The Common Ills: Barack fondles Nouri's trigger

Friday, January 17, 2014

Barack fondles Nouri's trigger

Oren Dorell (USA Today) reports, "The Obama administration said Friday it is sending more weapons to Iraq to help Baghdad put down a resurgent al-Qaeda that is battling government troops in cities that U.S. troops helped liberate during the Iraq war." Barack's in bed with a despot -- who's sleeping in the wet spot?

Through yesterday, Iraq Body Count counts 640 violent deaths for the month. Today? National Iraqi News Agency reports a Tikrit armed attack left 1 Sahwa leader dead and his son injured, 1 corpse (gun shot wounds) was discovered dumped in the street northeast of Baquba, a Shura armed attack left 1 Iraqi soldier dead, a Mosul roadside bombing left one military Lt Col injured, an Almishahdah armed attack left 2 rebels dead, a Ramadi suicide bomber took his own life and that of 9 "Anabar's tribes sons," a Jorfi-ssakhar elementary school was bombed, and a bridge linking Anbar Province to Karbala was blown up.

And in the US? The Los Angeles Times' editorial board offers something they call an "editorial." Everyone's right!!! At least everyone in the the current administration or the previous one. It's an Up With Officials, kind of editorial which may reach its nadir in this passage:

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell was right when he said, in connection with the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, that "if you break it, you own it." The invasion did "break" Iraq in the sense of toppling an authoritarian regime without ensuring that it would be followed by a stable new order. Having unleashed an unexpected insurgency, the U.S. felt obliged to deal with it, at a cost of thousands of American lives. But the statute of limitations on that obligation has run out, and when U.S. forces left in 2011, Iraqis were happy to see them go.

First off, liar Colin Powell called it the "Pottery Barn rule." As Al Franken delighted in pointing out repeatedly on his Air America Radio show, the Pottery Barn had no such rule.

Second, "it"?

Iraq is and was a populated country. "It"?

Iraq was owned by the Iraqi people. The country was not for sale and was not "bought."

The current political crises -- plural -- in Iraq have been ongoing for years now. They stem from the Obama administration refusing to back the Iraqi voters and the concept of democracy. In 2010, the White House brokered The Erbil Agreement to go around the voters, to nullify democracy and to ignore the Iraqi Constitution by giving Nouri al-Maliki a second term as prime minister after his State of Law lost the 2010 elections to Ayad Allawi's Iraqiya.

If this is news to them, they're not stupid but they're to blame for their own stupidity. The paper has only a handful of nationally recognized reporters. It really couldn't afford to lose Ned Parker. But it did and that's why POLITICO ran Parker's "Who Lost Iraq?" and not the Los Angeles Times:

It was the April 2010 national election and its tortured aftermath that sewed the seeds of today’s crisis in Iraq. Beforehand, U.S. state and military officials had prepared for any scenario, including the possibility that Maliki might refuse to leave office for another Shiite Islamist candidate. No one imagined that the secular Iraqiya list, backed by Sunni Arabs, would win the largest number of seats in parliament. Suddenly the Sunnis’ candidate, secular Shiite Ayad Allawi, was poised to be prime minister. But Maliki refused and dug in.

And it is here where America found its standing wounded. Anxious about midterm elections in November and worried about the status of U.S. forces slated to be drawn down to 50,000 by August, the White House decided to pick winners. According to multiple officials in Baghdad at time, Vice President Joseph Biden and then-Ambassador Chris Hill decided in July 2010 to support Maliki for prime minister, but Maliki had to bring the Sunnis and Allawi onboard. Hill and his staff then made America’s support for Maliki clear in meetings with Iraqi political figures.

The stalemate would drag on for months, and in the end both the United States and its arch-foe Iran proved would take credit for forming the government. But Washington would be damaged in the process. It would be forever linked with endorsing Maliki. One U.S. Embassy official I spoke with just months before the government was formed privately expressed regret at how the Americans had played kingmaker.

And while we're talking about losses and this 'editorial,' the paper helped sell the Iraq War. They even got rid of their lone columnist against it, Robert Scheer. So if the editorial board now feels the Iraq War was a mistake, the first thing they should do is rehire Scheer.

The following community sites -- plus Jody Watley, Ms. magazine's blog, Susan's On the Edge, Pacifica Evening News, Dissident Voice, the Independent of London, Jake Tapper, the ACLU and KPFK -- updated last night and today: