Iraq snapshot

Monday, June 17, 2013.  Chaos and violence continue, Catherine Ashton visits the KRG, as does Brett McGurk, the Camp Ashraf refugees get attention as a result of yet another attack on them, whistle-blower Ed Snowden speaks today, US President Barack Obama's decision to openly arm the so-called 'rebels' in Syria meets with disapproval, CODEPINK plans an NYC action against The Drone War for this Saturday, and more.


Glenn Greenwald (Guardian) broke the news: two weeks ago about the NSA collecting metadata on all Americans phone calls and then the news that the NSA and FBI were using PRISM, a program collecting data from the internet -- video, photos, e-mails, you name it.  Ed Snowden is the whistle-blower who exposed the programs.  Today, at the Guardian, he participated in an online discussion.  Among those asking questions were AP's Kimberly Dozier:


Kimberly Dozier @KimberlyDozier


Answer:

US officials say this every time there's a public discussion that could limit their authority. US officials also provide misleading or directly false assertions about the value of these programs, as they did just recently with the Zazi case, which court documents clearly show was not unveiled by PRISM.
Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to acheive that, and ask yourself if it was worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.
Further, it's important to bear in mind I'm being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.

Kimberly Dozier's AP report on Snowden's chat is here.  Asked by Ryan Latvaitis about his advice to other potential whistle-blowers, Snowden replied, "This country is worth dying for."  That's not the talk of a Benedict Arnold, those are the words of someone concerned about democracy and the Constitution.  In response to a question from the Guardian's Spencer Ackerman, Snowden denied supplying the Chinese government with classified information.

On CBS This Morning today, Senate weakling Dick Durbin showed up to try to pretend he was finally on the job.


Charlie Rose: Britain's Guardian reports [. . .] the NSA spied on Russia's president and other foreign leaders at a G20 summit in London in 2009.

Norah O'Donnell:  Illinois Senator Dick Durbin is here, he's the number two Democrat in the Senate and Chairman of the Subcommittee that overseas funding for intelligence.  Senator, good morning.

Dick Durbin: Good morning. 

Norah O'Donnell:  The news today is that the head of the NSA is going to release new details where more than a dozen plots, terrorist plots were foiled in the US and other countries.  Is that enough to quiet some of the privacy concerns?

Little Dick Durbin: I think it's an important development and I'm glad they're doing it.  And this is an issue I've been on for years, I've offered admnents on the floor of the Senate and in the Judiciary Committee to try to narrow the gathering of information to what we need and not more. Uh, and now we're going to take a closer look.  What I need to know on these cases, if we had known the suspect and gone after those phone records after some suspicion could we have come up with the same information?  Rathter than the approach that's being used -- gather everything, hold everything, wait to see if maybe Charlie Rose's name is going to pop up at some point in the future so you can go back in phone records of four or five years ago?  Can you gather that information as needed with suspects?  Or do you have to gather all of that in advance?  That's the key question.

Charlie Rose: You say you've been working on this for a long time --

Little Dick Durbin:  I sure have.

Charlie Rose:  Has there been push back and resistance on security grounds and therfore no changes have been made?

Little Dick Durbin:  That's right.  Initially, under the PATRIOT Act, the provision I supported was there and it protected -- 

Charlie Rose:  Do you expect anything to change now?

Little Dick Durbin:  It can.   It depends on the appetite of the American people for privacy.  It's an interesting thing because you get different things in these polls -- 

And we'll stop mincing  Dick Durbin there because he's not cute and for a man his age and girth to act that way is really disgusting.  When Durbin was 18, The Four Seasons had a number on hit with "Walk Like A Man" -- at what point will Durbin?  Polls, he said. 

He doesn't know a poll any better than the bulk of the press.  CNN has a new poll out.  It's shocking.  If you don't know how to read a poll.  The findings of this poll?  They were there weeks ago if you're educated in the social sciences, if you're actually educated, you knew to look at the independents when the press started polling.  That is always your clue.  This is not anything I invented with any alleged wisdom.  These are the basics of polling.  We've explained it and explained it -- most recently June 13th.  The press needs to learn how to interpret polls.  There's really no point in an 'insta poll' of asking people the weekend of revelations what they think.  Most haven't decided and most are attached to their partisanship.  The only value of those 'insta polls' is the numbers for the independent voters.  We're not going to review it again today, I'm getting tired of spoon feeding.

Regardless of Barack's very bad polling numbers, Little Dick Durbin did not take an oath to uphold a poll, he took an oath to uphold the Constitution.  Is that confusing to him?  If it's confusing, he needs to resign because he's clearly not qualified to hold office.  "I sure have" been working on this for a long time, he boasts.  Then he's done an awful job.  It shouldn't be that difficult.  As Senator Mark Udall Tweeted yesterday:


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A comment left to the CBS News report is worth noting (and thanks to the CBS News friend who passed it on):

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ByrdSong says:

This country won't spend a few million to build a simple computer system to manage the VA claims to care for and compensate our wounded veterans of two illegal and totally unnecessary wars, yet it will spend untold billions building a top secret system to spy on, collect, store and peruse information on every person in this country. And yet many out here call Snowden and Bradley traitors. Go figure.

Go figure indeed.  Last week, I sat in a House Judiciary Committee hearing listening to FBI Director Robert Mueller lie that if they had the NSA spying program prior to 9-11, it would have prevented 9-11.  And people accepted this as fact on the Committee.  Despite the fact that the recent bombing in Boston stands out most infamously for the fact that the FBI never shared details with Boston authorities.  As Scott Shane and Michael S. Schmidt (New York Times) reported last month, "The F.B.I. did not tell the Boston police about the 2011 warning from Russia about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the two brothers accused in the Boston Marathon bombings, the city's police chief said Thursday during the first public Congressional hearing on the terrorist attack."  That had the program but nothing got shared then so stop lying to the American people, Robert Mueller.


Yesterday, Peter Eisler and Susan Page (USA Today) hosted a video chat with NSA whistle-blowers Thomas Drake, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe  and with Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project.  Excerpt.

Susan Page:   All of you raised your objections to NSA programs in the extent of the surveillance that they involved for months or years before they erupted publicly.  With Edward Snowden, he went directly to the news media with his story.  Based on your experience, did he have another effective option? 

William Binney:  Well, I mean, we tried to stay, for the better part of seven years, inside the government.  Trying to get the government to recognize the unconstitutional, illegal activity that they were doing, openly admit that, and define ways that would be legal and Constitutionally acceptable to achieve the ends that they were after.  And that just failed totally because no one in Congress, we couldn't get anybody in the courts and certainly no one in the Inspector General's Justice Dept  didn't pay any attention to it.  And so all of the efforts we made just produced no change whatsoever.  All it did was continue to get worse and expand. 

Susan Page:  So he did the right thing?

William Binney: Yes.  Yes.  I think he did.

[. . .]

Thomas Drake:  There is a bottom line though.  The government unchained itself from the Constitution as a result of 9-11 and in the absolute darkest of secrecy, at the highest levels of government, approved by the White House, NSA became the executive agent for a surveillance program, extraordinarily broad surveillance program that turned the United States of America effectively into a foreign nation for electronic dragnet surveillance and it started with phone numbers.


Ed Snowden is the reason this conversation -- this overdue conversation is taking place.  Not Dick Durbin.  Ed Snowden risked a great deal to raise this issue.  The editorial board of the Guardian noted last night:

In unmasking himself as the leaker of the files showing the uses and abuses of western intelligence, Edward Snowden called for a wider public debate. He suggested that the public was sleepwalking into a surveillance society through a lack of knowledge about what was being done in their name. President Obama, reacting in a measured way to the fact of the leak, also welcomed the opportunity to have such a debate.
A meaningful debate cannot be held without information. Snowden's case is that almost no one – not ordinary citizens, not the press, not the courts, not even congress – is in a position to discuss the reasonable balance between security, privacy and openness because they are denied the full and true facts. From Snowden's vantage point – reading a great deal of source material – he believes the US National Security Agency "routinely" lies to congress.




Let's move over to the IRS scandal where apparently everyone's competing for Idiot of the Day.  Let's start with US House Rep Elijah Cummings.  He is the Ranking Member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.  The Chair is Darrell Issa.  Cummings and Issa are in conflict.  Cummings feels that since Issa is releasing transcripts to the press -- transcripts of interviews with IRS employees -- that the transcripts should be public and should be public right now.   That part actually makes sense -- and would even if the press wasn't seeing them.  The government needs to stop sitting on information and start informing the citizens what is going on.

Where Cummings is being stupid?  Josh Hicks (Washington Post) reports that Cummings is releasing his own excerpts "The Cummings release revealed that a self-described 'conservative Republican' in the agency’s Cincinnati office elevated the first tea party case to Washington, seeking guidance."  If tomorrow, which could happen, a Democrat in the Cincinnati office is found to have done something untoward, the "Demcorat" does not matter, the "Republican" does not matter.  The IRS is not supposed to be politicized nor are low level officials capable of carrying off political targeting.  Cummings is attempting to politicize the scandal and he needs to stop doing that.  It undercuts his overall argument and it sets him up to look very foolish if a minor member in the scandal turns out to be a Democrat or someone who donated or campaigned for Democrats.  It's not smart.  He also looks stupid when he makes statements about the White House not being involved.  A) Why is he reinforcing that possibility to begin with?  B) It makes it appear that his only interest is whether or not the White House was involved when the American people have made clear in polls that they find the targeting of political groups outrageous.  Is he serving the American people or the White House?  Since every member of the House who chooses to remain in Congress is up for re-election next year, he might want to concentrate a little more on how he is seen?


Was Cummings responding to Fox News reporting?  I have no idea but for him to make such a stupid move (and it's gravely stupid, you don't stake out a position like that until all the interviews are done), it seemed possible.  So I went to Fox News and found more stupidity in this article.  They bill it as a Fox News report and, at the end, offer that "The Associated Press contributed to this report."  If it's not entirely AP,  Fox News needs to do some firings because of the errors in the article that repeatedly downplay the actual events.   Take Lois Lerner who pleaded the Fifth and refused to testify before Congress.  That alone makes your character in question.  Lerner was not going to be asked whom she slept with or if she was a member of the Communist Party or the mob.  She was going to be asked about how she did her job.  A government employee who pleads the Fifth rather than answer those type of questions is questionable for that reason alone.  The press has no problem dragging whistle blowers' names through the mud but a government employee -- whose entire career is public as a result of being a government employee -- that takes the Fifth is off limits?

Apparently so, "Lerner is the IRS official who first disclosed the targeting at a legal conference May 10."  Is that how we tell the story now?  She lied in her disclosure at the ABA conference and, as we know now, she also planted the question with a friend.  That too goes to the character of Lois Lerner.  It's amazing the mud Ed Snowden's dragged through while the joke that is Lois Lerner gets a pass."


A version of the AP article with Stephen Ohlemacher's name attached to it can be found here. It's the height of stupidity.  And pair it with Tamara Keith's nonsense for NPR that we called out last week.  The key takeway of Tamara's article is that she found a connection to DC.  This is a major detail because IRS officials testifying to Congress have repeatedly blamed it on lower level officials in Cincinati.  At one point, the idiot states, "There's a second employee, Elizabeth Hofacre who, for six months, worked on these Tea Party cases. And she was actually working with a tax law specialist in Washington, D.C., and she talks about being frustrated about how long it took him to respond."  Who is the tax law specialist?  She never mentions his name.  Nailing down the specifics was apparently too much reporting for Tamara.   If Tamara was referring to IRS official Holly Paz (the IRS's director of rulings and agreements), that's especially sad because Paz's attorney told USA Today's Gregory Korte that Paz has been placed on administrative leave.  Korte has the best report on the IRS scandal.  He notes Paz insists that "tea party" was, she thought, just short hand and that it could require to any number of groups -- even liberal ones.  Is that true?

