Monday, July 31, 2017

Iraq snapshot

Monday, July 31, 2017.  Chaos and violence continue, the Islamic State continues, Tony Blair continues to walk on war crimes, the US government continues to fail veterans, and much more.



Starting in Afghanistan . . .


  7 hours ago
Gunfire heard after several explosions hit Afghanistan's Kabul, reportedly near the Iraqi embassy
60 replies419 retweets366 likes
 
 

  2 hours ago
The Islamic State group claims responsibility for an attack on the Iraqi embassy in the Afghan capital Kabul
1 reply61 retweets16 likes
 
 


Amir Shah (AP) reports, "The Islamic State group targeted the Iraqi Embassy in Kabul on Monday, with a suicide bomber blowing himself up outside the gates, followed by three gunmen who stormed into the building. The assault set off a four-hour firefight that ended only after Afghan security forces said they had killed all the attackers."




  Jul 27
Ret. Army NG Staff SGT Will Thompson has had double lung transplant - retirement pay kicks in at 60, but he is pretty sure he won't make it
 
 


Last week, BURNPIT 360 was in DC providing a Congressional briefing.  Veteran Will Thompson was among those participating.

Will Thompson: My name is retired Staff Sgt William Joseph Thompson.  I have served 23 years, 3 months, 11 days in the United States Army and the West Virginia Army National Guard.  I have deployed twice with the West Virginia Army National Guard to Iraq. During my last deployment, I was stationed at Camp Striker on the Victory Complex.  My symptoms of frequent coughing started on September 2009 while in Iraq. I was treated for allergies by the doctors and PAs.  I returned to Fort Stewart Georgia and after I mentioned to the doctor that I had been having frequent cough, they did a chest x-ray that revealed bilateral pneumonia.  They treated me with an antibiotic and sent me home to West Virginia and told me to follow up with my PCP in one week. After a week, I followed up with my doctor [. . .] and after a CATSCAN he discovered that I had coronary fibrosis with pulmonary nodules.  He stated my lungs looked like an 80-year-old coal miner's lungs. He referred me to Walter Reed Army Medical Center where I was treated by Dr. Jacob Collen for six months.  He admitted me to the Warrior Transition Unit at Walter Reed and, after six months of testing which included an open lung biopsy, I was informed that I had titanium, magnesium, iron and silicon in my lungs.   


The ones paying for the war -- in Iraq and elsewhere -- are not the ones who started it.




  1 hour ago
Tony Blair being responsible for the murder of a million Iraqi civilians should be enough to prosecute him.
1 reply12 retweets23 likes
 
 

  41 minutes ago
Disgusting decision. You could be prosecuted for harming a cat or a dog but not for killing a million people.
5 replies15 retweets15 likes
 
 





Tony Blair skates again.

He lied a country, a world, into war.


And he won't stand trial.
Will Thompson: My life and my family's life has changed since I returned home from deployment in 2010. Due to my low immune system now, I have to wear a mask in highly populated areas to prevent infection.  I challenge you to go into a store wearing a mask like the one I have on right now and see how people treat you.  I have been treated like I was contagious and I have had to explain many times that it was for my protection.  And with that it's even hard to hang out with my kids during the day when they say, "Daddy, can we do this?" and I say, "No, we can't do that." Or "Daddy, let's go skiing."  I can't do that. "Daddy, let's go swimming."  I can't do that. "Daddy, can I have a piggy back ride?"  I can't do that.  "Daddy, let's go to the beach."  I can't do that. I can't do that because of bacteria in the water [. . .] I don't feel like a man because my role as a husband has been taken over by my wife.  She now does everything that I used to do.  There are so many things that I can no longer do. I am a warrior of the United States of America. I gave my lungs for my country.


The suffering gets dispersed to the 99%.

The 1% just get dividends.

Tony's certainly gotten richer and richer since starting the Iraq War.



MINT PRESS NEWS notes:

 Writing for Middle East Eye, Mansfield and Antonia Benfield, who represented the former Iraqi general at the high court, said the ruling has “brought to an end the hope of prosecuting Tony Blair, Jack Straw and Peter Goldsmith for the crime of aggression”.
They said: “On the national and international stage the failure of the British government to give a tangible commitment to the prosecution of the crime of aggression undermines the rule of law.  It sets a dangerous precedent in times of global insecurity and sets an example to the rest of the world that states can wage aggressive war with impunity.

“The devastation that has been caused to millions of Iraqi civilians leaves the world with only one lesson – how to commit the most serious of crimes, and get away with it.”


