Saturday, June 11, 2011

Camp Ashraf

Violence continued in Iraq today. Reuters notes 2 Mosul car bombings claimed 6 lives and left sixty injured, a Samarra home invasion resulted in the death of 1 teacher and 4 of his family members and "a local human rights NGO" activist was found in Abu Ghraib dead and headless. It's not noted but it was only last Sunday that Nouri al-Maliki was publicly calling NGOs terrorists.

Yesterday's snapshot did not include Dana Rohrabacher's alleged comments in Iraq. Jack Healy (New York Times) notes, "Meanwhile, Iraqi officials on Saturday bristled over published remarks from a visiting American congressman, Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, who suggested that Iraq should one day consider repaying the United States for the billions of dollars spent here."

They should repay.

That's not even controversial or shouldn't be.

A group of exiles, cowardly exiles, wanted someone else to invade and overthrow their home country's government. The US did that (with some help from the UK and Australia) and installed the newly-returned exiles into leadership. If you ask a government to kill somebody so you can have their job, you should expect to foot the bill. The Iraqi people don't owe the US a damn thing (but reparations should go the other way); however, the exiles who now run things should be paying.

Because they can use it to partisan bash, idiot assholes like Ben Armbruster and the rest of the trash at Think Progress run with the 'item.' That's the only Iraq gets noted by those assholes. But we didn't run with those remarks for a reason.

There was a big political situation in Iraq yesterday involving the US Congressional delegation. Though idiots like Ben Armbruster think they've found the story, that's not the story. Rohrabacher was very public in a recent Congressional hearing about how Nouri al-Maliki needed to answer about this year's assault on Camp Ashraf (what Senator John Kerry has publicly called a "massacre"). There's a lot of pretense on the part of lot of whining Iraqi MPs -- who return from their vaction tomorrow! and leave on vacation in August! and are as inept as Nouri al-Maliki since the security ministries still aren't filled -- that Rohrabacher's alleged remarks were outrageous. But Roy Gutman (McClatchy Newspapers) reports reality (pay attention, Ben Armbruster):

After a "very frank" exchange with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a prominent House Republican announced Friday his subcommittee is investigating whether forces under al-Maliki's command had committed a "crime against humanity" when they killed 35 Iranian dissidents at a camp north of Baghdad on April 8.
Responding to the assertions by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., al-Maliki asked the U.S. Embassy to remove the U.S. delegation from Iraq immediately, government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said on Alhurra television.

Tim Craig (Washington Post) reports that the delegation was refused the right to visit Camp Ashraf:

Rohrabacher, a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he will now press for a “criminal” probe of whether Iraq has mistreated the dissidents.

“We are investigating to see if criminal behavior caused the death of these noncombatants,” Rohrabacher said. “The killing of unarmed people . . . a mass killing . . . is a criminal act and a crime against humanity.”

And, for the record, if Think Progress had been right? That still wouldn't have been a reflection on any member of the US Congress. Had that been why Nouri ordered the delegation out that would have proven that Nouri al-Maliki is even worse than I think and I loathe Nouri. Grasp that, for just a moment. The Think Progress crew thought they could bash a US Congress member over a remark. When, had their facts been right, the real story would have been that Nouri had a meltdown and ordered a delegation out over disagreeing with an opinion. That's what Think Progress thought happened and they attacked a Republican because their knee jerk idiots. Had what they said happened actually happened, Think Progress should have been attacking the little dictator who didn't like an opinion he heard involving money.

How sad it must be to spend each day figuring out how you'll slant the latest story to make your side look good and the other side look bad.

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