5/05/2017

ellen degeneres is working my last nerve

i like ellen.

i was glad she came out.

i thought her sitcom was better and more focused because of it.


but her politics lately are getting on my last damn nerve.

today, she declared donald trump would never be on her show.

and i was ticked off.

but thought, 'oh, it's just you.'

  5 hours ago
But Bush, the war criminal who launched an invasion of Iraq based on lies, killing and displacing millions, is very welcome? Right Ellen?
Ellen DeGeneres: Trump is not welcome on my show
67 replies387 retweets697 likes
 
 





exactly.

she had him on her stupid talk show and made nice with him.

bully boy bush started the iraq war.

and she's okay with that?

but offended by donald trump?

seriously?

ellen needs to step away from politics.

she's clearly not very smart.




let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'


Friday, May 5, 2017.  Chaos and violence continue, the US military presence in Iraq is set to continue beyond the (hoped for) demise of ISIS, and much more.



As of now, US troops are not leaving Iraq.


AP report this morning, "Iraq's Prime Minister says no U.S. combat troops will stay in Iraq after the fight against the Islamic State is concluded."

Never mistake word games for truth.

He goes on to declare that US troops will be there for "advise and consent."

Of course, according to Barack Obama throughout his second term, there were no US combat troops in Iraq.

Even though there were.


Word games.

The Pentagon refused to term what took place at the end of 2011 as "withdrawal."

They called it a "drawdown."

And did so because some US troops were moved to neighboring Kuwait and some US troops (special-ops) remained in Iraq even after the drawdown.

It wasn't a secret.

Ted Koppel reported it on both NBC and NPR in real time.

But the will to self-deceive is immense.

The SOFA was replaced in 2012.


Dropping back to the December 11, 2012 snapshot:

 
 
In yesterday's snapshot, we covered the Memorandum of Understanding For Defense Cooperation Between the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Iraq and the Department of Defense of the United States of America.  Angry, dysfunctional e-mails from Barack-would-never-do-that-to-me criers indicate that we need to go over the Memo a little bit more.  It was signed on Thursday and announced that day by the Pentagon.   Section two (listed in full in yesterday's snapshot) outlines that the two sides have agreed on: the US providing instructors and training personnel and Iraq providing students, Iraqi forces and American forces will work together on counterterrorism and on joint exercises.   The tasks we just listed go to the US military being in Iraq in larger numbers.  Obviously the two cannot do joint exercises or work together on counterterrorism without US military present in Iraq.
 
This shouldn't be surprising.  In the November 2, 2007 snapshot -- five years ago -- we covered the transcript of the interview Michael R. Gordon and Jeff Zeleny did with then-Senator Barack Obama who was running in the Democratic Party's primary for the party's presidential nomination -- the transcript, not the bad article the paper published, the actual transcript.  We used the transcript to write "NYT: 'Barack Obama Will Keep Troops In Iraq'" at Third.  Barack made it clear in the transcript that even after "troop withdrawal" he would "leave behind a residual force."  What did he say this residual force would do?  He said, "I think that we should have some strike capability.  But that is a very narrow mission, that we get in the business of counter terrorism as opposed to counter insurgency and even on the training and logistics front, what I have said is, if we have not seen progress politically, then our training approach should be greatly circumscribed or eliminated."
 
This is not withdrawal.  This is not what was sold to the American people.  Barack is very lucky that the media just happened to decide to take that rather explosive interview -- just by chance, certainly the New York Times wasn't attempting to shield a candidate to influence an election, right? -- could best be covered with a plate of lumpy, dull mashed potatoes passed off as a report.  In the transcript, Let-Me-Be-Clear Barack declares, "I want to be absolutely clear about this, because this has come up in a series of debates: I will remove all our combat troops, we will have troops there to protect our embassies and our civilian forces and we will engage in counter terrorism activities."
 
So when the memo announces counterterrorism activies, Barack got what he wanted, what he always wanted, what the media so helpfully and so frequently buried to allow War Hawk Barack to come off like a dove of peace.



Yesterday afternoon, Nancy A. Youssef and Mike Giglio (BUZZFEED NEWS) reported:
The United States and Iraq now are in talks that would allow an as-of-yet unspecified number of US troops to stay in Iraq after the presumed fall of ISIS.
Just a few years ago, US officials said the military mission was winding down in Iraq and Afghanistan. If the two nations agree on terms, Iraq would join Afghanistan in having US troops stationed there for the foreseeable future.
In Iraq, the US troops would support their local counterparts with skills where they still fall short like counterterrorism, intelligence gathering and aviation, a US defense official explained to BuzzFeed News. They also would advise and assist their Iraqi counterparts.
That's the Memo of Understanding.  That's the 2012 document.
Maybe this go round people will pay attention?
We won't have a thing
So we'd got nothing to lose
We can all be free
Maybe not with words
Maybe not with a look
But with your mind
-- "Maybe Not," written by Cat Power, first appears on her album YOU ARE FREE

Word games were played before and they're being played now.


