ISIS unveiled in Ancient Sumer/Babylon.
Time for a MOAB bomb? Operation Iraqi Liberation pt 2?
I wonder if the Saudis send ISIS checks directly or if there's some sort of Dubai bank back channel?
ORDO AB CHAO
Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by 8bitagent » Thu Jun 12, 2014 4:39 am
by 8bitagent » Thu Jun 12, 2014 4:44 am
by stillrobertpaulsen » Thu Jun 12, 2014 5:41 pm
by 8bitagent » Thu Jun 12, 2014 11:25 pm
stillrobertpaulsen » Thu Jun 12, 2014 4:41 pm wrote:For those who want to read up more on ISIS, here's a link I put on the Syria thread.
http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... aq#p524800
I'm not sure if this analogy is quite equivalent, but it seems to me that what the Khmer Rouge was to Mao, so is ISIS to al-Qaeda.
Some may look at this and call it blowback. I call it an insurance policy for further justification of The War That Will Not End in Our Lifetime.
And seriously, ISIS?! Getting mythological on us, those religious fundamentalists.
by 82_28 » Fri Jun 13, 2014 1:57 am
by JackRiddler » Fri Jun 13, 2014 2:08 am
Iran Deploys Forces to Fight al Qaeda-Inspired Militants in Iraq
Revolutionary Guard Forces Help Iraqi Troops Win Back Control of Most of Tikrit, Sources Say
By
Farnaz Fassihi
Updated June 12, 2014 9:46 p.m. ET
Iraqis chant slogans against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham as they volunteer for the army at a Baghdad recruiting station on Thursday. Associated Press
BEIRUT—The threat of Sunni extremists eclipsing the power of its Shiite-dominated Arab ally presents Iran with the biggest security and strategic challenge it has faced since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
With the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, an offshoot of al Qaeda, rapidly gaining territory, Iran deployed Revolutionary Guards units to Iraq, according to Iranian security officials.
Iran has invested considerable financial, political and military resources over the past decade to ensure Iraq emerged from U.S. war as a strategic partner for the Islamic Republic and a strong Shiite-led state. The so-called Shiite crescent—stretching from Iran to Iraq, Lebanon and Syria—was forged largely as a result of this effort.
Two Guards' units, dispatched from Iran's western border provinces on Wednesday, were tasked with protecting Baghdad and the holy Shiite cities of Karbala and Najaf, these security sources said.
Iraq's military was trained and equipped by the U.S. and coalition forces. When attacked by insurgents in several cities this week, Iraqi soldiers surrendered without a fight. What went wrong? What is the U.S. prepared to do? WSJ's Jason Bellini has #TheShortAnswer.
The involvement of Iran would pose yet another security challenge for the White House, and raises the prospect of the U.S. and Iran fighting on the same side. The U.S. opposes Iran's support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but with Tehran is jointly supporting Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
State Department officials on Thursday refused to outline what steps the Obama administration would take if Iranian forces entered Iraq.
Spokeswoman Jen Psaki said American diplomats who met with Iranian officials in Geneva this week to discuss Tehran's nuclear program didn't raise the issue of the Iraqi crisis.
"We've encouraged them to play a constructive role in Iraq," Ms. Psaki said about the Iranians.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, reached by phone in London, said of the report that Iran's Revolutionary Guards were entering the fight: "Frankly I have no idea about that. I am in London now."
Syria's conflict has turned Iraq into an important operational base for Iran to aid another ally, the Assad regime, which is dominated by an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Shiite militia trained by Iran, weapons and cash have flowed from Iran to Syria via Iraq.
"Iraq is viewed as a vital priority in Iran's foreign policy in the region and they go to any length to protect this interest," said Roozbeh Miribrahimi, an independent Iran expert based in New York.
The commander of Iran's Quds Force, Maj. Gen. Qasem Solaimani, went to Baghdad this week. Shahaboddin Vajedi
Iran has also positioned troops on full alert along its border with Iraq and has given clearance to its air force to bomb ISIS rebel forces if they come within about 60 miles of Iran's border, according to an Iranian army general.
