The Common Ills: Hejira

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Hejira

Today, the US military announced:

Strikes in Iraq

Attack, bomber, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 15 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:

-- Near Fallujah, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL vehicle bomb facilities, two ISIL staging locations, and five ISIL buildings.

-- Near Mosul, one strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL bunker.

-- Near Qayyarah, two strikes destroyed two ISIL vehicle bomb facilities.

-- Near Ramadi, six strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL vehicle, two ISIL command and control nodes, an ISIL assembly area, two ISIL fighting positions, and denied ISIL access to terrain.

-- Near Rawah, one strike struck an ISIL vehicle bomb facility.

-- Near Sinjar, one strike destroyed an ISIL checkpoint.

-- Near Sultan Abdallah, one strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL vehicle and four ISIL fighting positions.

-- Near Tal Afar, one strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL vehicle.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target.

And today, Patrick Williams (DAILY STAR) reports of England's Special Air Service Regiment:

He was part of a four-man “kill” unit sent to wipe out jihadis.
The mission was launched two weeks ago after intelligence sources located an Islamic State bomb factory in a village in northern Iraq.
It is understood the team was part of a larger special forces unit which had been operating in the region for the past year.

So British forces are also in combat.

And yet we pretend that the Iraq War ended.

Why do we pretend?

Because some of us are whores and some of spend too much time listening to whores.

Bob Someby is a 'truth teller.'

He's a whore.

That's all he and his trashy friend are.

Years ago, it was obvious just who stood up and who was the freaky trash -- that's around the time Bob's failed comedic friend was trying to stalk Rebecca and sending threatening e-mails to me.

It was also, please note, during the time Bob was attacking former US diplomat Joe Wilson as a liar and insisting the yellow cake uranium story didn't hold water -- Wilson's famous column explaining how Bully Boy Bush knew there was no yellow cake uranium did not make sense.

Of course, it was left to us -- here and at Third -- to explain Bob's non-revealed relationship with a certain reporter involved in the scandal, called before the grand jury.

Is everyone still pretending that undisclosed relationship isn't what was really behind Bob's attacks on Joe Wilson?

Recently, he was trashing Carly F. She's running for the GOP nomination.

She matters so little to me that not only do I not know how to spell her last name, I'm not even going to look it up.

But, goodness, doesn't Bob create sympathy for her by lying about her repeatedly.

Calling her a liar on this or that -- usually on the Planned Parenthood story.

Now she may be wrong on some details (I believe she's wrong on many) but Bob's big claim that she was a liar? Based on what he'd read about the videos as reported by the NEW YORK TIMES, her remarks were not accurate.

But some of the stuff he's insisted she's made up -- not the right-wing activists who made the videos but Carly F herself -- has now been reported on.

That's not to say that the claims are accurate but that is to say he's called her a liar and said she made the claims up.

That has turned out not to be the case.

That long ago became obvious but he's never come forward with an apology, let alone a retraction.

He's just woman-hating trash.

And he and stupid prick Kevin Drum have been allowed to carry out their war on Maureen Dowd and pretend that it doesn't have a damn thing to do with gender.

Reality: Dowd called out the Iraq War.

Thomas Friedman gets a pass even today by the 'brave' bitch bois Drum and Somerby.

They're cheap liars.

Today, as numerous e-mails note, Bob's praising a ridiculous piece in the Washington Post because he's nothing but a stupid little Miss Manners wanna be.

