Saturday, May 21, 2016

The self-promoter

What success has Hillary had?


Where has she accomplished anything?


Andrew Levine ponders that at COUNTERPUNCH:




The idea that Clinton is good at getting things done is more preposterous still.

It is true that she has been around the block many times. But everything she has worked on – as a First Lady, a Senator, and a Secretary of State – has gone awry. The woman is inept.

Is there anything genuinely worthwhile, much less progressive, that she has ever accomplished?   Were reason in control at the Democratic National Committee, they could offer a prize to anyone who comes up with an example. Reason is not in control there, however; Debbie Wasserman Schultz is.

More irrational still is the idea that politically Clinton and Sanders are on the same page. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Sanders is a twenty-first century New Deal-Great Society liberal. Clinton is the reigning Queen of the neoliberal consensus that has all but quashed the last remnants of the kind of liberalism Sanders promotes.




It's similar to a point we made at THIRD in "Hillary Clinton's faux feminism:"




If it seems hard to find anything Hillary Clinton's done that borders on feminism it's because she -- and her zombie followers -- define anything she does for herself as "feminism."


She's  a ruthless self-promoter.


That's all she's ever been.




"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Thurdsay, May 19, 2016.  Chaos and violence continue, Haider al-Abadi's failures continue, the IMF gets its hooks in Iraq, corruption continues with vengeance used as a distraction, and much more.



Today, the US Defense Dept announced:

Strikes in Iraq
Fighter and remotely piloted aircraft and rocket artillery conducted 14 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:

-- Near Baghdadi, a strike destroyed an ISIL vehicle.

-- Near Albu Hayat, two strikes destroyed an ISIL vehicle bomb and an ISIL front-end loader.

-- Near Fallujah, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit.

-- Near Haditha, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL fighting position.

-- Near Kisik, three strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL fighting position and an ISIL assembly area.

-- Near Mosul, two strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed three ISIL assembly areas and an ISIL vehicle.

-- Near Qayyarah, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL vehicle, two ISIL mortar systems and an ISIL mortar position.

-- Near Sultan Abdallah, a strike struck an ISIL weapons cache.

-- Near Tal Afar, a strike struck a large ISIL tactical unit; destroyed five ISIL assembly areas, two ISIL command and control nodes, two ISIL bed-down locations, six ISIL supply caches and an ISIL staging area; and damaged an ISIL oil tanker.


Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target.



Today, the US destroys Iraq with bombings, for years it has destroyed Iraq by installing 'leaders.'

Shi'ites who were too chicken to fight for Iraq, fled it and returned after the US-led invasion.

These cowards -- and all their pathetic, deep-rooted fears -- were installed as 'leaders.'

And they've destroyed the country with their petty nonsense and their night time terrors.

Take the pathetic Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

Today, he's the Minister of Foreign Affairs. His other positions since 2003 would include prime minister of Iraq.


Since 2003 because the Shi'ite fled Iraq in 1980.  First he ran to Iran and spent nearly a decade there only to move on to London in 1989.

But when it was safe to come back to Iraq, the coward did and wanted to be a leader because what says "leader" more than fleeing while wetting your pants?


Today, Ibrahim's in the news for demanding Jordan turn Raghad Saddam Hussein al-Majid over to Iraq.

Who?

She's the eldest daughter of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Hussein was overthrown in the 2003 US-led invasion and later executed (December 30, 2006).

And his oldest daughter?

ASHARQ AL-AWSAT reported in 2010:

Raghad Saddam Hussein, the eldest daughter of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein fled to Jordan on two separate occasions in her life. Raghad Hussein first fled to Jordan in 1995 along with her husband Hussein Kamel al-Majid who defected from Iraq along with Rana Saddam Hussein and her husband Saddam Kamel al-Majid. Raghad Hussein fled to Jordan for a second time in 2003 following the US invasion of Iraq and the collapse of her father’s regime. Raghad Hussein fled in fear of punishment; in 1995 she fled in order to save her husband’s life from her brother Uday, while in 2003 she fled in fear of the Iraqi people taking revenge against her father by attacking her. Raghad Hussein fled to Amman, where she was placed under the protection of the Jordanian monarch. In 1995, Jordanian King Hussein treated Raghad and Rana Hussein as his own two daughters, and they lived with the Jordanian royals in the royal palace. Whilst in 2003, King Abdullah placed Raghad Hussein under his protection as his guest.

