As we noted Friday:
In other news, the White House is objecting to the Kurds exercising their Constitutional right to explore full automony.
Oh, look, Barack's stabbed the Kurds in the back.
Again.
Again.
Can someone please tell the White House spokesperson to not take a position on Kurdish issues at a time when the White House desperately needs the help of the Kurds?
Or is the spokesperson expressing Barack's desire to f**k up repeatedly on Iraq?
This is not a White House concern, nor is it anything that's going to happen in the next few weeks.
So maybe the White House could learn to keep their big nose out? Maybe Barack and company could learn that the world doesn't need an opinion on them about every damn thing? That sometimes, especially when you're attempting diplomacy, the smartest thing you can do is not express opinions on side issues when you know the opinions will only anger the people whose help you need?
It's beyond stupid but so typical of the US government which honestly believes it has to have and express an opinion on whatever any other country might consider.
All Iraq News reports today:
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham said on Saturday that Iraqis will never accept disintegration of their homeland.
She reiterated in a statement reviewed by All Iraq News Agency "Iran
So the US government is on the same page as the Iranian government.
When that tends to happen, Iraqis tend to get screwed over. (See 2010 when the US and Iran decided to override the Constitution and the Iraqi voters to give Nouri a second term.)
If the Kurds want to pursue an option, who says other governments get a say?
And when the US government desperately needs the help of the Kurds, why are they pissing them off?
The White House is beyond stupid. Reality, sewing dissension among Kurdistan officials is not complicated or difficult. If the White House wants to bloc Kurdish independence, it could easily do so that way.
But to take a position on it publicly, to rebuke the notion before the world? At a time when you need the Kurds?
For those who missed it, Thursday, KRG President Massoud Barzani spoke to the KRG Parliament and declared they needed to create an independent electoral commission for Kurdistan and that they needed to have a referendum on the KRG's future.
There was no need for a White House 'response.'
I would hope Jay Carney would have had the brains to grasp that. The new White House spokesperson did not have the brains.
Now maybe the KRG will move immediately on what was requested.
But is that highly likely?
The KRG held provincial election September 2013. It's July 2014 and they've only recently settled on a prime minister and deputies.
Is it really likely that they're going to get it together enough to move in the next few weeks on Barzani's request?
My own personal opinion is that the KRG needs to do what they feel is best. I support the right of autonomy.
But if the White House doesn't, they need to learn when to be silent.
If they lose the support of the Kurds right now, any diplomatic measures the US government hopes to successfully carry out in Iraq are doomed.
It's stupidity.
Martin Chulov and Spencer Ackerman (Observer) report on Ahmed Chalabi:
He was a presidential patron, then a pariah; an alleged fraud, then an economic saviour. And, perhaps more remarkably, he was groomed by Washington, lured by Iran, and is now being courted by both as a man who could rescue Iraq.
The mercurial career of Ahmad Chalabi has been central to much of the turmoil that Iraq has gone through in the past 20 years. From guerrilla leader in exile in the Kurdish north to the pinup boy of the Pentagon's war plans, Chalabi was more responsible than any other Iraqi for the ousting of Saddam Hussein more than a decade ago.
An e-mail asks what I think about Chalabi?
His failings are well known. I'm not particularly fond of the fact that Iraqi exiles keep getting named prime minister but I'm not an Iraqi. It's their country. Their MPs should be representing them.
I doubt anyone could be worse than Nouri al-Maliki.
The Parliament needs to push through the law limiting a prime minister to two terms only and that needs to be accepted by the next prime minister.
That would be the best curb on tyranny.
Chalabi? I would guess he's more interested in being part of a world community than becoming a tyrant. It takes a special kind of pathology to create a despot. Nouri had it. The paranoia made it so.
Another curb on tyranny?
The US government not being silent when bad things happen. Like their silence when Nouri targeted gays and lesbians. Like their silence when he killed peaceful protesters.
Nouri was installed by the US government and protected at the very least by the same government's repeated silence. He's a tyrant but he had a lot of help becoming that.
It's over, I'm done writing songs about love
There's a war going on
So I'm holding my gun with a strap and a glove
And I'm writing a song about war
And it goes
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Oh oh oh oh
-- "I Hate The War" (written by Greg Goldberg, on The Ballet's Mattachine!)
The number of US service members the Dept of Defense states died in the Iraq War is [PDF format warning] 4489.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
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