Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Iraq snapshot

Tuesday, October 31, 2017.  The lessons in betrayal.


Yesterday, the US State Dept issued the following:



Press Statement
Office of the Spokesperson
Washington, DC
October 30, 2017



The United States commends the decision of Masoud Barzani not to seek an additional term as President of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region and the vote of the Iraqi Kurdistan Parliament to distribute presidential authorities to other Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) institutions. President Barzani is a historic figure and courageous leader of his people, most recently in our common fight to destroy ISIS. This decision represents an act of statesmanship during a difficult period.
The United States now looks forward to engaging actively with the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Nechirvan Barzani, and the Deputy Prime Minister, Qubad Talabani. A strong KRG within a ‎unified and federal Iraq is essential to its long-term stability and to the enduring defeat of ISIS. We call on all Kurdish parties to support the KRG as it works to resolve pending issues over the remainder of its term and prepare for elections in 2018.
We call on the Government of Iraq and the KRG under its new leadership to work urgently to resolve pending issues under the Iraqi constitution. We have been encouraged by the security dialogue that has taken place in recent days, and call for an end to all confrontations and clashes.
We also continue to support the strong leadership of Prime Minister Abadi as he works to ensure the total, and enduring defeat, of ISIS and a stable Iraq after ISIS. We welcome the recent decision from Prime Minister Abadi to begin a new dialogue with the KRG, under the Iraqi constitution, and avoid further confrontations.
We will continue to work with all parties as they address these issues for the benefit of all Iraqis. It is time for all parties to look to the future and focus on peaceful resolution of disputes under the Iraqi constitution. 



And Brett McGurk emerges from his hole (no idea of the man or woman's name) to Tweet:


  1.   18 hours ago
    The US supports a strong KRG within a unified & federal Iraq & calls on Kurdish parties to support the KRG in run-up to 2018 elections. 4/4
    288 replies174 retweets447 likes



  2.   18 hours ago
    We also commend the historic decision by President Barzani and will engage actively with KRG PM Nechirvan Barzani & DPM Qubad Talabani. 3/4
    72 replies112 retweets263 likes



  3.   18 hours ago
    We are encouraged by the security dialogue that has taken place in recent days and have called for an end to all confrontations. 2/4
    28 replies65 retweets142 likes



  4.   18 hours ago
    The U.S. has been actively engaged over past week to open a new dialogue and resolve disputes peacefully under the Iraqi constitution. 1/4
    105 replies82 retweets233 likes








The same old lies from DC.

The story of the US government and the Kurds has always been the story of betrayal.


This story was told in the Pike Report which the US Congress produced but then quickly decided not to release.  It was leaked to the press and, February 16, 1976, The Village Voice published Aaron Latham's "Introduction to the Pike Papers."  Latham explained:



In 1972, Dr. Henry Kissinger met with the Shah of Iran, who asked the U.S. to aid the Kurds in their rebellion against Iraq, an enemy of the Shah.  Kissinger later presented the proposal to President Nixon who approved what would become a $16 million program.  Then John B. Connally, the former Nixon Treasury Secretary, was dispatched to Iran to inform the Shah, one oil man to another.
The committee report charges that: "The President, Dr. Kissinger and the foreign head of state [the Shah] hoped our clients would not prevail.  They preferred instead that the insurgents simply continue a level of hostilities sufficient to sap the resources of our ally's neighboring country [Iraq].  The policy was not imparted to our clients, who were encouraged to continue fighting.  Even in the context of covert action, ours was a cynical enterprise."
During the Arab-Israeli war, when the Kurds might have been able to strike at a distracted Iraqi government, Kissinger, according to the report, "personally restrained the insurgents from an all-out offensive on the one occasion when such an attack might have been successful."
Then, when Iran resolved its border dispute with Iraq, the U.S. summarily dropped the Kurds.  And Iraq, knowing aid would be cut off, launched a search-and-destroy campaign the day after the border agreement was signed.
A high U.S. official later explained to the Pike committee staff: "Covert action should not be confused with missionary work."

That is the root and start of a relationship where the US government repeatedly used and misled the Kurdish people and repeatedly lied and broke promises.  It remains the story of the US government and the Kurds.


It's why KRG President Massoud Barzani included the US in the denouncements in his speech Sunday.  The US has been a bitter disappointment to the Kurds -- again.


This has happened repeatedly.


And it is past time the Kurds realized that.


We noted Jalal Talabani, among others, made a fool of himself in 2010 when he was among those believing the US government's promises regarding The Erbil Agreement -- the agreement the US ignored after swearing that they would back it.


It should now be completely clear to the Kurds that the US government will lie to them, will make promises that will never be kept and will never stand with them.


Currently, the Kurds are under attack from Baghdad.


Callum Paton (NEWSWEEK) explains:





In the wake of a series of lightning victories over Kurdish forces in recent weeks, Iraq’s leaders plan to press their advantage and effectively dismantle Kurdish regional autonomy in the north of the country, ending decades of independence for the ethnic group in Iraq.
The Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi outlined his government’s plans in an interview with The Independent Monday. He said that by taking back authority over Iraqi Kurdistan’s borders, absorbing the Kurdish security forces into the Iraqi military and reestablishing control over the regional government’s oil exports, Baghdad would take steps to curtail powers the regional government in Erbil has enjoyed for 26 years.


Ahmed Rasheed, Ercan Gurses and Raya Jalabi (REUTERS) report:


Iraqi troops deployed on Tuesday at one of the main land crossings with Turkey, gaining a foothold at the Kurdish-held frontier for the first time in decades and imposing one of Baghdad's central demands on the Kurds.
Iraq's entire land border with Turkey is located inside the Kurdish autonomous region, and has been controlled by the Kurds since before the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.






That's what passes for 'peace' to the United States.  And this is only the internal situation -- they are also facing hostility from neighbors -- including Turkey.






View all Link to headline article
Ankara still frosty toward KRG as Barzani exitsDespite the decision by the Kurdistan Regional Government's President Massoud Barzani to step down, Turkish hostility toward him and his likely political successors has not…
Profile image of authorAl-Monitor
Oct 31, 2017





  Oct 27
forces not who are supposed to respect all the Iraqi people including people and it’s flag. Now stepping on it.
12 replies61 retweets45 likes







Barzani steps down as president tomorrow November 1st.


solvemee‏ @solvemee Oct 28

They called on Israel and USA for help, but they turned them down. Now they call on God.
11 replies 21 retweets 28 likes


The entire international community looked away as the Baghdad-based government used US-supplied weapons on the Kurds.

France's Bernard-Henri Levy puzzles over the betrayal of the Kurds.


  1.   3 hours ago
    has left , one of US's oldest allies, in hands of Iraq and Iran killers. How to explain this betrayal?
    21 replies65 retweets130 likes



  2.   4 hours ago
    stance on and support to militias is a huge moral forfeiture, unlike any I have ever seen
    18 replies32 retweets94 likes



  3.   5 hours ago
    Shock re: ’s shocking inconsistency: he lectures deal is the worst, yet welcomes in
    5 replies35 retweets80 likes



  4.   5 hours ago
    The attitude of the on is a terrifying mystery & one to which insufficient attention has been paid.
    12 replies39 retweets99 likes






There's nothing to puzzle over.

This is how the US government has repeatedly treated the Kurds.

Over and over.


And Sunnis should take note because they've been lied to as well.

Some of Barzani's statements of regret regarding the US?  Not that unlike Ayad al-Allawi's remarks about Barack Obama.

(Ayad al-Allawi is a Shi'ite.  His remarks were regarding the US government's betrayal of Iraqiya.  al-Allawi headed Iraqiya -- which won the 2010 elections and was a non-sectarian, mixed-slate coalition.)


