Saturday, February 17, 2024

NYT continues to sell the Iraq War, trans blogger Simsim is killed in Iraq

THE NEW YORK TIMES lied.  They destroyed their reputation and the way Americans see journalism by lying to start the Iraq War.  They continued to lie to keep the war going.  Posers online try to pretend the lying was just to get the war started.  No, they lied for years and years to keep the war going.  We know because we were here calling it out in real time -- calling out 'award winning' reporters for letting the military vet their copy, for letting the military dictate who they spoke to in Iraq, etc, etc.  The paper wanted the lies.  No one twister their arms.  And when people stood up at the paper, they were fired.  A woman was fired early on in the first year of the war because she stood up to the lies and the paper tried to concoct a smear campaign against the woman.  The pigs of the paper in Baghdad were going to whore houses while ignoring Iraqi women in print.  They were the go-go boys of the Green Zone as we dubbed them back in 2004.  

I bring all this up -- and there's a lot more that could be brought up -- because there's little the paper can do anymore that surprises me when it comes to Iraq.  (To be fair, Tim Arango, Alyssa J. Rubin, Sabrina Tavernise, etc would do strong reporting later for the paper on Iraq.)  

And then there's Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr.

This week, the idiot pig was published by THE NEW YORK TIMES.  The column? "It’s Not Time for Our Troops to Leave the Middle East."  So, grasp please, that the paper learned nothing -- not one damn thing -- from their debacle that left over a million Iraqi people dead.  The whores are still peddling the same street corner.  They've learned nothing at all.  They're still promoting the Iraq War and enough people in the country don't pay attention to Iraq anymore, so the paper knows that they can get away with it.

They have never taken true accountability for what they did.  And they feel no remorse.

We're not linking to the trash.

But, please, let's underscore that ahead of the 21st anniversary of the start of the illegal war (anniversary is next month), the paper that sold the war still can't call for all US troops out and instead choose to publish war pornography arguing that US troops need to remain in Iraq even longer.



Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani met with United States Vice President Kamala Harris on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Friday amid tensions over US airstrikes against Iraqi armed groups blamed for the deaths of American soldiers in Jordan.

Harris “urged the Iraqi government to prevent attacks against U.S. personnel and expressed appreciation for the Prime Minister’s efforts to date. She stated that the United States has no higher priority than the safety of U.S. personnel, and will act, as needed, in self-defense,” according to a statement from the White House. 




The meeting is part of ongoing efforts to try to persuade Iraq not to expel US troops.  That includes Wednesday's face-to-face between KRG President Nechirvan Barzani and the US Embassy's David Burger. 


Earlier this week, Tara Copp (AP) explained, "Both Iraq and the U.S. had agreed last August to enter into talks to transition U.S. and coalition forces from their long-standing role in assisting Iraq in combating IS. There are approximately 2,500 U.S. troops in the country, and their departure will take into account the security situation on the ground, and the capabilities of the Iraqi armed forces, the Iraq government said in a statement Sunday posted to X, formerly Twitter."

Mohammed Shia' Al-Sudani  has publicly called for US troops to leave.  There are diplomatic whispers that he doesn't mean this but is saying it for public consumption (to please the Iraqi people) while privately he is telling the US government that this will blow over.  If true, it's the wrong game to play.  Gallop noted this week, "Last year was the first time since 2014 -- when the Islamic State launched an offensive in Iraq and seized large parts of territory, including Mosul -- that a majority (51%) of Iraqis have approved of their country’s leadership."


In other news, Chantelle Billson (PINK NEWS) reports:  


A trans blogger, known as “Simsim”, has been killed in the Al-Qadisiyah governorate of Iraq, a security source has said.
The blogger was killed by unknown assailants, the source told Iraqi publication Shafaq News. The 28-year-old victim was stabbed several times, near the mural roundabout in the centre of the city of Diwaniyah.
According to the unnamed source, “the killers escaped to an unidentified location, and the forensic team took the body to complete the legal formalities”.
Simsim’s death follows a series of attacks on transgender individuals in the Middle Eastern country. Last year, prominent Iraqi TikTok star Noor Alsaffar, known Noor Bm on the app, was shot dead in the capital, Baghdad. He had faced repeated questions about his gender and sexuality, and his death was treated as a “criminal incident”.












 

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