New York Times Says USA Too Scared Of Hitting Civilians To Deal With ISIS

There are a few questions raised by a sorty in the New York Times which accuses The White House and The Pentagon of being too scared of hitting civilians to attack ISIS strongholds in Iraq and Syria. The first is “When did the liberal New York Times align itself with neo – con warmongers.

The second of course is “When did fear of killing civilians ever stop The Pentagon from carpet bombing enemy targets?

The answer to the first is of course that to US ‘liberals’ the colour of the current President’s skin absolves him of everything, if he says war is good then there can be no argument against that.

Could the answer to the second by any chance lies in the ‘conspiracy theory’ that thanks to a recent whistleblower was proved to be true: ISIS was set up with the aid of the CIA to assist the Sunni Muslim fundametalist government of Saudi Arabia overthrow several Shi’ite and secular Muslim middle eastern dictatorships?

This story in Information Clearing House makes things a lot clearer.

NYT Trumpets U.S. Restraint against ISIS, Ignores Hundreds of Civilian Deaths

The New York Times this morning has an extraordinary article claiming that the U.S. is being hampered in its war against ISIS because of its extreme — even excessive — concern for civilians. “American officials say they are not striking significant — and obvious — Islamic State targets out of fear that the attacks will accidentally kill civilians,” reporter Eric Schmitt says.

The newspaper gives voice to numerous, mostly anonymous officials to complain that the U.S. cares too deeply about protecting civilians to do what it should do against ISIS. We learn that “many Iraqi commanders, and even some American officers, argue that exercising such prudence is harming the coalition’s larger effort to destroy” ISIS. And “a persistent complaint of Iraqi officials and security officers is that the United States has been too cautious in its air campaign, frequently allowing columns of Islamic State fighters essentially free movement on the battlefield.”

The article claims that “the campaign has killed an estimated 12,500 fighters” and “has achieved several successes in conducting about 4,200 strikes that have dropped about 14,000 bombs and other weapons.” But an anonymous American pilot nonetheless complains that “we have not taken the fight to these guys,” and says he “cannot get authority” to drone-bomb targets without excessive proof that no civilians will be endangered. Despite the criticisms, Schmitt writes, “administration officials stand by their overriding objective to prevent civilian casualties.”

But there’s one rather glaring omission in this article: the many hundreds of civilian deaths likely caused by the U.S.-led bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria.

READ ALL

The Damning (but secret) Report On Blair’s Weapons Of Mass Destruction

The reason why the UK went to war in Iraq was a trumped up, sexed up dossier prepated on the orders of former UK Prime minister, the traitor and war criminal Tony Blair, accusing Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussain of stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. The accusations in the dossier have since proven to be completely false. Blair’s determination to blindly followed the US President to war is responsible for Iraq becoming the failed state it is today, costing countless innocent civilians, not least the lives of our own troops and massive cost to the taxpayer in the process.

Were there any illegal weapons found in Iraq you might well ask. A New York Times investigation, published on Tuesday of this week reveals there were, but not such as would justify war. American and Iraqi troops found, and in multiple cases, were injured by aged and degraded stockpiles of chemical weapons in Iraq.

The report stated however that the US withheld information of these discoveries from the world as the weapons were manufactured in the 1980s when the US and its allies were actively supplying chemical agents to Saddam Hussein’s regime during the Iraq-Iran war. In other words – western foreign policy makers fucked up again.

UPDATE:
Why Bush Censored News Of WMD Finds In Iraq

US Will Use Its ISIS Airstrikes in Syria as Aircover for Rebels To Hit Syrian Military Targets

from Patrick Henningsen, 21st Century Wire

President Obama?s much celebrated ISIS(L) ?strategy? speech came on Tuesday night amid great fanfare and even greater debate. Sure, he outlined a strategy, but the President has been harboring another hidden agenda ? one you won?t get a straight answer on.

Obama rode a wave of public outrage and fear into Tuesday?s address, mostly due to the extensive media coverage of the alleged murders of two American journalists, James Foley and Steven Sotloff ? a drama played out on Youtube of all places. The beheadings were important in this process because they set the US military media campaign into hyper-drive. The timing in the run-up to the 9/11 anniversary seemed uncanny.

Obama?s public agenda is the one you can see on the table, one where the US officials promise to ?degrade and destroy ISIS?. Sounds great. Who can disagree with that?

Then there?s the hidden agenda, somewhere under the table, and not really up for rational debate. That?s probably because it?s highly illegal and has something to do with what started the ISIS crisis to begin with.

This is how Obama plans to sneak back in and re-ignite with last year?s failed bombing campaign that never was in Syria. He explains, ?I have made it clear that we will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country, wherever they are. That means I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria.?

Continue reading (long and detailed article)

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Why Assad is Winning: Victory For Secular Ruler In Syria Will Transform the Middle East.
While mainstream media continue to spin the Washington lie that US sponsored rebels are about to topple the Assad regime in Syria (the story they have been telling us for three years, an examination of the news feeds that mainstream news publisher and broadcasters use, which are free from Washington’s propaganda spin reveal a different story.