In 2007, INTERPOL issued a Red Notice (which many in the press falsely called an arrest warrant) but BBC NEWS noted the Red Notice "does not legally oblige Jordan or any other country to act."


Not only that but Arabic and Islamic law are both on Raghad's side -- a detail often overlooked by the press.

In 2006, Nouri al-Maliki repeatedly accused of her funding the insurgency and, years later, the Iraqi government began insisting that she was funding the Islamic State.

Over ten years of accusations and nothing to show for it but high drama.


THE JERUSALEM POST notes, "In a statement released Wednesday following a meeting between the Jordanian consul in the city of Irbil and senior Iraqi officials, Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said: 'Iraq asked Jordan to coordinate the extradition of people residing in its territory who are wanted by the Iraqi judicial system'."

Nothing's ever been proven regarding Raghad Hussein and she's a guest of the King of Jordan who, following Arabic and Islamic law, is under no legal obligation to hand her over to Iraq.

This blood lust for vengeance is why Iraq cannot move forward.


Mohammad Tayseer and Dana Khraiche (BLOOMBERG NEWS) report, "Iraq has reached a $5.4 billion, three-year loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund to help OPEC’s second-biggest producer repair public finances damaged by the plunge in oil prices and war with Islamic State militants."


The revenge fantasies, where the daughter of Saddam Hussein must be captured and flogged in the streets of Baghdad?

They are raw meat tossed to the masses to distract them from the ongoing corruption in Iraq.

Billions of dollars have disappeared from the country's coffers as a result of corrupt politicians and officials.

Rather than fretting over the daughter of Saddam Hussein, they might ask how Nouri al-Maliki's son ended up with all those sports cars and residences outside of Iraq.

Where did that money come from?

How did Nouri's two terms as prime minister of Iraq leave him such a wealthy man?

Those are questions that need to be asked.

The Iraqi people live in squalor.

They have no dependable public services.

Baghdad floods in the raining season -- water up to the knees in some sections (including Sadr City) and that's due to the crumbling public infrastructure.

The corruption is not a secret.

There have been US Congressional hearings on the topic going back to the years when Bully Boy Bush occupied the White House.

Billions have been stolen.

And now the IMF is getting their hooks into Iraq.

THE JORDAN TIMES reports:


The IMF $5.4 billion loan to Iraq will have an annual interest rate of 1.5 per cent, Iraq's Central Bank Governor Ali Al Alak said at a press conference, following a week of talks with IMF officials in Jordan, Reuters reported.  
The IMF deal will allow Iraq to secure additional financial aid of around $15 billion over the next three years, including securing international bonds, according to [Iraq's Finance Minister Hoshiyar] Zebari.


At this late stage, who's still pretending that the IMF helps out countries in trouble?


After Argentina, who still believes that lie?

In 2004, Antonia Juhasz explained:


Protests against the policies of the IMF have occurred in every corner of the world for decades. Zimbabwe has been host to some of the most powerful and persuasive due to the appalling record of the IMF in that country. The IMF took a devastated economy and made it far worse – with the vast majority of the burden falling on the poorest members of society.
An IMF-sponsored study of its policies in Zimbabwe concluded that it "radically underestimated the social consequences," of its policies and that the "social hardship was avoidably severe because of poor program design." In other words, the IMF is to blame for the deadly impacts of its policies in Zimbabwe.
Sadly, this outcome is not unique. Rather, it represents the constant thread through IMF giving: conditions placed on receipt of loans are designed in virtual apathy to anything other than strict neoliberal measures of financial growth. Cookie-cutter approaches are applied to revamp economies such that a small sector of society (often not even residing within the recipient country) reap enormous gain, while the majority is expected to wait for its benefits to "trickle down" to them. Rarely, if ever, do these trickle down effects occur, leaving the majority – particularly the most vulnerable in society, in markedly worse conditions than before the Fund arrived.
Several studies of IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programs have actually found that the longer a country succumbs to these programs, the more indebted the country is likely to become



So it's bad enough that Iraqi officials and politicians have been stealing the country blind, now they've just sold the future of Iraq -- for a few coins.

