Iraq – Page 3 – praag.org

Dick Cheney says ‘far deadlier’ 9/11coming

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday predicted there would be an attack on the United States within the next decade that is “far deadlier” than the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Cheney has come under intense fire for his role in the devastation of Iraq.

“I doubt it,” Cheney told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, when asked if he thinks the U.S. would “get through this decade” without another “massive attack on the homeland.”

“I think there will be another attack. And the next time, I think it’s going to be far deadlier than the last one. Imagine what would happen if somebody could smuggle a nuclear device, put it in a shipping container, and drive it down the beltway outside Washington, D.C.”

Hewitt then asked Cheney if another attack would lead to “military rule” and the reconstitution of the U.S. government. Cheney detailed the “continuity of government” program, which he said was set up during the Cold War so that a “government in waiting” could be in place if necessary.

Fox News host Megyn Kelly grilled Cheney last week on his role in the Iraq War, after Cheney had co-bylined a Wall Street Journal op-ed with his daughter, Liz, trying to portray himself as an innocent party to the destruction of Iraq.

Cheney and GeorgeW Bush used 9/11 as an excuse to bomb Iraq “because they had WMD’s”. No WMD’s were ever found.

Many actually view Cheney as one of the architects of 9/11.

Source: Business Insider

John McCain selfie with ISIS posted

On Memorial Day in 2013, John McCain, senior United States Senator from Arizona and Republican presidential nominee in 2008, went on a secret trip to Syria to meet with the rebels who were fighting against Bassar Assad.

At the time, McCain described his visit as ‘moving.’ During an appearance on CNN, McCain elaborated on his experience.

“It was a very moving experience to meet these fighters who have been struggling now for over two years. And they’re very aware of the battlefield situation and they’re very disturbed about the dramatic influx of Hezbollah fighters, more Iranians, and of course, stepped-up activities of Bashar Assad.”

McCain posed for pictures with these rebels, smiling as the camera snapped. Now, ISIS, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria formerly known as Al Qaeda in Iraq, is using those pictures as a campaign ad.

The ISIS terrorists are thus using Republican politicians to advance their cause.

Source: TPNN

Judge who sentenced Saddam murdered by ISIS

After the second invasion of Iraq in 2006 found no WMD’s – the pretext for the invasion in the first place – the Americans settled for the kangaroo court trial of Saddam Hussein.

Quick to announce “mission accomplished” then, recent events however have made a mockery of that claim.

As part of its blitz-campaign to take over northern Iraq, ISIS found and then promptly executed Rauf Rashid Abd al-Rahman, the judge who sentenced Saddam to death – a death which was crowning moment of the second US invasion of Iraq, and the confirmation of successful US foreign policy.

It goes without saying that if local reports are true, the man who indirectly did the US bidding in slamming the book shut on the Saddam regime and Iraqi “liberation”, has met with poetic justice.

As LiveLeak first reported, Rauf Rashid Abd al-Rahman was the replacement chief judge of the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal’s Al-Dujail trial of Saddam Hussein in 2006. His background, from Wikipedia:

Abd al-Rahman was an ethnic Kurd from Halabja. He replaced Rizgar Mohammed Amin as chief judge on 23 January 2006. Amin had resigned after being criticised in the Iraqi media for appearing “too soft” on the defendants by allowing them to speak aloud in court without being recognized. After Amin’s resignation, Abd al-Rahman headed the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal during the rest of the trial of Saddam Hussein and when it sentenced him to death. He also sentenced to death some of his top aides. In December 2006, Abd al-Rahman took his family to Britain on a travel visa, and three months later applied for asylum. He later cancelled his application. In 16 June 2014, Abd al-Rahman was arrested by ISIS rebels during 2014 Northern Iraq offensive. Two days later, it was reported that ISIS captured and executed him.

Oil price hikes are manufactured

Today’s double dose of codswallop is the oil price.

Turmoil in Iraq is the predictable last chapter of the fiasco that began with a pack of lies about atomic bicycles from Dubya and Blair. Same old same old: US goes on silly half-baked venture, UK crawls up its backside, West gets bored, Islamists sit quietly waiting for laurel-resting….and then move back in.

But it’s the idea that crude oil prices have been “boosted” by the unsettled Iraqi situation that strikes me as complete poppycock. While Iraq has probably the world’s largest untapped oil reserves, it still has eleven producers ahead of it – and with the world careering towards recession aka slump, 9% of total output isn’t any kind of game changer….even if disruption were to be 100%…um, as it was when the Blair-Dubya Grand Alliance gave us all Schlockanawe.

No, the price has gone up because (1) Bourses overreact to everything – or ignore everything – depending on whether we’re talking QE or oil; and (2) the smart aka crooked money got in there first and directionalised the saps.

Remember, dark pool, algorithmic and/or speed-of-light trading (they overlap) is estimated to account for around 2 in 5 trades on the NYSE today. Or using another dimension of market concentration, just six firms on Wall Street account for 33% of all trades:

Markets are no longer there to raise money for dynamic businesses, they exist to make money for banking firms and their vaguely defined ‘clients’.

All these firms know the numbers. Their job is to suggest danger to the nervous, get them to buy, wait for the truth to dawn…and then buy back at a price lower than where they sold.

The practice contributes nothing to the real economy, but quite a lot to the unreal bonus.

If you want to see some really significant moves on this front, then look at Venezuela and Ukraine.

It’s another reason why Bourse-obsessed capitalism is on the skids.

http://investmentwatchblog.com/

Don’t Know Shiite From Shinola

…where there was once oppression and order, there is now only chaos and carnage.