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Intervening in Libya was a big mistake
ISIS and the imperative of war in Iraq and Syria
Drive for global government

As soon as Obama gets one new war he wants another.

It was only two days ago Barack Hussein Obama went on tlevision to pitch his latest was to the American people. Contrary to what our ideologically idiotic leftie friends might tell you, America is not overwhelmingly in favour of Obama. Those who never supported him or feel the warmonger In Chief has betrayed them are not “a few right wing nut jobs who believe God created the world 4,000 years ago,” but actually about 50% of Americans with a a further significant minority believing Obama is well intentioned but even more clueless than Jimmy Carter.

Also contrary to what our ideologically idiotic leftie friends might tell you, Americas are not stupid even if their President is. They know a war against ISIS can never be won and cannot even succeed in checking the advance of the Islamic State forces without boots on the ground. And America has no desire for another war.

Obama is a solipsist however, and thus is as detached from reality as Tony Blair was. Already he is working on starting another war. Or to be exact, restarting another failed war.

Even as their heads are still reeling from the earbashing they took when Britain and Germany when they held out the begging bowl for support in a new war in Iraq and Syria, America’s Dumb and Dumber team, Barack Obama and John (Herman Munster) Kerry are trying to seduce Algeria into allowing The Evil Empire to set up bases within its borders from which to attack Libya.

Reintervention: Algeria considering US, France request to ‘facilitate’ Libya military strikes

from stratrisks.com

Algeria is reportedly studying requests by the US and France to “facilitate” military operations against militant groups in neighbouring Libya.

“The US and France have both asked Algeria to open its airspace to surveillance planes and other military planes transferring commando units for a reconnaissance mission in parts of Libya,” the source, requesting anonymity, told Anadolu Agency.

He added that the US and France have made the same request of “other states near Libya.”

Interesting to note that although it may be nothing but a rumour, one news report today said the assessors of the Nobel Peace Prize let it be known they regretted giving the peace prize to Obama. I think that’s a bit harsh, he has worked tirelessly to achieve peace … by killing every fucker in the world.

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There are few people in politics who will say in public the things that really think, thanks to the hypersensitivity of the American political establishment and their enthusiasm for bombing the crap out of anyone who upsets members of their anointed minorities. Its refreshing then to learn of comments made by veteran Czech Republic leader, putting the boot into the cowardly mealy mouthed sum who pass for conservative and libertarian politicians in the English Speaking countries.

Oh Barack We Hardly Knew Ye

A brilliant blog post from Zero Hedge today, only indirectly related to the financial topics they usually comment on, it is a response to President The Emperor Obama’s latest foray into Foreign Policy and probably his stupidest move yet (and thast is very very stupid indeed) as he finally achieves what he has been trying to do for the past three years and insert the USA into to intractible sectarian wars in the middle east.

The Change You Can Believe In promised by The Obamessiah then turns out to be a change from uneasy peace to perpetual war. How very very Orwellian. Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere’s Tyler:

Barack, We Hardly Knew Ye
Submitted by Tyler Durden

With your drums and guns and guns and drums, hurroo, hurroo
With your drums and guns and guns and drums, hurroo, hurroo
With your drums and guns and guns and drums
The enemy nearly slew ye
Oh my darling dear, Ye look so queer
Johnny I hardly knew ye…..

This memorable stanza from the classic anti-war song could not be more apt with respect to Barack Obama. He became President because he campaigned across the land draped in the garlands of peace. Yet he has now promised to spend his final three years in the White House smearing his face with war paint and strutting around the imperial city marshalling his “drums and guns and guns and drums”.

And let’s be clear. The President’s so-called “counter-terrorism” campaign—-that special kind of violent eruption which isn’t a “war”—-is not really about punishing some barbarians who have beheaded two innocent Americans and who have also recruited perhaps a dozen not so innocent Americans to join their blood-thirsty ranks. Civilized adults just do not start a war on the other side of the world on account of such thin gruel, as horrific as the actions involved might be.

Indeed, based on his stated reasons for war—beheadings and venomous rhetoric—Obama is on the same slippery slope that Woodrow Wilson stood on when he sent two million American GIs into the senseless slaughterhouse of northern France. It was to vindicate the freedom of Americans to sail into war zones, even on armed belligerent ships, he said.

In the cold light of history, Wilson’s misbegotten crusade in behalf of an utterly untenable principle accomplished nothing more than to prolong a war which was already over in the spring of 1917 due to the mutual exhaustion and bankruptcy of both sides; and in so doing, he spawned the Bolshevik tyranny in Russia, the punitive peace treaty of Versailles, the revanchist evil of Nazi Germany and the world wars and cold wars which followed.

