Saturday, April 08, 2017

Ban the War Hags

rice



From earlier this week, that's Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Susan Trust-Me Rice."


Can you imagine if that War Hag had been held accountable?

Maybe it would send a message to other War Hags -- that they aren't untouchable.

Instead, they can start the Iraq War and they're able to still be out in public, seen as reasoned people.

They are filthy War Hags.

They need to be treated as such.

Only when this human filth realizes there are consequences for their ways -- consequences that hit them where it really hurts -- their bank accounts -- will anything change.

Ban the War Hags.


Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"




Friday, April 7, 2017.  Chaos and violence continue, The Mosul Slog continues, the partisan liars continue and let's learn to tell the difference between a partisan piece of crap and a peace activist.







There's a chance peace will come, in your life please buy one
There's a chance peace will come, in your life please buy one

For sometimes when I am feeling as big as the land
With the velvet hill in the small of my back
And my hands are playing the sand
And my feet are swimming in all of the waters
All of the rivers are givers to the ocean
According to plan, according to man

Well sometimes when I am feeling so grand
And I become the world
And the world becomes a man
And my song becomes a part of the river
I cry out to keep me just the way I am
According to plan, according to man
According to plan, according to man
According to plan, according to man
According to plan, according to man
According to plan
-- "Peace Will Come (According to Plan)," written by Melanie Safka, first appears on her album LEFTOVER WINE

There's a chance that peace will come . . . but not as long as people lie.
Take this idiot, "Peace Is Active."

Bush Said Iraq Would Welcome Us As Liberators... Many Lives Lost... Civil War We Sparked Bled Into Syria...

 

 

Where's Barack on that list?

I get that D Cheney smirk when I see orgs quote Dr. King today that said nothing during Obama's 8 years of bombings.


If he hadn't overturned the 2010 Iraqi vote -- talk about foreign interference in an election -- Nouri al-Maliki wouldn't have gotten a second term and Iraq might not have witnessed the rise of the Islamic State.
Where's Bill Clinton?
Do a half million dead Iraqi children not matter?
Or, like Madeline Albright (Bill's Secretary of State and Destruction), do you think killing them was "worth it"?


There's a special in place for hell for Madeline Albright and plenty of spots for those who lie and cover for her as well.
Where's Jimmy Carter?


Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs [“From the Shadows”], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

Brzezinski: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?

Brzezinski: Regret what?
That's  Mika Brzezinski's dirty ass father Zbigniew Brzezinski who served as Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor.
Peace will never come when whores and liars pretend the problem is Republicans.
John Kerry voted for the Iraq War.  John Edwards voted for the Iraq War.  Joe Biden voted for the Iraq War.  Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq War. 
What do they hold in common?
They're all Democrats for one thing.
And they were all on presidential tickets after their votes for war.
The 2004 Democratic presidential ticket was Kerry - Edwards (or John and John -- two toilets for twice the flushing).
Joe Biden was the running mate on the 2008 and 2012 ticket.
Hillary Clinton was the presidential candidate on the 2016 ticket.
Before you start cheering on Barack Obama and Tim Kaine for not voting for the Iraq War, remember that neither was in the US Congress -- House or Senate -- in 2002.
And add in that Barack told THE NEW YORK TIMES in 2004, during the national convention in Boston, that he didn't know how he would have voted had he been in the Senate.
And yet someone claiming to want peace, is pimping the wars as the responsibility of the sole Republican Party?
That's a lie. 
And peace will never come while we continued to allow ourselves to be hijacked for partisan purposes.
Grasp that in 2006, Democrats promised they would end the war in Iraq if they were given control of a house of Congress.
At the time, they were in the minority in both houses.
In those November elections, the American people gave them control of both houses.
January 2007 saw that Congress sworn in.
Did the Iraq War end?
No.
Did it end in 2008?
No.
Give us one house of Congress and we'll end the war . . . 
A lie.
Nancy Pelosi, elevated to Speaker of the House, tried to pin the blame on then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
What a load of nonsense.
She didn't say, "Give me both houses of Congress," she said one.
They thought they had a chance at winning back the House.  That was the promise she was making.  So she expected the Senate would obstruct -- that it would be controlled by Republicans. 
Instead, it ended up controlled by Democrats.
And she whined -- the the editorial board of THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE -- that she only had control of the House herself so she couldn't end the war.
What a lying sack of s**t.
Shame on everyone who provides cover for politicians who start and/or continue illegal wars.
Shame on those who use it as a partisan issue.
This is about human life and you're lying to churn out the vote for a political party?
That includes Peace Is Active who doesn't give a damn about peace -- check out the Twitter feed -- just about slamming Republicans and praising Democrats.
You are the problem.
You are the cause of continued war.
Because you whore.
I'm hoping Chris Hayes is just stupid.
Remember: US re-involvement in Iraq started with humanitarian mission to save Yazidis from slaughter on Mt Sinjar.