Almost unanimous on the right is the mystifying notion that a reduced American footprint in the world, President Barack Obama’s doing, has brought about the “sudden” eruption across Iraq of a particularly savage faction of Sunni fundamentalists called the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). This small band of zealots has conquered a third of Iraq, including the metropolis of Mosul, from which 500,000 residents have fled. Tikrit too is under ISIS control. Fallujah fell in January.

Odd too is the idea that ISIS, currently barreling toward the capital, Baghdad, is somehow a new killer on the block. While the gang, led by newcomer Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is not as ancient as the Egyptian goddess by the same name—ISIS was previously known as Al Qaida in Iraq (A.Q.I.), reflecting its earlier, more modest mission. A.Q.I. was the brainchild of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, described aptly in the New Yorker as, “A Jordanian who had been a convicted thief and sex criminal before turning to radical Islam.” Commensurate with its morphing, expansive ambitions, A.Q.I. changed its name to ISIS. Whereas “Al Qaida was originally envisioned as a kind of Sunni foreign legion, which would defend Muslim lands from Western occupation,” writes New Yorker staffer Lawrence Wright, “Zarqawi had a different goal in mind. He hoped to provoke an Islamic civil war.” George W. Bush’s invasion primed Iraq for Zarqawi’s purposes. “There was no better venue than the fractured state of Iraq, which sits astride the Sunni-Shiite fault line.”

So savage and extreme is ISIS, always has been, that it had been “booted out of the Al Qaida consortium,” attests Wright. Remember the “Dear Al (Zarqawi)” letter penned by Ayman al-Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in 2005? In it, Bin Laden’s Capo Bastone (Zawahiri) had asked the lieutenant (Zarqawi) to reconsider the wisdom of slaughtering so many Shia civilians in Iraq. Al-Z No. 1 broached the topic by counseling Al-Z No. 2 about the wisdom of bringing “the Muslim masses to the mujahed movement.” To that end, killing so many of them was probably unhelpful. Yes, the Shia are a handful—theologically problematic—conceded Zawahiri. Suspect too was the Shia’s history of “connivance with the Crusaders.” But while Zawahiri didn’t give a dried camel’s hump about his Shia brethren, he thought better of slaughtering them, preferring to forgive their “ignorance.” Besides, added Zawahiri as an afterthought, it’s impossible for the mujahedeen to kill all Iraq’s Shia.

While Zarqawi rejected Zawahiri’s soft approach, his personal odyssey has a happy ending. Zarqawi died, killed by Americans in 2006. But his legacy, like that of Bush’s invasion of Iraq, lives on in ISIS. Shia Iran, once a bitter enemy of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, now has pride-of-place in the Iraq that Bush built. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been galvanized to the aid of the Iraqi army. But it is not the 930,000 members of the Iraqi security forces that the Revolutionary Guard aims to rouse. Despite the princely sums ($25 billion) Americans spent to train and prepare it, in Mosul, this inorganic, artificial creation of the Bush brigades fled before 1,300 ISIS fighters. To fight the marauding Sunnis, the Revolutionary Guard will likely corral well-motivated, tribal Shia militias. (In Iraq, Shiites make up about sixty percent of the population. Sunnis comprise less than twenty percent.)

It is this cauldron of sectarian strife that Saddam Hussein kept from bubbling over.

What’s unfolding in Iraq, with ISIS, is no more than a progression along a predictable continuum, the starting point of which was an American occupation that unseated an extremely effective law-and-order leader: Saddam Hussein. Consequently, where there was once oppression and order, there is now only chaos and carnage. The lawlessness we brought to Iraq with our messianic, faith-based initiative has allowed the manifestation of divisions that have riven the region for four millennia.

As this column predicted in 2007, “Once we decamp, some Saddam-like strongman will fill the power vacuum left. The dictator to emerge from the ruins of Iraq will impose Sharia, pray to the hidden Imam, and compel women to walk about in black nose bags. We had it good with Saddam because he was secular, an enemy of fundamentalist Islam. Can we have back what, in our folly, we fouled up? No.”

There is little reason for me to hope to impart something new about the predictable progression of Iraq from (sectarian) rogue state to failed state to Islamic state, in the wake of the American occupation. There is no reason to expect me to best a column dated December 2006, titled “At Least Saddam Kept Order”:

“… If Iraqis appear ungrateful or disoriented, it is because they are busy … busy dying at rates many times higher than under Saddam. In the final days of Saddam’s reign of terror, i.e., in the 15 months preceding the invasion, the primary causes of death in Iraq were natural: “heart attack, stroke and chronic illness,” as The Lancet reported. Since Iraq became a Bush object lesson, the primary cause of death has been violence. …
… Hussein’s reign was one of the more peaceful periods in the history of this fractious people. What a shame it’s too late to dust Saddam off, give him a sponge bath, and beg him to restore law and order to Iraq.
Secretly, that’s what anyone with a head and a heart would want. We could promise solemnly never to mess with him again—just so long as he kept his mitts off nukes, continued to check Iran (which he did splendidly), and minimized massacres. To be fair, Saddam’s last major massacre was in 1991, during which only 3,000 Shiites were murdered. That’s less than Iraq’s monthly quota under “democracy.”
No one is praising Saddam, yada, yada, yada. But even the Saddam-equals-Hitler crowd cannot but agree that Iraq was not a lawless society prior to our faith-based intervention. Even the war’s enablers must finally admit that under our ministrations Iraq has gone from a secular to a religious country; from rogue to failed state.
Put yourself in the worn-out shoes of this sad, pathetic people. Would you rather live under Saddam—who was a brutal dictator, but did provide Iraq with one of the foundations of civilization: order—or under a force made up of ideological terrorists, feuding warlords, and an “Ali Baba” element, all running rampant because they can, and where not even mosques provide a safe haven from these brutes and their bombs?”

“Iraq has slipped back into chaos,” huffed one of Fox News’ interchangeable commentators, who, heretofore, had been oblivious to the pal of despair that has engulfed this Gulf state; to the Christian community’s near annihilation; to the millions of displaced Iraqis, refugees living in squalor within and without their country, all since Bush sicced the dogs of war on it.

“I wish the Americans had never come,” Baghdadi Mohammed Rejeb told veteran war correspondent Arwa Damon, a decade after the American Nakba (catastrophe). “They ruined our country. They planted divisions. They made us cry for the days of Saddam Hussein.” Wept another Iraqi woman, on that anniversary: “I lost hope six to seven months ago. You don’t feel it’s home anymore.” One after another, Iraqis all speak of the “corruption, suspicion and tribalism” that have seeped into civil society since the invasion.

No. Iraq hasn’t suddenly “slipped back into” this backward and benighted state. It was bombed there by a mulish military power which didn’t know Shiite from Shinola.

[followbutton username=’IlanaMercer’ count=’true’ lang=’en’ theme=’light’]

Like Ilana Mercer’s Facebook page

ISIS Inc, Jihadists attract investors

The notorious ISIS, which has been slicing through Iraq moving closer to Baghdad, behaves like a big corporation, issuing press releases to create an image of a well-structured, disciplined and effective organization to attract investors and new members.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL), which has made lightning advances against government forces seizing key cities, is determined to sweep towards Baghdad.

In just a few days ISIS fighters have almost reached the Iraqi capital, killing scores of people along the way. During the US-led invasion of the country it took the allied forces 22 days to reach Baghdad.

ISIS emerged back in 2004 following the chaos of invasion from radical Sunni jihadists, whose main objective is to establish an Islamic caliphate based on Sharia law.

Manipulating religions tensions in the country between Shias and Sunnis, they were able to unite followers of Saddam Hussein Ba’ath party, a Sunni dominant force. By 2011, ISIS militants regrouped after Nouri al-Maliki’s government released high-profile members of the militant movement.

Today ISIS claims to have over 15,000 fighters most of who are thought to be from neighboring middle eastern countries, but around 2,000 are believed to have come from Europe, including Britain.

In the militant’s own assessment, found in an annual report called al-Naba, or “the news”, ISIS boasts of its destructive force. A regurgitated version of the report, covering the period of November 2012 to November 2013, is offered by the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

Originally in Arabic the 400 page long document was initially published by the I’tisaam Media Foundation. It is also the second known ISIS release advertising their bloody rampage in Iraq.

The Institute for the Study of War summary also claims that “From the period of April 2013 through to the present, ISIS has been operating in Syria as well, though the distinctions between their military operations in Iraq and Syria is the subject of ongoing study at ISW.”

In its conclusion, the institute believed the organization is making several nation-wide changes to its tactics. “This is a strong indication of a unified, coherent leadership structure that commands from the top down.”

The report has been described as “almost like a company with details of martyrdom operations and targets,” by Nigel Inkster, former assistant chief of UK intelligence service MI6, in an interview to the Financial Times. “You have a clear overlay of structure, planning and strategy to the organisation.”

“ISIS is an extension of Al-Qaeda. With American funds, now ISIS is killing Iraqis and planning to go for Baghdad and Iraqi Shiite shrines to settle an old score,” Elijah Abraham, an Iraqi Christian evangelist told Baptist Press. “Since 2009 with President Obama’s policies in the Middle East, there has also been a systematic cleansing of Christians in the Middle East.”

Washington which spent $25 billion to train Iraq’s security forces over the years, according to a report by the special inspector general on Iraq, now finds itself at ground zero – Islamists are taking over Iraq.

Source: RT

Violence in Iraq means huge profits

Three sales will put nearly $1 billion in the pockets of American defense contractors

U.S. companies are reaping big benefits from the Iraqi government’s battle with ISIS militias. Three sales, including some big-ticket items, announced last month will put nearly $1 billion in the pockets of American defense contractors if Congress approves the sales.

Beechcraft Defense Co. and eight other contractors are selling 24 AT-6C Texan II aircraft, plus spares and other equipment to Iraq. That deal is worth about $790 million. The plane is used for “light attack and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.”
AM General has a deal to send 200 of its venerable Humvees to help guard oil installations. The contract, which includes spares and equipment such as radios and machine gun mounts, is worth $101 million.
Raytheon has a $90-million deal for seven aerostats along with 14 Rapid Aerostat Initial Deployment (RAID) Tower systems to be used for command and control by the Iraqi military.

These are just the latest in a string of sales of military equipment to the Iraqi government. Others have included Stinger missiles, C-130J cargo planes, drones and patrol boats.

Since 2005, the U.S. government has provided more than $14 billion in military hardware, services and training to Iraq, according to Global Post. The Iraqi government is now requesting more equipment to battle the Sunni militias, which have taken over large swaths of the country, and American contractors stand to make even more money as the fighting progresses.

Source: All Gov.

Washington’s Iraq ‘Victory’

The citizens of the United States still do not know why their government destroyed Iraq.

The citizens of the United States still do not know why their government destroyed Iraq. “National Security” will prevent them from ever knowing. “National Security” is the cloak behind which hides the crimes of the US government.

George Herbert Walker Bush, a former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency who became President courtesy of being picked as Ronald Reagan’s Vice President, was the last restrained US President. When Bush the First attacked Iraq it was a limited operation, the goal of which was to evict Saddam Hussein from his annexation of Kuwait.