Continue reading an in depth analysis of the nightmare scenarion Obama has invoved America (and possibly the UK) in at Zero Hedge

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Lebanon Army Chief Warns of Widening Conflict As ISIS Extremists Attack

Hee’s the latest instalment of depressing news from the middle east:

Islamic State fighters raise their flag in Labanon

(Reuters) – Islamic State insurgents who seized a Lebanese border town this month planned to turn Lebanon into another Iraq by unleashing sectarian war between Sunnis and Shi’ites that would have endangered the nation’s very existence, the army commander said.

General Jean Kahwaji told Reuters that radical Islamists on the march in Iraq and Syria still posed a “great threat” to Lebanon, which was torn apart by a 1975-90 civil war and has been badly buffeted by the Syrian conflict.

“The army hit them and continues to, smashing their plan,” said Kahwaji, 37 of whose soldiers were either killed or captured in the battle for the border town of Arsal. “But this does not mean that the story is over,” he said.

“They might think of another plan and try another time to cause Sunni-Shi’ite strife,” said Kahwaji, 60.

The Aug. 2 attack marked the most serious spillover to date of Syria’s three-year-old civil war into Lebanon and the first time a foreign invader has taken Lebanese territory since Israel entered the south during its 2006 war with Hezbollah. Read more at Reuters

Another ‘I told you so’ for Little Nicky, another all too predicable outcome of the west’s arming and training Islamists extremists in an idiotic push to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria and turn yet another middle eastern nation into a lawless failed state.

And don’t forget folks, our war loving, neo fascist blogosphere colleagues who cheered for ‘humaniratian’ intervention in Syria and are now waving flags for war with Russia were facilitators of this conflict. They gave Ameriucan, British and French leader enough support to encourage them to go ahead with arming and training the human organ noshing lunatics who are rampaging through Iraq and now seem to be turning to Lebanon as their next target in establishing an Islamic Cliphate.

Are U.S. Airstrikes In Northern Iraq About Oil?

Is it a coincidence US humanitarian airstrikes are hitting an area where US oil companies have huge investments (picture source)

Last week the rent boy President, Barack Hussein Obama authorized American airstrikes against the ISIS (Islamic State) fighters in Iraq. Obama justified his intervention by describing it as a “humanitarian effort.” Taken at face value that seemed true, the air strikes, though probably the wrong approach and one that may reap a terrible harvest for American interests around the world, was intended to save thousands of Yazidi sect members trapped on a mountain by the ISIS forces. The Yazidi are considered heretics by the fanatical Sunni Muslims who form the rebellion.

Obama made one slip, not picked up immediately (mea culpa) by mainstream media or the blogosphere whe he said it was also “an effort to protect our American personnel.”

The one word keyword he managed not to mention was “oil,” but as ever black gold lies near the center of American motives for intervention.

The United States with UK RAF support, is making airdrops of aid to the beleagured Yazidi who have fled before the advance of Islamic State militants, but is also conducting airstrikes around Erbil, which is to the east of the Yazidi area but is the centre of the Kurdistan oilfield.

There are American consular personnel in Erbil, but they could be evacuated if necessary. What Obama left unsaid was that Erbil, a city of 1.5 million, is the capital of the Kurdish oil industry, which accounts for about a quarter of Iraq’s oil. The Kurds claim that if they were to become an independent state, they would have the ninth-largest oil reserves in the world. And oil wells are near Erbil.

If the Islamic State were to take over Erbil, they would endanger Iraq’s oil production and, by extension, global access to oil. Prices would surge at a time when Europe, which buys oil from Iraq, has still not escaped the global recession. On Thursday, American oil companies Chevron and Exxon Mobile began evacuating their personnel from Kurdistan.

In portraying American intervention in Iraq as a purely humanitarian effort, Obama is following the script he read from in Libya, when he justified American intervention as an effort to prevent a massacre in Benghazi. Need I say anything more?

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Isis threat justifies greater surveillance powers in UK, says Liam Fox

Now I like to be selective about which conspiracy theories I support and which I ignore. The return of The Nephilim I am quite happy to pass on, likewise the indea that the world’s banking community is controlled by reptillians (politicians may display reptillian tendencies but bankers are only reptiles in a metaphorical sense.

and up to now I have found it easy to dismiss allegations that the ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and al Shem) was created by the west to further a globalist agenda.

After watching the Andrew Marr show yesterday I may have to rethink my position however:

Britain’s security services may need to be given greater powers of surveillance to monitor extremists from Isis when they return home to Britain from Iraq and Syria, the former defence secretary Liam Fox has said.

A majority of people will accept that an “ideological battle” means that the authorities will need greater powers to intercept the communications of extremists, Fox said.

The former defence secretary, who was speaking on the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1, said Britain should offer to put its airbases at the disposal of the US to avoid a “horrendous” situation in Iraq as Isis forces pose a threat to Baghdad.

Even if the bastards have not organised it in collaboration with the USA and United Nations, they clearly see it as an opportunity to shaft us again.

