Thursday, March 16, 2023

Iraq snapshot

Thursday, March 15, 2023.  The 20th anniversary of the Iraq War looms -- we're told maybe US troops can leave in . . . five years, John Stauber continues his lurch to the right and his embrace of hate, and much more.



The U.S. and its allies invaded Iraq 20 years ago in Operation Iraqi Freedom. President George W. Bush’s press secretary Ari Fleischer twice accidentally referred to it as Operation Iraqi Liberation, which was definitely not its official name and would have generated an unfortunate acronym.

The men and women who launched this catastrophic, criminal war have paid no price over the past two decades. On the contrary, they’ve been showered with promotions and cash. There are two ways to look at this.

One is that their job was to make the right decisions for America (politicians) and to tell the truth (journalists). This would mean that since then, the system has malfunctioned over and over again, accidentally promoting people who are blatantly incompetent failures.

Another way to look at it is that their job was to start a war that would extend the U.S. empire and be extremely profitable for the U.S. defense establishment and oil industry, with no regard for what’s best for America or telling the truth. This would mean that they were extremely competent, and the system has not been making hundreds of terrible mistakes, but rather has done exactly the right thing by promoting them.


As we get closer to the 20th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, more publications note (remember) Iraq.  Julian Borger (GUARDIAN) writes:

There are still US soldiers on counter-terrorist missions in Iraq and Syria. The Authorisation to Use Military Force that Congress first granted to the Bush administration in the run-up to the 2003 invasion has yet to be repealed by the Senate, and has been cited by the Obama and Trump administrations in justifying operations in the region.

Coleen Rowley, an FBI whistleblower who exposed security lapses leading to the 9/11 attacks, wrote an open letter to the FBI director in March 2003, warning of a “flood of terrorism” resulting from the Iraq invasion. She says now that two decades on, nobody has been held accountable for the fatal mistakes.

“I think the real danger is that their propaganda was very successful, and people like Bush and Cheney have now been rehabilitated,” Rowley said. “Even the liberals have embraced Bush and Cheney.”

The terrible mistakes made leading to and during the Iraq war forced no resignations and neither George W Bush nor his vice-president, Dick Cheney – nor any other senior official who made the case the war and then oversaw a disastrous occupation – have ever been held to account by any form of commission or tribunal.


Terrible mistakes?  Try outright lies.  Peter Van Buren exposed some of the lies in his book WE MEANT WELL.  At RESPONSIBLE STATECRAFT, he writes:

The Iraq reconstruction failed to account for the lessons of Vietnam (the CORDS program in particular.) The Afghan reconstruction failed to account for the lessons of Iraq. We now sit and wait to see the coming Ukraine reconstruction fail to remember any of it at all.

“It is obvious that American business can become the locomotive that will once again push forward global economic growth,” President Zelensky said, boasting that BlackRock, JP Morgan, and Goldman Sachs “have already become part of our Ukrainian way.” The New York Times calls Ukraine “the world’s largest construction site,” and predicts projects there in the multi-billions, as high in some estimates as $750 billion. 

It will be, says the Times, a “gold rush: the reconstruction of Ukraine once the war is over. Already the staggering rebuilding task is evident. Hundreds of thousands of homes, schools, hospitals and factories have been obliterated along with critical energy facilities and miles of roads, rail tracks and seaports. The profound human tragedy is unavoidably also a huge economic opportunity.”

We did worse than nothing. Iraq before our invasion(s) was a more or less stable place, good enough that Saddam was even an ally of sorts during the Iraq-Iran War. By the time we were finished, Iraq was looking closer to a corrupt client state of Iran. Where once most literate Americans knew the name of the Iraqi prime minister — a regular White House guest — now, unless he’s changed his name to Zelensky, nobody cares anymore. And that’s what the sign on the door leading out of Iraq (and perhaps into Ukraine) reads: tens of thousands of lives and billions of dollars later, no one cares, if they even remember.


Unlike the bulk of people weighing in, Peter's tying in then and now and his knowledge of Iraq doesn't stop in 2008.  The November 2008 election of Barack Obama lead 'activists' like United for Peace and Justice to close shop  -- their very own "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" moment -- and media outlets to withdraw -- ABC announced at the end of 2008, for example, that they would be using BBC NEWS reports to cover Iraq instead of their own correspondents.  