Here's Justin Raimondo (ANTIWAR.COM) on the same b.s. column:

But they aren’t quite ready to acknowledge defeat, and when challenged they come out swinging, as in a recent piece by Paul Farhi, the “media reporter” for the Washington Post, the title of which exactly sums up the prejudices of the Georgetown cocktail party circuit he represents: “Thanks to Trump, fringe news enters the mainstream.”
Farhi makes much of Trump’s recent appearance on the Alex Jones radio show, which is supposed to taint the GOP frontrunner with Jones’s brand of kookiness. Aside from the fact that Jones has an audience several times larger than the Washington Post, it’s ridiculous to attribute the views of the interlocutor to the one being interviewed. We are told this is “the first time a leading presidential candidate has been interviewed by a media figure from the far extremes” – an absurd statement, and one that, furthermore, underscores the unrelenting subjectivity of our media mandarins. To take just one example: Hugh Hewitt – who started out as a far-right blogger cheerleading the Iraq war – has not only interviewed a slew of GOP presidential hopefuls, he even served on a GOP debate panel. But of course a writer for a newspaper that employs Jennifer Rubin as a columnist isn’t about to indict Hewitt for being on the “far extremes.” Republican candidates routinely appear on talk radio, the fulcrum of Trumpismo, but since pointing this out doesn’t fit Farhi’s agenda it goes unmentioned.
[. . .]

Gee, I wonder what caused those “cutbacks and economic woes.” Maybe it’s customer dissatisfaction with the “mainstream” media’s attempt to dictate what is and what isn’t a “false narrative.” And is it a coincidence that when a “false narrative” is being generated by government officials it not only goes unchallenged but is reinforced by these Guardians of Truth? The Iraq war springs to mind. Wasn’t it the “mainstream” that assured us Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” were at the ready? Didn’t the front page of the Washington Post headline whatever talking points Dick Cheney and his gang of fabricators were pushing that week? Oh, but Farhi has an answer to that: “On Iraq, journalists didn’t fail – they just didn’t succeed”! Yes, that’s the actual title of Farhi’s piece giving himself and his fellow mainstreamers a pass for leading us down the road to a war justified by outright lies. He writes: “Thousands of news stories and columns published before the war described and debated the administration’s plans and statements, and not all of them were supportive.” Based on the little bits of truth buried in the second to last paragraph of these missives, “it wasn’t impossible for skeptics of the war to connect the dots,” he avers.

But isn’t it the job of the writer – rather than the reader – to ferret out the truth? Not in the Paul Farhi School of Journalism, which recommends faithfully transcribing everything a government official says, anointing it with the label of Near-Absolute Truth, and then throwing in a few hints that the real facts are hidden in a web of obfuscation – and good luck to you if you have the time or the inclination to discover it for yourself!

Yes, we're back there again -- where Bob Somerby pimps a cheerleader for the Iraq War.

He loves to pretend he was against the Iraq War, Somerby does.

But I don't think a day or two of posts before the war started gives you a pass or qualifies as truly opposing the Iraq War.

He had a daily blog where he could have called the war daily but didn't.

Because he's a whore.

And his whoring misdirects and confuses the issues.

Carly F is a "liar."

And he loathes Donald Trump (I share that loathing).

Because he loathes Donald, he rushes to praise Paul Farhi's crap.

It doesn't deserve praise.

But when you're a whore -- not a media analyst -- all you want is to see your own vision reflected.

Hillary lied on TV -- which time? -- I know.

I'm referring to her declaring on ABC (two Sundays ago) that she hadn't blamed the 9/11/12 Benghazi attack on a video when speaking to the families.

He has called Carly F a "liar" based on the fact that he can't find support for her claims in the NEW YORK TIMES.

But with Hillary, we have three family members who contradict her claim.

So they're the liars?

We also have the e-mail Judicial Watch released last week.

Let's note some of their most recent press release on that:

U.S. Military was Prepared to Immediately Protect U.S. Diplomats in Benghazi, Email Records Show
Judicial Watch Takes Deadly San Francisco Sanctuary Policy to Court
JW Sues for Details on Massive Hillary Clinton Russian Uranium Scandal