What can you do? Use a proxy server online – anonymouse is a good one for beginners; set your browser’s privacy settings to the highest practical level; next time you buy a computer go linux – ebuyer.com in the UK are shipping laptops with linux pre loaded now, the version of Ubuntu on the one I bought my daughter is nothing to be afraid of; buy over the counter for cash whenever possible – help reserve jobs in your community as well as frustrating the surveillance state fascists; do not publish personal information on social media – remember all Facebook’s profit las year came from what the US government pay them for spying on users.

Your personal revolution starts here.

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We told you some years ago when our publication appeared under a different name that the then Labour Government’s plan for compulsory electronic ID cards was the step that would take us over the line from a seblance of liberal democracy into oligarchic fascism. Labour’s plan was derailed by public opposition but now it has been rehashed and is presented with fluffy window dressing. A vote for Labour, Conservative Or Liberal Democrat is a vote for fascism. You have been warned.

Iraq Will Need Additional US Assistance, Obama Says

“President Barack Obama said Thursday Iraq will need more help from the United States as it seeks to push back a violent Islamic insurgency that has captured two key cities and is vowing to press toward Baghdad.

Obama did not specify what type of assistance the U.S. would be willing to provide, but said he had not ruled out any options.

“We do have a stake in making sure that these jihadists are not getting a permanent foothold in either Iraq or Syria, for that matter,” Obama said during an Oval Office meeting with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Iraq has been beset by violence since the last American forces withdrew in late 2011. The violence escalated this week with an al-Qaida-inspired group capturing two key Sunni-dominated cities this week and vowing to march on to Baghdad.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders have pleaded with the Obama administration for more than a year for additional help to combat the growing insurgency, which has been fueled by the unrelenting civil war in neighboring Syria. Northern Iraq has become a way station for insurgents who routinely travel between the two countries and are seeding the Syrian war’s violence in Baghdad and beyond.”

According to Little Nicky Machiavelli’s sources the big irony here is that while Obama talks about supporting the Maliki government in Iraq, his administration has been arming the ISIS fighters too …

How The US Is Arming Both Sides Of The Iraqi Conflict

from Zero Hedge
Recall a week ago we wrote “US Begins Delivering F-16s To Iraq This Week, A Decade After It Wiped Out Iraq’s Air Force” in which we said:

… the US will deliver the first of 36 F-16 fighter jets to Iraq in what Baghdad’s envoy to the United States called a “new chapter” in his country’s ability to defend its vast borders with Iran and other neighbors.

….the US earlier in March provided Iraq with some 100 Hellfire missiles as well as assault rifles and other ammunition. Then in April the US sent more arms, providing Iraq with 11 million rounds of ammunition and other supplies.

It is unknown how many of these have fallen into Al Qaeda/ISIS hands (we do know that at least one Iraqi Black Hawk chopper was captured during the rush for Mosul). What is known is that as PBS Frontline reported two weeks ago, while the administration has denied arming Syrian “rebels”, i.e. the same ISIS militants that have crossed the border and are now fighting in Iraq…

Continue reading

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Want A Good Laugh? Try This: Tony Blair Says Invasion Of Iraq Did Not Trigger Current Crisis

Public opposition to war doesn’t ‘invalidate’ invasion, says war criminal Tony ‘Bloodlust’ Blair

Tony Blair Selfie – I love the smell of napalm any time of day

The murderer and war criminal Tony Blair is busy running round the world claiming his complicity in the murder of 100,000 Iraqis, most of whom were innocent, was an act of great humanity for which he deserves to be granted high office and eventually proclaimed St. Anthony of The Cottage. Honestly there is no end to the arrogance and pomposity of these shits. One also has to wonder what Bliar is after, there must be a prestigious, high paying job going. Or maybe he is just acting as a shill to try and revive Obama’s failed attempt to start world War Three in Syria.

Tony Blair as he claims he saved Iraq from Syria-style civil war

Tony Blair yesterday said ministers must be prepared to go to war in the future regardless of the level of public opposition. The former Prime Minister suggested voters do not always understand where Britain’s real interests lie and should be ignored if politicians think there is a good case for military intervention.

He admitted that ministers should be ‘aware’ of the need to secure public support for a foreign conflict. ‘But in my view, it doesn’t invalidate the necessity to intervene because what you’ve got to compare is the fact and the consequences of intervention with the fact and the consequences of non-intervention,’ he said.

Tony Blair yesterday said ministers must be prepared to go to war in the future regardless of the level of public opposition. The former Prime Minister suggested voters do not always understand where Britain’s real interests lie and should be ignored if politicians think there is a good case for military intervention.

He admitted that ministers should be ‘aware’ of the need to secure public support for a foreign conflict. ‘But in my view, it doesn’t invalidate the necessity to intervene because what you’ve got to compare is the fact and the consequences of intervention with the fact and the consequences of non-intervention,’ he said.

And we should be aware of the real agenda on Syria.