  4 hours ago
Replying to   
PM said no agreement made with the US and there is NO TROOPS in but there are advisors.
1 reply11 retweets15 likes
 
 



Again, word games.


If you're punked this go round, you deserve to be.



  46 minutes ago
No US troops in Iraq after ISIS? The rapidly expanding and hardening international military base at Erbil airport disagrees.
Iraq PM Haider al-Abadi says there's no agreement with any state on military role in post-ISIS, but open to "international expertise"
1 reply6 retweets9 likes
 
 



Meanwhile, in June 2014, the Islamic State seized the city of Mosul.


Over two years later -- over two year later -- the Baghdad-based Iraqi government decided to respond.


Context.

  1 hour ago
Iraqi army launches 'final push' to defeat ISIS in Mosul five months after it was supposed to have retaken the city
1 reply12 retweets16 likes
 
 






It's day 198 of The Mosul Slog.


With no end in sight.


No end to the violence either.

Iraqi journalists remain targeted.



AFP reports, "Eleven journalists died covering conflict or were assassinated in Iraq during the past year, a Baghdad-based watchdog said in a report released Wednesday to mark World Press Freedom Day."


And the country has still not dealt with reconciliation.

Mustafa Habib (NIQASH) reports on the division in the Sunni political community:


Last Sunday, Iraqi parliamentarians voted to ban their colleagues from participating in conferences held outside the country, if the politicians had not received prior approval from the appropriate parliamentary authorities. It is yet another sign of the deepening divisions within the Sunni Muslim bloc in Baghdad – and it comes as a result of the increasing competition between Sunni politicians trying to work out how to rule over Sunni-Muslim-majority provinces that were, until relatively recently, under the control of the extremist Islamic State group.   
The resolution was mooted after a controversy about two conferences inviting Sunni Muslim politicians to discuss the future, were held outside the country, one in Geneva, Switzerland, in February this year and one in Ankara, Turkey, in March. Both conferences were supposed to help bring Sunni Muslim politicians closer together in the interests of reconciliation after the Islamic State, an extremist group that bases its ideology on Sunni Islam, was driven out of Iraq.
Unfortunately, the controversy over the conferences appears to unintentionally had the opposite effect. This is clear from ongoing accusations and insults being traded by the Sunni politicians, who say their opponents are trying to divide the country.   
The fact that the extremist Islamic State has caused these kinds of divisions is not unexpected; infighting has also had an impact on the Shiite Muslim and Kurdish political alliances. But the scrapping appears to have affected the Sunni Muslim politicians worst, although maybe this is also not surprising. After all, it is the people they represent who have been hardest hit by the brutal extremists.

The different Sunni political groups compete with one another for power and influence and act more like enemies than allies. For example, the party led by Salim al-Jibouri, the Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, competes with Osama al-Nujaifi’s party for influence in Ninawa and its capital, Mosul. Other Sunni Muslim parties joust for influence in Anbar and Salahaddin.


Click here for Mustafa Habib's April report on problems plaguing the Shi'ite National Alliance.



Last Saturday brought news of another US military death in Iraq.  Sunday, the fallen was identified as 1st Lt Weston C. Lee.


  13 hours ago
Scholarship fund to honor 1st Lt. Weston Lee, who was killed by IED in Iraq.
2 replies50 retweets72 likes
 
 









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    iraq
    Posted by at

    5/04/2017

    why we're lucky hillary didn't go away yet

    hillary.

    c.i. has always noted that the best front for hillary was the down-low.

    long before the 2016 campaign, c.i. would tell you that when the american people see hillary talking about herself, they start to dislike her.

    so maybe her little stunt with the c.n.n. media whore earlier this week will do her in?


    robert parry ('consortium news') takes on hillary clinton:
    It was also somewhat ironic that Clinton sat before a slogan, #SheBringsPeace, given her militaristic approach toward American foreign policy, including her infamous celebration of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s grisly murder in 2011, when she declared, “we came, we saw, he died” and clapped with joy.
    Despite her off-putting passive-aggressive attitude for much of the half-hour interview, Clinton was at her best toward the end when she began discussing detailed domestic policies and the future challenges to the jobs of Americans from robotics and other high-tech developments.
    Only then did the viewers get a sense of Clinton’s greatest strength, her wonky interest in the nitty-gritty of what the government can do for people, a favorable contrast to President Trump’s surprise at how complicated many of the issues are that land on the President’s desk.