It's just more failure from Haider al-Abadi.

One in a long list of failures.

Haider?

US President Barack Obama picked Haider to replace Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister back in the second half of 2014.

Haider has a lot of people will to lie for him in the press.

They pretend he's accomplished something.

He hasn't accomplished a damn thing.

Iraq's problems from before he became prime minister remain.

That's the never ending political crisis, that's the Islamic State controlling Mosul.


On the former, Ali Maouri (AL-MONITOR) reviews the three suggestions for leading Iraq out of its current and ongoing political crisis:

  1. The formation of a national "salvation" government. Former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi made this suggestion in an interview with Asharq al-Awsat newspaper on May 13. Under this proposal, the government would work on getting things back on track within two years, during which it would focus on two main tasks: to defeat the Islamic State (IS) and create a political climate that helps eliminate IS completely, including national reconciliation and addressing the issue of the displaced and fortifying liberated areas, and to pass a new election law and replace the electoral commission to ensure that the next elections are fair. This option seems ideal, but it requires a radical change for which political parties do not seem to be ready. Allawi recognized this problem when reactions to this proposal were unenthusiastic.
  2. The formation of a technocratic government. A proposal for this solution came from Sadrist movement leader Muqtada al-Sadr in February, when he called for the cabinet to include independent figures, disregarding the sectarian quotas that prevent the government from performing its tasks. Sadr played all of his cards to get this proposal passed, including demonstrations, sit-ins and the storming of the Green Zone on April 30. Yet he did not succeed, and was forced to withdraw from political life for two months, he said in an April 30 news conference. Iran's Tasnim News Agency, which is close to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reported May 4 that Sadr is in Iran and intends to spend the waiting period there. Right now, the technocratic government is not an option.
  3. The dissolution of parliament and holding of early elections. A number of parliament members, including Jabouri and Jawad Bolani, head of the economy and investment parliamentary committee, demanded as much on April 6. Jabouri called for the signing of a petition to dissolve the parliament and hold early elections, parliament spokesman Emad al-Khafaji said in April. The biggest challenge, however, is that most of Iraq's Sunni areas are under IS control, preventing elections from being held there. Given the vulnerable sectarian situation in Iraq, it would be dangerous for elections to exclude key components.
 


More and more, it's becoming obvious that Haider can't govern.


Last month's storming of the Green Zone and the Parliament appears to have shaken the lethargy of some Iraqi politicians and observers and the consensus pretense that Haider is solving anything has faded.


Ma'ad Fayad (ASHARQ AL-AWSAT) reports:

Former Iraqi Speaker and Vice President Osama al-Nujaifi blamed the head of parliament and cabinet for breaking into the parliament. Al-Nujaifi added that it is not a taboo to discuss the change of prime minister.
With respect to the security situation in Iraq, al-Nujaifi said this is the most dangerous stage of Iraq’s history. Al-Nujaifi discussed many other issues in his exclusive interview with Asharq Al-Awsat.
Al Nujaifi believed that there isn’t a state in Iraq in its conventional meaning. He explained that when there are weapons everywhere, innocent people in prisons, obstruction of justice, and ISIS in several districts, we can’t speak of a state in Iraq. Al-Nujaifi explained that the government should work on those problems to gain the respect of the Iraqi people and the world.



In the US, Senator Bernie Sanders is seeking the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.  We'll close with these Tweets:









  • Sanders Campaign Statement on Clinton’s Comments






  • It's unacceptable that billionaire families can leave virtually all of their wealth to their families without paying a reasonable fair tax.