The following community sites -- plus Jody Watley and BLACK AGENDA REPORT -- updated:





Oh Boy It Never Ends
SUBURBICAN
2 hours ago


  • Trina's Kitchen
    Judy Collins caught lying about Joni Mitchell
    2 hours ago
  • Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills)
    Judy Collins is a lousy feminist

    • SICKOFITRADLZ
    It's over
    2 hours ago


  • Ruth's Report
    THE NATION magazine endorses pedophilia
    2 hours ago
  • The Official Jody Watley Website
    Jody Watley. NEW Video on Youtube.
    12 hours ago
  • Black Agenda Report
    Let White Supremacy “Fucking Die”
    12 hours ago


    • Mikey Likes It!
    Joni Mitchell never lies
    14 hours ago


  • Like Maria Said Paz
    How do pervs like David Yaffe get hired by Syracuse?
    15 hours ago




















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    Posted by at

    Monday, October 30, 2017

    Iraq snapshot

    Monday, October 30, 2017.

    Fake news?

    You mean like this:

      Oct 28
    Iraqi army won the title of the best army in the world! Alsumaria News: The British military magazine Jeans has named the the "best army in the world" of 2017, while Lieutenant General Abdul Wahab al-Saadi won the award of the best military commander.



    YES2IRAQ might need to rethink their claims.  There's no "Jeans."  Possibly they mean JANE'S DEFENCE WEEKLY?

    At any rate, no such praise has been published in the print edition of JANE'S nor has it been published online.  And if ALSUMARIA truly presented the claims, it did so in a live broadcast and not in a story it filed at its website -- which makes no sense at all.

    But if the Iraqi military had to pretend on genuine praise, they'd be waiting forever.

    Iraq can't defend itself.

    Even now, it cannot defend itself.

    A US-led coalition scrambled ISIS.  Did it defeat it?  Nope because that's not how you defeat terrorism.  But they scrambled ISIS.

    To pretend that the Iraqi military is competent let alone praiseworthy requires serious delusion.

    There's so much pretending going on.

    In last night's "Looks like a victory for Massoud Barzani despite the pack mentality of the press," we noted that the resignation of KRG President Barzani on Sunday came at the perfect time for his legacy.  He stood up to all foreign powers and honored the Kurdish people by holding a referendum -- in which over 92% of the voters declared that they did not want to be a part of Iraq.

    Barzani is now a folk hero.

    The press can't see that?  Or it refuses to admit it?

    We knew that our failure to address the disputed territories and conflicting Kurdish-Arab claims to places like Kirkuk was dangerous. When I was back working in Iraq again from 2008 to 2010, Ambassador Ryan Crocker predicted in a senior staff meeting that our leaving the Kirkuk issue unresolved “would destroy Iraq.” Distracted by each new crisis du jour, we never mounted a sustained, determined effort to bring Erbil and Baghdad together to resolve the smoldering problem of the disputed territories.

    That's Robert Ford writing at THE ATLANTIC this morning in a piece entitled "America Never Understood Iraq: As the Kurdish crisis continues to spiral, a former diplomat laments a history of missed opportunities."  Ford writes:

    But Abadi and the Baghdad government—far stronger and with Iranian and American backing—would have none of it, rejecting appeals for dialogue and threatening force. On October 19, the outnumbered Kurds unhappily relinquished Kirkuk and the oilfields without a fight. Again rejecting renewed Kurdish appeals for dialogue, Abadi demanded that Erbil cancel the referendum and turn over its airports and control of its border points. Iraqi forces and the Iran-backed Shia Islamist Popular Mobilization brigades marched into other areas in the disputed territories and the point where Turkey, Syria, and Iraq meet. The Iraqi forces and the peshmerga eventually agreed to a temporary ceasefire on October 28, but there is no resolution in sight for the disputed territories and the future of Iraq’s Kurds.
    While Abadi and others in Baghdad condemned the Kurdish vote as illegitimate, there is nothing in the Iraqi constitution that expressly forbade such a non-binding referendum. Moreover, its result merely confirmed what everyone in Iraq already knew: Iraq’s Kurds don’t want to be in Iraq. 
    This poses the question of how democratic Iraq could ever be when such a large segment of its population wants out. Oil revenues can help bind Iraq’s Arab and Kurdish communities. The communities are, however, very far apart politically and socially. If Iraq is to find stability, reaching a political solution to integrate Iraqi Kurdistan into broader Iraq seems unavoidable.