Peacemaker and Joybringer Prepares To Restart Iraq Warar

This blog is becoming the Obama Warmonger blog. A long time ago, just after Obama was elected in 2008 I began a post by slightly misquoting Shakespeare’s Henry IV part 2 act 4 sc 5. The old king is speaking to his son (Henry V to be). All I had to do was substitute Obama’s real name (Barry) for the Prince’s …

Therefore, my Barry,
Be it thy course to busy giddy minds
With foreign quarrels, that action, hence borne out, 3110
May waste the memory of the former days.

from Gobal Reseach:

Two years after President Barack Obama declared that his administration had ended the catastrophic US war in Iraq “responsibly… leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant” government, the US has rushed emergency shipments of Hellfire missiles to Baghdad and appears to be preparing for a possible renewal of direct military intervention in the form of drone missile attacks.

These measures are a response to an appeal from the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, the New York Times reported Thursday, and come in the face of a rise in violence to a level not seen since the US military “surge” of 2008, with over 8,000 Iraqis having lost their lives over the last year.

A shipment of 75 Hellfire missiles arrived in Iraq last week, according to the Times report. The Pentagon is also set to deliver dozens of reconnaissance drones to the Baghdad regime in the coming year, along with F-16 fighters and Apache helicopter gunships. US intelligence is also providing targeting information for Iraqi air strikes.

Military experts cited by the Times (London), however, expressed skepticism that the Iraqi military, even with such material assistance, will prove capable of defeating a growing Al Qaeda-affiliated insurgency in the country’s predominantly Sunni Anbar province.

The prospect for a more direct US military intervention through the launching of a drone airstrike campaign has been raised in recent months by Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari.

Last Sunday, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki signaled the escalating US involvement in Iraq, declaring that Al Qaeda-connected insurgents were “seeking to gain control of territory inside the borders of Iraq” and describing these elements as the “common enemy of the United States and the Republic of Iraq, and a threat to the greater Middle East region.”

This “threat,” however, is one of Washington’s own making, and the “common enemy” in Iraq has been the de facto proxy force of US imperialism’s war for regime-change in neighboring Syria.

Well as the USA lurches from crisis to crisis, in race relations, social collapse, jobs, cost of living, law enforcement, out of control climate management experiments, legislative paralysis and a loss of confidence in government it certainly seems Barry has set himself on a course “to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels”.

Will it work?

Only if his goal is to make himself more unpopular. And shouldn’t someone be asking who T. F. gave the Syrian Al Qaeda butchers advanced weapons in the first place.

The Truth About Western Humanitarian Intervention In Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan

Just occasionally us truth tellers have to deal with a fully paid up, card carrying member of the idiots union. Yesterday for example, a comment on Little Nicky’s post about Libya sliding towards civil war as a result of the botched intervention by the FUKUS axis attracted a comment from some plank who wanted to tell me it was nonsense to suggest that “Gadaffi kept the peace”. Well it would have been wrong to apply that phrase but regular readers know Little Nicky would never use such a mealy mouthed, limp wristed, wussy, pink knicker wearing phrase.

Gadaffi was a brutal dictator who maintained a kind of order by suppressing brutal, bloodthirsty, fanatical factions who would otherwise been in a state of permanent civil war. Big difference, and the reason why most Libyans wish Gaddafi was still in charge.

Here for the benefit of cliche spouting idiot lefties who think ancient hatreds can be resolved by telling people to join hands and sing Kumbaya, is a snapshot of the “peace” that has reigned in three nations after western intervention removed brutal dictators.

If you are a stupid leftie who wants to tell me how mean and horrible I am for telling the truth about the total failure of Kumbayaism, don’t bother, just fuck the fucking fuck off. I am not interested in anything morons have to say.

The bloody disaster of Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan is laid bare

from Simon Jenkins in The Guardian

‘Forty-three people died on Friday in clashes between militias in Libya, as did 22 on Sunday from bombs in Iraq. In Helmand, a return of the Taliban to power is now confidently expected. Why should we care? Why should it feature on our news?

The answer is that we helped to bring it about. Britain’s three foreign wars in the past decade were uninvited military interventions to topple installed governments. All have ended in disaster.

In each case – Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan – it was easy to see evil in the prevailing regime. These are bad guys that we need to go after, said the Americans. Yet the removal of law and order from a nation is devastating, however cruel that order may have been. Iraqis today repeat that, whatever the ills of Saddam Hussein, under his rule most ordinary citizens and their families could walk the streets at night without fear of murder or kidnap. Religious differences were tolerated. Iraq should have been an oil-rich modern state. Even the Kurds, scourged by Saddam in the past, enjoyed autonomy and relative peace.’

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Iraq Civil War: I Told You So Again

When will you learn, all you nay sayers, when wil all those Ivory Tower dwelling academics and experts learn.

“We toppled the tyrant Saddam and broght freem’an’moxy (copyright George Dubya Bush) to Iraq they said.

Iraq will fragment and drift into tribal and secartian, many sided civil war Little Nicky Machiavelli said. Well having observed the baser instincts of human nature for over 500 years, us Machiavelli’s know a thing or two about tyranny, brutality and man’s inhumanity to man. And that is why, while being aware of how awful tyrants like Saddam, Gaddafi and Assad are, I knew that what was put in their place by the join-hands-and-sing-fucking-kumbaya brigade would be far worse.