  • California – if you want to vote for the political revolution, you have gotta register by Monday. Do it right now:






  • Americans should not have to live in fear that they will go bankrupt if they get sick because politicians won't challenge the drug lobby.






  • Our country should be investing in jobs and education for our young people, not more jails and incarceration.
















    Wednesday, May 18, 2016

    Bill, Hillary and Gloria -- all the (dis)graces



    Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "The Original Loose Cannon"


    original loose cannon


    Will 2017 find us back again with that scamp Bill Clinton wagging the, er, dog?

    Who knows.

    We can all hope not.

    Hillary is outright scary.

    One moment that I want remembered from this election cycle.

    Barbara MacLean reminds us of it in her piece for COUNTERPUNCH:

    Gloria Steinem has said that all the young women are flocking to Sanders because – excuse the paraphrasing – “that’s where the boys are”. Gloria is supposed to be an icon for feminists, having been one of the leaders and icons of The Feminist Movement in the 60’s and 70’s. She later tried, and failed, to convince women that she didn’t really mean it – she was joking. This “feminist” is suggesting that women are too stupid to follow someone for reasons other than their gender.


    Oh, go shut up, Gloria.

    What an embarrassment she's been for feminism.

    The moment she forces Betty Friedan from the stage, she leads a compromise feminism.

    It's not the in your face approach that Friedan and others had championed.

    It's a don't make waves and whimper 'feminism.'

    Gloria worked for the CIA -- she can lie all she wants but she bragged about it before she came to feminism and she's caught on video doing just that -- and then she, for whatever reasons, set herself up as the leader of feminism.

    Under her misleadership, women saw one setback after another.


    "Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
    Wednesday, May 18, 2016.  Chaos and violence continue, White House denies any knowledge of War Crimes, Hillary Clinton's in another mess of her own making and much more.


    Staring with the NSA.  Their actions against democracy are in the news  as their efforts to sell the Iraq War become public.  RUSSIA TODAY reports:


              
    NSA intelligence played a key role in preparing the UN for the US invasion of Iraq and aiding the subsequent occupation, while senior agency officials even met with interrogators at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, internal documents show.
    The agency’s activities in Iraq were chronicled in the Signals Intelligence Directorate (SID) newsletter, SIDtoday. Issues of the newsletter dating from March 2003 to 2012 were contained in the trove of information collected by former NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden. The first batch of 166 documents was published by The Intercept on Monday.
    “SIGINT support to the US Mission to the United Nations has enabled and continues to enable the diplomatic campaign against Iraq,” Chris Inglis, deputy director for analysis & production, wrote in SIDtoday. “Your efforts have been essential to the plans of the US Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador John D. Negroponte, as well as to the United Kingdom's Permanent Representative, HMA Sir Jeremy Greenstock.”
    Greenstock thanked the NSA for offering “insights into the nuances of internal divisions” among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, calling it “highly useful,” Inglis noted. (Support to UN Diplomatic Efforts on Iraq, April 7, 2003)
    “Timely SIGINT played a critical role” in the unanimous adoption of two UN Security Council Resolutions, another article said. Resolution 1441, adopted in November 2002, said Iraq was in breach of the 1991 ceasefire, demanding the return of weapons inspectors expelled after the 1998 US bombing. Resolution 1472, adopted in March 2003, re-started the oil-for-food program under UN management that had been suspended on the eve of the invasion.



    THE INTERCEPT has released the latest documents from whistle blower Ed Snowden.  Glenn Greenwald explains:



