Wednesday, August 05, 2015

Iraq snapshot

Wednesday, August 6, 2015.  Chaos and violence continue, Barack invokes the Iraq War to sell his Iran deal, and much more.



Dripping with desperation, US President Barack Obama attempted to sell his proposed deal with Iraq today.

Instead of explaining what was in the deal and how this would be good for the United States and the world, Barack elected to traffic in fear and bitchery.

The Hindu reports:

 President Barack Obama warned Congress that rejecting the nuclear agreement with Iran would be the worst mistake since the invasion of Iraq and would lead to "another war" in the Middle East.


Fear and lies, it was 2002 all over again.

Agree with me, he insisted, or there will be war.

Trust me, he argued, and that what I say is true because, after all, I just said it.

He didn't prove anything and basic fact checks of his statements tended to expose one lie after another.

For example, David Swanson's analysis of the speech includes:



“This deal is not just the best choice among alternatives—this is the strongest non-proliferation agreement ever.” —President Obama
Except, of course, for the Nonproliferation Treaty! if its parties were to comply with it. (I'm looking at you, President Obama.)
The President's tweets -- tweeted by someone other than the President of course -- came during a speech he gave at American University, from which a transcript will likely be posted on the White House website.
Obama, in truth, has zero evidence of Iran pursuing a nuclear weapon. Zero. None. The claim that he halted a nuclear weapons program in Iran is outrageous -- as crazy as Dick Cheney's claim that Iraq had nuclear weapons.
Obama might claim he was only suggesting he'd halted a nuclear ENERGY program, but the reader who would put that interpretation on his statement, and combine it with an understanding that Iran's program has been exclusively for energy, has got to be rare, given the propaganda being pushed by Obama, his supporters, and his opponents.

Remarkably, neither the advocates of war, nor the momentary fans of diplomacy, will point out that Iran has never threatened the United States and has no nuclear weapons program.



Yes, it was 2002 all over again as Barack, like Bully Boy Bush before him, used the threat of wars to try to push through what he wanted.  Fear mongering.  FITS News observes:
“I know it’s easy to play on people’s fears, to magnify threats … but none of these arguments hold up,” Obama said during an address at American University.
Really?  All we know is Iran’s ruler – Hassan Rouhani – referred to the deal Obama negotiated as an “answered prayer.”  That can’t be good.
More to the point: In the same speech Obama blasted critics for “playing on people’s fears,” he engaged in … wait for it … the exact same fearmongering.
“Let’s not mince words,” Obama said.  “The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy or some form of war.  Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon.”
 


It was Bully Boy Bush who helped hardened divisions in the United States with 'you're either with us or against us' nonsense which failed to recognize that people could have honest disagreements.

Barack was supposed to usher in change.

He was going to do so much for the public dialogue.

He would be able to do this, you may remember, because he was not of the baby boom.  (He actually is by a baby boomer by most definitions of the generation.)

He would be able to bridge the divide, dismiss the "Tom Hayden Democrats," and allow for better dialogue.

That was the argument.

Didn't hold up, but that was the argument.


Kevin Liptak (CNN) points out, "He declared that lawmakers risk damaging American credibility if they vote to scuttle the deal and equated them with those who pushed for war with Iraq -- and with the mullahs in Iran."


So if you opposed the deal, you are in league with the mullahs?

And the Legion of Doom as well?

Why not include them because this speech was the most idiotic political speech since Lois Griffin ran for mayor of Quahog on Family Guy (and, using Brian's advice, Lois decided to repeatedly invoke 9/11) and gave speeches while seeking the office and after being elected.

Attempting to persuade citizens to support a tax hike, Lois declares at one point, "We have intelligence that suggests that Hitler is plotting with -- with the Legion of Doom to assassinate Jesus using the lake as a base."

That assertion would have fit right in with the ones Barack made today.

Meanwhile, Barack worked overtime to use Iraq to justify his deal with Iran.

Dan De Luce and John Hudson (Foreign Policy) note:

Obama’s use of the Iraq War as a political cudgel against opponents of the deal carries clear risks for the president. Obama has consistently taken public credit for bringing the long and deeply unpopular Iraq War to what he has called a responsible end, but the Iraqi Army disintegrated last year in the face of the Islamic State, and the militants have conquered vast swaths of the country. Many critics — including prominent Democrats and an array of current and retired senior military commanders — say that Obama’s rush to withdraw American forces helped pave the way for the rise of the Islamic State.
In recent months, Obama has been forced to send roughly 3,000 U.S. troops to train Iraqi forces and tribal fighters to take on the militant group. The Pentagon has also spent almost one full year bombing Islamic State targets in both Iraq and Syria.