FROM THE INDEPENDENT:

“Iraqi leaders fear that the country is sliding rapidly into a new civil war which “will be worse than Syria”. Baghdad residents are stocking up on rice, vegetables and other foodstuffs in case they are prevented from getting to the shops by fighting or curfews. “It is wrong to say we are getting close to a civil war,” said a senior Iraqi politician. “The civil war has already started.”

This is borne out by the sharp rise in the number of people killed in political violence in Iraq in April, with the UN claiming more than 700 people were killed last month, the highest monthly total for five years.

The situation has suddenly deteriorated since the killing of at least 36 Sunni Arab protesters at a sit-in in Hawijah on 23 April. An observer in Baghdad, who did not want to be named, said “ever since, Hawijah people are frightened of a return to the massacres of 2006”. She added that Sunni and Shia were avoiding going into each others’ areas. Signs of deteriorating security are everywhere. Al-Qa’ida showed its reach on Monday when five car bombs blew up in overwhelmingly Shia southern Iraq, leaving 21 dead. The Sunni fundamentalist group, which had a resurgence in 2012, is responsible for killing a majority of the almost 1,500 Iraqis who have died in political violence so far this year.

Its members are now able to roam freely in Anbar province where a year ago they were a secretive underground movement. In neighbouring Kirkuk, al-Qa’ida last week seized the town of Sulaiman Bec, shot the chief of police, stormed the police station and departed with their weapons after agreeing a truce with the Iraqi army.

Residents in Baghdad say that soldiers, whom they claim are Shia militiamen in uniform, have massed around Sunni enclaves in the city and are setting up checkpoints. Memories of the sectarian civil war in 2006 and 2007 when, in the worst months, some 3,000 people were butchered, may be exacerbating the sense of threat, but old fears are reawakening. Bombs have usually been directed against Shia in the past, but in recent weeks Sunni mosques and cafés are being targeted. “Before we could escape to Syria, but with the violence there where can we go?” asked one Iraqi. “There is no way out.” ”

read full article

Don’t come round here with your Kumbayaism, some parts of the world (about three quarters of it by population actually) just don’t do democracy and human rights.

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Boggart Abroad … Daily Stirrer home … Greenteeth Bites … Boggart Blog … Greenteeth Labyrinth … Author … Gather … Bubblews … Authorsden … Scribd

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Does Dr Kelly Deserve An Inquest

The attempt to deny the need for an inquest into the death of Dr David Kelley in 2003 dominate the news today. The pathologists who conducted the post mortem was yesterday standing by his coluclusion that death was cause by severed arteries in Dr. Kelly’s wrists exacerbated by advanced heart disease. You may remember Dr. Kelly was involved in leaking information about the Iraq Weapons Of Mass Destruction dossier after Tony Blair had allegedly mislead Parliament to justify going to war.

Funny, I could have sworn earlier in the week he was talking about Dr. Kelley having swallowed 26 Co Proximol tablets, way over the maximum eight a day stipulated when I was prescribed the powerful pain killer.

And then there are the contradictory conclusions of the private autopsy carried out at the request of the family.

Curiouser and Curiouser. No wonder the conspiracy theories persist.

Read more on the pathologist and Dr. Kelly

THE THIRD WORLD WAR

A headline in one of today’s papers, over a picture of an overturned and burned out tank in which six U.S. soldiers and an interpreter told us that Iran is orchestrating an offensive aimed at driving the Americans and British out of Iraq.
The story that followed reported that new alliances have been forged between Sunni insurrectionists (they’re not insurgents, OK, they’e bloody insurrectionists) and Shia militia, Al Quaeda terror groups and Syrian geurillas have increased the strike capabilities of the Iraqis.

This is the response to Bush’s surge of course.

Loyal readers of Machiavelli blog will recall we predicted about a year ago that the conflict would escalate towards full scale war in late 2007 or early 2008 as defeat for the religious right in the U.S. Presidential elections started to look certain.

Earlier this year we reported that U.S. and British troops had been carrying out covdert operations inside Iran with the aim of stirring up unrest.

Now our discredited and deluded politicians are trying to fool us by crying foul when the Iranians retaliate.

It is time we took to the streets to put an end to this insanity before we are counting our dead in hundreds rather than tens each week.

SONGS OF WAR
PALS
Iraq Inquiry – Blair Guilt

Unambiguous

Browsing a big U.S. news blog earlier I chanced upon a post written by an American commentator whose stance is on the religious right. He was lambasting the U.S. Senate and Congress for voting to impose on the President a timetable for withdrawal of troops from Iraq.
This person argued that the tide is turning in America’s favour and it would be “cowardly and unchristian” to pull out before the goals of the occupation have been achieved. (He did not actually say what those goals were, presumably because like the people who ordered the invasion he has never actually known.)
It all just made me wonder what part of “you got your arses kicked again, get out before it gets really embarrassing” America’s political right have a problem getting their heads round. The message of the Iraqi resistance seems pretty unambiguous.