The media withdrew from Iraq.  All this time later, US troops remain in Iraq. 


At COUNTERPUNCH, Kathy Kelly notes:


Twenty years ago, in Baghdad, I shared quarters with Iraqis and internationals in a small hotel, the Al-Fanar, which had been home base for numerous Voices in the Wilderness delegations acting in open defiance of the economic sanctions against Iraq. U.S. government officials charged us as criminals for delivering medicines to Iraqi hospitals. In response, we told them we understood the penalties they threatened us with (twelve years in prison and a $1 million fine), but we couldn’t be governed by unjust laws primarily punishing children. And we invited government officials to join us. Instead, we were steadily joined by other peace groups longing to prevent a looming war.

In late January 2003, I still hoped war could be averted. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s report was imminent. If it declared that Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction (WMD), U.S. allies might drop out of the attack plans, in spite of the massive military buildup we were witnessing on nightly television. Then came Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February 5, 2003, United Nations briefing, when he insisted that Iraq did indeed possess WMD. His presentation was eventually proven to be fraudulent on every count, but it tragically gave the United States enough credibility to proceed at full throttle with its “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign.

Beginning in mid-March 2003, the ghastly aerial attacks pounded Iraq day and night. In our hotel, parents and grandparents prayed to survive ear-splitting blasts and sickening thuds. A lively, engaging nine-year-old girl completely lost control over her bladder. Toddlers devised games to mimic the sounds of bombs and pretended to use small flashlights as guns.

Our team visited hospital wards where maimed children moaned as they recovered from surgeries. I remember sitting on a bench outside of an emergency room. Next to me, a woman convulsed in sobs asking, “How will I tell him? What will I say?” She needed to tell her nephew, who was undergoing emergency surgery, that he had not only lost both his arms but also that she was now his only surviving relative. A U.S. bomb had hit Ali Abbas’s family as they shared a lunch outside their home. A surgeon later reported that he had already told Ali that they had amputated both of his arms. “But,” Ali had asked him, “will I always be this way?

I returned to the Al-Fanar Hotel that evening feeling overwhelmed by anger and shame. Alone in my room, I pounded my pillow, tearfully murmuring, “Will we always be this way?”

Throughout the Forever Wars of the past two decades, U.S. elites in the military-industrial-Congressional-media complex have manifested an insatiable appetite for war. They seldom heed the wreckage they have left behind after “ending” a war of choice.


The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft is a fairly new think-tank (2019).  It was started by Andrew Bacevich and has recieved funding from the Koch brothers and George Soros.  Where we're concerned is the proposal on Iraq that they've published -- written by Steven Simon and Adam Weinstein:


 Withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq within five years (except Marine Security Guards for the protection of the Embassy and OSC–I personnel under the U.S. Mission), recognizing that temporary combined training exercises, military delegations, and combined planning efforts using TDY personnel would be useful and should continue if both countries wish.


Five years.  

It's 2023 and we're talking five years.

"We want troops out of Iraq!  And we want it now!"

Was that Jane Fonda at the big January 2007 rally in DC against the Iraq War?

No.

It wasn't an activist.

It was Barack Obama in 2007 and 2008 at his rallies and that was also used in the 2008 campaign ads.  

Did we want that, Barack?  

If you're part of the 'we' then clearly not.

He used the Iraq War to get into the White House.

He did a drawdown in 2011.  Then he began increasing US forces in Iraq secretly the following year -- at the end of September 2012, Tim Arango (NEW YORK TIMES) reported:

 
 Iraq and the United States are negotiating an agreement that could result in the return of small units of American soldiers to Iraq on training missions. At the request of the Iraqi government, according to General Caslen, a unit of Army Special Operations soldiers was recently deployed to Iraq to advise on counterterrorism and help with intelligence.        


That was buried in a report on Syria, Jill Abramson would not allow the important news in a report of its own -- with a proper headline.  

You'll read lies this week by idiots who'll tell you US troops left Iraq at the end of 2011 and didn't return until 2014.  A lie.  Most of them are just ignorant of reality but some are aware that they're lying.  