No, Chris, it didn't.
You refused to report what happened but Tim Arango reported it, we've covered it here hundreds of times and, in your magazine THE NATION, Tom Hayden even wrote about Tim Arango's report.
So are you stupid?  Are you lying? Or are you whoring?
The drawdown (not withdrawal) was at the end of 2011.  The Yazidi 'rescue' began in 2014.
Where's Barack sending special-ops into Iraq in 2012?  Oh, Chris ignores it.
From November 7, 2012's "Let the fun begin (Ava and C.I.):"
 If you doubt that, September 26th, the New York Times' Tim Arango 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.



September 26th it was in print.

Days later, October 3rd, Barack 'debated' Mitt RomneyAgain October 16thAgain October 22nd.
Not once did the moderators ever raise the issue.

If Barack's sitting before them and he's flat out lying to the American people, it's their job to ask.  They didn't do their job.  Nor did social menace Candy Crowley who was apparently dreaming of an all-you-can-eat buffet when Barack was babbling away before her about how he wouldn't allow more "troops in Iraq that would tie us down."  But that's exactly what he's currently negotiating.

Maybe Candy Crowley missed the New York Times article?  Maybe she spends all her time pleasuring herself to her version of porn: Cooking With Paula Deen Magazine?

That is possible.

But she was only one of the three moderators.  Bob Schieffer and Jim Lehrer also moderated.  Of course, they didn't foolishly self-present as a fact checker in the midst of the debate  nor did they hit the publicity circuit before the debate to talk about how they were going to show how it was done.

Poor Crowley, a heavy weight strutting into a non-competition will always look woefully misdressed.

Barack lied and Americans will face that or not.
Chris Hayes appears to indicate that America will not face that.
Let's all hope he's wrong.
Meanwhile . . .
President Erdogan: It is not appropriate to raise the Kurdistan flag alongside the Iraqi flag.


Must be wonderful to be Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of Turkey, so few problems that you can stick your nose into other countries' business and do so over issues like whether or not they should raise a flag.
What's that?
Erdogan's Turkey has thousands of problems -- most of them stemming from Erdogan.
And when he's out of office, he will be seen as a butcher for all the civilians he's killed in his so-called efforts to bomb the PKK.  (He's killing Kurds.  He knows it.  The Kurds know it.  He's thinning out the population.  His policies in Turkey are the same only less obviously violent.)
Repeating, when he's out of office, he will be seen as the butcher he is.
And he can shut down every last TV channel, newspaper and blog in Turkey and he still won't be able to silence that truth.
Butcher.
Meanwhile it's day 171 of The Mosul Slog.  
How's that going?
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees offers this:

KEY FIGURES
314,268 Iraqis currently internally displaced from Mosul and surrounding areas since military operations to retake the city began on 17 October 2016
37,455 core relief item (CRIs) kits distributed to families in camps, assisting some 224,000 IDPs from Mosul and surrounding areas
7,814 family plots currently occupied out of 12,497 family plots (for some 75,000 people) in UNHCR built camps ready to receive IDPs displaced from the Mosul corridor
3 million IDPs since January 2014
250,952 Iraqi refugees hosted in countries in the region, and 14,878 Iraqis received in Al Hol camp in Syria since 17 October 2016
FUNDING
USD 578 million requested for IDPs and Iraqi refugees in the region in 2017


And remember that this week, the civilians in Mosul were again instructed to remain in their homes.  There is no safe passage out.  But we can be sure that when the next civilian massacre gets attention we will suffer through members of the US Congress insisting it's all ISIS' fault.


The war continues in Iraq, Trump's attacking Syria and the thing all the 'intelligent' people are doing?  Mocking Jared Kushner for wearing a flack jacket.
No, your priorities aren't screwed up at all.  (That was sarcasm.)
While flying home to Hawaii, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard issues statement: Trump's air strikes on Syria are reckless and short-sighted. –Team Tulsi




US House Rep Tulsi Gabbard is correct.
By the way, the US State Dept will not have a press briefing today: "There will NOT be a Press Briefing today."  And they haven't held once since March 21st.  The State Dept press briefing is a daily event.  How sad that Donald Trump's people are too scared to face the press.  How sad, but how telling.
So much to work on but so little willing to do the work.


We don't need another war but, by all means, let's not focus on that or Iraq or anything that matters because we can be snotty about Jared!  (Snotty, not bitchy.  It's not mature enough to pass for bitchy.  It's the stuff of 3rd graders.)


