abadi as prime minister (don't we love Iraq's right to self-determination -- in theory, even if we never let them practice it).
He's not moderate.
He's ineffectual at best.
No one listens to him.
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