Kuwait was once a part of Iraq, but a Western colonial power created new political boundaries, as the Soviet Communist Party did in Ukraine. Kuwait emerged from Iraq as a small, independent oil kingdom.

According to reports, Kuwait was drilling at an angle across the Iraq/Kuwait border into Iraqi oil fields. On July 25, 1990, Saddam Hussein, with Iraqi troops massed on the border with Kuwait, asked President George H. W. Bush’s ambassador, April Glaspie, if the Bush administration had an opinion on the situation. Here is Ambassador Glaspie’s reply:

“We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960’s that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.”

According to this transcript, Saddam Hussein is further assured by high US government officials that Washington does not stand in his way in reunifying Iraq and putting a halt to a gangster family’s theft of Iraqi oil:

“At a Washington press conference called the next day, State Department spokesperson Margaret Tutweiler was asked by journalists:

‘Has the United States sent any type of diplomatic message to the Iraqis about putting 30,000 troops on the border with Kuwait? Has there been any type of protest communicated from the United States government?’

“to which she responded: ‘I’m entirely unaware of any such protest.’

“On July 31st, two days before the Iraqi invasion [of Kuwait], John Kelly, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs, testified to Congress that the ‘United States has no commitment to defend Kuwait and the U.S. has no intention of defending Kuwait if it is attacked by Iraq’.”

Was this an intentional a set-up of Saddam Hussein, or did the Iraqi takeover of Kuwait produce frantic calls from the Bush family’s Middle Eastern business associates?

Whatever explains the dramatic, sudden, total change of position of the US government, the result produced military action that fell short of war on Iraq itself.

From 1990 until 2003 Iraq was acceptable to the US government.

Suddenly, in 2003 Iraq was no longer acceptable. We don’t know why. We were told a passel of lies: Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that were a threat to America. The spectre of a “mushroom cloud over an American city” was raised by the National Security Advisor. The Secretary of State was sent to the UN with a collection of lies with which to build acceptance of US naked aggression against Iraq. The icing on the cake was the claim that Saddam Hussein’s secular government “had al Qaeda connections,” al Qaeda bearing the blame for 9/11.

As neither Congress nor the US media have any interest to know the reason for Washington’s about face on Iraq, the “Iraq Threat” will remain a mystery for Americans.

But the consequences of Washington’s destruction of the secular government of Saddam Hussein, a government that managed to hold Iraq together without the American-induced violence that has made the country a permanent war zone, has been ongoing years of violence on a level equal to, or in excess of, the violence associated with the US occupation of Iraq.

Washington is devoid of humanitarian concerns. Hegemony is Washington’s only concern. As in Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan,Yemen, Ukraine, Syria, and Iraq, Washington brings only death, and death is ongoing in Iraq.

On June 12, 500,000 residents of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, benefactors of Washington’s “freedom and democracy” liberation, fled the city as the American trained army collapsed and fled under al Qaeda attack. The Washington-installed government, fearing Baghdad is next, has asked Washington for air strikes against the al Qaeda troops. Tikrit and Kirkuk have also fallen. Iran has sent two battalions of Revolutionary Guards to protect the Washington-installed government in Baghdad.

(After this article was published, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani dismissed the widespread news reports–Wall Street Journal, World Tribune, The Guardian, Telegraph, CNBC, Daily Mail, Times of Israel, etc.–that Iran has sent troops to help the Iraqi government. Once again the Western media has created a false reality with false reports.)

Does anyone remember the propaganda that Washington had to overthrow Saddam Hussein in order to bring “freedom and democracy and women’s rights to Iraqis”? We had to defeat al Qaeda, which at the time was not present in Iraq, “over there before they came over here.”

Do you remember the neoconservative promises of a “cakewalk war” lasting only a few weeks, of the war only costing $70 billion to be paid out of Iraqi oil revenues, of George W. Bush’s economic advisor being fired for saying that the war would cost $200 billion? The true cost of the war was calculated by economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University budget expert Linda Bilmes who showed that the Iraqi war cost US taxpayers $3 trillion dollars, an expenditure that threatens the US social safety net.

Do you remember Washington’s promises that Iraq would be put on its feet by America as a democracy in which everyone would be safe and women would have rights?

What is the situation today?

Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, has just been overrun by al Qaeda forces. These are the forces that Washington has claimed a number of times to have completely defeated.

These “defeated” forces now control Iraq’s second largest city and a number of provinces. The person Washington left in charge of Iraq is on his knees begging Washington for military help and air support against the Jihadist forces that the incompetent Bush regime unleashed in the Muslim world.

What Washington has done in Iraq and Libya, and is trying to do in Syria, is to destroy governments that kept Jihadists under control. Washington faces the prospect of a Jihadist government encompassing Iraq and Syria. The Neoconservative conquest of the Middle East is becoming an al Qaeda conquest.

Washington has opened Pandora’s Box. This is Washington’s accomplishment in the Middle East.

Even as Iraq falls to al Qaeda , Washington is supplying the al Qaeda forces attacking Syria with heavy weapons. It is demonized Iran that has sent troops to defend the Washington-installed regime in Baghdad! Is it possible for a country to look more foolish than Washington looks?

One conclusion that we can reach is that the arrogance and hubris that defines the US government has rendered Washington incapable of making a rational, logical decision. Megalomania rules in Washington.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

Obama announces sending US troops to Iraq

Tony Blair now tells the world that Western “inaction” in Syria has produced the Iraq crisis.

But since bombing Syria would have brought to power in Damascus the very Islamists who are now threatening Baghdad, it must therefore be only a mad person who considers his views.

President Obama certainly did not wince. He announced on Monday that US ground troops ‘equipped for combat’ are being sent to Iraq – just days after claiming that no American soldiers would be deployed to the war-ravaged country.