It's not hard to prove it true or false.  Paz states she personally worked on 30 cases.  So examine Holly Paz's cases -- are they a split (to any degree) of liberal groups and conservative ones (and are the liberal groups not liberal ones that called out Barack)?  If not, Holly Paz lied.  Regarding Paz's claims, Korte points out:

But Elizabeth Hofacre, the agency's emerging issues coordinator in Cincinnati when the targeting began, has told investigators that she kicked out any progressive groups that other agents tried to put in with the Tea Party cases. She said she understood the term to mean conservative or Republican groups. "I was tasked to do Tea Parties, and I wasn't — I wasn't equipped or set up to do anything else."


(To AP's Stephen Ohlemacher's credit, he does note that Paz's testimony contradicts what IRS officials have claimed and he leads with that unlike Tamara Keith last week.)

Today Al Mada notes Iraq's ranking on a new list -- Global Firepower's ranking of the world's military power.  Out of 68 countries, Iraq comes in 58th  which is good news for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki . . . if Mongolia decides to attack.  Global Firepower breaks down the various strengths of each country.  Here for Iraq.  Among other things, it notes of IRaq:

FINANCIAL (in USD)
Defense Budget:  $5,568,000,000 [2012]
External Debt:  $50,790,000,000 [2011]
Reserves of Foreign Exchange and Gold:  $58,960,000,000 [2012]
Purchasing Power Parity:  $129,300,000,000 [2012]

And yet Iraqis live in squalor.  The public works areas have never been fixed -- electricity, drinkable water, etc.  But a ton of money gets spent on military hardware.  For a military that's used against Iraq's own people.


Yesterday Iraq was slammed with violence and at least 51 people were killed.  Iraq Body Count counts 260 dead so far this month, through Sunday.   All Iraq News notes Nouri blamed foreign countries today for yesterday's violence.   Al Mada adds that he basically issued a fatwa on Israel.

Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) notes the US Embassy in Baghdad issued a statement which included, "We mourn the loss of life and stand firmly with the Iraqi people who seek to live in peace and who reject cowardly acts of terrorism such as this."  Yesterday, Alsumaria reported Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi said the violence underscores the continued weakness of the security forces and goes to the state of disorder and confusion in Iraq.  All Iraq News noted cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr holds al Qaeda in Iraq responsible.  The United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq released the following statement:

Baghdad, 16 June 2013 – The Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Iraq (SRSG), Mr. Martin Kobler, strongly condemns the latest wave of car bomb attacks that targeted crowded areas in several Iraqi cities during rush hour, killing and injuring dozens more innocent people. كوردى
“Less than a week after a string of similar attacks, Iraqis are hit by another round of deadly and remorseless acts of terrorism,” Mr. Kobler said.
“Nothing can justify such despicable and heinous crimes, targeting innocent people going about their daily business,” the UN envoy added. He once again called all Iraqi political leaders to sit together with good faith and determination, to address all pending problems that the country continues to face. 
Mr. Kobler extends his deep sympathy and sincere condolences to the families of the victims and wishes a speedy recovery to the wounded.

Of course, the weight of a statement from Kobler means much less than it might have 8 days ago.  It's been announced that Kobler's been reassigned to the Congo.




Violence on Saturday resulted in the US State Dept issued the following:



Press Statement


Alsumaria reported a mortar attack on Camp Liberty  left 4 of the former Camp Ashraf refugees dead and twenty-two people injured (16 were Iranaian and Ashraf refugees, 6 were Iraqi).

 Approximately 3,400 people were at Camp Ashraf when the US invaded Iraq in 2003.  They were Iranian dissidents who were given asylum by Saddam Hussein decades ago.  The US government authorized the US military to negotiate with the residents.  The US military was able to get the residents to agree to disarm and they became protected persons under Geneva and under international law.  When Bully Boy Bush was in office, they were protected and remained at Camp Ashraf.  That all changed when Barack Obama was sworn in as US President in January 2009.


Since then there have been four major attacks on the residents counting today's attack.    July 28, 2009 Nouri launched an attack (while then-US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was on the ground in Iraq). In a report released this summer entitled "Iraqi government must respect and protect rights of Camp Ashraf residents," Amnesty International described this assault, "Barely a month later, on 28-29 July 2009, Iraqi security forces stormed into the camp; at least nine residents were killed and many more were injured. Thirty-six residents who were detained were allegedly tortured and beaten. They were eventually released on 7 October 2009; by then they were in poor health after going on hunger strike." April 8, 2011, Nouri again ordered an assault on Camp Ashraf (then-US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was again on the ground in Iraq when the assault took place). Amnesty International described the assault this way, "Earlier this year, on 8 April, Iraqi troops took up positions within the camp using excessive, including lethal, force against residents who tried to resist them. Troops used live ammunition and by the end of the operation some 36 residents, including eight women, were dead and more than 300 others had been wounded. Following international and other protests, the Iraqi government announced that it had appointed a committee to investigate the attack and the killings; however, as on other occasions when the government has announced investigations into allegations of serious human rights violations by its forces, the authorities have yet to disclose the outcome, prompting questions whether any investigation was, in fact, carried out."  Since then they've been moved to Camp Liberty which hasn't offered any additional protection.  In addition to today's attack, February 9, 2013, they were attacked with as many as 10 dead and fifty injured.

Sunday, the United Kingdom's Foreign Office issued the following statement on the attack:

 

Responding to the news of the attack on Camp Liberty in Iraq, FCO Minister for Middle East and North Africa, Alistair Burt, said:

I strongly condemn the attack on Camp Liberty that took place in Iraq yesterday. The British Government calls on the Government of Iraq to fully investigate the attack and ensure that those responsible are brought to justice.

We also call on the Iraqi Government to do all that they can to ensure the security and safety of the residents of Camp Liberty.

Violence didn't just take place over the weekend.  Today?

Kareem Raheem, Kamal Naama, Isabel Coles and Janet Lawrence (Reuters) report a Taji restaurant bombing claimed 7 lives and a Taji minibus claimed 2 lives and left seven injured, a Falluja suicide bomber detonated himself in front of Falluja's police headquarters killing 3 people (in addition to the suicide bomber). "A bloody end to a simple meal," this Reuters video notes of the Taji restaurant bombings.    Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) notes the Falluja attack also left thirty people injured.  In addition, All Iraq News notes a Mosul bombing injured one police commander, and they note that the Taji restaurant bombing didn't just claim 7 lives lives, it also left 23 people injured.  National Iraqi News Agency reports an armed attack on a Hilla restaurant left 3 dead and one person injured, and a Tikrit bombing claimed the life of 1 police officer and left three more injured.  All Iraq News adds 1 barber, Saman al-Shuwayil, was shot dead by assailants on motorcycles in Sadr City.




Earlier this month, Suha Audah award winning report on Iraqi women athletes was carried by CNN: 


Filing nervously into a sports hall in Mosul, northern Iraq, around 20 girls prepared to practice gymnastics. Compared to their male counterparts at Mosul University's Faculty of Sport, their number is small. Another difference is that the gates to the sports hall were locked behind them and an announcement made that the hall was exclusively allocated for women.
Battered by scandals surrounding security failures in Benghazi and allegations of criminal activity by diplomats, the State Department is taking over the sensitive process by which background checks are given to locals hired to work at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, the largest and most expensive diplomatic post in the world.
The process is presently handled by a private security company contracted to the Pentagon. But a recently circulated contract solicitation indicates that the firm conducting the vetting -- and the budget for the process -- is being shifted to the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security.

Let's hope they do a good job because, as we noted June 10th, Arabic social media is not kind to Brett McGurk and the US government needs to be very sure they're protecting him.  It's really not safe for him to be in Iraq. 

On Monday, Al Mada notes, Catherine Ashton arrived in Baghdad and met with Nouri and, All Iraq News adds, she met with Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi.



Zbigniew Brzezinski: What hasn't worked as well was the attack on Iraq which was based on false assumptions and which has created a situation that is very unstable and continues to deteriorate.  The intervention in Libya by the British and French with our backing hasn't worked out so well and the French and the British haven't been very effective. We're now pointed toward something similar but more dangerous in Syria because Syria is inter-locked with Iran.  That poses problems from the global economy, that will effect the interests of Japan and China.  We should be building an international coalition to impose some kind of a solution.  We should be serious in negotiations with the Chinese and the Russians, involve the Japanese as well because they are influential -- so are the Indians, incidentally, who are dependant on energy.   Instead, we are essentially engaging in mass propaganda, promoting this as a democratic war.  Who is fighting for democracy?  Qatar and Saudi Arabia are fighting for democracy? This is a sectarian war waged with great brutality by both sides.  And I repeat that 93,000 were killed in the civil war -- they weren't killed just by the Syrian regime.  There are two sides to that struggle and neither one is waging it in a particularly attractive fashion.

That's Zbigniew Brzezinski speaking on MSNBC's Morning Joe (video is at Information Clearing House). You can consider that an establishment view (he served in Jimmy Carter's administration).  A view from the academic world?   Marc Lynch (Foreign Policy) weighed in yesterday:

President Obama's move to increase the public flow of arms to selected Syrian rebels is probably his worst foreign policy decision since taking office. It is basically the Afghan surge decision redux: long months of grueling internal deliberation about whether to escalate military commitments resulting in an "Option C" policy choice which pleases nobody and which few think will work. At least the Afghan surge came with an expiration date.

A representative of the people?   Former US House Rep Ron Paul has a column today at Antiwar.com on the topic:

Setting aside the question of why 100 killed by gas is somehow more important than 99,900 killed by other means, the fact is his above explanation is full of holes. The Washington Post reported this week that the decision to overtly arm the Syrian rebels was made “weeks ago” – in other words, it was made at a time when the intelligence community did not believe “with high confidence” that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons.
Further, this plan to transfer weapons to the Syrian rebels had become policy much earlier than that, as the Washington Post reported that the CIA had expanded over the past year its secret bases in Jordan to prepare for the transfer of weapons to the rebels in Syria.
The process was identical to the massive deception campaign that led us into the Iraq war. Remember the famous quote from the leaked “Downing Street Memo,” where representatives of British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s administration discussed Washington’s push for war on Iraq?

An activist with a long track record?  Tom Hayden has a column at ZNet reviewing many of the issues before offering this conclusion:


It's a very strong column from Hayden.  One that calls on all his life's experiences and works.  People should read it. 

Barack's Drone War never ends but we never seem to have time to note it here.  CODEPINK has an action this Saturday in NYC and we'll note it in today's snapshot and, if I can work in The Drone War into a snapshot this week, we'll note the action again then:








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the guardian
glenn greenwald
cbs news
the morning show
kimberly dozier
 the new york times
michael s. schmidt
 scott shane
 usa today
susan page
peter eisler
gregory korte
josh hicks
 alsumaria
all iraq news
the associated press

national iraqi news agency
aswat al-iraq

Ed Snowden online at the Guardian right now

First:
 



Back to Iraq, 
All Iraq News reports that Kirkuk Governor Najim al-Din Karim gave a radio interview where he declared that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani was improving.  Last December,  Iraqi President Jalal Talabani suffered a stroke.   The incident took place late on December 17th (see the December 18th snapshot) and resulted in Jalal being admitted to Baghdad's Medical Center Hospital.    Thursday, December 20th, he was moved to Germany.  He remains in Germany currently.  Every few weeks someone comes along to announce, "He's getting better!"  It's past time that Iraqis were told when Jalal was coming back and if he's not coming back shortly, it really is time to replace him.  He's been out of the country -- and not doing his job -- for over six months now.  It's a four year term and he's already missed 1/8 of his term.