Who's for peace?

That should be the question of the day.
The following community sites updated:





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    Wednesday, April 05, 2017

    NPR -- another part of the war machine

    Agree with this Tweet:

    Another reason to : they're calling for war in Syria


    They called for war with Libya too.

    I can't remember where we were.

    But we were outside and listening on our phones to some NPR afternoon program and it was that awful woman from Barack's administration, not Susan Rice, the woman who talked about sexism and then tried to retract.

    Anyway, she was all on their calling for war.

    And we all pull out our ear buds at the same time -- Wally, Ava and C.I. and me -- and Ava's like, "WTF did that crazy ass say?"

    NPR does not represent the people.

    It does not question war.

    It supports war and leads a drive to war.

    That hideous Rachel Martin on MORNING EDITION is a good example.  Renee Montagne was not anti-war -- I wish she had been -- but she did present in a balanced manner.  Now Rachel's replaced her and there's no war claim she won't swallow and spit back out.



    Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


    Wednesday, April 5, 2017.  Chaos and violence continue, The Mosul Slog continues, the Iraqi government continues to tell civilians in Mosul to remain in the city and much more.


    In shocking news, Janine Jackson has emerged from her coma.

    It's been an 8 year coma which kept her from speaking out on the Iraq War.

    She had done so up through 2008.

    Then came the coma.

    Some say it was self-induced.

    Possibly it was.

    What is known is that, freed from the desire to look away in order to protect Barack Obama, Janine has finally returned to the topic of Iraq.

    And who better to speak to them my BFF Raed Jarrar aka Jar-Jar Blinks.

    From their interview:


    JJ: Well, if I can put it very crudely, the media assessment, or the assessment that you would take from media in the wake of the Mosul airstrike, is that civilian deaths are sad but unavoidable, especially because of ISIS and their methods. And the takeaway is, we can only hope that in the end it will have been “worth it.” The damage and the harm from attacks like the one that we just saw, in other words, is not ignored, but it stands itself as justification for further attacks. And so one hardly knows how to intervene in that logic loop, if the goal is really to stop the dying.

    RJ: I would intercede with two points. The first one is that the level of civilian casualties to US airstrikes, and to those forces supported and aided by the US, might actually reach to the point of war crimes. So we’re not just talking about a tactical difference—you know, we’re offending some groups. The US apparently has changed its rules of engagement in the last few months, and this came after promises by President Trump to take the gloves off against ISIS. And he said that we have been “restrained,” we have to take it all the way. So there is an intention there to start bombing more and to disregard civilian lives.
    And under international law, these principles of proportionality and distinction are not optional; it’s not an issue that a president can decide to tweak for political reasons. So that’s my first point, is that the US might have been engaged in war crimes in the last few weeks because of the unprecedented level of civilian casualties in Syria and in Iraq, where hundreds of civilians are being killed by airstrikes by the US, in what seems to be a new pattern of US engagement.
    My second point is that I completely disagree with the premise of what’s going on in Mosul. So if you were to listen to mainstream media in the US, or to the US government, what’s going on is supposedly a liberation of Mosul. That’s why any price should be given for this liberation of Mosul from this pure evil group, because at the end of the day, supposedly, we’re getting all of these Iraqi civilians liberated.
    And I disagree with this premise, because what’s going on in Mosul is nothing more than a handover between one sectarian and violent militia, called ISIS, to another sectarian and violent militia, called the Iraqi government. Civilians in Mosul are not being liberated; in some cases [there is] worse treatment by the Iraqi government and militias affiliated with the Iraqi government. Human Rights Watch issued a few reports in the last few years. One of them is called “After Liberation Came Destruction,” and in that report, Human Rights Watch documents how Iraqi forces, aided and funded and trained by the US, committed systemic war crimes in areas that they took back from ISIS, including ethnic cleansing and rape and torture and extrajudicial killing. We’re talking about the same level of violations committed by ISIS.

    So there is no liberation going on there. Iraq is not getting to a point where we’re opening a new page. What’s going on now is exactly another step, a continuation of the destruction of the country.


    Oh, Jar-Jar.

    I still have the e-mails, the ones where you swore you'd call out Barack.

    Remember those.

    But you never did, Jar-Jar.

    You were a good little foot whore in the march to deceive the people.

    All those years of silence, where did they lead to?

    To the very thing you're now appalled by.

    It's a damn shame you were nowhere to be found when it mattered.

    Oh, he would show up on, say DEMOCRACY NOW!, where he and Amy Goodman would find a way to discuss the Iraq War without ever mentioning Barack.


    And during such appearances, he would make clear that he didn't know a damn thing about what was going on in the country.


    For one example of that, see "TV: A week of putrid and puerile."