In a letter to Congress, the president said American troops will be returning to Iraq only three years after they left and their deployment began on Sunday.

The president told Congress that American military personnel in Baghdad will be ‘equipped for combat.’

It is instructive to contemplate what Blair’s rebel friends in Syria are up to.

Assad’s enemies are the same Nusra and al-Qaida fighters whom Blair’s bombing of Damascus would have helped and who now threaten Iraq’s existence.

Not to mention the recent attacks in Kenia.

Televangelist Pat Robertson on Monday blasted former President George W. Bush for selling Americans the Iraq invasion, which led to the violence that is currently sweeping across the country.

During his Monday broadcast, a viewer asked Robertson if there was a solution to the ongoing violence caused by an al Qaeda splinter group, ISIS, threatening to take over Iraq.

“Right now, what we did — and it was a great mistake to go in there,” Robertson explained, pointing out that Saddam Hussein’s “bomb maker” had said that the then-dictator “doesn’t know how to make an atomic bomb.”

And so to sell the American people on weapons of mass destruction, he had WMD and was getting [concentrated uranium] yellowcake out of Africa and all of that, it was a lot of nonsense,” the TV preacher said. “We were sold a bill of goods, we should never have gone into that country!”

“As bad as Saddam Hussein was, he held those warring factions in check, and he contained those radical Islamists,” he continued. “Fix it, no? It’s too late to fix it. It’s unfixable. Those simmering animosities have been there for centuries.”

Most people outside the US knew this before the ill-fated invasion.

The sudden implosion of the vast Iraqi Army of the Baghdad Puppet Regime constructed by the US is a timely warning of the fates of the other puppet states in the Muslim World: Afghanistan, Egypt, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE and lesser ones.

The whole Muslim World of one and a half billion people have turned overwhelmingly against the US and support guerrilla groups against the US.

Pakistan, a huge nuclear state with about 150 millon people quickly went from pro-US to fiercely anti-US over the annihilation of Afghanistan and the systematic drone attacks on Pakistani civilians.

Clearly American politicians understand money and funding, but have no grasp on geography or identity.

Al Qaeda loots Iraqi banks

As reported yesterday, in yet another humiliating blow to US foreign policy and the State Department, Al Qaeda-linked ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham) militants took over the key northern town of Mosul, where an unknown number of US-made Black Hawk helicopters were parked and have been captured by Al Qaeda (potentially the same forces that have been trained by the US across the border in Syria).

Adding insult to injury the Al Qaeda militants also appear to have looted some $429 million from local banks. From IBtimes:

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (Isis) has become the richest terror group ever after looting 500 billion Iraqi dinars – the equivalent of $429m (£256m) – from Mosul’s central bank, according to the regional governor.

Nineveh governor Atheel al-Nujaifi confirmed Kurdish televison reports that Isis militants had stolen millions from numerous banks across Mosul. A large quantity of gold bullion is also believed to have been stolen.

Following the siege of the country’s second city, the bounty collected by the group has left it richer than al-Qaeda itself and as wealthy as small nations such as Tonga, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and the Falkland Islands.

The financial assets that Isis now possess are likely to worsen the Iraqi governement’s struggle to defeat the insurgency, which is aimed at creating an Islamic state across the Syrian-Iraqi border.

In other words, now that it is armed with US-made weapons, this particular al-Qaeda group also happens to be the world’s richest terror force!

And so with all disposable cash it needs for a long time and armed to the teeth, what is Al Qaeda to do? Why continue expanding of course. Moments ago, via Reuters, we got confirmation that the “insurgents” have just captured yet another symbolic Iraqi town, Tikrit: the birthplace of none other than Saddam.

Sunni insurgents overran parts of the Iraqi city of Tikrit on Wednesday, security sources said.

Tikrit, which is located 150 km (95 miles) north of Baghdad, is the hometown of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Will they stop here? Of course not. Expect the ISIS force to continue south until finally it overruns Baghdad itself and until all of Iraq, courtesy of a crippled army, officially belongs to Al Qaeda. America’s job is done here.

One can’t wait until Al Qaeda is also in charge of all the other countries recently liberated by the US and/or CIA.

Source: Zero Hedge

John Major puts Blair on the spot over Iraq

Former Tory prime minister John Major insists his New Labour successor Tony Blair’s notes to president Bush should be released without being edited

Tony Blair was yesterday put on the spot over the Iraq inquiry by the man he defeated in 1997.

Former Tory Prime Minister John Major said Mr Blair should demand the release of all his secret notes to former US President George Bush in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

And he insisted Mr Blair alone had the power to make them public.

Sir John said censoring the papers meant suspicions about the Iraq War would “fester.” His intervention came after Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry into the invasion was branded a “whitewash” because it will only publish the “gist” of 25 notes and 130 taped talks between Mr Blair Mr Bush .

He slammed the Cabinet Office for withholding the documents, telling the BBC: “Firstly, it will leave suspicions unresolved and those suspicions will fester and maybe worsen. Secondly, withholding them is going to be very embarrassing for Tony Blair, not least because he brought in the Freedom of Information Act.”

He said rules keeping the papers secret could only be overturned if the former administration led by Mr Blair agreed. “I suppose it could approach them and say ‘we think it better if they release the papers,’ but the Government can’t do that, Mr Blair could.”

The release of the documents has delayed publication of the report which finished its public hearings in 2011.

At first the Government tried to block all papers between Blair and Bush amid fears it would upset the US and break a rule that Ministerial papers can only be published after 30 years.