    From the time we began reporting on the archive provided to us in Hong Kong by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, we sought to fulfill his two principal requests for how the materials should be handled: that they be released in conjunction with careful reporting that puts the documents in context and makes them digestible to the public, and that the welfare and reputations of innocent people be safeguarded. As time has gone on, The Intercept has sought out new ways to get documents from the archive into the hands of the public, consistent with the public interest as originally conceived.
    Today, The Intercept is announcing two innovations in how we report on and publish these materials. Both measures are designed to ensure that reporting on the archive continues in as expeditious and informative a manner as possible, in accordance with the agreements we entered into with our source about how these materials would be disclosed, a framework that he, and we, have publicly described on numerous occasions.
    The first measure involves the publication of large batches of documents. We are, beginning today, publishing in installments the NSA’s internal SIDtoday newsletters, which span more than a decade beginning after 9/11. We are starting with the oldest SIDtoday articles, from 2003, and working our way through the most recent in our archive, from 2012. Our first release today contains 166 documents, all from 2003, and we will periodically release batches until we have made public the entire set. The documents are available on a special section of The Intercept.
    The SIDtoday documents run a wide gamut: from serious, detailed reports on top secret NSA surveillance programs to breezy, trivial meanderings of analysts’ trips and vacations, with much in between. Many are self-serving and boastful, designed to justify budgets or impress supervisors. Others contain obvious errors or mindless parroting of public source material. But some SIDtoday articles have been the basis of significant revelations from the archive.

    Accompanying the release of these documents are summaries of the content of each, along with a story about NSA’s role in Guantánamo interrogations, a lengthy roundup of other intriguing information gleaned from these files, and a profile of SIDtoday. We encourage other journalists, researchers, and interested parties to comb through these documents, along with future published batches, to find additional material of interest. Others may well find stories, or clues that lead to stories, that we did not. (To contact us about such finds, see the instructions here.) A primary objective of these batch releases is to make that kind of exploration possible.


    Ed Snowden has exposed not just a secretive government but a corrupt one.  It's worth noting that the only person attempting to become president in the US in 2016 that has hailed Ed as the hero he is would be Jill Stein.  Jill is seeking the Green Party's presidential nomination.


    On the subject of the US presidential race, the only candidate who voted for the Iraq War and lied about it year after year forever would be Hillary Clinton.

    The War Hawk was dealt yet another defeat yesterday.




    Link to headline article



    If she's the shoe-in, why does she keep losing Democratic Party primaries to Senator Bernie Sanders?

    Bernie's not even a Democrat.

    You may remember that I lodged an objection to that.

    I don't feel non-Democrats should run in Democratic Party primaries.

    And I lodged that objection here and with friends on Hillary's campaign.

    I am overdue for a $5,000 bet (donated to the charity of my choice -- St. Jude's) from one of Team Hillary because they knew -- they includes Hillary herself -- that she'd "march right over Sanders."

    Uh, no, she didn't.

    Possibly, she can still goose step over him?

    But yesterday, _______ on her campaign called to ask why I'm not objecting to Bernie still trying for the nomination?

    Because the race isn't over.

    Because a contested nomination at the convention makes for actual news.

    Because everybody loves a fighter.

    Okay, then, will I at least repeat my objection that he shouldn't be in the primary because he's not a Democrat?

    No.

    I made that objection.  Ed Rendell was the only one who agreed with me at that time.

    I could list all the people who disagreed.

    But Hillary approved it.

    She thought it would give her a minor opponent.

    She thought she'd vanquish him quickly and be on her way.

    She's the one who okayed it.

    She's the one who could have stopped it.

    Now it's too late.

    He's been running.

    Of all her advisors and handlers, only Ed had the wisdom to realize that Bernie would be a formidable foe.

    War Hawk down, Hillary's still spiraling.

    And Bernie was let int he race by Hillary so it's on her.

    As for his dropping out, Shaun King (NEW YORK DAILY NEWS) points out:


      
    Either the Democratic Party has a terrible case of selective amnesia or they are just really gifted at revisionist history. For the life of me, I can't figure out which of those two best describes what I'm seeing right now.
    As more and more calls come for Bernie Sanders to drop out of the race against Hillary Clinton, he keeps on winning state after state and poll after poll. In fact, Bernie, as of this writing, has won primaries and caucuses in 19 different states and appears to be very competitive in both Kentucky and Oregon, which have their say Tuesday.
    Hillary Clinton did not drop out against Barack Obama until every single state voted. In fact, the final two states voted on June 3, 2008. She won South Dakota and Obama won Montana. She dropped out later that day, right?