Tony Blair skates again.

While the dead and the living victims continue to be scarred.

Will Thompson is still fighting for his rights with the VA.

Grasp that.

The fight continued throughout Barack Obama's 8 year presidency and continues to this day.

Grasp that the VA issues are still not fixed.

Grasp that even the basic issue of one uniform electronic record that would follow a person from service member status to veteran status didn't accomplished.

In 8 years.

What a proud moment for Barack and part of the reason veterans still have to fight so hard to get the appropriate disability ratings.

In what world is right that Barack's raking in millions while Will Thompson has to depend on charity for medical and treatment needs because the US government is still refusing to cover the disabilities their burnpits created?

This is shameful.

Politicians are seen as slime for exactly this reason -- they smile and brag about how great they are when all they do is destroy the people they are supposed to be representing.

Remember that the next time hair plugs and pot-bellied Bruce Springsteen publicly pretends to care about veterans.

No one caring about veterans would be partying on a yacht with Barack.


Meanwhile Nahwi Saeed (AL-MONITOR) writes:


In a July 19 statement, Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani said that holding a referendum is a natural right of the people of Kurdistan that they will not back down from. According to the spokesperson for the Independent High Electoral and Referendum Commission (IHERC) in Kurdistan, around 6 million people in the Kurdistan Region and the disputed territories such as the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, Sinjar, Makhmour and Khanaqin have the right to vote in the referendum. Forty-eight percent of the Kurdistan Region’s land is still disputed between Baghdad and Erbil and some 2.7 million people live in the disputed territories.
According to Article 140 of the constitution, the territorial disputes between Baghdad and Erbil was set to be settled by the end of 2007, but the Iraqi government never implemented this article. For Barzani, the nonimplementation of the Iraqi Constitution is one of the main reasons he wants to hold a referendum Sept. 25 in the Kurdistan Region and the contested areas. However, there are many challenges that may eventually keep the referendum from happening on the scheduled date, especially in the disputed territories.
Barzani’s referendum decision was preceded by a vote of the Kirkuk Provincial Council (KPC) April 4 to hold a referendum to decide the future administration of the province. However, many of the Arab and Turkmen members of the KPC boycotted the vote altogether. The KPC’s vote came after a call March 14 by Kirkuk Gov. Najmiddin Karim to raise the Kurdistan flag over the government buildings in Kirkuk province. But the Iraqi Turkmen Front opposed this move and filed a case against the acting head of the KPC, Rebwar Talabani, in Baghdad. By the same token, the Arabs and Turkmens of the disputed territories are expected to boycott the upcoming referendum and ask Iraq’s supreme court to declare that holding a unilateral referendum in the disputed territories is illegal. If these measures fail, they may eventually resort to violence. Nationally, Baghdad is not happy about the planned referendum either.

It's interesting, can you write about this topic and not know ARTICLE 140?

Because it doesn't appear AL-MONITOR understands ARTICLE 140 at all.

Article 140 of Iraq's Constitution is rather straightforward on oil-rich Kirkuk:

 The responsibility placed upon the executive branch of the Iraqi Transitional Government stipulated in Article 58 of the Transitional Administrative Law shall extend and continue to the executive authority elected in accordance with this Constitution, provided that it accomplishes completely (normalization and census and concludes with a referendum in Kirkuk and other disputed territories to determine the will of their citizens), by a date not to exceed the 31st of December 2007.   


Are writers for AL-MONITOR illiterate?

ARTICLE 140 calls for a census and a referendum.

It was always to be settled by a referendum.

This isn't a Barzani creation.  It's the Iraqi Constitution.

There's also a 'lightness' about AL-MONITOR's writing on this that needs to stop immediately.


Newsflash: Iraq's supposed to have held provincial elections already this year.

They have kicked it back.

And there's a good chance that, before September arrives, they'll try to do it again.

Elections are not held when you're ready -- they're to be held as defined by law.

Hayder al-Abadi is in violation of the law at present.

Treating this as a non-story is appalling.

September 25th is when the referendum is supposed to be held -- as noted in the article.  Not noted in the article?  That's also when the provincial elections are now supposed to take place.

That needs to be noted repeatedly.


Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Little White Devil" went up last night as did new content at THIRD:









iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq Iraq






Posted by at

Sunday, July 30, 2017

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Little White Devil"

little white devil


Isaiah's latest THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Little White Devil."  Convicted felon Corrine Brown stands beside Debbie Wasserman Schultz and declares, "Racist media!  All I did was steal about $800,000 and even before I was convicted -- 18 counts -- the media was all over my Black ass but let Little White Debbie risk national security and have a worker arrested by the feds last week trying to leave the country and silence.  Little Debbie?  Little White devil."  Isaiah archives his comics at The World Today Just Nuts.