    Over the weekend, Aziz Weysi Bani weighed in at NEWSWEEK:

     Following our vote for independence, Iraqi and regional backlash escalated with closure of our airspace, an end to financial transactions and arrest warrants for our officials. Emboldened by the total lack of international response, Iraq and Iran’s aggression culminated with an invasion of our territory by the Iraqi Army and their Iranian-backed militant counterparts. These militants include terror-designated groups such as Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
    These attacks on all fronts, from Sinjar to Kirkuk to Khanaqin, took us by surprise. It was not a complete surprise to the United States, however, which knew the attack was imminent but failed to provide us with a warning or apply adequate pressure to prevent it. Our weakness was partly due to some of our political and military leaders having made a desperate deal with Iran and Iraq, and who retreated their forces without a fight. Had the West provided us with sufficient support, we would not be as susceptible to such lethal manipulation by our common enemies.
    When President Donald J. Trump was elected, Kurds were buoyed with new hope. Initially positive signals from his administration prompted babies and businesses to be named after America’s new president.
    This support began to wane with President Trump’s opposition to our independence referendum and then turned to outrage when the United States stood by as our lines collapsed under the Iraqi assault. America's policy of not having a policy is all the more confusing, as President Trump only one week ago committed to decertifying the Iran deal and listing the IRGC as a terror organization.


    Donald Trump was able to turn his back on the Kurds largely due to the American media.  It's a point Baria Alamuddin (ARAB NEWS) made Sunday as she reflected on her recent trip to the US:

    From inside the Washington media bubble it can feel as if the outside world has ceased to exist. The liberal US media appears ill-equipped to handle any news story that doesn’t involve feigning outrage at Donald Trump’s absurd tweets. I wouldn’t want to trivialize the shocking Harvey Weinstein scandal, but is it inopportune to inquire whether anything else is going on in the world?
    Americans across the political spectrum appear so consumed with their shattered and polarized national identity that they struggle to pay attention to complex international developments. The White House is obsessed with self-generated crises and own goals, dominated by a president who, if he were suddenly minded to lash out at Tehran and Pyongyang, might struggle to find them on a map.  


    Trudy Rubin may have been the only journalist at a daily paper paying attention to what was taking place -- see her October 18th column "Betraying the Kurds plays into Tehran's hands" (PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER).


    In other news, another journalist has been killed in Iraq.

      5 hours ago
    Replying to 
    journalist Arkan Sharif leaves behind three children, he was killed in his home in Daquq by Iraqi militiamen.
    3 replies45 retweets33 likes
     
     
     


    India's TRIBUNE reports:

    A Kurdish video journalist with a channel backing Iraqi Kurdistan's leader Massud Barzani was stabbed to death at his home overnight in disputed Kirkuk province, a security source said on Monday.
    Four armed men broke into the home of Arkan Sharif, a 54 -year-old journalist with Kurdistan TV, at 2:30 am (local time) in the Daquq area south of Kirkuk city, the source said.
    Sharif, a father of three, was stabbed five times after his family were locked up in another room, the source said.


    New content at THIRD:

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    Posted by at

    Sunday, October 29, 2017

    Looks like a victory for Massoud Barzani despite the pack mentality of the press

    All these outlets and they all sing from the same hymnal?

    I'm referring to Masoud Barzani's announcement.

    The 'independent' analysis from western media goes like this: He held a referendum and it was a failure now he's stepping down.

    Or as Zaid al-Ali (ALJAZEERA) gushes excitedly, "The punditry world has never been as united as it is today: virtually everyone agrees that the independence referendum that was organised on 25 September in Iraqi Kurdistan was an unmitigated disaster."

    Maybe that's correct.

    It's also possible that it's wrong.


    I'd argue the better reading is that Massoud Barzani has shored up his legacy and his latest move just furthers that.

    Outside of the western media today, who thought the September 25th referendum was going to bring independence to Kurdistan?