    After 8 long years, our prodigal children Janine and Raed return and we're supposed to be grateful?

    So tell us, Janine and Raed, can we count on you beyond 2020?

    I mean, if Donald Trump gets voted out in the 2020 election and a Democratic becomes president, are you going to whore and lie again?

    Of course you are.


    That's why can't trust you.

    You made that clear for eight years.

    It's good that Raed can call out the militias.

    But there's the reality that they're acting on the will of the Baghdad-based government.

    Yes, we are seeing sectarianism.

    But that's a result of the Shi'ite dominated government which has refused reconciliation repeatedly.

    Raed doesn't get that what we've done -- and are doing now -- is propping a government that has no legitimacy with the people.

    We have chosen sides while pretending that we're defending the Iraqi people.

    Tell you what, Raed, you learn to talk about that?  I'll stop bitch slapping you for the last eight years.  Until then . . .


    Sounds like a good place for Diana Ross' "Until We Meet Again" (first appears on her album EVERY DAY IS A NEW DAY).






    'Liberation' -- the true face of it in Iraq.



    American war crimes continue in . Many children and women killed in a new massacre in controlled Tal Afar town..
     
     




    That's what's taking place.

    That's what the US government has backed and condoned and continues to back and condone.



    At what point do we speak up?

    Mustafa Saadoun (AL-MONITOR) reports:


    On March 26, the Iraqi government officially announced it favors the idea of some US forces staying. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in a Fox News interview that he supports retaining enough US troops to support Iraqi forces in a post-IS Iraq.
    "We are concentrating on training, logistical support, and intelligence cooperation and gathering; these are three important elements for which I think we need some US troops to stay in Iraq to continue the task," he stated.
    It appears that parliament's Security and Defense Committee has information that work has already begun on some US bases. Committee member Majid al-Gharawi told Al-Monitor, "The US troops, present in Iraq in rising numbers each day, are meant to stay in Iraq." Gharawi, a political representative of the Sadrist movement, not surprisingly opposes the idea. "American forces in Iraq will be met by resistance at the hand of Iraqis. Any foreign military presence on Iraqi soil will not be tolerated," he said.
    Jaafar al-Moussawi, the spokesperson for Sadrist movement leader Muqtada al-Sadr, concurred. He said, "Any continued presence of foreign forces in Iraq, whether they are American or not, without agreement by the Iraqi parliament is considered an occupation. Hence, it will face resistance by the Sadrist movement or the rest of Iraqis, as the movement's stance on a US presence hasn’t changed."


     
    Again, when do we speak out?
    After the bases are built and stationed?
    Meanwhile, Tikrit is slammed with bombings.  AL JAZEERA reports, "Dozens of people have been killed in a series of attacks in the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit, according to security sources.  The overnight attacks on Wednesday came after several suspected ISIL fighters infiltrated Tikrit, around 170km north of the capital, Baghdad."  AP counts at least 22 dead while REUTERS counts 31 and BBC NEWS offers, "A doctor at the city's hospital told the BBC that 34 people had been killed and 46 others wounded, many of them civilians."
    It's day 170 of The Mosul Slog. 
    Day 170.
    And what's being done?

    Iraq's military on Wednesday urged residents to shelter in their homes in jihadist-held areas of Mosul, where its bid to oust the Islamic State group has taken a heavy toll on civilians.
    Iraqi forces are battling to recapture west Mosul from IS, killing and wounding hundreds of civilians and pushing more than 200,000 to leave their homes.

    The government has encouraged residents not to flee during the fighting -- a policy aimed at easing ease the burden of widespread displacement but which can heighten the risk of injury or death for civilians.


    Despite the infamous March 20th strike that left 100s of civilians dead, that's still what they tell Mosul residents?  Don't leave?

    They refuse to create a corridor for safe passage to get the civilians out of Mosul.

    The Mosul Slog is not about helping Iraqi civilians.

    That should be clear by now.


    The editorial board of THE KANSAS CITY STAR offers:

    Protection of the innocent in war time is a marker of civilization itself — a concept so central to international law and the ancient “just war ethic” our laws and norms grew out of that it has been recognized across the millennia.
    So we can hardly be complacent about the unacceptable number of civilian casualties caused by drone strikes under President Barack Obama.
    Or about evidence that a growing number of noncombatants have been killed in even more aggressive airstrikes in Iraq and Syria since President Donald Trump was sworn in. There were 1,000 such deaths last month alone, according to the U.K.-based monitoring group Airwars.

    Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article142745594.html#storylink=cpy




    Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Susan Trust-Me Rice" went up last night and the following community sites -- plus BLACK AGENDA REPORT -- updated:




  • Caught
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