    But the bulk of the interview focused on blame-shifting her defeat largely onto Russia as she presented herself as a new fighter in the anti-Trump #Resistance. “I’m now back to being an activist citizen and part of the Resistance,” Clinton declared.


    martin schram ('tribune) calls her out on her claim that she couldn't talk about the economy because no debate moderator asked her about it:

     We all know the bottom line of this blame game: If Clinton had great solutions and wanted to be America’s Jobs President, all she had to do was give a speech and say them. Better yet, many speeches. Also, every rookie candidate knows Debate Trick No. 1: If you’ve got something you want to say, simply twist any question toward your topic — and say whatever you want!
    But in Campaign 2016, Clinton didn’t even need to pull Debate Trick No. 1. Because in the very first question of the very first fall campaign debate, NBC’s Lester Holt asked her: “Beginning with you, Secretary Clinton, why are you a better choice than your opponent to create the kinds of jobs that will put more money into the pockets of American workers?”
    Clinton began with a bromide — the importance of building for the future. Then this: “Today is my granddaughter’s 2nd birthday, so I think about this a lot.” She wallowed, wandered and tap-danced on a quicksand of cliches and generalities — but no solutions. All un-memorably, for the nation’s voters and — quite obviously — for herself.
    And now she’s apparently still wallowing in the muck of strained rationales and self-denial.


    s.e. cupps ('cnn') has a hilarious mocking column:
    Taking it even one step further, "I was the person who was on the ballot," she said, revealing that she doesn't believe anyone else's name was on the final ballot but hers. I know!!
    In the biggest revelation yet, though, she asks and answers the question: "Did I make mistakes? Oh my gosh, yes." That is huge. We can't know for sure if by mistakes she means nibbling on that questionable, shellfish platter at the Polk County meet-and-greet -- or not going to Wisconsin and Michigan to campaign.
    But, as she said following up that admission, and with zero air of that old Clinton condescension, "you'll read my confession and my request for absolution," in her forthcoming book. 



    hillary should have gone away.

    by refusing to do so, she's probably just upped her negatives yet again.




    let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'


    Thursday, May 4, 2017.  The Mosul Slog continues -- despite a lack of interest from the corporate press.



    Day 197 of The Mosul Slog.


    And here's what the mainstream press runs with.


      4 minutes ago
    Iraqi forces open front in west Mosul, aiming to squeeze ISIS after earlier push is stalled
    1 retweet2 likes





      36 minutes ago
    Iraqi forces launch new operation northwest of Mosul
    5 retweets4 likes






    "New"?

    Day 197.

    Maybe Day 197 should be in the headline.


    The original plan was this would take just a few weeks, remember?


    Dropping back to the August 1st snapshot:

    POLITICO asserts that US President Barack Obama is planning an October Surprise to influence the outcome of this year's presidential election.

    For those late to the topic, refer to Robert Parry's reporting on the 1980 October Surprise at CONSORTIUM NEWS.


    POLITICO'S Mark Perry reports that Barack is planning to start the battle to retake Mosul in early October and, "If Mosul is retaken, it would both mark a major political triumph for Barack Obama and likely benefit his party’s nominee at the polls, Hillary Clinton, undercutting Republican claims that the Obama administration has failed to take off the gloves against the Islamic State."


    Mosul was seized by the Islamic State in June of 2014.


    Barack's 'answer' since August of 2014 has been to drop bombs on Iraq daily.



    That was the plan.

    Of course, Iraq's Prime Minister Hayder al-Abadi couldn't pull it together enough to even get it started in early October.

    Even if he had, the notion that Mosul could be retaken in a matter of weeks shows just how out of touch the Iraqi government and the White House was with reality on the ground in Iraq.


    And out of touch also describes the press.

    Elise Labott screamed "NO!" in the middle of a press conference  when another reporter, Said Arikat of AL QUDS DAILY, referred to the Mosul operation as a slog near the end of October.

    Elise works for CNN.


    QUESTION: Okay. Can we stay on [the Islamic State] and the battle of Mosul?

     MR KIRBY: Sure, sure.

     QUESTION: Okay. Is it turning out to be like a slog, or how are things moving? How are they progressing?

     QUESTION: No!

     MR KIRBY: Elise, do you want to come take the podium?

     QUESTION: Not today.




    Elise's little outburst shocked even then-spokesperson John Kirby.


    But that's how the western media has played it -- denial, denial and more denial.


