Vermont's Ashleigh Smith has another bad article as the US Socialist Worker. That rag is so bad that we took them off the links. They have no concern for facts and see it as being part of 'the vanguard' to inflame situations with lies and deception.
Ashley Smith is one of the ones who's been told of the September 2012 New York Times' report but always writes like he's never heard of it. Telling the truth would mean taking on Barack and the Socialists of Socialist Worker (they're not the only Socialist group in America and, in fact, they're rightly ridiculed by WSWS -- World Socialist Web Site) never will do that. They're little whores for Barack.
Let's deal with the visit that began in the last week of October -- Nouri's visit to DC. This is what lair Ashley types:
This is the context in which Maliki visited Obama in Washington
earlier this month. Maliki claimed his government was as ally in the
so-called "war on terror" against al Qaeda, he promised he would help
convince Iran to agree to U.S. demands about Iran's nuclear capacities,
and he offered to aid in brokering a peace deal in Syria.
In return, Maliki demanded increased military support in the form of
helicopter gunships and drones to attack al Qaeda. Clearly, given his
track record, he would use such weaponry to terrorize the Sunni
population at large.
As Obama headed into the meeting, the U.S. establishment worried that
it has lost Iraq to Iran for good. Thus, Rep. Eliot Engel, top Democrat
of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, lamented, "It almost seems
like, after all the blood we lost and all the money we spent, Iran seems
to have more influence in Iraq than the United State does, and that of
course is a galling situation."
But weakened by its setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. is not a
position to dictate terms to Maliki. So despite Senate luminaries, in an
open letter and in congressional hearings, attacking the Iraqi prime
minister for his corruption, authoritarian methods and sectarianism, the
Obama administration put minimal pressure on Maliki. They want to keep
him in their camp as much as possible.
Nouri's biggest request -- as the Iraqi press was reminding again on Sunday -- Al Rafidayn, Al Mada, etc. -- was to get the US backing for a third term. As for Congress, there were no hearings. What the hell is that crazy liar trying to manipulate people into thinking now?
Nouri met with Biden on Wednesday, he met with Congressional leaders and gave a speech at the US Institute of Peace on Thursday and he met with Barack on Friday. When in there did he appear before Congress? He didn't. Nor were there any hearings on Iraq in that week. Iraq, the Armed Services Committees insist, is the responsibility of the Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate and the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House. They say that because the State Dept is over the mission in Iraq. They're asking, in fact, for over a billion dollars just for the next fiscal year -- just for the Iraq mission.
Six US Senators did sign an open letter to Barack the week Nouri visited. But there were no hearings.
I could overlook if he'd just stop lying. But obviously that day will never come. At the end of September 2012, Tim Arango (New York Times) reported:
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.
This doesn't jibe with Ashley's wet dreams of Barack so he leaves it out -- over and over.
The White House has tremendous influence in Iraq with Nouri.
Their failure to keep their word with regards to The Erbil Agreement means they have less power (and trust) with the Sunni and Kurdish communities. But with Nouri, they own him.
He has US Special-Ops in Iraq. They have trained Nouri's SWAT team, they are rumored to have been behind the planning of attack on Hawija in April.
Despite the idiotic whines of some for reparations now (those funds would just go in Nouri's pockets, his son's pockets and other family members), the US government is pouring over a billion tax payers dollars each year into Iraq via the State Dept since the drawdown mistakenly called a withdrawal.
Idiotic is Nir Rosen. Ashley wants to rescue Nir. It's not happening. Nir's trash and it will never go away. Saying you're glad a woman got raped? Saying it would have been funnier if it happened to Anderson Cooper? Selling out journalists in Syria? Nir Rosen's rep ensures he has no support.
Ashley quotes Nir babbling the myth of perfection before the Iraq War started, there was no civil war, he insists, between Sunnis and Shias.