    It was a non-binding referendum.

    Do American journalists no longer understand basic English?

    Raya Jalabi and Maher Chmaytelli (REUTERS) maintain that the referendum "backfired."


    Sebastian Usher (BBC) insists that the referendum "backfired dramatically."


    On and on it goes.

    92% of Kurds voted for independence.

    How is that a failure?

    They want independence.

    That's not an unknown.

    Massoud brought them closer to it than anyone else ever has.

    That's a win.

    What was the big criticism of Massoud?

    That he overstayed his terms, that this was disrespectful of democracy.

    What did he say in his announcement?

     I refuse to continue the position of president of the Kurdish region after November 1.  Changing the law on the presidency of Kurdistan or prolonging the presidential term is not acceptable.
    I believe that addresses that issue.


    Barzani is a hero.

    Nabih Bulos (LOS ANGELES TIMES) misses that point even while reporting:

    Local news outlets reported his supporters, many armed with sticks, broke into the parliament to insist that he remain in power. They also attacked an opposition member of parliament who had criticized Barzani, according to the Alsumaria news channel.


    Just as everyone seems to have pre-agreed how to report the events, they also appear to have pre-agreed not to name names.  Rabun Maroof is the MP who was attacked.  He's a member of the CIA-backed Goran Party.


    They also apparently agreed to ignore Barzani's critique of the US.  RT leads with what the others ignore:


    The US has failed to back the Kurds, who were their close allies in the fight against ISIS terrorists, and has allowed Baghdad to use American weapons in its attack on Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani, the Iraqi Kurdish President, has said after resigning his post.
    “Nobody stood up with us other than our mountains,” Barzani said in a televised address Sunday after the Kurdish parliament endorsed his resignation request. 
    He was referring to Baghdad’s military operation launched on October 16 following the Kurdish referendum. The vast majority had supported the region’s independence from Iraq in the September plebiscite.
    The departing Kurdish leader denounced the US for abandoning the Kurds and allowing American Abrams tanks, which were supplied to Iraqi forces to fight Islamic State, to be deployed against them. “Without the help of Peshmerga(Kurdish fighters), Iraqi forces could not have liberated Mosul from ISIS (Islamic State, IS) alone,” he pointed out as cited by Reuters.
    “Our people should now question, whether the US was aware of Iraq's attack and why they did not prevent it,” Barzani said.“Why would Washington want to punish Kurdistan?” he reflected in disbelief.

    In his speech, he also noted that "treason" (his word) was committed.  He's referring to the spawn of Jalal Talabani.

    Two weeks ago, we noted the development -- treason being used to describe the Talabani actions (for a few coins, they refused to allow the Peshmerga to defend Kirkuk -- and, yes, that action is indeed treason).

    I don't see the downside for Massoud Barzani.


    He's 71-years-old.

    Do you really think he's got the stamina or future to continue leading?

    He stood up to the world.  The US, the UK, France, everybody (except Israel) insisted the September 25th referendum had to be cancelled.

    He didn't back down.

    The Kurdish people got to have their say.

    What followed?

    It makes Barzani a martyr, a hero.

    This is the perfect time to bow out.

    Now it's on someone else to carry the baton to the next step.

    He delivered more than any Kurdish leader ever has.

    That's his legacy.

    It's a legacy his family will stand on.

    The Talabanis?

    The trashy family that sold out their own in order to get some more coins?  The ones who held the post of president while Jalal was unable to serve for two years -- held it by lying about his stroke and his inability to serve?

    This is a win.

    The press?

    I can't figure if they're idiots or whores?

    The RAND Corporation, years ago, before Barack was even president, identified the issues involved as a powder keg with many saying they needed to be resolved sooner than later.

    All these years later, these issues are still not resolved.

    To shut down the discussion, Hayder al-Abadi used the military and militias against the Kurdish people.

    That's not a win.

    And only a stupid or whorish press could ignore that.

    But this is the same press that ignored what Nouri al-Maliki was doing until Barack Obama finally spoke out against Nouri.



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

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