The Common Ills: Hejira

Sunday, February 07, 2016

Hejira

Today, the US Defense Dept claimed/bragged/announced:

Strikes in Iraq

Attack and fighter aircraft, and ground attacks, resulted in 10 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:

-- Near Kirkuk, one strike struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL light machine gun, two ISIL vehicles, and eight ISIL fighting positions.

-- Near Mosul, three strikes destroyed four ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL assembly area, an ISIL command and control node, two ISIL weapons caches, and suppressed an ISIL fighting position.

-- Near Qayyarah, one strike destroyed seven ISIL assembly areas.

-- Near Ramadi, three strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed three ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL recoilless rifle, an ISIL vehicle borne bomb, an IED cluster, an ISIL staging area, two ISIL bed down locations, and an ISIL weapons cache.

-- Near Sinjar, two strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed two ISIL fighting positions.

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.

Meanwhile, Mad Maddy Albright is in the news. As she tries to drum up votes for War Monger Hillary Clinton, Mad Maddy's repeating her saying about "there's a special place in hell for women who don't support other women."

On ABC's SCANDAL, when that tired saying was trotted out to Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington), Pope responded, "There's a special place in hell for women who spout that tired quote to justify their bad behavior" (Season 4, Episode 9, "Where The Sun Don't Shine").

And that's one strong response to Mad Maddy's nonsense.

There's another.

Is this special place in hell for women who don't support other women near or adjacent to the place in hell for women (and men) who are responsible for the deaths of over a million Iraqis?

Because Hillary's vote and actions mean she's responsible.

She's responsible for those deaths.

And Mad Maddie?

Sanctions that killed over 500,000 Iraqi children and Mad Maddie thought it was worth it?

And it would take nearly a decade of people expressing outrage over her statement for her to finally try to walk it back?

I don't know that those who take pride in their part in killing a half million children are people that anyone needs to listen to.

Mad Maddie probably thinks a great deal about hell.

Most people responsible for that many deaths would be obsessed with what might happen in an after life.

And maybe it makes her feel better to pretend that everyone else is going to hell with her?

I don't know.

I just know that's she's not anyone who should be taken seriously or treated as an endorsement worth having.

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).

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