U.S. Military was Prepared to Immediately Protect U.S. Diplomats in Benghazi, Email Records Show
Contrary to what the Obama administration has told the American people, the U.S. military was poised and ready to respond immediately and forcefully against terrorists in Benghazi, Libya.
That’s what we have learned from an email exchange from then-Department of Defense Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash to State Department leadership immediately offering “forces that could move to Benghazi” during the terrorist attack on the U.S. Special Mission Compound in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012. In an email sent to top Department of State officials, at 7:19 p.m. ET, only hours after the attack had begun, Bash says, “we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak.” The Obama administration redacted the details of the military forces available, oddly citing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exemption that allows the withholding of “deliberative process” information.
Bash’s email seems to directly contradict testimony given by then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta before the Senate Armed Services Committee in February 2013. Defending the Obama administration’s lack of military response to the nearly six-hour-long attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Panetta claimed that “time, distance, the lack of an adequate warning, events that moved very quickly on the ground prevented a more immediate response.”
This latest bombshell your Judicial Watch has released to the public has attracted considerable media attention. Here is how the Washington Examiner reported on these revelations:

While parts of the email were redacted, the message indicates the Pentagon was waiting for approval from the State Department to send the forces in. That help never arrived for the Americans under siege at the Benghazi compound. A spokesman for the House Select Committee on Benghazi said investigators had received the unredacted version of the email, which was obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act and made public Tuesday, last year but had declined to make it public.

Now would be a good time to go back and review the Obama administration’s many prevarications on the Benghazi terrorist attacks. (A significant collection of our history-making work on the Benghazi scandal is available here.)
You may recall that the first assault occurred at the main compound at about 9:40 p.m. local time (3:40 p.m. ET in Washington, DC). The second attack on a CIA annex 1.2 miles away began three hours later, at about 12 a.m. local time the following morning (6 p.m. ET), and ended at approximately 5:15 a.m. local time (11:15 a.m. ET) with a mortar attack that killed security officers Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.
The newly released email reads:

From: Bash, Jeremy CIV SD [REDACTED]
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2012 7:19 PM
To: Sullivan, Jacob J; Sherman, Wendy R; Nides, Thomas R
Cc: Miller, James HON OSD POLICY; Wienefeld, James A ADM JSC VCJCS; Kelly, John LtGen SD; martin, dempsey [REDACTED]
Subject: Libya
State colleagues:
I just tried you on the phone but you were all in with S [apparent reference to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton].
After consulting with General Dempsey, General Ham and the Joint Staff, we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak. They include a [REDACTED].
Assuming Principals agree to deploy these elements, we will ask State to procure the approval from host nation. Please advise how you wish to convey that approval to us [REDACTED].
Jeremy

Jacob Sullivan was Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the time of the terrorist attack at Benghazi. Wendy Sherman was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the fourth-ranking official in the U.S. Department of State. Thomas Nides was the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources.
The timing of the Bash email is particularly significant based upon testimony given to members of Congress by Gregory Hicks, Deputy Chief of Mission of the U.S. embassy in Tripoli at the time of the Benghazi terrorist attack. According to Hicks’ 2013 testimony, a show of force by the U.S. military during the siege could have prevented much of the carnage. Said Hicks, “If we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split. They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them.”
Ultimately, Special Operations forces on their own initiative traveled from Tripoli to Benghazi to provide support during the attack. Other military assets were only used to recover the dead and wounded, and to evacuate U.S. personnel from Libya. In fact, other documents released in October by Judicial Watch show that only one U.S. plane was available to evacuate Americans from Benghazi to Tripoli and that raises questions about whether a delay of military support led to additional deaths in Benghazi.
As per usual, we only obtained this document after going to federal court. The new email came as a result of a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed on September 4, 2014 seeking:

Records related to notes, updates, or reports created in response to the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. This request includes, but is not limited to, notes taken by then Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton or employees of the Office of the Secretary of State during the attack and its immediate aftermath.

The Obama administration and Clinton officials hid this compelling Benghazi email for years. The email makes readily apparent that the military was prepared to launch immediate assistance that could have made a difference, at least at the CIA Annex. The fact that the Obama Administration withheld this email for so long only worsens the scandal of Benghazi.
The Washington Examiner puts it very well:

The newly disclosed email chain casts doubt on previous testimony from high-level officials, several of whom suggested there was never any kind of military unit that could have been in a position to mount a rescue mission during the hours-long attack on Benghazi.