    Yesterday, the US Defense Dept announced:


    Strikes in Iraq
    In Iraq, coalition military forces conducted four strikes consisting of 39 engagements against ISIS targets:
    -- Near Mosul, four strikes engaged three ISIS tactical units and a sniper team; destroyed two fighting positions, two artillery systems, a heavy machine gun, a medium machine gun, and an ISIS staging area; and suppressed nine mortar teams.
    Additionally, three strikes were conducted in Iraq on May 1 that closed within the last 24 hours:

    -- Near Mosul, May 1, three strikes destroyed three vehicle bombs and three ISIS fuel tankers, and suppressed three mortar teams.


    These daily strikes having been going on since August of 2014.

    A fact the corporate press also tries to bury.



    Of the strike last month which killed 100s in Mosul, Jason Ditz (ANTIWAR.COM) notes:


     Witnesses and survivors of the US strike say the whole US story about ISIS putting them in the homes never happened.
    Rather, they insist airstrikes had been leveling houses in the area for days, and ultimately everybody ended up collected into just three houses close together, hundreds of people from scores of families, when major US airstrikes came and brought the buildings down on top of them.
    Indeed, the whole reason the houses had been so popular with fleeing civilians is that they were relatively far away from the fighting, and they assumed there’d be no reason for them to be attacked, since they were small and isolated. The Pentagon has yet to respond to the eyewitness accounts, which radically differ from their own version of events.



    Also noting that reality is Amnesty International's Donatella Rovera:


      19 hours ago
    No & no human shields say survivors & witnesses of deadliest coalition bombardment in battle
    14 retweets5 likes








    From Monday's snapshot on an AP story by Susanna George:



    As for national reconciliation, dropping back to Friday's snapshot:


     THE BAGHDAD POST reports that MP Mohamed al-Ja'fari has said that the reconciliation is "doomed to failure."

    This is just one opinion, right?

    Wrong.

    He's a member of State Of Law.

    State Of Law is the political coalition created by Nouri al-Maliki to avoid running with his political party (Dawa).  So State Of Law is making clear that they remain opposed to reconciliation.

    And Hayder al-Abadi, the current prime minister?

    He's also a member of Nouri's State Of Law coalition.

    Which explains why he does nothing to bring about reconciliation either.


    So get ready because the never-ending Iraq War is never going to end.

    As long as the government persecutes a group, some organization will rise up -- it's the basic reaction to persecution.

    But don't worry, George tells us, with money, there will be reconciliation.

    Remember that lie?

    Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House, it was 2007.  And Iraq promised reconciliation.

    Why?

    To keep getting billions.


    They never met the benchmarks then-prime minister Nouri al-Maliki signed off on.

    But they kept getting money, remember?

    And arms.


    And no strings attached.

    Even though, remember, Nancy Pelosi, failure to live up to the benchmarks was supposed to result in pulling all funding.



    Monday, Peter Van Buren (ANTIWAR.COM) weighed in:


     Iraq’s Foreign Minister this week asked the United States to develop a financial plan for the reconstruction of the country after ISIS, similar to a program developed for Western Europe after the Second World War.
    In discussions with Special Presidential Envoy to the Coalition Brett McGurk, Ibrahim al-Jaafari stressed the need for “collective support from the international community to contribute to the reconstruction of infrastructure after the defeat of terrorism.” Jaafari suggested “the adoption of a project similar to the Marshall Plan which contributed to rebuilding Germany after the Second World War.”
    Iraq will need billions of dollars to rebuild after ISIS. Large portions of major cities were destroyed in the war, infrastructure was neglected under ISIS, villages are riddled with mines and booby-traps. The deputy governor of Anbar estimated that his province would need $22 billion alone for reconstruction.

    Um, never mind invoking the Marshall Plan. What needs to be cited here is that the United States already spent billions to reconstruct Iraq, from 2003-2010. I know. I was there. It was my job to help spend some of those billions. We accomplished less than nothing. In fact, our failure to reconstruct Iraq then lead in a direct line to the Iraq of now. I cannot believe I am writing this. Again.

    See, in fact, I wrote a whole book about it: We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, in 2011. 



    At some point, you'd expect the corporate press would be required to note these basic details -- even if only for context.

    But proper context is the one thing the corporate press no longer wishes to convey.

    It's all about opinion and personalizing these days.  Hotheads distracting the American people from the real issues.



    The Mosul Slog will soon hit 200 days and that alone is news.

    Equally newsworthy is how little has been accomplished.

    The operation, for those who've already forgotten, was supposed to be about rescuing the citizens of Mosul, improving their lives.

    But they are the ones who have suffered the most during this operation.


      13 hours ago
    An estimated 118,000 (35%) of IDPs from are -age - -
    7 retweets3 likes






    Maybe someday the corporate media will do its job?



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