Monday, September 12, 2011

Look who caved again

Oh, how I love my fan mail. Going through this morning's e-mails I see ____ (name at a publication, not a daily paper) wrote yesterday to curse at me over this Saturday entry. He wrote this morning to crow that obviously he had so cowed me with his e-mail that I was no longer posting online.

Oh, if only he had the power he thinks he does.

I'd already announced in the gina & krisa round-robin that I'd be starting late today. It is time for the regular check out re: breast cancer and, as I noted at in my column for the gina & krista round-robin, good for Andrea Mitchell for going public and I'm thrilled she's fine but it was really the last thing I needed to hear going into today's exam. (As if luck was finite and there's only X to go around. An irrational fear, I know, but I don't try to be rational ahead of these after the 2005 scare.)

The only thing the man's two e-mails did was make me laugh -- at how pathetic and stupid he was. I called out Stephen Walt and apparently that's a no-no. If Walt had bothered to inform himself before writing, I wouldn't have had to. I'm informed that I don't know that there wasn't "a single Sadrist present." No, I don't know that, nor did I claim that. *Walt falsely claimed that Sadr had called on his people to participate in Friday's demonstration and that they protested -- in fact, he ignored the Youth Activists who had planned the demonstration over a month ago and worked tirelessly to pull it off -- they are not Sadrists. Moqtada didn't participate and told his people not to. Walt was wrong and he got called out.* Live with it. Life does go on. Maybe next time your buddy will do a little research before advancing fantastical claims. [9-12-11: Starred sentence reworded for clarity at community member Jonah's request, original at back-up sites.]

If reality is still too much for you to grasp, grasp this report (it's in English, presumably you can follow that since you can't follow the reports in Arabic) from Alsumaria TV today: "Iraq's Sadr Front was due to stage a demonstration against Iraq's bad services few days ago. The rally however was delayed at the last minute. The party on the other hand called for a new demonstration to support and thank Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki's government for taking Sadrist demands into consideration. Sadrists' new stand surprised Al Iraqiya List which considered it as a shift that would benefit the government but would not satisfy the Iraqi people. This development wasn't the only change in Sadr Fronts positions lately. The party declared, one day earlier, the suspension of attacks against US troops."


Walt was wrong. Deal with it and it would probably be more therapeutic for you to do so in a way that doesn't involve the use of every slur including the c-word for women. But maybe that's just you revealing your courting skills?

Moqtada al-Sadr's latest move is completely in keeping with his history and I honestly question Ayad Allawi's skills of perception if he and Iraqiya are surprised by it. I would have thought that by now Allawi would have at least suspected that Sadr's periodic overtures were nothing but an attempt to discover what was being planned so he could then pass it on to Nouri. As noted here this summer, Moqtada honestly believes he will be the next prime minister of Iraq when elections are held in 2014 or 2015. (Elections could be held earlier. There's a move calling for early elections.) Nouri and his Iranian supporters have nurtured this belief. So why would Moqtada want to put that dream in jeopardy by helping to topple Nouri now and install someone who might not support him?

When protests were breaking out seriously in Iraq back in February, Moqtada showed up to throw water on them and insist (a) that his followers no participate and (b) that Nouri be given 100 days. The promise was that at the end of 100 days, if the goals were not met (provide basic services, end corruption, create jobs, etc.), Moqtada and his supporters would take to the streets. Around August 25th, Moqtada began making noises that his followers would take to the street. And then he bailed on that too.

Again, he barks very loudly but his fangs were removed long ago. Moqtada is a myth. He bullies and snarls and threatens but when it comes to action? He's rather limp.

In Iraq, Nouri's prime minister, Moqtada's First Lady. That says it all.

As for the e-mailer, I should actually thank ___ for his two e-mails. Not only did they make me laugh, they gave me a focus after staring at the screen wondering what to cover this morning? We'll do withdrawal and the Erbil Agreement in the next entry. It will go up slowly, I'm sure.

We'll close with this from Sherwood Ross' "Was President George W. Bush Complicit in 9/11?" (MWC News):

Questions about Bush’s appointments to the 9/11 panel are more than troubling. Bush initially named former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger chairman of the 9/11 probe---a man whose consulting firm it turned out had done work for the bin Laden family! What a coincidence, right?
When Kissinger hurriedly resigned, Bush named former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean in his place. Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research pointed out that Kean “sits on the board of directors of a company which has business dealings with financier Khalid bin Mahfouz.” Kean, it turns out, was a director of Amerada Hess Corp., involved in a joint venture with Delta Oil of Saudi Arabia, an outfit owned in part by Mahfouz---a man whose sister is married to Osama bin Laden! Another coincidence, of course.
Chossudovsky writes, “Carefully documented by (Washington reporter) Wayne Madsen, George W. Bush also had dealings with Osama’s brother-in-law (bin Mahfouz,) when he was in the Texas oil business” and both Bush and bin-Mahfouz were implicated in the Bank of Commerce International scandal.”
Americans are right to be skeptical of Bush’s motives when the two chairmen he names to the 9/11 panel are linked to the bin Laden family. They are also right to be skeptical of the 9/11 Commission Report. As David Ray Griffin noted in his “Debunking 9/11 Debunking”(Olive Branch Press), a Zogby poll taken in May, 2006, indicated that 42% of the American people believed that “the U.S. government and its 9/11 Commission concealed...critical evidence that contradicts their official explanation of the September 11th attacks.” And a Scripps/Ohio University poll in August, 2006, showed 36% of the public believes “federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them “because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East.”
A new report in the Miami Herald of September 8, states that “The final 28-page of the (official) Inquiry’s report, which deals with “sources of foreign support for some of the Sept. 11 hijackers,” was entirely blanked out. It was kept secret from the public on the orders of former President George W. Bush and is still withheld to this day, (former U.S. Senator Bob) Graham (D-Fla.)said. This new information was provided by Anthony Summers, co-author of “The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 & Osama bin Laden” and Don Christensen, editor of the online “Broward Bulldog.”





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