The Iraqi people have still never been told how serious this is.  Clearly, this wasn't an 'average' stroke, or he would have made a public announcement himself long ago.  This appears to be a much more serious stroke and there may have been other strokes which followed after he was moved to Germany.  Indulging a family for one month or two is one thing.  Having no one in that position for six months is completely different.  If Jalal is not able to return to Iraq quickly, he needs to resign or be replaced.

Yesterday Iraq was slammed with violence and at least 51 people were killed.  Iraq Body Count counts 260 dead so far this month, through Sunday.   All Iraq News notes Nouri blamed foreign countries today for yesterday's violence.


Today?

Kareem Raheem, Kamal Naama, Isabel Coles and Janet Lawrence (Reuters) report a Taji restaurant bombing claimed 7 lives and a Taji minibus claimed 2 lives and left seven injured, a Falluja suicide bomber detonated himself in front of Falluja's police headquarters killing 3 people (in addition to the suicide bomber).  Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) notes the Falluja attack also left thirty people injured.  In addition, All Iraq News notes a Mosul bombing injured one police commander, and they note that the Taji restaurant bombing didn't just claim 7 lives lives, it also left 23 people injured.



On Iraq, Barack has two disgusting nominees.

Last week Peter Hart (FAIR) explored Samantha Power, Barack's nominee to be US Ambassador to Iraq, and concluded:


Some of Power's most pointed critics�"like writer and lawyer Chase Madar�"have argued that Power does not forcefully critique U.S. policies that have encouraged and enabled massive crimes against humanity, preferring instead to talk about instances where the United States could have taken steps to intervene militarily in a given crisis and didn't. 
But in the case of Iraq, at a time when the themes of her celebrated book were very much a part of the debate over whether or not to go to war, it was hard to determine where Power stood.


Peter's got a strong piece, the one thing -- if he had more room -- he could've included is that Power wrote and co-wrote pieces on how maybe someone in Congress should speak.  Maybe.  She's a joke.  So is Susan Rice.  Stephen Zunes wants to write about her now.  And I could be nice.  I try to be.

I'm ripped off every damn day and don't really care for the most part. Information should be free it's not a big deal.  For the most part.  As Mike noted at his site, last month, I was shocked to discover a US print publication had ripped me off word for word.  I didn't realize that until years later.  But I wrote the story -- based on Arabic media -- four days before the reporter paid to write about it in the US picked up on the story and damned if three paragraphs are not what I wrote word for word -- and of course there's no attribution at all.  That kind of pissed me off because it was one of the many key issues that we have owned here, that in terms of English websites, we have broken the news on.  So it did piss me off, I'm not going to lie.

Stephen Zunes.  I probably wouldn't give a damn about his bad column today denouncing Susan Rice if he weren't such a damn liar.  Benghaiz is not a minor point and when idiots like priss pot Zunes can't pull the stick out of their ass on this one, they look like idiots and they shut off a large part of the audience they could be reaching.  Benghazi does matter, four American lives do matter, whether or not diplomats around the world are properly protected matters.  I'm sorry that these issues escape Zunes.

Zunes 'discovers' Susan Rice and Iraq today and I love this paragraph:

Rice, however, was adamant that Powell had "proved that Iraq has these weapons and is hiding them, and I don't think many informed people doubted that." In light of such widespread and public skepticism from knowledgeable sources, Rice's dismissal of all the well-founded criticism was positively Orwellian: those who blindly accepted Powell's transparently false claims were "well informed," while the UN officials, arms control specialists and others knowledgeable of the reality of the situation were presumably otherwise.

Why do I love it?  That link under "adamant" goes to a November 28, 2012 Daily Kos post that just 'discovered' Susan's interview to NPR about Iraq in 2003 praising Colin Powell.

You know what I love even more than that?  "The unqualified Susan Rice."  Which I wrote.  November 15, 2012.  Noting that NPR interview.  I love that.


And I love that we're so read.  But honestly, sometimes I don't love the fact that you all love to rip off, you all live to rip off but none of you bitches no how to give credit.

You know how to copy.  You know how to steal. You just never learned how to credit and that's what really stands out after nine years online.



This has to go up now because we need to get Greenwald's Snowden announcement up.  I will note CODEPINK's press release in the snapshot today, in full.















The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.



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 reuters
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  mohammed tawfeeq
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Lies from the government, lies from Law and Disorder Radio

Barack Obama's spying scandal continues. Declan McCullagh (CNET) reported Saturday:


Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed on Thursday that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that."
If the NSA wants "to listen to the phone," an analyst's decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. "I was rather startled," said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.
Not only does this disclosure shed more light on how the NSA's formidable eavesdropping apparatus works domestically, it also suggests the Justice Department has secretly interpreted federal surveillance law to permit thousands of low-ranking analysts to eavesdrop on phone calls.

 As we noted at Third yesterday, this makes NPR 'expert' Carrie Cordero the  "Stupid Punk Ass Clown of the Week."  (If you're late to the party, see "NPR tries to sway public opinion on spying.")  If NPR was really concerned about news, they would be a little more careful about not inviting raving lunatics onto the airwaves to pose as 'experts.'  Carrie Cordero didn't know a damn thing she was talking about but, wouldn't you know it, just by coincidence, of course, she happened to repeat and advance US government talking points.  Now, she's exposed as an idiot or maybe a cheap whore. How proud all must be of her.

Tom Ackerman (Al Jazeera -- link is video) reports today on Denis McDonough's statements yesterday.  Why report on the White House Chief of Staff?  Because McDonough is a sick looking individual.  May be the nicest person in the world but, to Middle East audiences (as well as around the world), he looks like a deviant who preys on children.  He's shifty-eyed and makes Richard Nixon look photogenic.  Way to go, White House, yet again the master communicators demonstrate that they don't know a damn thing. ("Let's reassure the American people by sending out a trusted face!  Who do we have here that looks like John Wayne Gacy?  McDonough, you're up!")  Here for that Face The Nation video.  Here's the argument McDonough presents for the crooks he works for:


* Congress has authorized these programs now in very robust debates.

* The president is saying I want every member of congress on whose authority we are running this program, to understand it, to be briefed about it, and to be comfortable with it, that's why we've done things like we did in 2009 and 2011 by presenting a classified white paper, inviting every member of congress -- 535 members of them -- to see that piece of paper, to study it and to come to us with questions.

 Those are his direct quotes from the CBS interview.

A) Congress okayed it!  Nothing to see here!  B) Woops, we haven't fully briefed Congress!  But -- after being caught -- we will now!

Not good enough.  This program needs to be debated by the American people.  And you're a black eye to democracy if you think otherwise. The editorial board of the Guardian noted last night:

In unmasking himself as the leaker of the files showing the uses and abuses of western intelligence, Edward Snowden called for a wider public debate. He suggested that the public was sleepwalking into a surveillance society through a lack of knowledge about what was being done in their name. President Obama, reacting in a measured way to the fact of the leak, also welcomed the opportunity to have such a debate.
A meaningful debate cannot be held without information. Snowden's case is that almost no one �" not ordinary citizens, not the press, not the courts, not even congress �" is in a position to discuss the reasonable balance between security, privacy and openness because they are denied the full and true facts. From Snowden's vantage point �" reading a great deal of source material �" he believes the US National Security Agency "routinely" lies to congress.


And by the way, like idiot Carrie, Denis comments on what the program can do?

What a load of crap.

This has to stop.  If I'm having heart surgery, you better believe I want heart surgery expert.  Love pediatricians, but don't bring me a pediatrician to explain my heart surgery to me or to conduct it.  Don't bring me an administrator from the hospital to explain the surgery to me.  The only 'expert' is the one who does it.  Everyone else is just mouthing words.  Denis was an administration for a brief time at NSA, he was not an analyst, he didn't do a damn bit of real work. 

As we saw with Susan Rice, cheap whores will say anything to the public.

Susan Rice didn't know a damn thing about Benghazi.

Which was she lied.

Lied?

Yeah, when you go out to be an expert on something you're not -- forget the details of what you said, just the fact that you're presenting to the American people as an 'expert' on something you're not makes you a cheap and damn liar.  And that is Susan Rice.

What everyone of the five programs she went on should have asked her: Were you there?  (No.)  Who did you speak to that was there? (No one.)  What are your basing your allegations on?  (A list of talking points that were handed to me.)  Susan Rice lied to the American people and didn't think twice.

Like many a cheap whore, she told herself she was serving a president.

Guess what, stupid idiot, you're not there to serve a president.  Those losers come and go.  They can die in office and makes little difference, the nation continues.  None of them matter beyond their terms of office due to the scandals and corruption that they've all got their fingers in.  You serve the American people.  You're not there to dance for the president and deceive the American people. You are there to serve the Republic which means serving the people, not lying to them, not tricking them, not deceiving them.

That's also  true of Denis who has never run an NSA intercept.


So anything he says is what he was told to say -- not what he knows.

He's not an expert.

He's a whore.  All administrations have them.

Equally true, don't really think the American people give their blind trust to those who worked for the Center for American Progress -- a shill organization for the Democratic Party.

In fact, Denis needs to close his mouth and sit his tired ass down.  It's past time for  The Little Prince to get off his candy ass and explain to the American people what's going on.

It's past time for The Little Prince who ran for re-election to start answering to the American people.

They don't work for Barack, they pay his salary, he works for them.  He is answerable to them.

He needs to start acting like he recognizes that fact.  First step might be having a little talk with members of the First Family who seem to think they're royalty and don't have to put up with the American people.

The most powerful person in the world is not Barack.  It is the American people.  His boss.  He better start answering questions and he better start doing it soon.

It has been one lie after another from his trashy administration and one scandal after another.  What appears to be happening is that after he's done posing and lecturing, Barack has no energy for governing.

It's past time The Little Prince was grounded.  No more trips, no more vacations until he sits his ass down and does some of the work he's twice been voted to do.  That's address the economy, that's get his administration in order.

Spying on the American people will not be 'addressed' by briefing Congress.  Congress has failed to use oversight.  Congress -- like Prince Candy Ass -- is answerable to the American people.  It is past time that the government stopped stonewalling and started telling the American people exactly how badly they've damaged the Constitution.


AP reports that China today, via Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying, is demanding that Barack provide answers about the National Security Agency's collection of telephone data and internet activity.  Yes, countries are beginning to note that Barack's spying program includes spying on them.  Here for Turkey and Russia.  Barack has disgraced the country on an international scale.  It is time for a real press conference where he is forced to address these issues.


America needs truth, not more lies. Some will whine that this is going up after this week's Law and Disorder Radio,  an hour long program that airs Monday mornings at 9:00 a.m. EST on WBAI  has already started.

Boo-f**king-hoo.  The attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Michael S. Smith and Michael Ratner (Center for Constitutional Rights) will be heard all around the country all week.  More importantly, I am tired of damn liars.

Rick Rowley and his wife  Jacquie Soohen are cheap and constant liars.


They think it's cute to lie to the American people, to trick them.  Click here for some of Soohen's big lies about Jena -- she lied about everything and did so over and over.  That a cheap liar like that is involved with Jeremey Scahill's new project says all we need to know about Scahill and his project.  You can't lie over and over and expect to be believed.

Rick and Jacquie thought it was okay to lie, they justified it as they were helping 'race issues.'  No, they were lying through their teeth, cementing hatred with their lies.  People like that don't belong on programs, they need to be shunned. (And they produced a film on Jena that included the lies that Jacquie was 'reporting' in real time.)

All the more so when these White reporters want to ignore the parent of  one of the kids they claim to want to help (Caseptla Bailey, the mother of Robert Bailey).  She told her story.  She did so honestly and upfront.  But Rick and Jacquie had no respect for this African-American woman and why let facts interfere with their little tale?

People like that are trash.  You do not bring them on to your program unless you too are trash.