The two IRGC battalions that moved to Iraq on Wednesday were shifted from the Iranian border provinces of Urumieh and Lorestan, the Iranian security officials said.
Revolutionary Guards units that serve in Iran's border provinces are the most experienced fighters in guerrilla warfare because of separatist ethnic uprisings in those regions. IRGC commanders dispatched to Syria also often come from those provinces as well.
Iran was also considering the transfer to Iraq of Shiite volunteer troops in Syria, if the initial deployments fail to turn the tide of battle in favor of Mr. Maliki's government, the Iranian security officials said.
At stake for Iran in Iraq's current tumult isn't only the survival of a Shiite political ally in Baghdad, but the safety of Karbala and Najaf, which along with Mecca and Medina are sacred to Shiites world-wide."The more insecure and isolated Maliki becomes, the more he will need Iran. The growth of ISIS presents a serious threat to Iran. So it would not be surprising to see the Guards become more involved in Iraq," said Alireza Nader, a senior policy analyst at the Rand Corp.
A spokesman for the militant group ISIS, Abu Mohamad al-Adnani, urged the group's Sunni fighters to march toward the "filth-ridden" Karbala and "the city of polytheism" Najaf, where they would "settle their differences" with Iraq's Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Kurdish military units known as peshmerga deployed armor at the provincial capital of Kirkuk on Thursday as Iraq edged closer to full-scale sectarian conflict following lightning strikes on major cities. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
That coarsely worded threat further vindicated Iran's view that the fight unfolding in Iraq is an existential sectarian battle between the two rival sects of Islam-Sunni and Shiite—and by default a proxy battle between their patrons Saudi Arabia and Iran.
"Until now we haven't received any requests for help from Iraq. Iraq's army is certainly capable in handling this," Iran's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afgham said Wednesday.
Iranian President Hasan Rouhani cut short a religious celebration on Thursday and said he had to attend an emergency meeting of the country's National Security Council about events in Iraq.
"We, as the Islamic Republic of Iran, won't tolerate this violence and terrorism…. We will fight and battle violence and extremism and terrorism in the region and the world," he said in a speech.
ISIS's rapid territorial gains in the past few days appeared to have caught Iranian officials by surprise and opened a debate within the regime over whether Iran should publicly enter the battle.
Iran's chief of police, Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam said the National Security Council would consider intervening in Iraq to "protect Shiite shrines and cities," according to Iranian media.
In the short-term, analysts said the outcome of the crisis in Iraq will only strengthen and increase the influence of Iran and the Revolutionary Guards.
Write to Farnaz Fassihi at farnaz.fassihi@wsj.com
by Peachtree Pam » Fri Jun 13, 2014 4:12 am
Why Saudi Arabia and Qatar want to Eradicate Iraq[/b]
by John Galt
June 12, 2014 22:00 ET
On September 1, 2013, I published the following article referring to the idea of putting US troops on the ground in the Syrian Civil War:
[b]Just Say NO on Syria
In that article, I stated the following:
The desire to build a natural gas pipeline from Qatar and Saudi Arabia first took hold in 2009 but due to the uprisings within the “Arab Spring” which followed and massive instability created from the uprisings, Bashar Al-Assad’s distrust of the Sunni governments which supported the rebellions caused his heart to change from one of cooperation to absolute opposition to the pipelines and any other projects with the governments on the Arabian peninsula. The pipeline project through Syria was spiked by Assad and shortly thereafter, the rebellion in Syria began under the guise of the Arab Spring.
The United States, once again, is being funded and pushed by the Arab nations within OPEC to fight a war so they will have a sustainable market for their natural gas and petroleum products in the near future as the United States shifts from an oil importer to the role of exporter in direct competition with their former Arab allies. Saudi Arabia and Qatar desperately need a consolidated Middle East free of Russian and Israeli influence so there is no competition for supplying Europe with their energy needs for at least the next forty plus years. As long as those two nations remain in the region with any economic or military superiority over the old OPEC regimes, then the ability to offer alternatives to Iranian and Russian petroleum products is via price competition versus a strategic monopoly.