    Nah. The next day? Nope. She waited several days until June 7 to finally announce that she was suspending her campaign. Every vote had been counted, but she held on until a mix of public pressure and inevitability forced her hand.


    Yet again, Hillary's current mess is one that she created herself.


    Iraq is in the news  and not just for the past but the present.

    How bad was Baghdad slammed with violence yesterday?

    So bad that the State Dept spokesperson had to start today's press conference on Iraq.

    Spokesperson John Kirby: "First, on the attacks in Baghdad, I think it can go without saying that the United States strongly condemns the barbaric terrorist attacks in Iraq today that deliberately and specifically targeted civilians. Initial estimates right now project something over 70 people have been killed, many more injured, in what we now know are three separate attacks. Of course, we extend our deepest condolences, our thoughts, and sympathies to all those affected by this terrible violence."




    NBC NEWS noted, "A car bomb targeting an outdoor market in a Shiite-dominated neighborhood of Baghdad killed at least 28 people on Tuesday."  The car bombing was one attack, a female suicide bomber was another and then the Sadr City section of Baghdad was also targeted with a car bombing.  Of the first two bombings, XINHUA observed, "The attackers apparently followed the old tactic of first creating an initial explosion to attract security forces and people, and then setting off another blast to inflict heavier casualties."  Lizzie Dearden (INDEPENDENT) updated with 58 dead and at least 91 injured.

    In the last seven days, over 200 people have died from bombings in Iraq.


    Sunday, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS filed "White House says ISIS 'shrinking' as group launches new attacks in Iraq."  This followed many boasts from the White House about the Islamic State being on the run, blah, blah, blah.

    Clearly, they are not.

    And John Kirby was asked about this.


    QUESTION: In the wake of another bloody day of carnage in Baghdad, is the attack by ISIS a sign that the terror group is not as close to being wiped out, despite claims by members of the Administration saying that ISIS is shrinking?

    MR KIRBY: I think it’s – I’m not sure what you mean by shrinking, but – so let me just --

    QUESTION: Or making --


    MR KIRBY: Let me try to dissect this because it’s a great question. There’s no question, no doubt at all, by almost any measure, that this group is under increasing pressure and has been forced increasingly on the defensive. They haven’t – they haven’t grabbed any new ground or acquired new territory of any significance since May, since almost a – well, yeah, a year ago, May of last year. They are having trouble recruiting. They’re having trouble retaining. And we’re learning more and more from defectors about their dissatisfaction in the ranks. And it’s becoming – they are resulting to more extortion, for instance, in order not just to try to make up the revenues they’re losing, but to exert the influence over local populations that they are now starting to lose. They have definitely lost, by some accounts, a third, if not more, of their revenues from – simply from things like oil. So this is a group that’s very much under pressure. And we are – as we look at them, we’re not – you’re not seeing them operate, communicate, resource themselves at all like they were even six, eight months ago. So there’s no question that this group is under more pressure.
    One thing we have seen – and again, this isn’t about – this isn’t a subject of analysis; it’s true – one thing we’ve seen, as they have continued to come under more and more pressure, they continue to resort to tactics like we’re seeing in Baghdad and elsewhere, even in places in Europe – more targeted, more individualistic terrorist violence, whether it’s vehicle-borne explosive devices or suicide bombings. And so we are seeing them resort more and more on those kinds of tactics where they can, in their view, achieve some matter of success and particularly get attention for their efforts through these very dramatic, very violent acts.
    That said – and I really want to underscore this, because I said this at the outset – they still remain a dangerous group. Nobody’s turning a blind eye to their capabilities. Nobody’s walking away from the fact that the pressure has to continue to be applied. There has been success by the coalition, but that is not – it’s not to be taken lightly and it’s certainly not to be considered foregone if we don’t keep it up. We have now 66 nations in the coalition, now that Afghanistan has joined, and the work against this group exists on many lines of effort, not just military. And I can assure you that, for our part, the United States is going to continue to keep the pressure up on them, because they have proven resilience in the past.

