Saturday, November 20, 2021

No, US forces most likely are not leaving Iraq at the end of 2021

Some outlets are saying that all US forces will be out of Iraq by the end of year.  Not only is this not true, it is not what the Secretary of Defense Dept, Lloyd Austin, was credited with stating.  Read the full DoD release "no U.S. forces with a combat role by the end of the year" but the important part is:


Secretary Austin confirmed with Minister Sadun that U.S. forces remain in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government to support the Iraqi Security Forces. The United States will uphold the commitments it made during the July 2021 U.S.-Iraq Strategic Dialogue, including that there will be no U.S. forces with a combat role by the end of the year.


If you missed it, there are supposedly no combat missions in Iraq.  That lie has been claimed for several years now.


So US troops will continue to remain in Iraq and they will continue to remain there under another name.


Hello, I'm United States Marine Kevin.  I'll be your server.



  [US Defense Dept photo taken by Sgt Kyle Talbot.]

 


 
If US forces are to really leave Iraq by the end of the year, it appears that they will be forced to do so by the militias or, as NEWSWEEK prefers to call them, "the resistance:"

A group of Iraqi militias has issued a warning that they were prepared to take up arms against the U.S. military presence in Iraq if U.S. troops stayed in the country past the upcoming year's end deadline for combat operations revealed over the summer by President Joe Biden.

In a statement issued Friday and shared with Newsweek, the Iraqi Resistance Coordination Commission, an umbrella of paramilitary groups aligned with the pro-Iran Axis of Resistance opposed to the U.S. footprint in the region, said its members were "closely monitoring the extent of commitment to the outcomes of the so-called strategic dialogue round" that took place between Washington and Baghdad in July.

The message went on to say that the council "did not believe in the seriousness of the occupation and its commitment" to withdrawing combat troops from Iraq according to the established timeline, but was itself "committed to giving the Iraqi negotiator an opportunity to expel the American occupation from our pure land through diplomatic means."


The headline reads "Iraq Resistance Warns It's Ready to Expel US by Force at Year's End."


It's really kind of amazing, Shi'ite militias linked to Iran get billed as the "resistance" but the actual resistance that fought the occupation from the start was hailed by the same publication as "terrorists."  (No, I'm not referring to ISIS; however, I am referring to Sunni actors.)


Interesting what word choices get made and don't get made.


We'll note this Tweet by Mussie Z Ethiopia:


U.S has committed a genocide in Iraq and no one has been accountable.
@POTUS
@SecBlinken
It is always absurd the democrats trying to maintain democracy in other developing nations. #NoMore
@HornOfAfricaHub
youtube.com
Iraq Veteran Confronts Ex-President George W. Bush On War Deaths...
A U.S. Army veteran confronted ex-President George W. Bush at a speech on Sunday, demanding the former president apologize for civilian deaths during the Ira...
12:32 AM · Nov 21, 2021


On things that go up here . . .


I'm asked by a certain writer why we're not noting him here?  


Does he cover Iraq?  No.  So it would be doing him a favor.  I was fine with that in the past.  


I've noted that my eyes are in serious decline.  I see two different eye surgeons and have had multiple surgeries since 2020 on my eyes.  I'm not here to put myself out to do you a damn favor when you start sneaking the f-word into your writing -- your lo-o-o-ng writing.  I don't have the time to through and change every f-word into "f**k" so it will be safe to post here.


That's how you get banned.  I don't have the time.  I don't have the energy.  And I just don't give a f**k.  Do you, who use that term without "**" over and over, grasp that?


I have better things to do with my time.  Again, I don't work for you.  I also don't owe you a damn thing.  You pushed yourself off this site.


A video panel?  Four panelists.  It was on Iraq.  It didn't get noted despite two panelists asking it be noted.  I don't have to agree with something for it to go up here.  But the first panelist to speak was a complete liar and I'm just not in the mood.  If he'd been the third or the fourth, it would have been fine.  But as the first to speak, he's all most would have listened to and I would've heard about all the e-mails asking why I highlighted a known liar and what was I thinking and . . . 


If the panel had opened with a proper introduction, for example, I might have posted it.  But it opens with this one man already in the midst of making an argument and he doesn't know what he's talking about and his claims are insensitive to the Iraqi people.  


I don't have to like you for you to go up here.  I don't even have to agree with you.  But there are some things that aren't going to go up here.


If I can't use the f-word in full here, you can't either.  If you want to misrepresent (and insult) the Iraqi people, I'm not interested.  


If you're trying to get something you did noted at this site, you need to grasp what's needed to go up at this site and you need to grasp that it's not my job to rewrite you, to edit you, to clean up your copy, whatever.  


 The following sites updated:







 

Posted by at