After months of wrangling, the Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood said the inquiry can release extracts of Blair and Bush’s correspondence. Mr Bush’s views will not be revealed.

The move sparked fury, with Labour MP John McDonnell saying it confirmed “suspicions of a whitewash.”

Rose Gentle, whose son Gordon, 19, was killed in Iraq, said: “How will the families get to know the truth? We are just shoved aside. I think Tony Blair has a lot to do with the decision. He is laughing at us”. Tony Blair’s office refused to comment.

Source: The Mirror

I’m confused. Can anyone help me?

By Neil Clark.

Iraq mourning millions of their dead — Iraq mourning a million of their dead

I’m confused. A few weeks ago we were told in the West that people occupying government buildings in Ukraine was a very good thing. These people, we were told by our political leaders and elite media commentators, were ‘pro-democracy protestors’.

The US government warned the Ukrainian authorities against using force against these ’pro-democracy protestors’ even if, according to the pictures we saw, some of them were neo-Nazis who were throwing Molotov cocktails and other things at the police and smashing up statues and setting fire to buildings.

Now, just a few weeks later, we’re told that people occupying government buildings in Ukraine are not ‘pro-democracy protestors’ but ’terrorists’ or ’militants’.

Why was the occupation of government buildings in Ukraine a very good thing in January, but it is a very bad thing in April? Why was the use of force by the authorities against protestors completely unacceptable in January, but acceptable now? I repeat: I’m confused. Can anyone help me?

The anti-government protestors in Ukraine during the winter received visits from several prominent Western politicians, including US Senator John McCain, and Victoria Nuland, from the US State Department, who handed out cookies. But there have been very large anti-government protests in many Western European countries in recent weeks, which have received no such support, either from such figures or from elite Western media commentators. Nor have protestors received free cookies from officials at the US State Department.

Surely if they were so keen on anti-government street protests in Europe, and regarded them as the truest form of ’democracy’, McCain and Nuland would also be showing solidarity with street protestors in Madrid, Rome, Athens and Paris? I’m confused. Can anyone help me?

A few weeks ago I saw an interview with the US Secretary of State John Kerry who said, “You just don’t invade another country on phony pretexts in order to assert your interests.” But I seem to recall the US doing just that on more than one occasion in the past 20 years or so.

Have I misremembered the ’Iraq has WMDs claim’? Was I dreaming back in 2002 and early 2003 when politicians and neocon pundits came on TV every day to tell us plebs that we had to go to war with Iraq because of the threat posed by Saddam’s deadly arsenal? Why is having a democratic vote in Crimea on whether to rejoin Russia deemed worse than the brutal, murderous invasion of Iraq – an invasion which has led to the deaths of up to 1 million people? I’m confused. Can anyone help me?

We were also told by very serious-looking Western politicians and media ’experts’ that the Crimea referendum wasn’t valid because it was held under “military occupation.” But I’ve just been watching coverage of elections in Afghanistan, held under military occupation, which have been hailed by leading western figures, such as NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen as a “historic moment for Afghanistan”and a great success for “democracy.” Why is the Crimean vote dismissed, but the Afghanistan vote celebrated? I’m confused. Can anyone help me?

Syria too is rather baffling. We were and are told that radical Islamic terror groups pose the greatest threat to our peace, security and our ’way of life’ in the West. That Al-Qaeda and other such groups need to be destroyed: that we needed to have a relentless ’War on Terror’ against them. Yet in Syria, our leaders have been siding with such radical groups in their war against a secular government which respects the rights of religious minorities, including Christians.

When the bombs of Al-Qaeda or their affiliates go off in Syria and innocent people are killed there is no condemnation from our leaders: their only condemnation has been of the secular Syrian government which is fighting radical Islamists and which our leaders and elite media commentators are desperate to have toppled. I’m confused. Can anyone help me?

Then there’s gay rights. We are told that Russia is a very bad and backward country because it has passed a law against promoting homosexuality to minors. Yet our leaders who boycotted the Winter Olympics in Sochi because of this law visit Gulf states where homosexuals can be imprisoned or even executed, and warmly embrace the rulers there, making no mention of the issue of gay rights.

Surely the imprisonment or execution of gay people is far worse than a law which forbids promotion of homosexuality to minors? Why, if they are genuinely concerned about gay rights, do our leaders attack Russia and not countries that imprison or execute gay people? I’m confused. Can anyone help me?

We are told in lots of newspaper articles that the Hungarian ultra-nationalist party Jobbik is very bad and that its rise is a cause of great concern, even though it is not even in the government, or likely to be. But neo-Nazis and ultra-nationalists do hold positions in the new government of Ukraine, which our leaders in the West enthusiastically support and neo-Nazis and the far-right played a key role in the overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected government in February, a ‘revolution’ cheered on by the West. Why are ultra-nationalists and far-right groups unacceptable in Hungary but very acceptable in Ukraine? I’m confused. Can anyone help me?

We are told that Russia is an aggressive, imperialist power and that NATO’s concerns are about opposing the Russian ‘threat’. But I looked at the map the other day and while I could see lots of countries close to (and bordering) Russia that were members of NATO, the US-led military alliance whose members have bombed and attacked many countries in the last 15 years, I could not see any countries close to America that were part of a Russian-military alliance, or any Russian military bases or missiles situated in foreign countries bordering or close to the US. Yet Russia, we are told, is the ‘aggressive one’. I’m confused. Can anyone help me?

Source: RT

Anglican Church supports war crimes… again

Not only is Middle East “Peace Envoy”, Catholic convert and Butcher of Baghdad, Tony Blair gunning for another overthrow and mass destruction in Syria, he has recruited the son of an Archbishop to help him.