Barack's sudden concern over those who supported the Iraq War has never resulted in a litmus test for his own Cabinet.  Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and many others who supported the Iraq War have been offered posts by Barack but those who opposed the war -- US House Rep Maxine Waters, Dennis Kuccinich, etc -- have not been offered Cabinet posts.


On the Republican side, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham supported the Iraq War.  Today, the two issued the following joint-statement:

Aug 05 2015

Washington, D.C. ­– U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) today released the following statement President Obama’s remarks on the Iran nuclear agreement at American University in Washington, DC:
“President Obama's speech today is just another example of his reliance on endless strawmen to divert attention from his failed policies. It is particularly galling to hear the President try to defend his nuclear agreement with Iran by claiming that its critics also supported the war in Iraq. Having presided over the collapse of our hard-won gains in Iraq, the rise of the most threatening terrorist army in the world, the most devastating civil war and humanitarian catastrophe in generations in Syria, the spread of conflict and radicalism across the Middle East and much of Africa, a failed reset with Russia, and escalating cyber attacks and other acts of aggression for which our adversaries pay no price, the President should not throw stones from his glass house.
“In addition to jousting with strawmen, the President also repeated his reliance on false choices. No one believes that military force can or should solve all problems. No one believes that diplomacy, including diplomacy with adversaries, is tantamount to weakness. What we object to is the President's lack of realism – his ideological belief that diplomacy is good and force is bad, which has repeatedly resulted either in failed deals or bad deals. The alternative to this deal was never war; it was greater pressure on Iran and insistence on a better agreement.
“President Obama’s deal with Iran empowers one of our chief antagonists and the world’s most radical Islamist regime with a pathway to the bomb, missiles to deliver it, money to pay for it, and the means to acquire a new military arsenal. Instead of dismantling Iran’s nuclear program, this agreement would lock it in place. Instead of weakening this radical regime, a regime with American blood on its hand, this agreement would make Iran stronger. Before the deal, Iran was able to destabilize Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. After this deal, Iran’s power in the region will only be enhanced as it ultimately becomes a member of the nuclear club. A more powerful Iran with a bomb in the Ayatollah’s hands is a direct threat to the United States and an existential threat to our allies in Israel.
“President Obama clearly does not understand the Middle East and has made one blunder after another. He was wrong when he ignored sound military advice to leave a residual force in Iraq. He was wrong when he turned down the advice of his national security team when they urged him to help Free Syrian Army fighters when it could have made a difference. He was wrong when he failed to enforce his own red lines against Bashar Assad. He was wrong when he declared ISIL a ‘JV team.’ He was wrong when he built a presidential campaign around a message of ‘Bin Laden is dead and al Qaeda is decimated.’ And he is wrong about this deal with Iran.
“Those of us who have warned President Obama about his past mistakes are warning him again about the consequences of this deal with Iran. We hope the American people realize this deal should be rejected and will weigh in to have their voice heard.”
###




The press was full on whore mode as evidenced by crap like that churned out by Margaret Talev and Toluse Olorunnipa:

 Obama rode to the White House in 2008 on his early, vocal and mostly lonely opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. More than a decade later, he says the fight over the Iran deal is with the same group of neoconservative politicians and commentators who beat the drum for war over diplomacy to meet what turned out to be a non-existent threat in Iraq.



I will never understand the mentality of a dirty whore who, all these years later, still wants to whore on this topic.



Barack gave a speech to a tiny group of people in 2002 where he was against going to war in Iraq.  And then he dropped that opposition.  I know it for a fact because as Elaine and I have noted for years now (before he got into the White House) we were face to face with him when he was running for the US Senate, sold on him by friends, ready to write checks for the maximum donations legally permitted when, during our face time, he insisted that the US military was in Iraq now so opposition no longer mattered.  He was for the war now.  We did not donate, we did not stick around.  We immediately walked out on the fake ass Barack and his fake ass supporters.


