NASA's Curiosity rover has come a long way since touching down on
Mars seven years ago. It has traveled a total of 13 miles (21
kilometers) and ascended 1,207 feet (368 meters) to its current
location. Along the way, Curiosity discovered Mars had the conditions to support microbial life in the ancient past, among other things. And the rover is far from done, having just drilled its 22nd sample
from the Martian surface. It has a few more years before its nuclear
power system degrades enough to significantly limit operations. After
that, careful budgeting of its power will allow the rover to keep
studying the Red Planet. Curiosity is now halfway through a region scientists call the "clay-bearing unit" on the side of Mount Sharp, inside of Gale Crater.
Billions of years ago, there were streams and lakes within the crater.
Water altered the sediment deposited within the lakes, leaving behind
lots of clay minerals in the region. That clay signal was first detected
from space by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) a few years
before Curiosity launched. "This area is one of the reasons we came to Gale Crater," said
Kristen Bennett of the U.S. Geological Survey, one of the co-leads for
Curiosity's clay-unit campaign. "We've been studying orbiter images of
this area for 10 years, and we're finally able to take a look up close."
NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover Explores Teal Ridge (360 View): Curiosity
captured this 360-degree panorama of a location on Mars called “Teal
Ridge” on June 18, 2019. This location is part of a larger region the
rover has been exploring called the “clay-bearing unit” on the side of
Mount Sharp, which is inside Gale Crater. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.
Video download ›
Close-up of "Strathdon": This mosaic of images shows layers of
sediment on a boulder-sized rock called "Strathdon," as seen by the Mars
Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera carried by NASA's Curiosity rover. The
images were taken on July 10, 2019, the 2,462nd Martian day, or sol, of
the mission. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS. Full image and caption ›
Rock samples that the rover has drilled here have revealed the highest amounts of clay minerals
found during the mission. But Curiosity has detected similarly high
amounts of clay on other parts of Mount Sharp, including in areas where
MRO didn't detect clay. That's led scientists to wonder what is causing
the findings from orbit and the surface to differ. The science team is thinking through possible reasons as to why the
clay minerals here stood out to MRO. The rover encountered a "parking
lot full of gravel and pebbles" when it first entered the area, said the
campaign's other co-lead, Valerie Fox of Caltech. One idea is that the
pebbles are the key: Although the individual pebbles are too small for
MRO to see, they may collectively appear to the orbiter as a single clay
signal scattered across the area. Dust also settles more readily over
flat rocks than it does over the pebbles; that same dust can obscure the
signals seen from space. The pebbles were too small for Curiosity to
drill into, so the science team is looking for other clues to solve this
puzzle. Curiosity exited the pebble parking lot back in June and started to
encounter more complex geologic features. It stopped to take a
360-degree panorama at an outcrop called "Teal Ridge." More recently, it
took detailed images of "Strathdon," a rock made of dozens of sediment
layers that have hardened into a brittle, wavy heap. Unlike the thin,
flat layers associated with lake sediments Curiosity has studied, the
wavy layers in these features suggest a more dynamic environment. Wind,
flowing water or both could have shaped this area.
Mastcam Views "Strathdon": This mosaic of images shows a
boulder-sized rock called "Strathdon," which is made up of many complex
layers. NASA's Curiosity Mars rover took these images using its Mast
Camera, or Mastcam, on July 9, 2019, the 2,461st Martian sol, or day, of
the mission. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS. Full image and caption ›
Both Teal Ridge and Strathdon represent changes in the landscape.
