Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Tom Dispatch and Other Iraq Liars

Truthdig has a ridiculous repost of David Vine's TomDispatch crap that includes this in the opening paragraph:  "With U.S. troops gone from Iraq and the withdrawal from Afghanistan underway, it’s easy to forget that we probably still have about 1,000 military bases in other peoples’ lands. "

Can you believe these damn lies?

All US troops never left Iraq.  Ted Koppel noted that on Rock Center with Brian Williams which apparently no one watched, hence the cancellation of the program.  But all US troops never left.  Never left Iraq, never left the region.  The bulk of US troops were taken out of Iraq as part of a 'drawdown' -- Pentagon term, not 'withdrawal.'

As we noted when it came in the Senate hearing in November 2011, 15,000 US troops would be moved from Iraq to Kuwait.  I'm not even talking about them; however, I'm speaking of the special ops carrying out 'counter-terrorism' missions.  In 2008, check the archives, I called out Barack for his plan to send counter-terrorism troops back into Iraq if things went poorly.  No one else appears to have caught that.

Which is too bad because Barack added another special ops brigade last fall as Tim Arango reported for the New York Times at the end of September. Here's the money quote -- and pay attention because Tom Dispatch can't:


 
 Iraq and the United States are negotiating an agreement that could result in the return of small units of American soldiers to Iraq on training missions. At the request of the Iraqi government, according to General Caslen, a unit of Army Special Operations soldiers was recently deployed to Iraq to advise on counterterrorism and help with intelligence.


At what point do we stop calling Tom Dispatch stupid and just call it a liar?

How do you miss that report?

Negotiating an agreement?

We covered that agreement.  I don't think anyone else did in real time. As we last noted in the April 30th Iraq snapshot:
December 6, 2012, the Memorandum of Understanding For Defense Cooperation Between the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Iraq and the Department Defense of the United States of America was signed.  We covered it in the December 10th and December 11th snapshots -- lots of luck finding coverage elsewhere including in media outlets -- apparently there was some unstated agreement that everyone would look the other way.  It was similar to the silence that greeted Tim Arango's September 25th New York Times report which noted, "Iraq and the United States are negotiating an agreement that could result in the return of small units of American soldiers to Iraq on training missions.  At the request of the Iraqi government, according to [US] General [Robert L.] Caslen, a unit of Army Special Operations soldiers was recently deployed to Iraq to advise on counterterrorism and help with intelligence."


How did they all miss that?

Because they'd like lying?  Because they're stupid?  Because they're ignorant?

I don't know but I'm tired of the damn lies.

US Congressional Research Service is Congress' think tank.  Last month, it offered Congress a report by Kenneth Katzman  entitled "Iraq: Politics, Governance, and Human Rights:"




General [Martin] Dempsey's August 21, 2012, visit focused on the security deterioration, as well as the Iranian overflights to Syria discussed above, according to press reports.  Regarding U.S.-Iraq security relations,  Iraq reportedly expressed interest in expanded U.S. training of the ISF, joint exercises, and accelerated delivery of U.S. arms to be sold, including radar, air defense systems, and border security equipment. [. . .]
After the Dempsey visit, reflecting the Iraqi decision to reengage intensively with the United States on security, it was reported that, at the request of Iraq, a unit of Army Special Operations forces had deployed to Iraq to advise on counterterrorism and help with intelligence, presumably against AQ-I.  (These forces presumably are operating under a limited SOFA or related understanding crafted for this purpose.)  Other reports suggest that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) paramilitary forces have, as of late 2012, largely taken over some of the DOD mission of helping Iraqi counter-terrorismf orces (Counter-Terrorism Service, CTS) against AQ-I in western Iraq. Part of the reported CIA mission is to also work against the AQ-I affiliate in SYria, the Al Nusrah Front, discussed above.
Reflecting an acceleration of the Iraqi move to reengage militarily with the United States, during December 5-6 2012, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy James Miller and acting Under Secretary of State for International Security Rose Gottemoeller visited Iraq and a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed with acting Defense Minister Sadoun Dulaymi.  The five year MOU provides for:

 * high level U.S.-Iraq military exchanges
* professional military education cooperation
* counter-terrorism cooperation
* the development of defense intelligence capabilities
* joint exercises

The MOU appears to address many of the issues that have hampered OSC-I from performing its mission to its full potential.  The MOU also reflects some of the more recent ideas put forward, such as joint exercises.



Hey, what do you know, it's what we were covering back in December, the MOU.

I'm not especially intelligent, anything I know I had to work to know.  So if dumb me can find the information, why can't Tom Dispatch?

Or why does Diane Rehm repeatedly allow lies on her program about Iraq.  We were just noting:


 I'm not big on gate keepers.   But after the first time of entertaining that offensive notion, Diane should have stopped it.  She has no problem playing a gatekeeper on everything else.
For example, a woman wrote the public account about how she tried to call in to the second hour of Diane's show last Friday to inform Diane and her guest Jonathan S. Landay that her husband is still stationed in Iraq.  That Diane will play gatekeeper on.  The woman was very clear about why she was calling.  She didn't get put on the air.


And that's the other thing, I couldn't lie about if I wanted to.  The public e-mail account fills up with e-mails from family members who have loved ones in Iraq and in the surrounding region.  They are so appalled and disgusted by the lies of the media.  I don't blame them.

The woman was referring to 'Iraq expert' Jonathan S. Landay who disgraced himself on Friday's Diane Rehm Show claiming that all US troops were out of Iraq.  Ava and I covered this in "Media: The destruction of McClatchy will be broadcast, not printed (Iraq)."

So maybe it's time to start compiling a list of all these liars?

There's Tom Dispatch, McClatchy Newspapers' Jonathan S. Landay and Diane Rehm just for starters.




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




 

 






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