U.S. Military recruiting ghosts?

Paul Bremer, former head of American operations in Iraq told members of Congress today that he was aware that nonexistent “ghost employees” were on America’s payroll when he was administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in 2003 and 2004.

Well I always thought Arabs were superstitious people but Bremner’s ghosts didn’t scare the Mahdi Army.

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Working 366 days a year to deceive us.

Do our wonderful government ever take a break from working flat out to keep us in a state of blissful ignorance. Even on Christmas day they are squirreling away burying bad news. Well let’s face it, if 9/11 was seen by Blair’s government as a good day to bury bad news 12/25 is a thousand times better.
And so over the weekend when the great British public are catatonic after overdosing on everything the news broke that the British Army had attacked the headquarters of the Iraqi police serious crimes squad in Basra.
Now the Iraqis may have a quirky understanding of the role of a serious crimes squad but what this event means is that we, the coalition are now not just at war with terror, truth, insurgency and various nationalist militias, but with the security forces of the Iraqi government (which you may remember was imposed on Iraq by the American / British coalition).
Yes, our boys are attacking those very security forces that a few months ago we were told would be ready to take over responsibility for “homeland security” in Iraq sometime in 2007. The reason for the attack? The serious crimes squad was a bunch of corrupt and depraved torturers, extortionists, rapists, thugs, racketeeers and thieves. Just like Saddam’s government then.
But the real reason the news had to be buried under the fallout from twenty million Christmas dinners. Simple, it shouts more clearly than anything has so far that we, the western alliance, have lost the war.

Talk to Tom Paine about the Army Mutiny.

It seems in his decrepitude the great libertarian agitator and free thinker Tom Paine has become a TORY.

Yes, over on his blog The Last Ditch which is billed as being about the death of liberty in Britain, Tom is slagging off the honourable and decent Army officer who has spoken out on behalf of his men against the idiotic and self serving policies of the TRAITOR Tony Blair.
The imposter Paine who writes the blog seems to think the nation will be plunged into a constitutional crisis if the WAR CRIMINAL AND MASS MURDERER BLAIR does not sack the General.

LITTLE NICK MACHIAVELLI say the General is right, the principle duty of an army officer abroad is to the safety and wellbeing of his men. Constitutional crisis my arse, if Blair does try to sack Sir Richard he could well have a military mutiny on his hands.