While my map is crudely drawn and an approximation, based on media and internet reports this is the approximate region of control and the direction of the advance to cut off Baghdad from the South of Iraq and at least encircle the capitol on three sides. Thus one has to start asking a few key questions:
Who supports ISIS?
And who benefits from a radical Sunni Islamist group seizing control of Western Iraq?
The first question is somewhat nebulous as the Qatari and Saudi governments initially supported all of the Islamist opposition groups in Syria against Assad but soon realized that radical pro Al-Qaeda groups were splintering the rebellion and attacking more moderate Sunni elements operating in Syria. While there are doubts about direct support from the monarchies of the Gulf region, there is a strong possibility that Wahhabist and radical Sunni supporters in the business community within Saudi Arabia and Qatar are providing indirect support to the ISIS forces.
This line of thinking was not far from the mind of the Iraqi leadership who was already struggling before this massive offensive to contain ISIS in the north of Iraq. According to the Middle East Monitor’s May 29, 2014 article, Baghdad accuses Riyadh of supporting ISIS to undermine moderate Sunnis:
Iraqi authorities said Wednesday that Saudi intelligence sent “messages” to the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIS) urging them to “eliminate moderate Sunnis.”
The Iraqi official TV quoted the vice president of the security and defence committee in the Parliament as saying that Riyadh supports ISIS, as does Qatar and Turkey.
“Terrorist groups and ISIS and Al Qaeda own advanced weaponry, made in Israel, and delivered to them through Syria or Turkey,” Iskander Toot said.
Toot accused Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey of “funding terrorists,” seeking to undermine the political process in Iraq.
He added that security agencies have evidence, which proves “the complicity of these countries in supporting terrorists, training them and sending them to Iraq to kill innocent citizens.”
Why would Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and perhaps even the European Union support such a move to eliminate or dissolve the Iraqi state? If one reviews the actions of the past week, it begins to make sense, especially from the perspective of the nations and EU regarding future energy supplies as Russia and Europe re-enter into a new Cold War over the Ukrainian situation. The original plan for the pipeline, as pictured in the map at the top, circumvented Iraq because the Malaki government would not share the revenues nor guarantee the security of a pipeline through Iraq to Turkey. The Saudis and Qataris were enraged when Assad also refused to grant permission for this pipeline also and thus the reason for the sudden civil war with tens of thousands of foreign fighters descending on Syria to “protect Sunnis” and eradicate Alawites, Christians, and Shi’ites from Syria.
Since that failure to overthrow Assad, the diplomatic situation between Russia and the European Union has deteriorated with the EU basically ordering Bulgaria and Serbia to stop construction of the South Stream pipeline from Russia into Central and Southern Europe. Why would the EU want to gamble on Putin supplying energy if they thought there was an alternative; perhaps through Western Iraq and Eastern Syria into Turkey to avoid paying the higher rates for natural gas and forcing the United States to turn a blind eye while Saudi Arabia and Qatar (along with other GCC states) obtain an outlet for their ample supplies of natural gas. Based on the old pipeline map with the current ISIS control region as of today, this would have not worked unless all of Syria was conquered:
http://johngaltfla.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/061214_IRAQ_ISIS_overlay_QATAR_PIPELINEjgfla.jpg
If ISIS is successful and the Jordanians, Saudis, and Qataris are able to mollify the ISIS leadership and promise them their own state in Western Iraq the new pipeline project might look something like this:
http://johngaltfla.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/061214_IRAQ_ISIS_overlay_FUTURE_PIPELINEjgfla.jpg
By seizing this swath of territory in Western Iraq it will essentially end Iraq as a functioning state and force Iran and the Kurds to either accept the de facto division of Iraq into a three state solution or create the largest multi-denominational military conflict since the great schism between Sunni and Shi’ites centuries ago; this would have the unintended consequence of bringing the entire Islamic world into conflict with and against the West and Asia depending on alliances.