"We're seeing an evolution in the ancient lake environment recorded in
these rocks," said Fox. "It wasn't just a static lake. It's helping us
move from a simplistic view of Mars going from wet to dry. Instead of a
linear process, the history of water was more complicated." Curiosity is discovering a richer, more complex story behind the
water on Mount Sharp — a process Fox likened to finally being able to
read the paragraphs in a book — a dense book, with pages torn out, but a
fascinating tale to piece together. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, leads the Mars Science Laboratory mission that includes Curiosity. For more about NASA's Curiosity Mars rover mission, visit:https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/https://nasa.gov/msl News Media Contact Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1501alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov
And on the topic of Mars, Lisa Grossman (SCIENCE NEWS) notes: Methane released in Gale crater
stays in Gale crater. An overnight change in the Martian atmosphere could hold the
gas close to the ground until morning, explaining why the Curiosity rover caught
a whiff of methane while an overhead orbiter found none. The theory offers “a way for
the two measurements to live in harmony with each other,” says planetary
scientist John Moores of York University in Toronto. He and his colleagues lay
out the theory’s details online August 20 in Geophysical
Research Letters. Since 2003, several
spacecraft have detected varying amounts of methane on Mars (SN: 1/15/09). NASA’s Curiosity rover, which
landed in Gale crater in 2012, has found that amounts of the gas rise and fall in a seasonal cycle (SN: 6/7/18). Methane should last no more
than about 300 years in the Martian atmosphere before sunlight breaks it down.
“To see a seasonal cycle tells you that something is actively producing or
destroying methane in the present time,” Moores says. Microbes produce methane
on Earth, so finding the gas on the Red Planet has been seen as a possible sign
of life — although not a definitive one.
Tuesday, September 3, 2019. Joe Biden's Iraq fairy tale takes a hit as a
former Defense Secretary publishes a book and makes media rounds.
In the US, the race for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination
continues as does the question: If Joe Biden really isn't the only one
who can defeat Donald Trump -- and he's not -- what else does he have to
offer?
Not much.
Not much at all.
Last Friday, Kelly Jane Torrence (WASHINGTON EXAMINER) reported
on a US general who was being very critical of Joe. The former general
is Jim Mattis. His long career includes participation in both Iraq
Wars -- the current one and the Persian Gulf War. It also includes
being in charge of CENTCOM from 2010 to 2013. He went on to become the
last Secretary of Defense serving in Barack Obama's second term. He has
no co-written, with Bing West, a book that comes out today entitled
CALL SIGN CHAOS: LEARNING TO LEAD. As Torrence has noted, it doesn't
sing Joe Biden's praises.
His career
culminated in three years as the head of U.S. Central Command,
overseeing military operations in the Middle East and Central Asia from
2010 to 2013. That meant Mattis was in charge of American troops in Iraq
and Afghanistan as war raged in both countries. Mattis served under President Obama, and Vice President
Biden visited Baghdad in the late summer of 2010. The general writes
that the U.S.-led coalition had “at last succeeded in establishing a
fragile stability” in Iraq. The administration was considering
withdrawing some troops, and any forces remaining would require the
permission of the Iraqi government, then led by the embattled Nouri
al-Maliki. “The National Security staff in the White House believed that
Maliki offered a continuity that, in their minds, would facilitate the
withdrawal of U.S. troops.” Mattis disagreed, and he told Biden so
during dinner after “a hot Baghdad day.”
Huh? They trusted Nouri? They saw Nouri being in place as necessary to
keeping the appearance of Barack's promise of withdrawal?
Wow, that is a shocker. If only someone could have discussed that in
real time. If only, when Barack was in the White House, someone could
have talked about that.
Oh wait. We did. Repeatedly. We addressed it here over and over. We
addressed how Barack stole the 2010 election from the Iraqi people
because Susan Rice, Joe Biden and others made the determination that
they needed Nouri to make good on Barack's 'promise.'
Barack's been out of office since January 2019. It would be real nice
if some of you who pretend to be 'independent' journalists could start
to tell the truth because it's really tiring to be the only one willing
to talk truth about Iraq on a daily basis.