US troops remain in Iraq all these years later -- most recent death was in December -- and what a 'statecraft' institute is proposing is that we can get US troops out (minus those guarding the embassy) in five years.

Fie years. 

Twenty-five years after the illegal war started.  

When Barack was lying on the campaign trail -- and he was lying, as Samantha Power infamously told BBC -- he knew no one would accept five years but that's where we are now.



Cher's political takes?  Not a fan.  I know Cher and I like her but she -- like too many other celebrities -- think they know something when they do not.  They don't understand that the media that lies about them also lies about other things.  It always amazes me when someone can't grasp something so obvious.

The media is not our friend.  It will destroy us given the chance.  The most honest -- in color film -- about the media ever made was probably 1986's ROCKABYE starring Valerie Bertinelli who ends up being used by a reporter after her child is kidnapped.  (In the days of black & white films, they tended to be more honest about the ruthless nature of the press.  Since then, ROCKABYE is the rare exception.)  Their goal is not to be your friend, their goal is to get a story.  And that story will be pumped and massaged at the expense of the truth.  

Homophobia exists to this day because of the media.  'Educated' people, 'well' informed by the media in previous decades were taught homophobia.  That is the reality.  

And that's what the media does: teaches people what to think.  You're the consumer trying to get facts but what you're given is rarely factual and more often it's got a long range plan behind it.

The war on Russia was obvious when Barack was president.  You can find, at this site, especially after Ed Snowden was in Russia, the point that The Cold War was being restarted.  By the same token, throughout the ongoing Iraq War, there have been attempts to sell war on Iran.  More recently, there's been a strong push to sell war on China.  I do believe WSWS has painted themselves into a corner on the origins of the COVID 19 virus.  I understand how that happened, their desire to avert US war with China.  But they've left themselves no wiggle room and should it be linked to that infamous lab, they're going to be publicly embarrassed.  (I'm not saying the lab and COVID are linked -- I don't know.  And I'm never afraid to say I don't know.)

The government feeds the media -- sometimes the truth, sometimes a lie -- editors and producers want their reporters 'well connected' and are more worried about angering a powerful government official than informing the public.  


News consumers need to stop being so willing to be fed. 

So I'm bringing this up because I have called Cher out before -- and will again, I'm sure -- but I'm factual when I do. 

John Stauber left the world of factual long, long ago.


Is the failed writer projecting?

He can't stop promoting his (co-written) book from two decades ago which I'll assume is because he's done nothing of value since.  

Cher doesn't do drugs, ''sweetie.'' Drugs clearly damaged your brain, John, but Cher doesn't do drugs.

I know that because I know her, yes.  

But it's equally true that that's never been a secret.  Sonny & Cher fell out of popularity in part because their anti-drug stance in the late sixties put them out of step with the youth who had celebrated them.  While starring in her own variety series in the 70s, she went to a party and was able to help save the lives of a few people because, unlike them, she didn't take the drugs being offered. This was a big story covered even by her own network CBS.  In addition, there's the whole Gregg Allman coupling and her statements there.  

Cher loves to tell the story about Mike Nichols coming backstage during the Broadway run of COME BACK TO THE FIVE AND DIME, JIMMY DEAN, JIMMY DEAN and offering her the tole in SILKWOOD and stating he was wrong (he'd turned her down for the female lead in THE FORTUNE years before.  She likes to say that it was like being on acid and then adding that she's never dropped acid.

I get it, John, I do.  Your pathetic life got you run off from the body you created.  You became such pariah that even Ruth Conniff was able to get laughs at your expense.  Your career ended long ago and, honestly, even when it was active, it didn't amount to anything.

Of course, you'd want to trash Cher, a singer who's had hit singles in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s and 20s.  Of course you'd want to trash Cher whose career includes starring in TV variety shows.  Cher who is a successful actress who's been on Broadway and who's won an Academy Award. 

What have you done in your professional life, John?

That's right, nothing much.  Nothing much at all.