Not any old Archbishop either. Blair’s latest recruit is son of Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England, who heads both the Church of England and the eighty million member Anglican Communion worldwide.

Blair has given Peter Welby “a key role” in his mega-funded Faith Foundation as “a researcher for a new website … that will analyse the role of religion in conflicts around the world.” Perhaps enjoining, as George W. Bush put it, a “Crusade” against majority Muslim countries might be an angle worth pursuing.

Twenty three year old Welby is clearly a faithful Blairite, having already hawkishly warned of President Putin’s “annexation” of the Crimea and that the British Government: “would be wise to consider reversing some defence cuts …” As a “researcher” he clearly has a bit to learn, since the Crimean referendum with a 83.1% turn out and near 97% vote to cede to Russia had clearly passed him by.

He will surely fit well in his new post since the above exhibits a splendidly Blair-type mindset and abandonment scrutiny of facts – like weapons of mass destruction that can be unleashed “in forty five minutes.”

However, it is with Syria that he follows Blair’s line to the letter. The “Peace Envoy” embraces wars of aggression as a fish takes to proverbial water – courageously always traveling with an army of armed protection officers funded by the un-consulted British tax payer.

Blair’s determination to do for Syria what he did for Iraq is a litany, but here are a random four: Legality ditched again, he declared of President Assad: “He’s got to go …” (CBS 19th April 2012.)

“We’ve got to look very carefully to what more we can do to ratchet up the pressure on Assad … “ (BBC “Today” Programme, 17th September 2012.)

There would be: “ ‘catastrophic consequences’ if the West fails to arm Syrian rebels to defeat the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.” (Daily Telegraph 19th June 2013.) Blair either missed, or is cheering on, the unspeakable atrocities being committed by the (Western paid) foreign insurgents and terrorist groups.

As this was being written he popped up on the BBC’s “Today” Programme again, loftily attempting to justify the catastrophes of Afghanistan and Iraq in his “I’d do it all again” mode and saying of Syria that the strong opposition of the British people (he didn’t mention the “No” vote in Parliament) did not “invalidate” the need for action. As Stop the War put it: “We should invade Syria whether the British public want it or not.”

The cynic might ponder on whether, for a man for whom precious human lives lost in orders of magnitude are clearly very cheap indeed, there is an element of pay-back involved.

At the beginning of November 2001, three weeks after the invasion of Afghanistan, Blair went to visit President Assad: “the first ever visit to Damascus by a British leader, to enlist support for the bombing campaign. Instead he was subjected to a recital of … Western failures in the Middle East.”

Rather than gather support for the bombing, he “was forced to listen as the Syrian President heaped criticism on the killing of Afghan civilians.”

“We cannot accept what we see on television, the killing of innocent civilians, hundreds now dying every day”, Assad told Blair, adding that: “We are always against war” – and moreover, the West also placed little value on Arab lives.

Whatever Blair’s motives, Peter Welby is firmly on side. On 31st March he wrote, in an article for the Faith Foundation’s website: “Last week I went to a presentation by Emile Hokayem hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.” In a “fascinating” talk: “Hokayem argued that engagement must be with [jihadist] rebels more favourable to Western interests …”

In a ramble about the complexities of terrorist groups in Iraq and their travels between Iraq and Syria, there is no mention that they were never there before in secular Iraq and Syria and, as mentioned previously, literally came in with Bush and Blair’s tanks, in their illegal invasion, which also left all borders wide open for all comers.

Hokayem, writes Welby unquestioningly, thought Assad’s victory “improbable”, but his money is basically on the thugs and: “peace is unlikely until one group is sufficiently dominant to take the others with it.”

No mention of countless beheadings, including children, and of the numerous, unspeakable medieval atrocities meted out by these demonic, illegal immigrants.

In fact, even the Washington Post is of the view that President Assad’s tide is turning and that: “He is in a stronger position than ever before to quell the rebellion” and indeed, to win a third term in the upcoming elections.

One man is incandescent about the appointment of Peter Welby and has written to his father in no uncertain terms.

Nicholas Wood is author of “War Crime or Just War? The Case Against Blair”, a meticulous legal compilation of just that. Wood, is also Secretary of the Blair War Crimes Foundation. He writes:

The Archbishop of Canterbury.
Canterbury Cathedral

Dear Sir,

I enclose my book on Blair, and also a letter to the Prime Minister on his criminality. Though quite why I bother to pay the postage I don’t know.

I cannot comprehend that you are someone who is supposed to think every day of moral values but not realise that Blair is a very dangerous psychopath, who, as well as causing untold devastation and misery in Iraq, wishes to extend that violence into Syria and Iran.

If you read page 570 of his autobiography you might possibly see what I mean.

Referring to Blair’s advisory position to various heads of State, including Uzbekistan, of which former Ambassador Craig Murray blew the whistle on mind numbing torture, he states:

Your son will be benefiting, indirectly, of course, from money obtained from despots who boil their victims. This, under the guise of piety.

I was brought up as a child, a long time ago, to think of Thomas A Becket as a Saint, who resisted the power of a military state, and paid the price with his life. I cannot see you doing that.

I also was brought up to worship the medieval beauty of Canterbury, it’s stones and it’s stained glass. If stones could weep, they would be weeping now.

Yours faithfully, Nicholas Wood, MA.

Page 570 of Blair’s autobiography to which Wood refers contains a phrase which should surely grab the attention of any psychiatrist:

I had a vision for Britain. All the way I had believed I could and would persuade the country it was the right choice, the modern way, bigger than Iraq, bigger than the American Alliance, bigger than any one thing; a complete vision of where we should be in the early twenty first century; about how we finally overcome the greatness of our history to discover the full potential of our future.