 


 
Posted by at

Politics in Iraq



  9 hours ago
: Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman receives Muqtada Al-Sadr, leader of the Sadrist Movement in on Sunday
15 replies148 retweets98 likes




Again, though the western media ignores it, the political season has already started in Iraq.


Shi'ite cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr is fighting for his vision of Iraq.

Nouri al-Maliki's trip to Russia last week was about him attempting to sell himself as the leader Iraq needs.


Baria Alamuddin (ARAB NEWS) notes:

The past week saw the spectacular implosion of leading Shiite faction the Islamic Supreme Council in Iraq (ISCI). The council was put together in 1982 by Iran. It consisted of Iraqi exiles deployed to fight their own countrymen during the Iran-Iraq war. During this same period — with varying degrees of success — Iran was bankrolling militants in Lebanon, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, intended to forcibly overturn the established orders in those countries.
With ISCI and its armed wing, Badr (previously known as the Badr Brigades), perceived by Iraqis as having treasonously fought on the wrong side during the 1980s war (they were notoriously used by Tehran to torture and interrogate prisoners of war), ISCI was understandably regarded with suspicion when they returned to Iraq in 2003.
Iran spent a small fortune re-establishing ISCI on Iraqi soil. Badr capitalized on its dominance of the Interior Ministry for a wholesale takeover of the security forces. Along with the Islamic Dawa Party (led by former Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki from 2006), and Moqtada Al-Sadr’s movement, these Shiite factions and their allies could secure around 50 percent of Parliament seats when Tehran coaxed them to act together.


The implosion is actually Ammar al-Hakim leaving to form National Wisdom.  IFP explains:

All Iraqi factions need to have a relationship with Iran. That is why Ammar Hakim has, in his speeches, thanked Iran for its support and assistance.
So, the new council that he has formed cannot be at odds with Iran; rather, it must be seeking a new atmosphere to secure a better social status. One of the new developments is the establishment of the new so-called “National Wisdom” current [created by Ammar Hakim] with national features which go beyond ethnic and religious lines. This has been one of the principles that new Iraqi parties and Iraqi people have favoured. Therefore, the National Wisdom current may be able to have a trans-religious and trans-ethnic performance. Moreover, some high-profile figures with long executive experience are still members of the ISCI. As already announced, they may be able to play a more constructive role in this arena by presenting their new programs and setting aside dynastic limitations.



That's a pretty important development.

Maybe at some point western news outlets will take the time to notice?




4h 4 Hours ago Not
Major openness to in last 6 weeks. Hosted: • PM Abadi in June • Ariji in mid July • Muqtada Sadr today

8 replies44 retweets29 likes







MIDDLE EAST EYE notes:


In April, Sadr told Middle East Eye that "sectarian" PMUs have no place in Iraq.
Speaking from his home in Najaf, he told MEE that he favoured urgent dialogue with Iraq's Sunni politicians so as to prevent clashes sectarian clashes once the country no longer has a common enemy in IS.
"I'm afraid that the defeat of . . . [Islamic State] is only the start of a new phase. My proposal is inspired by fear of sectarian and ethnic conflict after Mosul's liberation," he said.
"I want to avoid this. I am very proud of Iraq's diversity but my fear is that we may see a genocide of some ethnic or sectarian groups."
Relations between Saudi Arabia and Iraq were severed after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and were only re-established in 2015.
Last month, Iraq's prime minister Haider al-Abadi met King Salman in Saudi Arabia in a bid to strengthen ties between the two countries.








Now let's turn to so-called journalists.

14 hours ago14 Hours ago Not 14 hours ago
The president has not visited US service members / leaders in Afghanistan or Iraq six months into his presidency.
339 replies1,563 retweets2,593 likes









Glenn's the self-proclaimed hack exposed by WIKILEAKS but, truth is, he exposes himself as a hack daily.

Take the above Tweet.

Do we all get Donald Trump could be a one-term president and never visit Iraq and pretty much have Barack's record?

In two presidential terms, Glennny, how many times did Barack visit Iraq?

Once.

That's right only once.

Glenn's such a piece of trash liar.


Stan updated since yesterday:


  • Oh Boy It Never Ends
    ATOMIC BLONDE (Spoilers)
    1 hour ago




    •  The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
     








    iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq Iraq






    Posted by at
    Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)