And the reason for that is clear in your Tweet.  You don't care about facts, you just Tweet whatever you think will get you attention.  You're a smug little bitch whose Tweet doesn't hide the fact that you've accomplished nothing with your pathetic life and that you have to resort to lying to even attempt wit -- attempt but, of course, fail.



So sad -- sad and pathetic with your transphobia and, as Ruth pointed out last night, your efforts to elect Ron DeSantis president of the United States.   Five Tweets praising him, why don't you just come out as the right-winger you are?  And we need to note that "Don't say gay" Ron is your guy.  You have no foundation.  Your beliefs change from one moment to the next.  

Cher's Tweet's embarrassing.  And it's embarrassing because she doesn't have the background to Tweet about what she's Tweeting.  It's also embarrassing because she's worked herself up so much because there are so many idiots in our industry.  They're misled because they don't have the education background behind them.

But you do, John, so what's your excuse for promoting a hate merchant like Ron?

You know Keith Olbermann was a star on MSNBC and often said things that I agreed with.  But I didn't write him about him here, I didn't advance him because he's disgusting.  He was always disgusting.  He was always a sexist and abusive.

You are so far from where you once were.  I'll take Cher who cares a great deal but make mistakes based upon the propaganda from the 'news' media over someone like you any day.

You've chosen your side and you need to remain there now.  It's sad for you because I was one of the few people defending you over the last years.  You know you're a joke in independent media and you know how people in that media hate you -- it's why you're not invited on any programs.  I'm done defending you.  DOBBS changed everything.  We know who are friends are and we know who the trash is.  You've decided to stand with trash: Registered sex offender and convicted pedophile Scott Ritter, transphobe con artist Glenn Greenwald, etc, etc.  

Those are your people now.



And here's QUEER NEWS TONIGHT reporting on the crowd John Stauber hangs with now.





A new report published last week by the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism found that an “all-time high” number of “white supremacist propaganda” incidents occurred in the United States in 2022, eclipsing the previous year’s record total of 4,876 by nearly 2,000.

“Our data shows,” the ADL wrote, “a 38 percent increase in incidents from the previous year, with a total of 6,751 … the highest number of white supremacist propaganda incidents ADL has ever recorded.”

In addition to an increase in white supremacist incidents, the ADL recorded a more than doubling of “antisemitic propaganda” incidents, rising from 352 in 2021 to 852 in 2022. These included banner drops on roadways, in-person demonstrations, leafleting neighborhoods and projecting images on buildings and stadiums.

The ADL found that propaganda efforts were undertaken in every US state except Hawaii, with the most active states being Texas, Massachusetts, Virginia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, California, Utah, Florida, Connecticut and Georgia. These propaganda efforts were organized by “at least 50 different white supremacist groups” according to the ADL, however, “three of them—Patriot Front, Goyim Defense League (GDL) and White Lives Matter (WLM)—were responsible for 93 percent of the activity.”

White supremacist “events” such as demonstrations at state capitols, parades and local businesses, organized by WLM, GDL, Patriot Front, the Proud Boys and others increased by 55 percent last year, from 108 in 2021 to 167 in 2022.

The only area where ADL recorded a decrease in fascist activity was on school campuses, where the ADL found 219 incidents of white supremacist propaganda in 2022, a slight 6 percent decrease from 2021. Fascist propaganda, overwhelmingly distributed by Patriot Front (74 percent of all incidents), was discovered on campuses in 39 different states, led by Texas, Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Ohio, Illinois and Michigan.

This is the second report released by the ADL in the last month that has documented an historic rise in far-right agitation and violence in the US.

Last month, the ADL reported that every single “extremist” mass killing in 2022 was linked to far-right ideology. Notably, the ADL did not mention that every mass killing linked to in their report was directly inspired by Republican Party politicians and their sycophants in right-wing media. This is also the case in the March report, which likewise does not mention Trump or the role of the Republican Party in cultivating these right-wing and openly fascist elements.

While the Republicans, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, have advanced some 420 pieces of anti-LGBTQ legislation so far in 2023, violent Republican rhetoric is translating into threats of real-world fascist terrorist violence.


This is the world of hate that John Stauber, Glenneth Greenwald and so many others have decided to help create.  


Two days from now, there's an action in DC.








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