You can join the debate with Little Nicky at The Last Ditch

How Saddam May Yet Win The War

When Saddam Hussein is not in a courtroom he is safely locked up in prison somewhere in Iraq and like all right minded people I hope he stays there once his trial is ended. Unfortunately that hope may be in vain for even from a prison cell the old tyrant may yet disrupt our lives. When the neo – cons in the White House were whipping up the American people and Tony Blair to support the case for invading Iraq and overthrowing the regime, they failed to see the big picture. Economic tunnel vision seems to run in the Bush family but I suspect some of the others did realise what was going on in the world economy but chose to exploit short term economic opportunities and let the ordinary people of America suffer later.
It is about four years now since Saddam made his most astute move ever although it was probably done in a fit of petulance rather than with foresight. Maybe however some Iraqi economists did know the true state of the American economy when they advised their president to demand payment in Euros for Iraq’s oil. The U.S.A. far more than any other nation except perhaps Switzerland depends on the strength and stability of its currency. Exports are weak, the national debt is out of control and trade deficits are insupportable. If the dollar was not the currency the world trades, the U.S.A would be, if not quite a basket case of African levels then certainly in no better economic shape than “walking wounded” like Brazil and Mexico.
The American economy is both beneficiary and victim of the fact that the dollar is the world’s reserve currency. Whatever nations buy from across national borders they must pay for in dollars and whatever they bring to the world market to trade they want to be paid in dollars for. So it does not really matter how big the US deficit on oil, steel, foodcrops and coffee because what Uncle Sam is really selling in the world market is the dollar. This means the Federal Reserve Bank can print dollars to buy whatever the consumers demand.
The situation had persisted since the British economy crashed and burned in the early nineteen – sixties. The pound is still a trading currency but mostly within the British Commonwealth. In the world market a wodge of British wonga no longer begs the question “how much of our stuff would you like, sir?” but “how many dollars will that monopoly money buy, schmuck?” No matter, we own enough of America to ensure we have a ready supply of dollars flowing in through our holdings in the Caymans, Bermuda, The Isle of Man etc. World trade is truly wonderful.
The happy situation of dollar supremacy would have continued but for the push towards European integration. After the fall of the Soviet Union certain economists and political philosophers (mostly in France and Germany) decided that to have only one superpower would be bad for the world community. Another trading bloc was needed and the European Union could easily be adapted to fill the void.
It is easy to follow the reasoning, around 70% of the world’s currency reserves are held in dollars which of course means that essential commodities, particularly oil, are valued in dollars. While the U.S.A. controls the money supply in effect it gets imports for free. As a bonus most of the dollars that other nations have worked hard to earn have to be invested back in the U.S. economy. It is so smart we should be surprised the Mafia did not think of it first.
In spite of its recent enlargement the European Union’s economy suffers from none of the systemic weaknesses of the American economy. This being so, the Euro is the only serious competitor to the Dollar as a world currency. There we have one of the true, but unmentionable, reasons why The White House was so anxious to bring about regime change in Iraq. Now American interests control Iraq’s oil it is once more priced in dollars.
The lesson has not been lost on people who are not friends of America however.
The nations of the Middle East do more trade and have better political relationships with Europe, the EU imports more oil and the European economies are cashflow based rather than debt based and so are more sustainable in adverse trading conditions. There have already been rumblings from within OPEC (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) that a switch from dollars to euros for pricing oil could be a serious option. Should Europe’s two main oil producers, Britain and Norway adopt the euro it could well be the tipping point at which a switch by OPEC becomes not possible but inevitable. On top of that there is another risk. Western News Media portray Al Qaeda as an organisation intent upon destroying western civilisation but this is a dangerous over estimation of terrorist ambitions. There are surely terrorist cells around the world who meet in gloomy basements and mutter darkly through beards of mass destruction about the downfall of the decadent west and the triumph of Islam but Osama bin Laden is certainly neither mad nor stupid. He knows well the American collective psychology, the siege mentality that sees enemies (and Satan) lurking behind every rock and tree along the borders. The destruction of the World Trade Centre was a perfect tactical move and in his response George W. Bush played right into the terrorists hands. Now with the threat is inflated beyond all feasibility in the American psyche and the death toll in Iraq creeping past a thousand, isolationism is starting to look like a good option to American voters. A shift to a more inward looking stance on foreign policy could well open the way for a Bin Laden inspired coup in Saudi Arabia, overthrowing the House of Saud and replacing it with an Islamic fundamentalist regime. And with the fundamentalists pulling the strings in the world’s main oil producing area you can bet the exodus from the dollar would be rapid and total.
The American currency is already weak in world markets, the past twelve months have seen first a decline against other major currencies and now a resurgence. The situation is so far out of America’s control that with either a weak or a strong dollar they are the losers. The weak dollar mean imports, particularly oil, get more expensive and Americans regard the right to cheap gasoline alongside the right to free speech and the right to have bed dress sense. A strong dollar means America’s exports get dearer and a country already up to its neck in debt cannot afford a drop in its income from exports. Finally the American domestic economy is consumer led. A few hikes in the price of gasoline will cause panic to set in and people will stop spending. And then the trouble starts.
Central banks have started to shift reserves into more stable currencies and create a snowball effect. With demand for its main trading commodity diminishing the US economy faces possible collapse and America’s position as the world’s strongest nation looks precarious.
Europe may constitute a significant threat to America’s domination in trade but whereas the Soviet Union was a military superpower but an economic island, Europe and the U.S.A. are allies militarily but economic competitors that, under the unwritten rules of free market economics, would have go head to head in a trade war like two bull elephants. Free market economics compels all participants to compete for a bigger share of the cake at a time when America is more vulnerable than it has been in well over a century.
The problem in predicting how this poker game will be played out is that there is a third power and nobody truly know what kind of hand they hold. The Chinese are a military power, not so well armed in high – tech weaponry but with strength of numbers and a more compliant population. The risk of upsetting China, and the possible consequences of that may thwart America’s political ambitions but all the while the vast dollar reserves China holds can be used to influence the world economy in ways that suit the Chinese government.
The only way to avert a series of economic crises in the coming is for the other nations of the industrialised world to persuade America to adopt a more responsible and internationalist attitude to the obligations that go with its role as the world’s most powerful nation. Before we can begin to do that though, the American people must play their part by making sure the political establishment understands that being the biggest and the richest does not absolve a nation from its moral duty to the world community as a whole.
Before plunging into a war in Iraq, a war that Saddam Hussein knew he could not win on the battlefield, the U.S. Government and that of Britain should have consulted with experienced diplomats of other nations. In the west we are ruled by short – termism. The troops were in Baghdad within a month, a great triumph was proclaimed. It should have been all over but anyone experienced in Middle Eastern affairs would have advised that the Arab mindset is different and well suited to playing a long game.
So far the war has gone the way Saddam would have predicted. He knew his army could not withstand the assault, even if the British had not been involved the Iraqis would have been overwhelmed. But America has been sucked into a prolonged and costly occupation that has done inestimable damage to its standing in the world.
The consequences of a collapse of the global economy could result in global cultural war and plunge the world into a new dark age. The message that G8 has failed to send to the White House is that the world needs a strong and confident and outward looking America but America needs a supportive world community in order to regain its confidence and its sense of moral duty. If that message is not heeded soon then Saddam will truly have won the war.

Ian slams the madness of free market economics in
Holy City, a savage indictment of the attitudes that let to the global economic meltdown.