Back to the article:
“Prime Minister Maliki is highly untrustworthy, Mr. Vice President,” Mattis said. “He’s devious when he talks to us.” Mattis noted that in the election that year, Maliki had not
garnered a majority of the votes, and he seemed to be stonewalling the
formation of a new government. The Shiite leader had cultivated
relationships with officials in Iran and Syria in the years he spent
plotting to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
I haven't read Mattis' book. But here's where you provide additional
perspective if you're going to cover the topic. US Gen Ray Odierno,
right before the 2010 elections were held, raised the issue of what
happens if Nouri loses (no one else in the US government thought that
was even a possibility) and then refuses to step down as prime
minister. He was ignored.
Then ambassador to Iraq Chris Hill was all in with Nouri. And Chris'
vanity prevented the White House from getting reports and assessments it
needed.
It would be months after the election when then-Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton and then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates did a
workaround Chris Hill and got Odierno's warnings and assessments to
Barack. But Susan Rice and Samantha Power would insist only Nouri could
deliver US support and ensure that Barack could keep his promise. Joe
Biden sided with the two and Iraq's election was overturned with the
US-negotiated Erbil Agreement which gave Nouri his second term.
This was not minor. And to hear the rabid idiots in the US over the
last years cling to the delusion that Russia stole the 2016 US
presidential election has been the height of hypocrisy. Not only did
Russia not steal the election, the US government -- led by Barack --
stole the 2010 election in Iraq. Nouri lost. The people voted him
out. He refused to step down and for 8 months the country was brought
to a political stalemate. Instead of siding with the Iraqi people,
Barack had a contract negotiated that overturned the votes and gave
Nouri a second term.
It was in that second term that he became even more oppressive leading to the rise of ISIS.
Back to the article: “He looks at our ambassadors and military advisers as
impediments to his anti-Sunni agenda,” Mattis told Biden, who was
leading the administration's Iraq policy. “He wants to purge or
marginalize Sunnis and Kurds from the government.” Mattis said leaders
across the Middle East had warned against continuing to throw American
support behind Maliki.
Mattis
also argued against pulling out precipitately. He said the training
wheels shouldn’t suddenly be pulled off the bicycle. “We should slowly
inch the wheels up, allowing the Iraqis to wobble but not crash as they
slowly pedaled down the path to self-sufficiency,” he said. “If we
pulled out too early, I noted, we would have to bring our troops back
in.” The general’s assessment fell on deaf ears. “Vice President Biden and his assistants listened politely.
But as we spoke, I sensed I was making no headway in convincing the
administration officials not to support Maliki. It was like talking to
people who lived in wooden houses but saw no need for a fire
department,” Mattis writes. “I liked the Vice President,” Mattis writes, even after
Biden teased him: “Know why you’re at CENTCOM?” Biden asked him.
“Because no one else was dumb enough to take the job.” “I found him an admirable and amiable man. But he was past
the point where he was willing to entertain a ‘good idea.’ He didn’t
want to hear more; he wanted our forces out of Iraq. Whatever path led
there fastest, he favored,” Mattis writes. “He exuded the confidence of a
man whose mind was made up, perhaps even indifferent to considering the
consequences were he judging the situation incorrectly.” Biden reassured Mattis that Maliki wouldn’t eject all American troops from the country. “Maliki wants us to stick around, because he does not see a
future in Iraq otherwise,” Biden said. “I’ll bet you my vice
presidency.” Mattis doesn’t say whether he tried to collect on that bet.
As he writes, “In October 2011, Prime Minister Maliki and President
Obama agreed that all U.S. forces would leave at the end of the year.” Mattis’ warnings proved prescient, as Maliki, free of
American influence, went after Sunni politicians and districts,
alienating a third of the country. “Iraq slipped back into escalating
violence. It was like watching a car wreck in slow motion,” Mattis
writes. A Sunni revolt and a weak Iraqi Army allowed al Qaeda-aligned
terrorists to return in 2014, calling themselves the Islamic State.
“It would take many years and tens of thousands of
casualties, plus untold misery for millions of innocents, to break
ISIS’s geographic hold,” Mattis writes. “All of this was predicted — and
preventable.”
It was preventable. That's why I spent 2010 screaming here to uphold
the vote of the Iraqi people. They had reject Nouri and Nouri's
revenge. They supported Iraqiya. That was a new coalition that sprung
up. It was a future path for Iraq. Iraqiya was open to all, Iraqiya
was about an Iraqi identity taking the lead -- not a split of Sunni or
Shia. It was about healing and coming together. It included women in
leadership roles.
And that's how this brand new coalition managed to win the election.
No one wanted to talk about that. In fact, Quil Lawrence 'reported' on
NPR that Nouri had won the election -- reported it before the votes were
even counted. I guess it was hard for NPR to tell too much truth after
that. They sort of painted themselves into the corner, didn't they.
Imagine how much different Iraq would be today if the people's vote in 2010 had been respected.
The National Endowment for Democracy has been polling in Iraq -- as we
noted last month -- and the upcoming elections (provincial) are not
expected to have a huge turnout. The voters don't trust the system and
are tired of the corruption. The body is funded by the US government
so don't expect it to ask about the 2010 election. But as we warned
over and over in real time -- Patrick Cockburn, I'm looking at you as
one of the chief liars in real time while we were telling the truth --
what message would it send to the Iraqi people about voting and
democracy if, after they'd risked violence to vote in March 2010, the US
government overturned their votes?
It sent a strong message and it's past time that the US press got honest
about that. Instead, most of have tried to pretend that The Erbil
Agreement never existed (that would include European Patrick Cockburn).
It's a defining moment in modern day Iraq and the western press works
overtime to ignore it.
INSKEEP: You describe disagreeing specifically with then-Vice
President Joe Biden over the U.S. withdrawal of troops from Iraq in 2011
and say that you expected that the U.S. would have to be drawn back in. MATTIS: Well, that wasn't my assessment alone. The intelligence
community came in. I was briefed, and I still remember one of the young
ladies briefing me from the intelligence community. And she outright
guaranteed me that if we withdrew all of our troops at the time and on
the timeline that was being discussed, we would have to go back in
because the enemy would surge and they would become a threat to us
again. And that, unfortunately, is exactly what happened. INSKEEP: I guess we should describe - Vice President Biden had a
difference of opinion with you about the value of the then-Iraqi prime
minister and whether he would be supportive of a continued U.S. troop
presence. Did Vice President Biden misread the situation in some way?
MATTIS: You know, all leaders have got to be able to build trust.
I did not believe that the Iraqi prime minister was a man who could
build trust. And if you can't do that, especially under the stresses
that Iraq was going through, it was in a - virtually in a post-combat
but pre-reconciliation phase. And we're not always going to be blessed
to have a Mandela man type person, like Mandela brought South Africa
back together. You're not always going to have that sort of leader. But I
felt the man who was in - that we were backing at that time was
especially deficient in trust-building ability.
Again, he's speaking of Nouri al-Maliki -- former prime minister of Iraq and forever thug.
Yesterday, Caitlin Yilek (WASHINGTON EXAMINER) noted the topic of Mattis and his book: By 2010 the U.S.-led coalition had “at last succeeded in establishing
a fragile stability” in Iraq, largely as a result of former President
George W. Bush's troop surge of 2007. The Obama administration was
dealing with Iraqi premier Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite who had built close
ties with Iran during his years opposing Saddam Hussein, who presided
over a Sunni-dominated Iraq. “The National Security staff in the White House believed
that Maliki offered a continuity that, in their minds, would facilitate
the withdrawal of U.S. troops,” Mattis writes. During a Biden visit to
Iraq in August 2010, when he formally ended
the U.S. combat mission in the country, Mattis strenuously disagreed
with the Obama administration's assessment of Maliki, telling Biden:
"Prime Minister Maliki is highly untrustworthy, Mr. Vice President. He’s
devious when he talks to us.” Mattis continued: “He looks at our ambassadors and military
advisers as impediments to his anti-Sunni agenda. He wants to purge or
marginalize Sunnis and Kurds from the government.” Mattis said Sunni
leaders across the region had warned against continued U.S. backing of
Maliki. By his account, Mattis told Biden that withdrawing U.S.
troops prematurely would be akin to suddenly pulling the training wheels
off a bicycle. “We should slowly inch the wheels up, allowing the
Iraqis to wobble but not crash as they slowly pedaled down the path to
self-sufficiency,” he said. “If we pulled out too early, I noted, we
would have to bring our troops back in.”