To demonstrate the falsehoods promoted by the Obama administration about their inability to react, one must consider that the limited drone action in the conflict region as reported by the Wall Street Journal tonight pales to the current air power we have available in Kuwait, Qatar, and Turkey to launch attacks on ISIS forces. If the administration wanted to launch a coordinated attack with Turkish Air Force units along with the Saudis in support of the Iraqi government, the capacity is there yet for some reason our government continues to act with great restraint considering the threat to Baghdad and the fighting which has begun there tonight.
Logically speaking this does not appear to be another Middle East “war for oil” but the deafening silence from Riyadh and the GCC along with the inexplicable inaction from Washington, DC appears to support this theory. Europe needs an alternative natural gas supply instead of Russia and the royal families of the Arabian Peninsula need to force Iran into economic and geographical isolation, while cutting off the Kurds and Russia from creating an energy monopoly to Europe. If ISIS is successful and gains even more support to create its own independent state in exchange for a promise of “regional peace” then the trap becomes more obvious and the plans of the Wahhabi sect to begin the resurrection of the Caliphate shall begin.
by 82_28 » Fri Jun 13, 2014 4:56 am
Written by Chris Floyd
Thursday, 12 June 2014 22:55
The bitter fruits of the monstrous evil the United States inflicted on Iraq are ripening before our eyes. The blitzkrieg by ISIS, a radical militia so extreme that even al Qaeda disowned it, has swept through large swaths of the country and laid bare the sham of the government system imposed by the American invaders.
Having engineered the senseless slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent people and provoked a murderous sectarian war, the Americans installed a government based along strict sectarian lines -- a choice that was guaranteed to exacerbate internal strife and produce weak, ineffective, disunited governments. And so we have watched the government of would-be strongman Nouri al-Maliki wither away into corrupt factionalism and brutal repression in its frantic and failing efforts to impose its will on the inevitable chaos. This week we may be witnessing its total collapse, as its army -- built and funded by the American invaders -- is simply vanishing in the face of the onslaught by ISIS, which is itself funded, in part, by America's own staunch allies in the Gulf … and, via America's funding and arming of murky stew of Syrian rebel groups (which includes ISIS), indirectly by Washington itself.
Yes, it is madness. The US-UK act of unprovoked aggression in Iraq -- which in principle and illegality differs not one whit from the German invasion of Poland in 1939 -- has spread unimaginable ruin and destruction throughout the region, creating a Hobbesian nightmare of "each against all": of factions combining, breaking apart, recombining, fighting together, fighting each other, using each other, betraying each other, with no boundaries, no meaning, just a constant churning, chewing, gnashing of teeth, a vast, seething mass of death and brutality, held together, locked together, by a single, shared creed: the way of violence. Violence as a first principle, and the final solution; violence (and the ever-present, never-ceasing threat of violence) as the highest expression of human achievement, the physical embodiment of power, of domination over others -- which is the supreme value, the ultimate concern for all those who hold to this fanatical creed. It's the true religion of the American militarists, the Islamic extremists, the NATO nabobs, the authoritarian nationalists, the covert operators, the backroom financiers, and all the bit players and fellow travellers around the world who serve and support or profit from this ghastly faith.
There is a larger historical context to what's happening in Iraq today, which Juan Cole covers well here. But the immediate responsibility for the death and suffering we are witnessing in Iraq right now lies squarely on those who launched (and those who supported) a war of aggression that destroyed Iraqi society and -- just as was predicted -- "opened the gates of hell" to sectarian strife and world-rattling chaos.
2.