    So we are seeing them weaker. We are seeing them use more traditional terror tactics to strike out, in part because they’re weaker. They can’t operate the same way. They don’t have the same quasi-military capabilities that they once had. But it doesn’t mean that they aren’t still dangerous.



    He can spin.  He can lie.

    He can put on more mascara.

    He can do whatever he wants.

    But the one thing that is clear is that he does not want to tell the truth -- it's not in his job description.

    Doubt it?

    Let's note this section.


    QUESTION: John, I just wonder if you could --

    MR KIRBY: I’m going to a former Pentagon colleague.

    QUESTION: -- put your answer about Iraq in the context of the Abadi government and talk for a minute about the – your current assessment of the government and how – if these sustained casualties the ISF are taking undermine its popular support and undermine its ability to kind of manage this – what seems like maybe a new phase by ISIS in Iraq.

    MR KIRBY: I don’t think we’ve seen any indication thus far that casualties incurred by Iraqi Security Forces are undermining popular support for the effort against [the Islamic State]. This is a very real, substantial threat to the Iraqi people that the Abadi government is taking seriously, and frankly, the Iraqi people are taking seriously. And that’s why our advise and assist mission is so important there. So I’ve seen no indications that there is an erosion necessarily of public support for the mission in light of the casualties taken by Iraqi Security Forces. I think the Iraqis know all too well and too sadly that the fight against [ is a dangerous, lethal fight, and that their forces are going to come under fire and face – and be put in harm’s way.
    I would tell you that we continue to see Iraqi Security Forces fight bravely. We are going to continue to stay committed to making sure that they have the competence and the capabilities they need to continue to do so. They have had recent successes – you’ve covered this well yourself – recent successes, particularly out in Anbar. And it’s our expectations that those successes will continue – with coalition support, no question about it.

    But the last thing I’ll say is that we continue to support Prime Minister Abadi in his reform efforts, in his efforts to form a unity government to move the country forward, and to continue – and he has stayed committed to this – to continue to properly resource, to properly lead, and to properly man and staff Iraqi Security Forces that can remain competent and capable to the threat.



    The Shi'ite militias are now part of the Iraqi Security Forces -- Haider al-Abadi did that.

    His predecessor, thug Nouri al-Maliki, was a thug and a crook but didn't bring the militias into the national security forces.

    And John Kirby has never, ever heard a word about Shi'ite War Crimes in Iraq.

    Never.


    Ever.






  • DTN Iraq: Iraq militia attacks may constitute war crimes: HRW: Baghdad (AFP) Jan 31, 2016 - Iraqi Shiite mi...



  • Iraqi Shiite militiamen abducted and killed civilians following bombings earlier this month, actions that may constitute war crimes, Human



  • HRW: Shiite militias committed ‘possible war crimes’ against Ira via



  • Human Rights Watch reports Shiite militias committed possible war crimes against Iraqis.



  • Iraqi Shiite militiamen abducted and killed civilians following bombings earlier this month, actions that may constitute war crimes, Human



  • : Possible War Crimes by Shiite Militias.






  • Shiite militias supported by the Iraqi government have committed "possible war crimes" in Diyala province



  • : Possible War Crimes by Shiite Militias.







    John Kirby is paid to lie.



    Icon & star of western media sectarian |i Shiite criminal Abu Azrael is now on a war crimes mission in








    Let's close with this announcement from the US Defense Dept yesterday:


    Strikes in Iraq
    Attack, fighter ground attack and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 10 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:

    -- Near Baghdadi, two strikes destroyed an ISIL bunker and two ISIL rocket rails.

    -- Near Albu Hayat, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit.

    -- Near Rutbah, a strike destroyed two ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL fuel tanker, an ISIL vehicle bomb and an ISIL front-end loader.

    -- Near Kisik, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL fighting position and two ISIL heavy machine guns.

    -- Near Qayyarah, five strikes struck three separate ISIL headquarters; destroyed an ISIL vehicle, an ISIL assembly area and two ISIL rocket rails; and suppressed two ISIL mortar positions.

    Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike.