Sunday, April 10, 2011

And the war drags on . . .

Well look what the cat coughed up. The worthless Raed Jarrar shows up at Pacific Free Press wanting your help, your help!!!! Jar-Jar Blinks is a damn-damn liar. No one should sign onto his crappy little letter when, all this time later, he still can't get his facts straight. He's a damn liar and apologist for Barack Obama, a cheap, little whore for Obama, in fact. Barack mattered more than Iraq to Jar-Jar so he helped disperse the peace crowds with lies. Yes, lies. He was informed repeatedly that he was wrong in his intepretation of the SOFA. (I damn well know that.) And he chose to brush off everyone (myself included) who attempted to get him to tell the truth. He lied. He whored. The only thing he can offer now is a public apology.

But cheap whores are rarely known for their ethics. So Raed shows up to say that the SOFA "requires that all the US troops to leave Iraq" -- no, he hasn't gotten better at English in all of his many years in the US. He wants you to know that was a "binding deadline." No, it wasn't. He's still lying, he's still whoring. We explained the SOFA the day the White House released it (Thanksgiving Day, 2008 -- and believe me, I had a lot better things to do that day, with a house full of guests, then get online and analyze the SOFA). Others didn't bother.

The invasion of Iraq is illegal. The continued occupation has always had legal cover. (Which may or may not make it illegal.) The cover at first came from the United Nations. The UN didn't authorize the invasion; however, they did, after the invasion, authorize the occupation. It was a yearly UN mandate which gave the US (and other foreign forces) the right to be on Iraqi soil. The UN madate had to be renewed each year. In 2006, Nouri renewed it without telling the Iraqi government. They found out after the fact (much after the fact) and the Parliament was outraged. (This 2006 renewal covered the calendar year 2007.) Nouri swore any renewal in 2007 would go before the Parliament. He renewed it in 2007 without telling the Iraqi parliament. (This 2007 renewal covered the calendar year 2008.)

In order to continue the war, the UN mandate could have been extended. But it caused problems for Nouri and it also caused problems for US corporations who needed Iraq to move out of UN receivership. So the SOFA was the new agreement.

The SOFA first and foremost did away with yearly renewals so that Nouri would only have to face outrage once over three years. The contract covered a three year period. It did not contain a "binding deadline." That's like saying the UN mandate had a deadline. The UN mandate gave authorization for one year. It could be extended (and was twice under Nouri) or it could be replaced with a new agreement (as it was with the SOFA).

Jar-Jar Blinks now counts the US as his home. But not apparently enough to learn the Constitution. Nor does he know contract law. The only thing Jar-Jar needs to do right now is to issue an apology for three years of lying, for three years of insisting the Iraq War was over -- as Iraqis died, as US service members died -- for three years of lying. There's no excuse for what he did. It is not and will not be forgotten.

All he cared about was getting Barack to be the president of his newly adopted home (Raed's newly adopted home, for any confused). Like that was going to help Iraqis? It didn't. It didn't help them one damn bit. And until Raed can take accountability for that, he needs to sit his tired ass down because we don't need to hear it. He was put in a position of trust and he misused that position, he abused the trust and he used his position to rally support for Barack. He's a cheap whore and we are not interested in anything from him until he takes accountability for his lies and for the years of war his lies have allowed.

Let's be real damn clear, in 2009, had George W. Bush been sworn in, the peace movement would have continued calling for an immediate end to the Iraq War. If in January 2009, Bush had sworn on a Bible that all troops would be out Iraq no later than January 1, 2012, the peace movement would have (rightly) responded, "Not damn good enough!" The cry was "Out of Iraq Now!" It was not "Out of Iraq When You Feel Like It!" But liars and whores like Raed Jarrar worked overtime to make this seem acceptable. It was unacceptable and had it been presented to the grassroots, it would have been off with Raed's head. The liars covered for Barack, they whored for him. (Raed also whored for Samantha Power in 2008, insisting she was a voice of peace -- despite all evidence to the contrary. Now, thanks to the Libyan War, the peace movement's been confronted with the ugly reality of Samantha Power.)

Jar-Jar, Leslie Cagan and others did immeasurable harm to the peace movement, to Iraqs, to Afghanis, to the world. They're not going to sneak back in. These little liars who whored for a Corporatist War Hawk are not going to show up now and think they can cut in line. They lied, they whored. And they damn well better grasp that I've spent forty-six, forty-nine weeks on the road each year talking about Iraq. Do they get that? Do they get what that means?

If they don't let me break it down for them. In 2009, I was booed several times for telling the truth about the SOFA (more than "several") which is fine. But in 2010, I didn't get booed once. In 2010, I wasn't alone in bringing up the names of those who backstabbed and betrayed the peace movement. In fact, that was usually the most lively exchange in every talk as people rushed to have a turn at naming the names of those who sold out the peace movement. While Jar-Jar and Leslie have been on their own little pleasure cruise, America's grassroots have been working and they are damn well aware, on campuses across the country, who whored and prolonged the Iraq War.

If what I say online bothers Raed (and it does), he better grasp that what's said on campuses (and not by me -- I do a dead-on impersonation of a certain northern, half-American, Barack groupie and I stick to lampooning her in numerous skits) about him is far worse than anything that's ever gone up here -- and the most vocal? Iraqi-Americans who see him as the ultimate betrayer of Iraq.



They're just there to try and make the people free,
But the way that they're doing it, it don't seem like that to me.
Just more blood-letting and misery and tears
That this poor country's known for the last twenty years,
And the war drags on.
-- words and lyrics by Mick Softly (available on Donovan's Fairytale)

Last Sunday, the number of US military people killed in the Iraq War since the start of the illegal war was 4444. Tonight? PDF format warning, DoD still lists the the number of Americans killed serving in Iraq at 4449. And AP notes another American soldier has died in Iraq and this "marks the sixth U.S. soldier to die in Iraq so far this month." If that's new to you, see last week's "5 US soldiers have died this month."

Staying with deaths, Mu Xuequan (Xinhua) reports:

U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been causing huge civilian casualties with 63 percent of some 109,000 people killed in the Iraq war being civilians, according to a report on the U.S. human rights record released on Sunday.

The figures were quoted from a WikiLeaks trove by the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2010, which was released by the Information Office of China's State Council in response to the country reports on Human Rights Practices for 2010 issued by the U.S. Department of State.

Anyone questioning the numbers because of the Chinese government being the source should factor in that China's had better intelligence in and on Iraq then the west has. That's throughout the Iraq War. The US State Dept has long known that as has Britian's Foreign Ministry.


Reuters notes a Baghdad roadside bombing left two people injured, a Baghdad roadside bombing injured four people and that a Baghdad attack on a goldsmith shop resulted in the deaths of the owner and his son. Margaret Griffis (Antiwar.com) notes 5 dead and twelve injured in today's violence.

In major news, Ma'ad Fayad (Aswat al-Iraq) reports:

Salim al-Husni, a key figure in the Iraqi Islamic Dawa Party under the leadership of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, has revealed that the party is preparing for a general conference for the leaders of the Islamic Dawa Party. He said that the conference will announce Al-Maliki's removal from the party, because of his "abuse of the principles and ideas adopted by the Islamic Dawa Party."
Al-Husni, who is the former editor of the Islamic Dawa Party's newspaper (Al-Jihad) during the 1980s, said that: "Al-Maliki has used the Islamic Dawa Party and transformed it into a bridge to power." He noted that: "the ideas and principles of our party are far from power-mongering. Instead, it is a cultural and mass party that is founded on the principle of serving people, rather than serving officials and covering up for them."


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