We repeated that lie here in the early years of the war, noting people like Patrick Cockburn. They were the 'experts,' right? No, they weren't. Human nature is the expert. Human nature knows no boundaries.
We corrected ourselves here.
The Shi'ites were the majority people -- even under Saddam -- and yet they didn't control their own country. There was huge resentment -- and that's what's fueling today -- but the reason for no civil war? That's Saddam Hussein -- he wouldn't have allowed it. If the Shi'ites had tried it, he would have killed whole villages.
There was no civil war in 2006 and 2007. There was ethnic cleansing. That's what took place in Iraq. MSM journalists will often admit that in private. They won't say it on the airwaves or in print and that's partly because of the legal issues that arise for the US government -- which was in charge when the ethnic cleansing took place -- and in fact, it was helping attack the Sunnis. There are members of Congress who will talk about this at length -- privately in their offices but not on the floors of Congress.
Nir Rosen's claims that the US created the strife is mistaken and false.
They used it, they didn't create it.
They used it to distract and destroy Iraq and I'm glad Nir can make that point in 2013 because we've been making that point since this site went up.
They wanted to have a tag sale on Iraq's oil and they wanted to control the new markets that would be emerging. Naomi Klein's "Baghdad Year Zero," probably the finest thing she ever wrote, explained this:
The honey theory of Iraqi reconstruction stems from the most cherished
belief of the war's ideological architects: that greed is good. Not good
just for them and their friends but good for humanity, and certainly
good for Iraqis. Greed creates profit, which creates growth, which
creates jobs and products and services and everything else anyone could
possibly need or want. The role of good government, then, is to create
the optimal conditions for corporations to pursue their bottomless
greed, so that they in turn can meet the needs of the society. The
problem is that governments, even neoconservative governments, rarely
get the chance to prove their sacred theory right: despite their
enormous ideological advances, even George Bush's Republicans are, in
their own minds, perennially sabotaged by meddling Democrats,
intractable unions, and alarmist environmentalists.
Iraq was going to change all that. In one place on
Earth, the theory would finally be put into practice in its most perfect
and uncompromised form. A country of 25 million would not be rebuilt as
it was before the war; it would be erased, disappeared. In its place
would spring forth a gleaming showroom for laissez-faire economics, a
utopia such as the world had never seen. Every policy that liberates
multinational corporations to pursue their quest for profit would be put
into place: a shrunken state, a flexible workforce, open borders,
minimal taxes, no tariffs, no ownership restrictions. The people of Iraq
would, of course, have to endure some short-term pain: assets,
previously owned by the state, would have to be given up to create new
opportunities for growth and investment. Jobs would have to be lost and,
as foreign products flooded across the border, local businesses and
family farms would, unfortunately, be unable to compete. But to the
authors of this plan, these would be small prices to pay for the
economic boom that would surely explode once the proper conditions were
in place, a boom so powerful the country would practically rebuild
itself.
The fact that the boom never came and Iraq continues to
tremble under explosions of a very different sort should never be blamed
on the absence of a plan. Rather, the blame rests with the plan itself,
and the extraordinarily violent ideology upon which it is based.
Torturers believe that when electrical shocks are
applied to various parts of the body simultaneously subjects are
rendered so confused about where the pain is coming from that they
become incapable of resistance. A declassified CIA "Counterintelligence
Interrogation" manual from 1963 describes how a trauma inflicted on
prisoners opens up "an interval – which may be extremely brief - of
suspended animation, a kind of psychological shock or paralysis ... At
this moment the source is far more open to suggestion, far likelier to
comply." A similar theory applies to economic shock therapy, or "shock
treatment," the ugly term used to describe the rapid implementation of
free-market reforms imposed on Chile in the wake of General Augusto
Pinochet's coup. The theory is that if painful economic "adjustments"
are brought in rapidly and in the aftermath of a seismic social
disruption like a war, a coup, or a government collapse, the population
will be so stunned, and so preoccupied with the daily pressures of
survival, that it too will go into suspended animation, unable to
resist. As Pinochet's finance minister, Admiral Lorenzo Gotuzzo,
declared, "The dog's tail must be cut off in one chop."