If Heidi and the Michaels are now saying that the way to report is to ignore African-Americans who tell their stories, then they need to be upfront with the Law and Disorder audience.

That would explain a lot though.  Like why so many of their guests are White.  How do they do that?  How do they broadcast from NYC and end up with a show that sounds like it came from the over 95% Anglo White Iowa?

Racism doesn't end until you question those who think White-entitlement justifies their lying about what happened to African-American children and their ignoring the statements by African-Americans who are part of the story.

It's time for the left to start doing some serious purges of these liars who repeatedly lie and repeatedly distort and will argue that it's for 'the cause.'  If that's what the Center for Constitutional Rights wants to be associated with, please make it clear because i can tell you right now, that two-thirds of the donors will be walking.




Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Predator of the United States" went up Sunday morning and that's it at the top of this entry.


The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.



iraq the guardian cnet declan mccullagh al jazeera tom ackernman cbs news face the nation
wbai
law and disorder radio
michael s. smith
heidi boghosian
michael ratner

Hejira

How bad were things in Iraq today? So bad that it got some actual press attention outside of Iraq.   All Media New York lets Iraq lead the news in a video they share of headlines.  NPR even feels the need to do a blog post panning from the AP report.  Remember when NPR used to have reporters on the ground in Iraq and used to actually file reports?

'Not fair!' some say.  Why Rachel Martin did a report on Weekend Edition Sunday!  Yes, she did.  Here's NPR's summary of it, "Rachel Martin talks to Baghdad businessman Haider al-Jumaili about the growing violence in Iraq, where more than a thousand people died in May."  Of course, al-Jumaili left Iraq years ago and moved his family in Texas.  In fairness, he was visiting Iraq during the phone call.  He's got a job offer and he may move back if the violence isn't as bad as he fears it is. 

Hmm.  That's . . . news.  On violence, that's news?  That's a human interest story, it's feature reporting, it has nothing to do with today's violence or May's violence.  It does have to do with the ongoing refugee crisis.

Or would have to do with that if Rachel Martin had ever made the connection, spoken even a sentence of the past refugee crisis or how it's been revived (only the BBC News has reported that and BBC World Service beat the United Nations in getting in front of that story).

Let's look at some of the violence.  National Iraqi News Agency reports 2 Ministry of Water Resources employees were kidnapped in Kirkuk, a bombing inside Baghdad's Finjan Cafe claimed 2 lives and left ten people injured, a Baghdad car bombing claimed 1 life and left five people injured, a Mosul bombing apparently targeting a police patrol left five people injured, a Mosul car bombing left four Iraqi soldiers injured, an armed attack on a Mosul police station left 3 police officers dead and five more injured, an al-Mada'in car bombing claimed the life of 1 police officer and left six more injured,  a Najaf car bombing targeting a market claimed 1 life and left twenty injured,  2 Tikrit bombings left 2 federal police members dead and a third injured, a roadside bombing just north of Hilla left six people injured, a Hilla car bombing left four people injured, 2 Basra car bombings claimed 4 lives and left six people injured,  and 2 Kut bombings claimed 1 life and left thirty injured.  Press TV adds, "A shooting also broke out near the northern city of Mosul, when a gunman attacked police guarding an oil pipeline. At least four people were killed and five others wounded in the incident."


NINA reports as it happens, those numbers changed in some cases.  The Baghdad cafe, for example, Alsumaria offers a photo of the remains and notes it was a suicide bomber and 11 patrons died with another twenty left injured.  On the Basra car bombings, AFP quotes eye witness Ali Fadhil stating, "I saw cars on fire, dead bodies covered with blood, and wounded people lying on the ground screaming for help."  Sinan Salaheddin (AP) counts 51 dead in the day's violence.

Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) notes the US Embassy in Baghdad issued a statement which included, "We mourn the loss of life and stand firmly with the Iraqi people who seek to live in peace and who reject cowardly acts of terrorism such as this."  Alsumaria reports Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi said the violence underscores the continued weakness of the security forces and goes to the state of disorder and confusion in Iraq.  All Iraq News notes cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr holds al Qaeda in Iraq responsible.  The United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq released the following statement:

Baghdad, 16 June 2013 – The Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Iraq (SRSG), Mr. Martin Kobler, strongly condemns the latest wave of car bomb attacks that targeted crowded areas in several Iraqi cities during rush hour, killing and injuring dozens more innocent people. كوردى
“Less than a week after a string of similar attacks, Iraqis are hit by another round of deadly and remorseless acts of terrorism,” Mr. Kobler said.
“Nothing can justify such despicable and heinous crimes, targeting innocent people going about their daily business,” the UN envoy added. He once again called all Iraqi political leaders to sit together with good faith and determination, to address all pending problems that the country continues to face. 
Mr. Kobler extends his deep sympathy and sincere condolences to the families of the victims and wishes a speedy recovery to the wounded.

Of course, the weight of a statement from Kobler means much less than it might have 8 days ago.  It's been announced that Kobler's been reassigned to the Congo.


When the toll was still "dozens" in Iraq today, former US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker was on Weekend Edition and was allowed to briefly speak about Iraq -- Rachel Martin was more concerned with his marriage than with Iraq.  Crocker stated, "The kind of return to sectarian tension is born of mistrust among the different groups. That in turn is born of the terrible trauma that the country suffered under the Saddam years, in which all were victims - Kurds, Sunnis and Shiia alike - to a, you know, a despotic and vicious tyrant. You simply don't come out of that experience as newborn Jeffersonian democrats."  Martin had no follow up question, again, she was more concerned with his marriage.





I'm traveling in some vehicle
I'm sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
That shell shock love away
-- "Hejira," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her album of the same name

 The number of US service members the Dept of Defense states died in the Iraq War is [PDF format warning] 4488.


New content at Third:

• Truest statement of the week
• Truest statement of the week II
• A note to our readers
• Editorial: Barack's unconstitutional spying on Ame...
• Media: The Continued Self-destruction of NPR
• The Iraq Dialogue
• Stupid Punk Ass Clown of the Week
• Report on Congress
• Tweet of the Week
• Roundtable
• So many scandals
• Super Bomb: Man of Steel is awful
• The Syrian pretext (Workers World).
• Will this bill survive?
• Highlights

Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Predator of the United States" went up this morning.  It'll stay below right now but tomorrow I'll switch so that it's above this.  I had planned to do that now but an e-mail came in saying that it was confusing when I do that without notice and the reader doesn't scroll down to see "Hejira" but just assumes nothing news has gone up.


 The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

 iraq
hejira

Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Predator of the United States"

Isaiah's latest The World Today Just Nuts "Predator of the United States."  Barack lurks outside the window of a couple and declares, "Who ever said I was just interested in your phone calls and e-mails?"    Isaiah archives his comics at The World Today Just Nuts.



the world today just nuts
comic
 barack obama
predator of the united states
the common ills

Ashraf refugees attacked at Camp Liberty

 Alsumaria reports a mortar attack on Camp Liberty which left 4 of the former Camp Ashraf refugees dead and twenty-two people injured (16 were Iranaian and Ashraf refugees, 6 were Iraqi).

 Approximately 3,400 people were at Camp Ashraf when the US invaded Iraq in 2003.  They were Iranian dissidents who were given asylum by Saddam Hussein decades ago.  The US government authorized the US military to negotiate with the residents.  The US military was able to get the residents to agree to disarm and they became protected persons under Geneva and under international law.  When Bully Boy Bush was in office, they were protected and remained at Camp Ashraf.  That all changed when Barack Obama was sworn in as US President in January 2009.


Since then there have been four major attacks on the residents counting today's attack.    July 28, 2009 Nouri launched an attack (while then-US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was on the ground in Iraq). In a report released this summer entitled "Iraqi government must respect and protect rights of Camp Ashraf residents," Amnesty International described this assault, "Barely a month later, on 28-29 July 2009, Iraqi security forces stormed into the camp; at least nine residents were killed and many more were injured. Thirty-six residents who were detained were allegedly tortured and beaten. They were eventually released on 7 October 2009; by then they were in poor health after going on hunger strike." April 8, 2011, Nouri again ordered an assault on Camp Ashraf (then-US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was again on the ground in Iraq when the assault took place). Amnesty International described the assault this way, "Earlier this year, on 8 April, Iraqi troops took up positions within the camp using excessive, including lethal, force against residents who tried to resist them. Troops used live ammunition and by the end of the operation some 36 residents, including eight women, were dead and more than 300 others had been wounded. Following international and other protests, the Iraqi government announced that it had appointed a committee to investigate the attack and the killings; however, as on other occasions when the government has announced investigations into allegations of serious human rights violations by its forces, the authorities have yet to disclose the outcome, prompting questions whether any investigation was, in fact, carried out."  Since then they've been moved to Camp Liberty which hasn't offered any additional protection.  In addition to today's attack, February 9, 2013, they were attacked with as many as 10 dead and fifty injured.


Today, the US State Dept issued the following:



Press Statement



That wasn't the only violence in Iraq today.  National Iraqi News Agency reports 1 military officer was shot dead in Mosul (his rank was Captain), 1 Lieutenant Major was shot dead in Mosul, a Tikrit roadside bombing killed 2 federal police officers and left three more injured, a bomb placed in a squad car in Shiqat killed 1 police officer, a sticky bomb placed on a mosque preacher's car in Ramadi killed the preacher, and a  Mosul roadside bombing claimed the lives of 2 Iraqi soldiers and 1 civilian while leaving another civilian injured.  All Iraq News adds that 1 person was shot dead in front of his Mosul home (Gazaer neighborhood) and another civilian was shot dead in Mosul (Mesherfa area), a Beji sticky bombing left one police officer injured, and a roadside bombing in Salman village claimed the lives of 3 Sahwa.  Alsumaria reports a mortar attack on Camp Liberty which left 4 of the former Camp Ashraf refugees dead and twenty-two people injured (16 were Iranaian and Ashraf refugees, 6 were Iraqi), 1 Iraqi soldier was stabbed to death in a Baghdad attack, 1 construction worker was shot dead in Mosul, a mortar attack on Baghdad International Airport left four people injured, and a Samarra roadside bombing left 1 police officer dead and another injured.  That's 21 reported dead and 32 reported injured.  Through Friday, Iraq Body Count counts 198 violent deaths in Iraq so far this month.



In other violence?  Alsumaria is reporting that the President of the Football Federation in Wasit Province, Nassif Jassem, is dead following an altercation with the Referees Committee chair and secretary.

Aswat al-Iraq reports journalist Zamil Ghanam was assassinated on Sunday in Baghdad and that the Iraqi Association for Defending Journalists' Rights is calling for disclosure on the details.  Meanwhile Al Arabiya notes that Iraqi journalists Mohammed Fuad and Afdhal Jumaa have been held by security forces for ten days after being accused of stealing Saadun al-Dulaimi's notepad.  Who?  They call him the Minister of Defense.  He's not.  The position remains vacant.  Nouri's never nominated anyone for that position in his second term.  al-Dulaimi is Nouri's puppet.  The outlet states the notebook was found after a conference and handed over to an official.



Today, the US State Dept issued the following:

Readout of Secretary Kerry's Call With Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari

Media Note

---

Syria?  You may remember that the so-called 'rebels' include al Qaeda in Iraq -- one of many groups that killed Americans but now are 'rebels' in Syria. 

Supposedly, they were kicked out of the 'rebels' earlier this week.  From Tuesday's snapshot, "The 'damage' has been that Jabhat al-Nusra has had 'funding' issues.  Governments wanting to support them -- the UK, the US -- are faced with questions by their citizens of why is the government supporting people who tried to kill US and UK service members in Iraq? [. . .] So if outrage wasn't alive over the assassination of a child and if funds weren't at risk, the Islamic State of Iraq would be as welcome in the 'rebel' camp as it was last week and the week before and the week before that and . . . "



Adam Schreck (AP) reports today that al Qaeda in Iraq issued a statement today noting that they were still part of the coalition of 'rebels' in Syria.  Which means Barack is now arming people who targeted, wounded and killed Americans in Iraq.  Barack is now arming people the US government has declared are terrorists.





The following community sites -- plus Jody Watley, PRI, Antiwar.com, Dissident Voice, Tavis Smiley, Pacifica Evening News, Chocolate City, Adam Kokesh, ACLU, Ms. magazine's blog,  and Cindy Sheehan -- updated last night and this morning:

 

 

• 
  
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Feminist News Digest provides a Weekly Feminist News Digest like the latest edition which includes a number of important stories from the week, the list that follows is not a complete list from the weekly digest, just a sample:



Weekly Feminist News Digest -  06/10/2013 - 06/14/2013
The Weekly Feminist News Digest is a service of the Feminist Majority Foundation, made possible through the support of individuals like you. Your contribution is vital to the continued success of our empowering work. 



The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.



iraq
alsumaria
all iraq news
the associated press

national iraqi news agency aswat al-iraq

Nutty Naomi Wolf

 
That's Isaiah's  The World Today Just Nuts "'Feminist' Naomi Wolf speaks" from October 25, 2009.  And the nutty Naomi just gets nuttier.


Naomi Wolf, Jew for Jesus, weighs in to let us know, she's been having some scary thoughts!!!!!

Keep popping those pills, Naomi, your in-laws really want custody, so keep popping those pills and keep acting crazy, you've exhausted the patience of your ex and your in-laws want your children.

In her self-medicated haze, Naomi's seeing things and what she's seeing, these signs, tell her whistle-blower Ed Snowden isn't really a whistle-blower.

What is he?

A CIA agent trying to trick the world.

Proof?

Well, he doesn't act like a whistle-blower.

Oh, we're back to that are we?

Naomi, of course, burned her final feminist bridges when she decided she could determine whether or not someone was a rape victim by how they acted.

Now the zaftig zany not only knows how a rape victim acts but she knows how a whistle-blower acts as well!

Here's the only 'act' Naomi knows: A man walking out.

Naomi's experienced that over and over throughout her life.  If she were honest, she'd admit that all the men who've walked out on her -- and they've all walked on her -- were different and walked out in different ways.

And rape is an act of violence that happens to a person and it will impact each person differently.  Whistle-blowing is an act that makes a person a whistle-blower.  There is no way to determine who a whistle-blower is.  Naomi's watched Minority Report zonked out on pills one time too many.

Could Ed Snowden not be what he seems?

On one level, I'm sure he's not.  If I've got a camera on me and I'm speaking to the press, I'm much more focused and much more collected than I would be otherwise.  In an interview, I perform.  I would assume that to some degree -- because I'm nothing exceptional -- that most people do to some degree.

So I don't believe that the videotape of Ed is 100% Ed.  I'm also aware that there are pieces written about me that shock friends -- in a good way or a bad way -- because they don't recognize the person on the page.  The thing captured on the page isn't a person.  You can't capture a person in anything short of a novel -- because you need that much space and you need to be allowed to invent to truly capture a person.

But in terms of what Ed Snowden's saying and the basics, yeah, he sound believable.  I'm sure that when the cameras are off, his hair's probably not always so neat and he probably has some ratty t-shirt that he loves and still wears although it should probably be trashed because it's falling apart.

That doesn't make him fake or false.

I have no idea what happened to Naomi, maybe she's doubling up on meds, who knows?

Naomi being Naomi she has to be bitchy.  And here's why you should blow her off:

 In stories that intelligence services are advancing (I would call the prostitutes-with-the-secret-service such a story), there are great sexy or sex-related mediagenic visuals that keep being dropped in, to keep media focus on the issue. That very pretty pole-dancing Facebooking girlfriend who appeared for, well, no reason in the media coverage…and who keeps leaking commentary, so her picture can be recycled in the press…really, she happens to pole-dance?


She wrote that.  Bitchy Naomi wrote it.

It's the equivalent of Dick Durbin sneering about "a security guard." 

Who the hell does Naomi think she is?

And I don't believe the woman's a 'pole dancer' either.  There's nothing wrong with being a stripper.  But I believe the woman is a trained dancer who dances with a troupe.  I haven't been following that because the woman's not part of the story.

But Naomi can't pass up any chance to trash women.  So this woman whose name most of us don't even know, is dragged through the mud by Naomi as a "pole dancer."  Naomi is not a feminist.  She's a bitchy little girl who hated Mommy because Mommy took Daddy from her.  That's her whole pathetic life story and it repeats in every damn relationship she has and goes to why she is so very toxic and so very dangerous for women.

Ed Snowden's a whistle-blower.  If Naomi can put down the pills and come up with a valid reason why he's not, I might make the time to listen.  But I have no interest in indulging her chemically fueled fantasies.  She insists she's not calling into question Glenn Greenwald's reporting.

Seriously?  That's exactly what she's doing.  She's saying Ed Snowden is a con man, a double agent, and the Glenn was played for a sap.  How is that not calling into question his reporting?  If Naomi's in a sharing mood, she should get her ass to an NA meeting to start getting the help she so desperately needs.








The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

the world today just nuts
naomi wolf
glenn greenwald

Nutty Naomi Wolf

 
That's Isaiah's  The World Today Just Nuts "'Feminist' Naomi Wolf speaks" from October 25, 2009.  And the nutty Naomi just gets nuttier.


Naomi Wolf, Jew for Jesus, weighs in to let us know, she's been having some scary thoughts!!!!!

Keep popping those pills, Naomi, your in-laws really want custody, so keep popping those pills and keep acting crazy, you've exhausted the patience of your ex and your in-laws want your children.

In her self-medicated haze, Naomi's seeing things and what she's seeing, these signs, tell her whistle-blower Ed Snowden isn't really a whistle-blower.

What is he?

A CIA agent trying to trick the world.

Proof?

Well, he doesn't act like a whistle-blower.

Oh, we're back to that are we?

Naomi, of course, burned her final feminist bridges when she decided she could determine whether or not someone was a rape victim by how they acted.

Now the zaftig zany not only knows how a rape victim acts but she knows how a whistle-blower acts as well!

Here's the only 'act' Naomi knows: A man walking out.

Naomi's experienced that over and over throughout her life.  If she were honest, she'd admit that all the men who've walked out on her -- and they've all walked on her -- were different and walked out in different ways.

And rape is an act of violence that happens to a person and it will impact each person differently.  Whistle-blowing is an act that makes a person a whistle-blower.  There is no way to determine who a whistle-blower is.  Naomi's watched Minority Report zonked out on pills one time too many.

Could Ed Snowden not be what he seems?

On one level, I'm sure he's not.  If I've got a camera on me and I'm speaking to the press, I'm much more focused and much more collected than I would be otherwise.  In an interview, I perform.  I would assume that to some degree -- because I'm nothing exceptional -- that most people do to some degree.

So I don't believe that the videotape of Ed is 100% Ed.  I'm also aware that there are pieces written about me that shock friends -- in a good way or a bad way -- because they don't recognize the person on the page.  The thing captured on the page isn't a person.  You can't capture a person in anything short of a novel -- because you need that much space and you need to be allowed to invent to truly capture a person.

But in terms of what Ed Snowden's saying and the basics, yeah, he sound believable.  I'm sure that when the cameras are off, his hair's probably not always so neat and he probably has some ratty t-shirt that he loves and still wears although it should probably be trashed because it's falling apart.

That doesn't make him fake or false.

I have no idea what happened to Naomi, maybe she's doubling up on meds, who knows?

Naomi being Naomi she has to be bitchy.  And here's why you should blow her off:

 In stories that intelligence services are advancing (I would call the prostitutes-with-the-secret-service such a story), there are great sexy or sex-related mediagenic visuals that keep being dropped in, to keep media focus on the issue. That very pretty pole-dancing Facebooking girlfriend who appeared for, well, no reason in the media coverage…and who keeps leaking commentary, so her picture can be recycled in the press…really, she happens to pole-dance?


She wrote that.  Bitchy Naomi wrote it.

It's the equivalent of Dick Durbin sneering about "a security guard." 

Who the hell does Naomi think she is?

And I don't believe the woman's a 'pole dancer' either.  There's nothing wrong with being a stripper.  But I believe the woman is a trained dancer who dances with a troupe.  I haven't been following that because the woman's not part of the story.

But Naomi can't pass up any chance to trash women.  So this woman whose name most of us don't even know, is dragged through the mud by Naomi as a "pole dancer."  Naomi is not a feminist.  She's a bitchy little girl who hated Mommy because Mommy took Daddy from her.  That's her whole pathetic life story and it repeats in every damn relationship she has and goes to why she is so very toxic and so very dangerous for women.

Ed Snowden's a whistle-blower.  If Naomi can put down the pills and come up with a valid reason why he's not, I might make the time to listen.  But I have no interest in indulging her chemically fueled fantasies.  She insists she's not calling into question Glenn Greenwald's reporting.

Seriously?  That's exactly what she's doing.  She's saying Ed Snowden is a con man, a double agent, and the Glenn was played for a sap.  How is that not calling into question his reporting?  If Naomi's in a sharing mood, she should get her ass to an NA meeting to start getting the help she so desperately needs.








The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

the world today just nuts
naomi wolf
glenn greenwald

I Hate The War

In her finest role to date, Sarah Jessica Parker plays high school grief counselor Peggy Callas in the 2005 film Strangers With Candy (directed by Paul Dinello, screenplay by Stephen Colbert, Paul Dinello and Amy Sedaris) which stars Sedaris as 47-year-old Jerri Blank, going back to Flatpoint High School to get her diploma.  To get rid of her, her teacher Mr. Noblet (Stephen Colbert) sends her to the grief counselor.
 


Jerri Blank: I'm Jerri Blank and my daddy's in a coma. 

Peggy Callas: You know what, Jerri? I wish my daddy was in a coma. He's dead, Jerri. He was executed for War Crimes -- but for insurance purposes, we say he was eaten by wolves. Anyway, my point is, Jerri, somebody's always got it worse. 


It's hard not to think of that scene when you read the latest nonsense from Patrick Cockburn.  It's called "Iraq: 10 Years Later, the Debate Still Rages."  The anti-Sunni gets more than a little looney.  He misrepresents MP Glenda Jackson's full statement but you can't be a Cockburn and respect women so that's a given.  He goes into full crackpot mode with this paragraph:


 What is striking about the US attitude to the Iraq war and the British is that there is much greater American willingness to admit mistakes and learn from them. And it is not just that Britain may have made a mistake in going to war, but that it went on making them. For instance, it tried and failed to control southern Iraq around Basra with a handful of troops. Three years on, the British Army dispatched a force of inadequate size, in Helmand province, whose main impact was to exacerbate rebellion.

 Maybe dumb asses should stick to writing about what they know.  I realize that would leave Cockburn with very little to write about.  But that paragraph is intensely wrong.

Right now, in England, the conclusions from the Iraq Inquiry -- which Cockburn did not cover but we did cover every day of public testimony in that hearing -- are overdue and maybe they'll be released this year or maybe they'll be buried for some time to come.

But the reality is that former Prime Minister Tony Blair got put on the hot seat and made to squirm as was forced to answer questions.  Honestly?  Tony Blair doesn't know how to be honest.

Bully Boy Bush left the White House and we're lucky if a reporter happens to ask him a generic Iraq War question.


There have been no inquires into the Iraq War in the US.


What mistakes were admitted to?  Forget learned from, what mistakes were admitted to?

Cockburn condemns Glenda Jackson for what he sees as her arguing that the war could have been fought better -- that omits entire sentences in her statement and it also omits her line about "horror." But it's funny he condemns her for that and yet he writes:.



For instance, it tried and failed to control southern Iraq around Basra with a handful of troops. Three years on, the British Army dispatched a force of inadequate size, in Helmand province, whose main impact was to exacerbate rebellion.


So Cockburn's championing learning how to fight war more effectively?

If he thinks so, he's not even learning that.

Cockburn is aware of how horrible it was for the British army in southern Iraq.  He didn't bother to report on it in real time -- apparently it was too embarrassing to report that the British military fled in the dark, fled their own base and that, within hours of their departure, their base was taken over by Iraqis who ripped it apart.  They fled closer to Basra and they couldn't maintain Basra either.  They were humiliated.  But they could have called for reinforcements.  They didn't.  Because reinforcements wouldn't have made a bit of difference.

Even Nouri's ridiculous "charge" of the area in 2008 didn't work out.  Unless the goal was to see how many members of Nouri's military could defect.

You could even argue that the British were misled by the US government into believing Basra would be an easy assignment.  Basra was not going to be occupied.  As bad as things were in the south for the British, it could have been much worse.

The BBC covers Iraq today more than any US outlet except the Associated Press.  More than CNN, more than the New York Times, more than the Los Angeles Times.   The Telegraph of London still regularly files on Iraq.  ITV and Sky News sometimes file.  Many times, when there's a report on PBS' The NewsHour, it's an ITV report.  NPR hasn't filed a report from Iraq in forever.

In the US, Iraq is The Forgotten War.  Monday, the New American Foundation had an event on just that topic, Madeline McSherry writes about it and what is her article called?  "Iraq: The Forgotten War."  You can listen to a podcast of the event here.  (We'll note it next week.  I tried repeatedly to work it in this past week but there wasn't time.)


Judging by his writing, Patrick Cockburn has very little clue as to what took place at the Iraq Inquiry (or the work of Stop the War UK -- they were out in full force during the public testimony).  His paper "The Independent" didn't really cover the inquiry except for carrying angry outbursts passed off as columns by Tony Blair's online mistress John Rentoul.  And Cockburn had lost interest in Iraq at that point anyway.  He was filing on Afghanistan.  Just one more pretender -- pretending to give a damn about Iraq -- only to move on.

But while he seems lost about his own country with regards to Iraq, he's dead wrong about the US and should learn not to shoot his mouth off just to be thrilled by the sound of his voice.

He should also stop whining.  Like Sarah Jessica Parker says in Strangers With Candy, "Anyway, my point is, Jerri, somebody's always got it worse."

Or maybe Maria McKee captures Patrick better?

Some people want and want what they don't have
'Til it keeps 'em awake at night in their bed just twitchin'
Some people like to complain about every little thing 
Some folks just never stop bitchin'
-- "Why Wasn't I More Grateful (When Life Was Sweet)," written by Bruce Brody, Marvin Etzioni and Maria McKee, first appears on McKee's You've Gotta Sin To Get Saved


Regardless, the US government has demonstrated no willingness to admit mistakes, let alone learn from them.  Nor has the US press.  Keep smoking what you're smoking, Patrick, but don't confuse what's appearing before your eyes with reality.






It's over, I'm done writing songs about love
There's a war going on
So I'm holding my gun with a strap and a glove
And I'm writing a song about war
And it goes
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Oh oh oh oh
-- "I Hate The War" (written by Greg Goldberg, on The Ballet's Mattachine!)


The number of US service members the Dept of Defense states died in the Iraq War is [PDF format warning] 4488.



The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.


iraq
i hate the war
the ballet

Iraq snapshot

Friday, June 14, 2013.  Chaos and violence continue, the US government continues to send billions to Iraq and without any oversight, Barbara Boxer has no concern for the Iraqi people but it 'fretting' alleged human rights abuses in Russia, US President Ben Rhodes declares that the US will back the so-called 'rebels' in Syria, Datagate continues and exposes just how ugly and self-righteous so many members of the US Congress are, the IRS lie to Congress that it was 'rogue' employees in Cleveland who were behind the targeting of political groups falls apart, and more.


Yesterday, a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee held a hearing on human rights in Russia.  Why?  Because we're all so damn concerned about human rights?  Please.  Russia is blocking the US on the United Nations' Security Council with regards to Syria.  The hearing was little more than mua roi nuoc (a centuries old Vietnamese tradition of water puppetry).  In that hearing, you have everything that is wrong with the United States government.  Resources are wasted not just to allow the government to poke their nose in everything, resources are used to penalize anyone who doesn't fall in line with the US government.  Resources are wasted to defocus and ignore pressing US issues. That hearing was  a Subcommittee hearing and presiding was the always ridiculous Senator Barbara Boxer.

Committee Chair Robert Menedez is also becoming a joke -- not because the US Justice Dept stayed silent, until after the senator's November re-election, on Menedez' employment of a criminal who also happened to be a foreign national and undocumented worker.  Menedez is a joke because he wastes US tax dollars and refuses to do his job.  He only holds hearing on human rights if it's a country that the US is in conflict with.


Syria?  Oh, yeah, Menedez can schedule a hearing on that.  He can waste all of our time on that.  Where's the hearing on Iraq? 


The US taxpayer isn't watching millions of US tax dollars be spent in Russia each day.  But, among foreign countries, the biggest budget item for the State Dept, billions each year, is Iraq.  So where's the Iraq hearing.  None so far in June and none on the schedule.  None in May.  None in April. None in March.  None in February.  None in January.

In the [PDF format warning] "Department of State and Other International Programs" Fiscal Year 2014 budget issued by the White House,

* Includes $6.8 billion for the frontline states of Iraq ($2.1 billion), Afghanistan ($3.4 billion), and Pakistan ($1.4 billion), including $3 billion in base funding and $3.8 billion in Overseas Contingency Operations funding.  The Budget prioritizes core diplomatic and development activities to ensure strong, lasting partnerships with these countries and to promote stability.

* The Budget continues to support U.S. security, diplomatic and development goals in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq while scaling down funding for operations and assistance, consistent with U.S. policy.

Now that's just some of what the State Dept wants for Iraq.  Let's move over to DoD.  DoD's requesting money for Iraq in Fiscal Year 2014.  Just for the Office of Security Cooperation - Iraq?
"Addendum A Overseas Contingency Operations" explains to us the amount is $200,000,000.   Although they make it much smaller by repeatedly referring to it -- not just in tables, which would be understandable, but in text as well -- as ".2" -- because they're doing billions (in tables, there's no excuse for rendering that way in text).  200 million dollars. 

What could 200 million dollars do in US cities in the next fiscal year?  It's just part of what the Defense Dept 'needs' in Iraq -- you know, the country the press and White House press secretary keeps insisting the war is over in.   It's noted, "The OSC-I is the critical Defense component of the U.S. Mission Iraq and a foundational element of our long-term strategic partnership with Iraq."   This doesn't cover the Special Ops troops in Iraq or the 'counter-terrorism' efforts in Iraq.

No one will see that money spent in the United States and, apparently, Congress will provide no oversight as it is spent overseas.

That is their job, to provide oversight.  Not only has Menedez  failed to provide oversight on Iraq, he's failed to provide oversight on the State Dept.  This week's scandal about alleged wide-spread use of prostitution by State Dept officials and employees, pedophilia by the same and a drug ring that State supposedly ran in Iraq (runs in Iraq?), have gotten no attention from the Menedez.

As someone who reads the Iraqi press, let me steal Barack's "let me be clear," you get off your damn ass and you clear up the drug thing immediately.  Iraqi media has been covering an alleged huge increase in drugs for several years now.  Smart representatives of the US government would hear rumors of an alleged US State Dept drug ring in Iraq and say, "Damn, we better investigate this real quick before the rumors spread and Iraqis are saying, 'They brought drugs into our country!'  If we don't get to the bottom of this immediately, then -- true or false -- this is going to be another 'CIA brought cocaine in' scandal!"

That's when you provide oversight -- not just because the truth needs to be known but also, in case the rumors are completely unfounded, so that you can kill them quickly before they spread like wildfire.  Now why might there be a scandal on this?

Maybe because there's no Inspector General for the State Dept?

Mendez is aware of it.  With the Committee's Ranking Member Bob Corker, he drafted a letter to the White House on that this week:


We are deeply concerned that the two lead agencies carrying out the international programs and activities of the United States, the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), have been operating without permanent Inspectors General for a considerable period of time. The Department of State has not had an Inspector General since 2008 and USAID has had a vacancy since 2011. Inspectors General play a crucial role in identifying ineffective programs, process weaknesses, and wasteful spending that undermine public confidence in government.
It is critical that your administration provide this committee with highly qualified nominees who can function independently and objectively in these positions in the near future. In a recent hearing before this committee, Secretary Kerry testified that he would like to see the Department of State’s Inspector General vacancy filled quickly and noted that the White House had recently selected a highly qualified nominee. It has been over a month since that hearing and we await the nomination.
It is vitally important that the Inspectors General are able to function independently and objectively. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has, since 2007, documented the lack of adherence to proper auditing standards and the lack of independence and autonomy within the Department of State’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). In particular, GAO has noted that the Office is led by “management and Foreign Service officials [, which] is not consistent with professional standards for independence;” the “use of Foreign Service Officers ... to lead OIG inspections resulted in, at a minimum, the appearance of independence impairment;” and the “OIG relied on inspections rather than audits to provide oversight coverage resulting in gaps to the audit oversight of the department.” It is imperative that the next Inspector General at the Department of State resolves these matters and protects the independence and credibility of the OIG.


When there are no IGs and there is scandal and you're the Committee over the State Dept, you call for hearings.  You put Russia and the other Executive Branch grudge f**ks on hold and you provide the supervision that's lacking.

Protests have been ongoing in Iraq since December 21st.  The protests continued today.  Iraqi Spring MC noted the turnout in Baquba and that the spokesperson for those with special needs stated, "Disability will not keep us from rejecting injustice, tyranny and government repression."  Iraqi Spring MC also notes that the people turned out in Baghdad and in Ramadi.  National Iraq News Agency reports, "Thousands of citizens flocked since early hours of the day from from different parts and cities of Anbar Province to sit-ins of Falluja and Ramadi, to participate in Friday unified prayer."  NINA also notes police were deployed and set up checkpoints in Falluja and Ramadi, imposing "tight security measures in the sit-ins squares."  Iraqi Spring MC reports that Nouri's forces surrounded the platform at the Baquba sit-in in an attempt to frighten the protesters.  NINA notes that in Samarra, Imam Diab Hamid called on the security forces to stop using security forces against the people and the Imam told the demonstrators that "several weeks ago you voted to replace UN representative in Iraq, Martin Kobler, and now the oppressor has been relieved of his post" (UN Secretary-General announced this week Kobler will be moving onto the Congo).  The Imam congratulated the protesters on their peaceful accomplishments.  In Diyala the call was to preserve the unity and security.   In Balad Ruz, there was the call to continue the peaceful sit-ins.  In addition, Kitabat reports that in Ramadi there is a call for Nouri al-Maliki to come to the sit-in and dialogue with the protesters.


What sparked this wave of protests?  Oh, the Senate Foreign Affairs has never seen fit to explore that or acknowledge what's taking place in Iraq.  That would be oversight and, under Menedez, they don't do oversight.  It's sad that the Committee Vice President Joe Biden once led could, and did, in 2008, explore that the future of Iraq might mean Nouri using weapons on his own people.  That's come to pass, that's no longer a projection or a prediction.  And it's come to pass without any oversight from the Committee that Senator Robert Menedez chairs.


Why the protests?  The failure to implement the power-sharing agreement (the US-brokered Erbil Agreement) that ended the eight-month plus political stalemate of 2010.  The failure to fix public services (while spending billions on weapons).  The issue of the disappeared, Nouri's attacks on his political rivals in Iraqiya, and other longstanding issues.  But the spark that got people into the streets (again)?  Human Rights Watch's Sarah Leah Whitson:



 

 Following an outcry against revelations of abuse of women detainees and the arrest of several bodyguards of the popular Sunni finance minister, the government promised in January to reform the judicial system, including reviewing the cases of 6,000 people who have been detained but not tried or even ordered released, in some cases for years, under the country’s antiterrorism law, and initiating an inquiry into widespread allegations of forced confessions and reliance on secret informants.


And in addition to the abuse of females in Iraqi prisons, Nouri's forces have repeatedly attacked the protesters.  Most infamously there was the  Tuesday, April 23rd massacre of a sit-in in Hawija when Nouri's federal forces stormed it.  Alsumaria noted Kirkuk's Department of Health (Hawija is in Kirkuk)  announced 50 activists have died and 110 were injured in the assault.  UNICEF informed the world that 8 of the dead were children and twelve more children were left injured.


Neither Menedez nor Boxer felt the need to hold a hearing on that.  There concern for 'human rights' are based not on actual atrocities but on geography -- location, location, location!

Nouri's attacks on the protesters haven't stopped.  From yesterday's snapshot:

 Jason Ditz (Antiwar.com) notes:

The Iraqi military’s violent attacks on Sunni Arab protesters weren’t the panacea that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was expecting them to be, but it also cost the army 1,070 troops, according to officials.
The troops, ethnic Kurds, mutinied when they were ordered to attack a Sunni Arab town where protests were taking place, and then refused to attend “disciplinary re-training” meant to ensure that they wouldn’t hesitate to attack Iraqi towns if ordered in the future.

AFP reports that Tuz Khurmatu Mayor Shallal Abdul explains the troops are still in their same positions, they're just now working for and paid by the Peshmerga -- the elite Kurdish fighting force.


 Nouri's attacks on the Iraqi people are so out of control that over a thousand members of the Iraqi military defect to the Peshmerga and that's not cause for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to hold a hearing on Iraq?

Tuesday, Human Rights Watch issued a call:

 Iraqi authorities should immediately investigate evidence that federal police executed four men and a 15-year-old boy on May 3, 2013, south of Mosul. Witnesses last saw the victims in the custody of the federal police 3rd Division, commanded by Gen. Mehdi Gharawi, who had been removed from his post as a federal police commander following claims he was implicated in torture and other abuses but was later reinstated.  Villagers found the bodies of the five in a field three kilometers from East Mustantiq village on May 11, near where federal police were seen taking them immediately after their arrest. A witness said the bodies had multiple large gunshot wounds, and machine gun shells were found in the vicinity. But photos leaked to the media by a police officer show police officers with the bodies in a less decomposed state than they were when the villagers found them.
"The apparent police role in the machine gun execution of four men and a boy requires an immediate investigation and the prosecution of those responsible," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "That these killings may have been committed by a unit under a commander once implicated in torture shows why abuses can’t be swept under the rug and forgotten."


When exactly is the Senate Foreign Relations Committee going to provide oversight on Iraq?

April set a record for the most violent deaths in Iraq in five years . . . until May came along and set a record for the most violent deaths in Iraq in five years.


 All Iraq News reports 1 Sahwa leader was shot dead outside his Shurqat home today.  NINA notes a Tikrit roadside bombing claimed the life of 1 police officer and left another injured, a Kirkuk bombing injured one police officer, and Nineveh Province candidate Muhannad Ghazi al-Murad was shot dead today as he left a mosque.  Alsumaria notes a bombing targeting an truck load of oil left one civilian dead. Through Thursday, Iraq Body Count counts 195 violent deaths so far for the month.

And no concern from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee?  Just waive the billions on through for next year, provide no oversight at all, right?

As they repeatedly fail to provide oversight, they do get that they look like a joke, right?  They do get that the world sees Iraq falling further apart (as a direct result of the US-led invasion) and sees talk of 'human rights' from the US as laughably hypocritical, right?

Here's a safe bet, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will ignore Iraq until well after the rumor takes hold -- true or false -- that the US State Dept was running drugs in Iraq and that's why Iraq has what the Iraqi press and people see as a drug crisis currently.

AFP reports, "Russia said on Friday that US data on the Syrian regime's alleged use of chemical weapons was 'unconvincing' and warned Washington against repeating the mistake it made when invading Iraq after falsely accusing Saddam Hussein of stocking weapons of mass destruction."  What are they talking about?


Thursday evening, US President Benjamin Rhodes announced that the US government would be spending US tax dollars to back the 'rebel's in Syria.  What's that?  Ben's not President of the United States?  That's right.  So why didn't Barack make the damn announcement.


 
Saad Abedine and Laura Smith-Spark (CNN) report:

The administration plans to share its findings with Congress and its allies, and it will make a decision about how to proceed "on our own timeline," Rhodes said.

The US is supposedly in the midst of a financial crisis -- food stamps are getting cut among other necessities -- and yet Beloved Barack feels free to commit more US tax dollars overseas without even checking with Congress which is supposed to control the purse.

 A line has been crossed, proxy President Ben Rhodes explained, Barack had decided.  Chemical weapons had been used!   You mean in March when the 'rebels' used them on the village of Khan al-Assad?

No, the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has used them!

It must be true because delightful "Deb" Amos told us so on Morning Edition (NPR) today: in a coffee clatch with Linda Wertheimer.  Excerpt.


WERTHEIMER: Deb, for the first time, the Obama administration appears to conclude that the Assad government has used nerve gas against rebels and against civilians. Administration officials say this is a clear crossing of the red line. What does that mean?

AMOS: Well, what we are seeing now for the first time, that the administration is in line with assessments in London and in Paris. The French have been far ahead of the administration on this issue. There were two French reporters who were on the ground who said that they saw chemical weapons being used. They brought out samples. In fact, there's been a rift with the French over this issue.  Now the Obama administration has been more forward in their assessments. They had been cautious. Government sources have been saying for some time that they did have this conclusive proof. Now that evidence has been made public, it's been shared with the Russians.


Poor ridiculous Linda, she tired herself out in the cooking segment (that's not a joke, the 'news' has fallen so on this crap awful NPR program that they now do cooking segments -- and not even good ones that educate, the whole point of the feature is to be ridiculous and provide laughter -- the dumbing down of America will be led by NPR). So, Deb explains, it's true, it's real and she knows it because "two French reporters" (and of course Barack -- by proxy) say so.  What a sad moment for the increasingly useless and unethical (see Ava and my feature Sunday at Third on how NPR's Morning Edition has yet again broken NPR guidelines) National 'Public' Radio. 

You know, one-time New York Times reporter Judith Miller saw herself as something of a 'chemical weapons' expert as well.  Maybe she'll save a seat for Deb Amos on the Fox News panel?  Matthew Schofield (McClatchy Newspapers) reports:



"It's not unlike Sherlock Holmes and the dog that didn’t bark," said Jean Pascal Zanders, a leading expert on chemical weapons who until recently was a senior research fellow at the European Union's Institute for Security Studies. "It's not just that we can’t prove a sarin attack, it's that we're not seeing what we would expect to see from a sarin attack."
Foremost among those missing items, Zanders said, are cellphone photos and videos of the attacks or the immediate aftermath.
"In a world where even the secret execution of Saddam Hussein was taped by someone, it doesn't make sense that we don't see videos, that we don't see photos, showing bodies of the dead, and the reddened faces and the bluish extremities of the affected," he said.


What a vast improvement over the stenography Lesley Clark offered this morning.  And before you think Matt's piece is an indication that McClatchy's trying to reclaim Knight Ridder's glory, read this nonsense by Hannah Allam that never questions the administration's claim.  Hannah makes herself a joke (although at least her peers aren't making fun of her online photo the way they're making fun of Nancy A. Youssef's Twitter photo which a New York Times reporter has gotten a ton of laughs for -- in a heavily circulated e-mail -- by comparing it to "an 80s Olan Mills glamour shot").  The job Hannah Allam can't do, Matthew Rothschild (The Progressive) does:

After saying in April that the evidence that Syria’s military used chemical weapons was inconclusive, the administration says now it’s clear, and the CIA estimates that between 100 to 150 Syrians were killed by sarin gas.
Who knows?
The CIA has lied to us all before, and the previous Administration went to enormous lengths to lie us into a war in Iraq.

So why this now?

One of the few sites that gathered the needed pre-war reporting on Iraq in real time was Information Clearing House.  It's also one of the few of that few that remains standing today.  A lot of people want to claim today that they did what ICH did but the reality is the others tended to run cover-your-ass pieces just in case it blew up.  ICH offered original analysis and rounded up some of the best available elsewhere online and provided a real public service.  So when the war drums start pounding, one of the first places you should go to find out what's really happening is Information Clearing House.   Shamus Cooke (ICC) explained yesterday:



The peace talks are dead because the U.S.-backed rebels are boycotting the negotiations, ruining any hope for peace, while threatening to turn an already-tragic disaster into a Yugoslavia-style catastrophe...or worse.
The U.S. backed rebels are not participating in the talks because they have nothing to gain from them, and everything to lose.
In war, the purpose of peace negotiations is to copy the situation on the battlefield and paste it to a treaty: the army winning the war enters negotiations from a dominant position, since its position is enforceable on the ground.
The U.S.-backed rebels would be entering peace talks broken and beaten, having been debilitated on the battlefield. The Syrian army has had a string of victories, pushing the rebels back to the border areas where they are protected by U.S. allies Turkey, Jordan, and northern Lebanon. Peace talks would merely expose this reality and end the war on terms dictated by the Syrian government. 



No, this isn't about peace.  It's about so-called 'rebels' losing.  Because they don't have popular support.  Two days ago, Finian Cunningham (Press TV via ICH) reported:


 Western-backed insurgents are being destroyed or routed from villages and towns across Syria as the Syrian army moves swiftly on to its next objective of freeing the country’s second major city, Aleppo, in the north. That clash may prove a more bloody and protracted fight than the three-week campaign to retake Qusayr. But, given their withering loss of fighters and the severance from key supply routes through Qusayr, the eventual defeat of insurgents in Aleppo looks all but assured.
The recapture of Aleppo, and shutting off the NATO weapons supply line from Turkey in the north, would then prove to be the last stand for the foreign-backed mercenaries. These mercenaries have been terrorizing Syria since March 2011 at the behest of NATO powers and their regional allies, including Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The Western agenda of regime change to oust President Bashar al-Assad is therefore, in a word, a dead letter.


For the US backing to come, the 'rebels' had to pretend to split with al Qadea in Iraq, which they made a pretense of doing earlier this week.  From Tuesday's snapshot, "The 'damage' has been that Jabhat al-Nusra has had 'funding' issues.  Governments wanting to support them -- the UK, the US -- are faced with questions by their citizens of why is the government supporting people who tried to kill US and UK service members in Iraq? [. . .] So if outrage wasn't alive over the assassination of a child and if funds weren't at risk, the Islamic State of Iraq would be as welcome in the 'rebel' camp as it was last week and the week before and the week before that and . . . "

BBC gathers a number of foreign policy types to explain what's at risk.  People like Joshua Landis who feels Barack "owes both the American and Syrian people a clear statement about what he sees as Syria's future borders, what kind of government he hopes to see in the future and how he will carry it out."  A clear statement?  He's failed to deliver any statement in the last 24 hours over the new 'policy.'  David Rieff's observations include:


What is clear is that, having insisted for more than two years that it was inevitable that Assad would fall, the Obama administration now realises its adolescent progress narrative about Syria as one of the last dominoes of the Arab Spring is so much liberal internationalist, human-rights-ist wishful thinking, and that outside military help for the Syrian rebellion is necessary not to ensure its victory but rather to stave off its defeat.
Why both liberal interventionists and neo-conservatives are so persuaded that overthrowing Assad and inflicting a defeat on Hezbollah is both a moral and a geo-strategic imperative, even if the effect is, as in Iraq, to evict Christianity from one of its homelands and make Syria safer for al-Qaeda, is a mystery to me.
But this, it seems, is what the consensus has become.

And CBS News reports (link is text and video):

CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer, who has reported extensively from inside Syria and has spoken with her contacts there following the Obama administration's decision, said it is "pretty much guaranteed" that some of the U.S.-supplied weapons will go astray, despite whatever safeguards the U.S. put in place.
"All sorts of methods have been discussed to keep track of [the weapons], right down to numbering the shells and distributing them to specific groups. But these groups fight with one another. [And] There's a thriving black market in arms. So it's going to be very hard - no, impossible - to keep track of them," Palmer said.


Changing gears, a number of e-mails to the public e-mail account ask about hearings this week when only one was reported on here.  As community members know, at least one hearing gets covered (by me) in the community newsletter.  But that's not really what's going on here.

In some cases, I'm just not in the mood.  Kat and I both went to the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing this week.  Committee Chair Bernie Sanders is still finding his 'chair' 'legs.'  And to report on that would be offering a host of examples that I'm just not in the mood for.  Here's one, I'm assuming he's setting the stage for two years from now if the VA has not gone paperless.  But I mean, using hearing time to kindly (and he was very kind about it) explain to the VA that you want regular updates on the progress on the move to paperless records?  I'm just not in the mood.  I've been too many VA hearings for this nonsense of let's be kind to the VA.  They've got a scandal with regards to text books (meeting the GI Bill students needs), they've got a huge scandal brewing in Atlanta and it was play footsie with the VA yet again?  I'm not in the mood.  And I'll give Sanders the benefit of the doubt because he is new to his position.  But I'm not in the mood to write about those hearings or about how another male senator needs to educate himself on MST (including learning the term) before he next speaks about it without grasping that that's what he's talking about.


There's the nonsense like Dianne Feinstein.   Fienstein's so busy trying to protect her own ass (she knew everything about the spying) that she can't do her damn job.  She didn't take an oath to the NSA.  She took an oath to "support and defend the Constitution."  Her failure to take her oath seriously is disgusting.  Don't get me started on that with regards to the Barbie Babbles Mikulski.  The apologists for the spying scandal are appalling.

Kirsten Powers (Daily Beast) has a strong column on this today -- on how Congress and others are embarrassing themselves and the country by attacking the whistle-blower Ed Snowden:


Margaret Kimberley (Black Agenda Report) was addressing it Wednesday:



 And the disgust with Congress is palatable.  You couldn't leave Wednesday's embarrassing hearing without hearing citizens talking about their level of disgust with Senators Dianne Feinstein, Dick Durbin, Babsie Babbles, Susan Collins and others.  As one man said, "What the hell is wrong with being a security guard?  That woman [Collins] and Durbin acted like it was the same as being a child molester!"  Exactly.  The spoiled and entitled let their true nature show.  They did it last week too.  And I pointed that out here.  Their concern was not about the citizens being spied upon.

Dropping back to the June 6th "Iraq snapshot,"


At today's Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Senator Mark Kirk estimated that this spying would have involved as many as 120 million phone calls.  (A key point Bamford made to Marco Werman was that raw data can be overwhelming and counter-productive to spying efforts.)  Kirk had one issue -- which was were members of Congress spied on.
 
Senator Mark Kirk:  I want to just ask, could you assure to us that no phones inside the Capitol were monitored -- of members of Congress.  That would give a future executive branch, if they started pulling this stuff, kind of a -- would give them unique leverage over the legislature?

Attorney General Eric Holder:   Uh, with all due respect, Senator, I don't think this is an appropriate setting for me to discuss, uhm,  that issue.  I'd be more than glad to come back in a -- in a appropriate setting to discuss, uh, the issues that you have raised but I -- in this open forum, I don't -- I do not

Senator Mark Kirk:  I would interrupt you and say that the correct answer would be:  "No, we stayed within our lane and I am assuring you that we did not spy on members of Congress."


Committee Chair Barbara Mikulski:  You know I'd like to suggest something here.  When I read the New York Times this morning, it was like, "Oh God, not one more thing."  And not one more thing where we're trying to protect America and it looks like we're spying on America.  I think the full Senate needs to get a briefing on this.

Kirk, Mikulski and Senator Richard Shelby all agreed it was an important question.  And it's important because it's them.  It's too bad that they don't feel it's important for non-members of Congress.  It's too bad that Mikulski's 'answer' is to call for a closed hearing.  It's too damn bad that she doesn't think the American people are owed answers.  Remember, in American now, 'democracy' translates as something that belongs only to elected members of Congress."



They're only concerned about themselves.  That's all they give a damn about, the people mentioned above.  It's wrong -- if they're spied on.  After they can get promises that they weren't spied on, it's a-okay.  And a security guard?  Oh, that is just so beneath them they can't relate.  What is it the idiot Dick Durbin said?  Dropping back to the June 12th snapshot for that from that day's Senate Appropriations Committee hearing:


Senator Dick Durbin:  I was on the intelligence community right at the time of 9-11. I saw what happened immediately afterwards.  There was a dramatic investment in intelligence resources for our nation, to keep us safe, a a dramatic investment in the personnel to execute the plan to keep us safe. I trusted, and I still do, that we were hiring the very best  -- trusting them to not only give us their best in terms of knowledge but also their loyalty to the country.  I'd like to ask you about one of those employees who is now in a Hong Kong hotel and what is as follows: He was a high school drop out, he was a community college drop out, he had a GED degree, he was injured in training for the US Army and had to leave as a result of that and he took a job as a security guard for the NSA in Maryland.  Shortly thereafter, he took a job for the CIA in what is characterized in the Guardian piece that was published.  At age 23, he was stationed in an undercover manner overseas for the CIA and was given clearance and access to a wide varray -- a wide array of classified documents.  At age 25, he went to work for a private contractor and most recently worked for Booz Allen, another private contractor, working for the government.  I'm trying to look at this resume and background.  It says he ended up earning somewhere between $122,000 and $200,00 a year.  [Fun facts: While 29-year-old Ed Snowden may have made $200,000 a year, 68-year-old Dick Durbin makes $174,000 a year as a senator.  Durbin hails from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and received his law degree from Georgetown University Law.] I'm trying to look at the resume background for this individual who had access to the highly classified material at such a young age with a limited educational and work experience, part of it as a security guard and ask if you were troubled that he was given that kind of opportunity to be so close to information that was critical to our security?


What is up with Dickless Durbin and his sneering at security guards?  What a world class piece of s**t Durbin has become.  And that's why I'm so disgusted.  The people's representatives aren't even pretending to relate the people anymore.  Cry baby Durbin, who cries in public, thinks he can look down on someone doing an honest job's work?  Who the hell does he think he is?  And Susan Collins was just as bad but with that voice that makes it sound like a goat's entered the Senate chamber.

 And, as Norman Solomon (ZNet) notes, you can't even count on so-called allies:

And how about speaking up for Edward Snowden while some in both parties on Capitol Hill are calling him a traitor and pronouncing him guilty of treason? Public mention of the virtues of his courageous whistleblowing seems to be a congressional bridge way too far.

It's just disgusting.   I'm at the hearings, there's just nothing I've seen as worth wasting my time to report on.  Back to the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing, I don't feel the need to rip apart Sanders while he acclimates to his new position as Chair in part because it's a natural process.  (I've said it before, Senator Patty Murray is the only one I've seen -- House or Senate -- become Chair of the Veterans Affairs Committee and hit the ground running.  Everyone else has had to feel their way into the position and find their own strengths.) And I also don't feel like ripping him apart because he may be the only one in the Senate besides Senator Rand Paul who's truly outraged about the spying on American citizens.  As Matthew Rothschild (The Progressive) explains:


Late on Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont introduced legislation to rein in the NSA and the FBI.
His bill is called S. 1168 and it says it is designed “to limit overbroad surveillance requests and expand reporting requirements.”


Justin Raimondo (Antiwar.com) has a great column where he both provides the term for this scandal (Datagate) and takes on a number of idiots.  If you're surprised that a number of 'left' voices are praising the spying on Americans, it's only because you weren't paying attention or you watched as people like Amy Goodman fawned over faux lefties.  Maybe next time, Amy Goodman, don't gush over a War Hawk -- and don't forget to tell your audience that 'groovy' Joshy Micah Marshall is a War Hawk who cheered war on Iraq.  Maybe then they'll know right away that sewage like JMM is never to be trusted?  Former CIA officer Michael Scheurer has an Information Clearing House piece outlining all of the current scandals of the White House and notes, "If Americans are surprised by Obama’s deliberate attack on the Constitution, they have only themselves to blame. From his first months in office, Barack Obama has consistently demonstrated his contempt for Americans and their Constitution, as well as an intention to have his administration -- and especially Attorney General Holder’s Justice Department -- treat them in a lying and lawless manner."

As he notes, one of those scandals is the targeting of political groups by the IRS which brings us to another embarrassing NPR moment.  If Tamara Keith and Melissa Block can each take their mouth of one of Barack Obama's balls, can they find time to explain the bulls**t they pulled today on All Things Considered?

The IRS scandal, you may remember, is the work of low level operatives in Cleveland, Ohio.  That's the lie the IRS officials appearing before Congress trot out.  Well, not Lois Lerner.  She appeared before Congress but refused to answer questions.  So the Congress has spoken at length to two employees out of the Cleveland office.  Tamara Keith is apparently the first reporter to be allowed to review all of the transcripts of the interviews.

What does she discover?  It wasn't two rouge employees and they had help from DC.  It goes to "mid-level IRS people in Washington, DC."  But she treats this as non-news and stresses it doesn't lead up to the White House.  I'm sorry, the claim was what?  The IRS officials told Congress it was low level employees -- apparently just two -- in Cleveland.  And it may have just been one because the outgoing acting IRS Commissioner told Congress that the person who got an oral warning might not actually have been involved.

I'm sorry if you've been at the hearings, you know this.  The revelation that the story now goes up to DC is the news.  You can bury it all you want.. You can even mock one of the two Cleveland employees for being "frustrated" (listen to Tamara do the drama on that term) with the Washington people.  But you can't call yourself a reporter while you've got your mouth around one of Barack's balls. 


One of the two people she saw transcripts on, Tammy The Former Husky Jeans Child Model explains, is non-political.  That doesn't mean one damn thing.  The IRS is supposed to be non-political.  If the IRS was used inappropriately -- in house or above the IRS -- the issue would not be the workers being political. The issue would be the targeting being political and the targeting went above the workers.  As Mike noted earlier this week -- about the same supposed non-political -- US House Rep Elijah Cummings looked like an idiot by presenting the non-political (actually apolitical) worker (same one that's in Tamara's story) as proof that there was no scandal here.  Repeating, the IRS workers are not supposed to be political, the IRS is not supposed to be political.  The fear with the targeting has always been that it was ordered and that was political.  What we now know is that what was told to the Congress was a lie.  The IRS repeatedly lied to the Congress claiming that it was just those two employees. That didn't go higher.  We now know it went to DC.  That's higher, that's more than two low-level 'rogue' employees.


And I'll go further, J. Russell George needs to be reprimanded.  Officially and in writing.  He's the IG who exposed this.  He refused to question superiors in the chain of command and he questioned the Cleveland workers with their superiors present.  That's not how you conduct an investigation and don't get me started on the months that the report lingered because someone was pursuing college classes.  I'm sorry, IG's not a part-time job.





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