“Bigger than Iraq”? The nearing two million deaths since 2003? The five million orphans, million widows. five million displaced? On to Syria, Iran?

Nicholas Wood says in succinct understatement:

I suggest that such a vision should be restrained before it is emulated and allowed free rein.

Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist with special knowledge of Iraq. Author, with Nikki van der Gaag, of Baghdad in the Great City series for World Almanac books, she has also been Senior Researcher for two Award winning documentaries on Iraq

Where’s America’s right to referendum, secession?

by Ilana Mercer

[followbutton username=’IlanaMercer’ count=’true’ lang=’en’ theme=’light’]

Like Ilana Mercer’s Facebook page

From a node in the neoconservative network, a Fox News studio, Charles Krauthammer has complained about the eviction of the Ukrainian Navy from the city of Sevastopol, where it was headquartered. Not a word did the commentator say about the city’s location: Sevastopol is on the Crimean Peninsula. It would appear that the city now falls within Crimean jurisdiction – starting March 16, the day the people of Crimea voted to secede from Ukraine.

By most estimates, between 97 and 93 percent of Crimean voters said yes to a reunion with Russia. High too was voter turnout. McClatchy pegs it at 83 percent of registered voters in Crimea. BBC News was agreed, also reporting a ballot of “more than 80 percent.” Zerohedge.com counted a “paltry” 73 percent turnout, still “higher than every U.S. presidential election since 1900.”

As rocker Ted Nugent might say, the Russians and Crimeans are blood brothers. Nugent got into trouble for using this perfectly proper appellation to describe his affinity for a politician, of all people: Texas Republican gubernatorial hopeful Greg Abbott. Notwithstanding that in the land of the terminally stupid, linguistic flourish can land one in hot water – blood brother is a good, if colorful, turn of phrase that denotes fealty between like-minded people. Steeped in state-enforced multiculturalism, America’s deracinated, self-anointed cognoscenti have a hard time grasping the blood-brother connections between the people of Russia and Crimea.

For no apparent reason other than that it is pro-Russian, Americans have reflexively aligned themselves against the swell for secession in southern Ukraine. Separatist referenda in Kosovo, Catalonia, South Sudan and Scotland have been accepted without demur by a political and media establishment unprepared to countenance a similar referendum in Crimea.

Guided by the pack animals of politics and punditry who seldom fail to shed darkness on whatever topic they tackle, a nation that struggles to locate the disputed territories on the map has been convinced of the menace posed by Russia. According to a CNN poll, 69 percent of Americans say they see Russia as a threat. A Rasmussen Report poll indicated that “52 percent support U.S. diplomatic action against Russia over Crimea.”

Helping to drive American Russophobia is the implacable logic exemplified by Bill O’Reilly of “The Factor,” yet another node in the network mentioned. At the suggestion that there are similarities between Russian and American military bellicosity, the TV host foams at the mouth. Fulmination is followed not by argument, but by a form of ad hominem or psychologizing.

It is absolutely verboten on this popular and powerful show to compare Russia’s “excursion” into Ukraine to America’s naturally illicit and illegal occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. In defense of their reflexive rejection of the reasonable, if inaccurate, comparison – for decades the U.S. has been far more aggressive than Russia in its forays abroad – Bill and his gang “argued” (on March 3) as follows:

President Vladimir Putin is a thug. That’s why his actions can’t be contrasted with the actions of “a good country” like the U.S. By “logical” extension, George Bush and Barack Obama are never to be fingered as thugs.

Why, Billy, some of you will inquire? Is it because these thugs are American? Precisely.

Next, Bill O’Reilly’s mind-reading gifts were galvanized to negate the juxtaposition of the actions on the ground of the Russian and American governments. Putin, it would appear, seeks the recrudescence of the Russian empire. On the other hand, the U.S., with a military presence in 148 countries and 900 bases worldwide, has neither sought nor achieved empire status.

Why, Billy, some of you will ask? Is it because the U.S. is a good country? You got it!

Be it in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Japan, Bahrain, Djibouti, South Korea, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and Kuwait – even Aruba, Iceland, Indonesia, Kenya, Norway and Peru – wherever it plants its military boot, a “good country” is never an empire, only a force for good.

Me, O’Reilly would dismiss as “anti-American.” But what of former secretary of state Henry Kissinger? While Kissinger has condemned Russia’s annexation of Crimea, he excoriated “the demonization of Vladimir Putin.” This antipathy “is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.” “The United States needs to avoid treating Russia as an aberrant to be patiently taught rules of conduct established by Washington,” wrote the statesman in the Washington Post.

Is Henry Kissinger anti-American or simply smarter than some Americans?

At least Secretary of State John Kerry hung on to his sense of humor. “Unless you are the United States of America, you just don’t invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests,” Kerry lectured the congenitally incurious David Gregory, of “Meet the Press.”

I ad-libbed. Except for the first eight words in quotation marks, Secretary Kerry did indeed say the foregoing. Given America’s military record, the missing words are implied.

The O’Reilly school of “thought” could – and does – counteract that Crimea’s vote to join Russia was tainted by fraud. This is certainly possible. Nevertheless, it is none of our business. Americans have their own tyrants to dethrone.

We’re supposed to be the freest people in the world, aren’t we? Is this claim not the moral basis for America’s we-know-best global meddling? But if we Americans are the freest people in the world, where’s our right to a referendum on, say, that “little” legislative “blip” called Obamacare? And if we’re so bleeding free, where’s our right to secede from D.C.?

[followbutton username=’IlanaMercer’ count=’true’ lang=’en’ theme=’light’]

Like Ilana Mercer’s Facebook page