That, in essence, was the working thesis in Iraq, and in
keeping with the belief that private companies are more suited than
governments for virtually every task, the White House decided to
privatize the task of privatizing Iraq's state-dominated economy. Two
months before the war began, USAID began drafting a work order, to be
handed out to a private company, to oversee Iraq's "transition to a
sustainable market-driven economic system." The document states that the
winning company (which turned out to be the KPMG offshoot Bearing Pint)
will take "appropriate advantage of the unique opportunity for rapid
progress in this area presented by the current configuration of
political circumstances." Which is precisely what happened. L. Paul
Bremer, who led the U.S. occupation of Iraq from May 2, 2003, until he
caught an early flight out of Baghdad on June 28, admits that when he
arrived, "Baghdad was on fire, literally, as I drove in from the
airport." But before the fires from the "shock and awe" military
onslaught were even extinguished, Bremer unleashed his shock therapy,
pushing through more wrenching changes in one sweltering summer than the
International Monetary Fund has managed to enact over three decades in
Latin America. Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate and former chief
economist at the World Bank, describes Bremer's reforms as "an even more
radical form of shock therapy than pursued in the former Soviet
world."
That was the plan and to help it succeed, thugs were put in charge to terrorize. They sent Iraq's educated class fleeing almost immediately.
There's a little whiner in Iraq who likes to moan that instead of the US restoring the Jewish archives, they should have taught him how to do it.
Why doesn't the idiot already know how to restore things? That's what his job requires he know how to do.
He doesn't know because he's not up to the job he holds -- and he only has the job because the bulk of the educated fled Iraq in various waves since 2003 -- these waves are known as "the brain drain."
Bremer outlaws every Sunni because that means even government employees are gone. No one can monitor the abuse, not anyone who knows what's really going on.
Thugs took over. Some invented degrees. That's been one of the big issues in Parliament repeatedly over the years -- MPs with fake degree, council members with fake degrees, Cabinet members with fake degrees.
Iraq was an educated and advanced country. It was even recognized as such for decades before 2003. It had great colleges and high rates of literacy. You had people with education or training -- or both -- that could do anything to advance Iraq. Many are not there anymore. They've fled or, in the case of many Sunnis who remained, been barred from employment.
If Ashley Smith were a mystery novelist, he would open with a murder on page one and then type 200 more pages, all the way to the end, never solving the murder. That's how stupid he is.
Why was Moqtada al-Sadr targeted? (And, no, he wasn't the only Shi'ite that the US targeted.)
Because Moqtada was a threat to the plans the US government had for Iraq and Moqtada was a threat because he had his own following. He was not US-created. He was an independent Iraqi. That, more than his ties to Iran, was what made Moqtada a threat and why the US created an arrest warrant on him. (That warrant was why he left Iraq.)
Ashley Smith is so stupid and useless that he can't type the term "counter-insurgency" or even tell the truth with regards to small topics like air dates. He writes, "As demonstrated in the BBC's recent documentary James Steele: America's Mystery Man in Iraq,
U.S. ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte and his henchman, Steele,
encouraged the Shia militias not only to target al-Qaeda, but the entire
Sunni resistance."
BBC's recent documentary?
To me, recent would be in the last two weeks. But I guess you could go back six weeks or even eight and claim recent.
Ava and I covered that documentary in "TV: The War Crimes Documentary" -- the date on that piece is March 10th. Seven months ago is recent?
I guess you have to type "recent" if you don't want readers to catch on that you ignored -- for months -- a documentary they should have been informed of.
The lies never end with Ashley: "Maliki's Shia electoral coalition, the National Alliance, won the 2010
elections, defeating the Sunni-backed Iraqiya Party, which was supported
by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia."
Iraqiya was not backed by the US government. Unlike Ashley, I can get invited to administration functions and parties and, unlike Ashley, I know the US government's position on Iraqiya. So he can tell that lie and maybe fool some people, but not me.
You can ride high atop your pony
I know you won't fall
'cause the whole thing's phoney
You can fly swingin' from your trapeze
Scaring all the people
But you never scare me
-- "Bella Donna," written by Stevie Nicks, first appears on her Bella Donna
The US government backed Nouri. That's why Chris Hill could keep his job ahead of and during the elections. The White House backed Nouri. That's why Quil Lawrence ran interference for Nouri on NPR.
Samantha Power had Barack's ear and she told him that Nouri was the answer for everything they wanted. Nouri with a second term would allow combat troops to leave, Nouri would do as they asked, a second term for Nouri would prove success -- she said a bunch of crazy s**t because she's a blood thirsty War Hawk. And she had Barack's ear.
Joe Biden disagreed. Strongly disagreed. Hillary Clinton disagreed but not as strongly. Robert Gates voiced serious concerns.
In the face of that, Barack went with Samantha Power -- especially after she enlisted Valerie Jarrett to side with her.
I have no idea what the government of Saudi Arabia was doing. Maybe Ashley Smith's right there, maybe he isn't. But he's wrong about what the US government was doing.
That's not his only mistake in that sentence.
Maliki's Shia electoral coalition, the National Alliance, won the 2010
elections, defeating the Sunni-backed Iraqiya Party, which was supported
by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.
Maliki is a member of Dawa. That's a political party like Democrats or Republicans in the US or Labour or Conservatives or Liberal Democrats in England. As prime minister of Iraq, he was the most prominent member of Dawa and its leader.
But Nouri angered Dawa.
He didn't want to run with them. He created his own political coalition or slate: State of Law. That's who he ran with in 2010.
The National Alliance? Actually, it's the National Iraqi Alliance.
Ibrahaim al-Jafaari heads that. He heads it and he's a rival of Nouri al-Maliki's. In 2006, the Parliament wanted to give Ibrahim a second term as prime minister. The White House said no. That's how Nouri got in to begin with.
How can Ashleigh Smith be so ignorant?
Who knows, but we're not done yet.
Maliki's Shia electoral coalition, the National Alliance, won the 2010
elections, defeating the Sunni-backed Iraqiya Party, which was supported
by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.
Iraqiya won the 2010 elections. Some little whiners like to say, "by only two seats!" It doesn't matter if it was by one seat in Parliament -- the winner is the winner.
Nouri's State of Law came in second.
The National Iraqi Alliance came in third. Nouri chose not to run with them in 2010. He ran with State of Law.
That we have to even go over this basic and well known point is a testament to the stupidity and lies of Ashley Smith.
Ashley Smith is a liar. In fact, in January of 2012, he could tell you that Iraqiya had won the 2010 elections (but even then he made no lunatic claim that the US had backed Iraqiya).
If you need more clues, here are two. The piece is a rescue job for Barack and it fails to note The Erbil Agreement.
Since 2010, Iraq has grown ever more violent.
That's because the White House backed second place Nouri who held the country hostage for 8 months in 2010 following the elections. This is the political stalemate.
Nouri only got away with that because the White House backed him. Barack ordered US officials to devise a contract to go around the votes, the Iraqi Constitution and democracy by giving Nouri a second term. That's The Erbil Agreement. And it's the poison apple that ensured all the violence and political squabbles that followed.
It's not minor. Only a whore from US Socialist Worker would leave it out.
On this week's Law and Disorder Radio, an hour long program that airs Monday mornings at 9:00 a.m. EST on WBAI and around the country throughout the week, hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Michael S. Smith and Michael Ratner (Center for Constitutional Rights)
discuss political prisoner Lynne Stewart at the top of the program.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
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