The general’s assessment was ignored by Biden. The vice
president, Mattis argues, was not listening to the counsel of a 40-year
Marine who had long experience of war, terrorism, and insurgencies, and
knew the cost of politics taking precedence over strategic thinking.
Will we ever get to an honest discussion of what the US did in 2010?
Patrick Cockburn is promoted by ANTIWAR.COM as the authority on Iraq.
But he's anti-Arab and he's wrong over and over and over. He's wrong
his reports (the murder of a young woman in Bully Boy Bush's second
term), he's wrong in his assessments, he's wrong. Scott Horton -- host
of ANTIWAR.COM's radio program -- would not have made such a fool of
himself on air if he hadn't thought Cockburn knew what he was talking
about. Horton ended up basically blowing Nouri on air week after week
because of Cockburn's assessment.
Only in a US unconcerned about the Arab world could that have happened.
In the Arab world, they know Patrick Cockburn is anti-Sunni. Arab
social media has long documented that reality. But in the US, people
have looked the other way and offered excuses -- Oh, he's Alex
Cockburn's brother, oh, he's Laura Flanders' uncle, oh . . . He's awful
is what he is. And a lot of Laura's assessments were wrong. She
doesn't talk about Iraq today. But back when the war could get you
listeners, she did. And most of her assessments were wrong. She paid
too much attention to her uncle and too little to reality..
Patrick Cockburn is one of the biggest problems with Iraq today. He has
gotten things wrong over and over and did so because he is prejudiced
against Arabs. He has tried to lead Americans -- and Scott Horton
assisted him there -- into rooting for the government of Iran. In what
world? The Iranian people are a dignified people and wonderful, I'm
sure. Their government? No. And I can say that and I can still oppose
war on Iran. If we can stop being childish and actually grow the hell
up, we might be able to have honest conversations.
And on war on Iran, you might want to be aware of this.
Iraqi Shiite Militia Leader Abu Alaa Al-Walai: If U.S.-Iran War Breaks out, We Will Fight alongside Iran, All Americans in Iraq Will Be Held Hostages by the Resistance; We Could Easily Send Drone to Strike (U.S.) Embassy
One man lost his uncle. Another is mourning
for two sons. Farmers and herders in Iraq’s Baiji say mines left by [ISIS] turned their beloved orchards into killing fields.
The improvised explosive devices, planted by militants trying to fend
off Iraqi troops in 2015, have also discouraged scores of families from
returning to their battered farming towns around Baiji, in the north of
the country.
Today, Chris Forrester (ADVANCED TELEVISION) notes: The Arabic Al Hurra TV channel has been hit
with a 3 month broadcasting ban. The channel is alleged to have
transmitted a controversial 12 minute report on corruption within
Islamic religious bodies. The programme was transmitted on Sunday.
It's the equivalent of VOICE OF AMERICA. And that cute little name?
"US Agency for Global Media"? It's the Board of Governors responsible
for the propaganda broadcast by VOA. In addition, it's also the US
Congress that funds them.
So what di[d] they broadcast? This:
The
12-minute documentary broadcast Saturday claimed that Sunni and Shiite
Muslim authorities were misusing state funds and had suspicious ties to
armed factions.
The
Sunni endowment denied the allegations in the report and said it would
take legal steps against the channel. The Shiite endowment could not
immediately be reached for comment.
Is it true or just more efforts by the US government to pit Sunni against Shia?