It came out later that day that the House Select Committee on Benghazi had been withholding from the public an unredacted version of the email released by Judicial Watch. Almost immediately upon Judicial Watch’s release of the devastating email, a spokesman for the House Select Committee on Benghazi made a snide, sour-grapes announcement to The Daily Caller attempting to defend the Committee’s decision to keep the email secret for a year by implicitly criticizing Judicial Watch’s supposed “rush to release or comment on every document it uncovers.” Bad enough fighting the lawless secrecy of the Obama administration – so it is disappointing to have the unnecessary spitballs from presumed allies for transparency.
The Democrats on the Select Committee thought they helped their cause of defending the indefensible by releasing a complete version of the email. Hardly. The new details show that the military forces that weren’t deployed, specifically “a SOF [Special Operations Forces] element that was in Croatia (which can fly to Suda Bay, Crete), and a Marine FAST [Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team] team out of Rota, Spain.” The FAST Team arrived well after the attack and the Special Operations Forces never left Croatia. In addition to providing confirming details that forces were ready to go, the Democrats expose the Obama administration’s dishonesty in withholding the information in the first place.

All this goes to underscore the value of Judicial Watch’s independent watchdog activities and our leadership in forcing truth and accountability over the Benghazi scandal.

The media played sides on Benghazi and any outlet or reporter that dared to question was quickly attacked publicly. Matthew Lee (AP), of course, cozied up to the State Dept and made a real ass of himself (have those e-mails been released -- because they need to be, that whoring was embarrassing for me to read and I'm rarely surprised by the whoring that goes on these days).

And you've got little whores like Bob Somerby who are not about truth or accountability, they're just about playing for their partisan team.

I'm about determining the truth.

In the 90s, I would have told you I thought Juanita Broadrick (sp?) was lying about her claim to be raped by Bill Clinton.

Today?

I'm not so sure.

I have no idea what happened.

That's because, in retrospect, the attacks on this woman or that woman by Team Clinton call into question what really happened.

Supreme Court Justice Scalia made some remarks.

They may have been racist.

I don't care for Scalia.

I'm interested in knowing if the remarks were racist or not.

But I'll never know because I don't feel I can get an honest report on them.

I feel far too many 'reporters' and columnists are cherry picking to make their arguments -- pro and con.

And I feel that way because the Iraq War is not over.

Yet those who huffed and puffed alongside me during the Bully Boy Bush administration now refuse to call out Barack who has continued the illegal war.

There is no honesty.

Elise Labott does a Tweet that crosses a line -- she's not allowed to offer personal opinions on stories she covers for CNN. And yet FAIR's CounterSpin rushes to minimize what she did by saying this or that on air host said something.

Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. (I did find it strange that, rather than play a clip of alleged statements, Janine Jackson offered a non-quote of what they supposedly said.)

When, the following week, it's revealed Elise was letting the State Dept write her Tweets, Janine and CounterSpin just looked the other way.

There is no honesty and it's past time that we on the left held up a mirror to ourselves and got honest about what is going on.

Until we stop whoring, we're never pulling anyone over to our side because we have no real side.

Until we stop whoring, we change our side/view daily based on what our political crushes need from us at the moment.

Hillary voted for the Iraq War and supported it for years.

Let's all downgrade that and like it doesn't matter because she might really, really be the best (most corrupt?) candidate our party has!!!!!

I'm so sick of the whoring and I think the majority of Americans are which is why it's not just corporate media that's being rejected these days.

I'm traveling in some vehicle
I'm sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
That shell shock love away
-- "Hejira," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her album of the same name

The number of US service members the Dept of Defense states died in the Iraq War is [PDF format warning] 4497 (plus 10 in Operation Inherent Resolve which includes at least 1 Iraq War fatality).