Margaret Talev once reported for Knight Ridder.  Today she's just a dirty whore -- one of many.



Let's drop back to the January 9, 2008 snapshot when Socialist Matthew Rothschild, then still posing as a Democrat publicly, felt the need to lash out at Bill Clinton for rightly noting that Barack's Iraq reputation was a "fairy tale:"

 


It is a "fairy tale."  We've used that term and many others to describe the lies about 'anti-war' Bambi.  The New York Times?  I believe we last noted Bambi telling them he didn't know how he would have voted in the January 4th snapshot: " Obama tells Monica Davey (New York Times, July 26, 2004) he doesn't know how he would have voted if he'd been in the Senate.  Two years later, he's telling David Remnick (The New Yorker) he doesn't know how he would have voted."  


Davey:
                     
He opposed the war in Iraq, and spoke against it during a rally in Chicago in the fall of 2002. He said then that he saw no evidence that Iraq had unconventional weapons that posed a threat, or of any link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.
In a recent interview, he declined to criticize Senators Kerry and Edwards for voting to authorize the war, although he said he would not have done the same based on the information he had at the time.


"But, I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports," Mr. Obama said. "What would I have done? I don't know. What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made."        


"What would I have done?"

"I don't know."


Speaking to Remnick:


 I think what people might point to is our different assessments of the war in Iraq, although I’m always careful to say that I was not in the Senate, so perhaps the reason I thought it was such a bad idea was that I didn’t have the benefit of U.S. intelligence. And, for those who did, it might have led to a different set of choices. So that might be something that sort of is obvious. But, again, we were in different circumstances at that time: I was running for the U.S. Senate, she had to take a vote, and casting votes is always a difficult test. 


Didn't know what he would have done then.

But today whores like Margaret let him pretend to have been opposed to the Iraq War and steady and consistent in that opposition.

It's a lie.

Unlike Margaret and her peers, Barry Grey (WSWS) can offer truths about 'peace' king Barack:

The president touted his supposed anti-war credentials, citing his opposition to the Iraq invasion, which he used to appeal to anti-war and anti-Bush sentiment in his 2008 election campaign. He did not bother to square this pretense with his record in office—continuing the Iraq bloodbath for another two years after coming to power, massively expanding the war in Afghanistan, organizing the war for regime-change that left Libya in a permanent state of chaos, and orchestrating a catastrophic civil war for regime-change in Syria.
Over the past year, he has launched a new war in Iraq, initiated the bombing of Syria and backed a murderous war by Saudi Arabia in Yemen. Just days before his speech at American University, he backed the carving out of a “buffer zone” in Syria by Turkish forces and sanctioned US air strikes against Syrian government forces in support of US-funded and trained mercenaries operating in the country.



Barack's latest wave of war on Iraq means more US troops sent into Iraq.  Amanda Dolasinski (Fayetteville Observer) reports today:


The Pentagon announced Wednesday about 1,250 soldiers from Fort Drum, New York, will rotate to Iraq to back the U.S. intervention against the Islamic State.
The soldiers, from 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, will deploy in support of Operation Inherent Resolve.

"These are routine rotations to replace personnel that are already there," Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said in a briefing on Wednesday.


But he had the nerve to hide behind Iraq today?


The point of today's speech?  Raf Sanchez (Telegraph of London) explains, "The speech is part of an all-out White House lobbying effort to convince Democratic members of Congress to support the deal in a vote in September."


Will the awful speech help?


Who knows.

But Kevin Liptak (CNN) wades in and offers:
The unanswered question is whether that framing -- viewed even by some supporters of the deal as overly simplistic -- will be effective in swaying enough votes in Congress to, at a minimum, sustain a veto on any measure objecting to the accord.
"I don't think that aids the cause," Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats and came out in favor of the deal Wednesday, said of Obama's "common cause" language. "In fact, I think there are Republicans that are really thinking hard about this agreement. I was talking to one this afternoon. And I don't think it helps."



Margaret Griffis (Antiwar.com) counts 119 violent deaths across Iraq today.



More on Iraq today?

Why?

Barack has allowed Iran to drown out Iraq repeatedly.

Grasp that.

Nothing can be done with regards to this or that in Iraq because (a) Iran consumes all the White House's time and attention and (b) and this deal was supposed to have been wrapped up in March continues to eat all up all the oxygen in the room.



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