Meanwhile, there are indications that the uprising is broader than the operations of ISIS, a group that with its al Qaeda-surpassing extremism is tailor-made to serve as a convenient devil. Just as one of their precursors, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, served as the Scarlet Pimpernel of much of the American occupation -- seemingly here, there and everywhere, and was blamed for every bit of unrest and resistance against the noble American and British liberators. It was Zarqawi's supposed presence in Fallujah that led to America's vicious destruction of that city; he was, of course, nowhere near the city, which the Americans well knew. In fact, Zarqawi too had once been an ally of Americans, at least indirectly; before the invasion, his terrorist group found safe haven in the Kurdish-controlled areas of Iraq, where Saddam's writ did not run, and where American officials moved freely. The Bush Administration vetoed several chances to capture or kill Zarqawi, preferring to let him attack the common enemy, Saddam. Later, as noted, he served as a convenient PR foil for the Americans during his rampages in the post-election landscape.
He was a loathsome character -- a fierce adherent of the cult of violence he shared with Saddam and America's bipartisan foreign policy elite. And ISIS is a malevolent faction of the same faith -- although of course they yet to kill even a fraction of the number of innocent civilians slaughtered in the region by the Defenders of Western Civilization and their clients. But as with Zarqawi, the focus on ISIS obscures the larger discontent and resistance to what it is still, essentially, an occupation regime in Baghdad. The Guardian has featured reports from the ground in the cities seized by ISIS; reports which paint a somewhat more complex picture than we are seeing in Washington, where the 'debate' has, as usual, congealed around partisan point-scoring -- and minute calibrations of just how much violence America should employ to exacerbate the chaos and ruin.
From the Guardian:
Among those who took control of Tikrit were large numbers of former Ba'ath party members. Ba'athists were the cornerstone of Saddam Hussein's regime and have been persecuted ever since. Residents of Tikrit said some insurgents were wearing the drab green military fatigues worn by Saddam's army. "There are no Isis flags in town," said one local woman. "They are playing Saddam and Ba'ath party songs."
…In nearby Samara, where insurgents have been negotiating with Iraqi army officials, car dealer Taher Hassan said militants had turned up on Sunday and quickly taken control of most of the city.
He said: "All the local police forces have pulled out of their bases in the city. … Everyone in Samara is happy with the fighters' management of the city. They have proved to be professional and competent. The fighters themselves did not harm or kill anyone as they swept forward. Any man who hands over his arm is safe, whatever his background. This attitude is giving a huge comfort to people here. We have lived enough years of injustice, revenge and tyranny and we can't stand any more.
Four days ago, Maliki’s military dirty force raided Al-Razaq mosque in the city, brought a few locals whom they picked up from different parts in Samara and killed them in the mosque. What do you think the people feeling would be towards these military forces? We have lived enough years of injustice, revenge and tyranny and we can’t stand any more.”
Abu Riyad, 50 years old, tribal leader in Mosul city: “It seems the fighters have a good security plan for the city. They really know the nature of the city and have not made the same mistakes as the US forces, or Maliki’s forces, when they invaded Mosul. They are protecting all the governmental buildings in the city and have not destroyed or stolen anything. They haven’t harmed a person in the city.
[Isis] fighters have opened and cleared out all the bridges, roads and checkpoints set up by the army. Now, we can move easily. It is so quiet here – not a bullet has been fired so far. Most of the families who fled the city began to head back today. We have suffered a lot under Maliki’s unfair government. …We’ve had enough injustice and corruption and no longer accept Maliki’s army. Since the US invasion until now, an organised ethnic cleansing was taking place here. Maliki’s men would show up on TV revealing their love to peace and security but the reality is completely different. They are all killers, fanatic and sectarians….
Last Thursday, the fighters attacked the right bank of the Tigris river. The army used planes and mortars in the fight, in a crowded residential area. The bombardment cut the power and water supply and sparked panic among the locals. Many civilians were killed.”
As always, extremist elements thrive where the "legitimate" authority is repressive and corrupt. (And in this case, implanted by foreign aggression.) The same dynamic was played out by the Taliban in Afghanistan, after the withdrawal of the Soviet forces that had been supporting, brutally, the secular government. The Soviets were forced out by a resistance led by violent sectarian extremists -- armed and supported by the Americans and their Saudi allies (such as Osama bin Laden). This led to years of ruinous chaos as warlords tore apart what was left of the country after the Soviet departure; many who later had cause to regret the Taliban’s ascendancy at first applauded their highly disciplined restoration of order.
This is evident in the current situation in Iraq as well, as illustrated by the quotes above. The welcome relief from corruption and chaos now will likely give way to dread and repression as ISIS — adherents to the Cult of Violence — impose the same kind of forcible domination as Maliki and his American predecessors. As the Guardian reports:
Isis has been handing out flyers in the towns it has seized assuring residents who have remained that it is there to protect their interests. The campaign for hearts and minds is gaining some traction, with some residents railing against perceived injustices at the hands of the Shia majority government. But yesterday it said it would introduce sharia law in Mosul and other towns, warning women to stay indoors and threatening to cut off the hands of thieves. "People, you have tried secular regimes ... This is now the era of the Islamic State," it proclaimed.
In retrospect, the American intervention in Afghanistan in the late 70s looks more and more like the linchpin of the modern era, the decisive event that gave rise to a multitude of later evils (much like the mobilisations of 1914 -- the blind exacerbation and amplification of a local crisis -- was the fatal pivot of the 20th century, seeding the even greater horrors of World War II). Here too, as in so many situations in our time, a distorted story was invented to paint America’s dark and deadly realpolitik as a bright cartoon of the Shining City vs. Pure Motiveless Evil. Americans were sold the false story of Kremlin Hitlers swooping down for no reason on the simple rustics of Afghanistan — the opening salvo in what we were told was surely a diabolical campaign of world conquest.
The truth was nothing like that. The Soviets were, of course, invited into Afghanistan by the Communist-run government in Kabul — a rather nasty and ineffective regime, to be sure — as it struggled with internal factional conflict and, more importantly, with a well-armed insurgency of Islamic fundamentalists opposed to the government’s modernization and secularization — including emancipation for women. The decision to accede to the Afghan government’s request and greatly increase the already existing number of Soviet military advisors was hotly debated in the Politburo. In the end, the reluctant decision was made to support the troublesome Afghan government. (The story is well told in Rodric Braithwaite’s book, Afgantsy.)
America’s meddling pre-dated the Soviet “invasion” of 1979. In fact, the “invasion” was a response to America’s horrifically short-sighted fomenting of violent Islamic extremism. The saintly Jimmy Carter and his Kissinger manqué, Zbigniew Brzezinski, decided they could give the Soviet Union “its own Vietnam” by luring it into an intractable guerrilla conflict in Afghanistan — as Brzezinski has proudly confirmed many times. So they joined with Saudi Arabia and other allies to create a worldwide network of heavily armed, well-funded Islamic extremists: the ultimate seed-bed of groups like al Qaeda, the Taliban, Zarqawi’s faction and ISIS.
These events don’t just arise, stir trouble for awhile, then go away. They have lasting effects, reverberating down through the years and bearing malignant fruit in a myriad of unexpected ways. We are all still paying the costs of Jimmy and Zbig’s murderously ignorant Great Gaming more than 30 years ago. Likewise, the Iraq War did not just go away when American forces finally pulled out less than three years ago. Although the country disappeared from the American consciousness, the destructive forces inflicted and unleashed upon the conquered land continued to ravage the lives of ordinary, innocent people there (and in America), leaving them in chaos, bitterness, hopelessness and despair. What is happening now was inevitable, in one form or another.
But our rulers — these pathetic, third-rate minds (for all their elite educations), lacking the imagination or the will or the desire to look beyond the blinkered constrictions of their imperialist worldview — have learned nothing from the past three years, or the past 30 years. It’s unlikely that Barack Obama will send American troops back to Iraq, but he will almost certainly take some kind of action, in his desperation to look “tough” to his critics, and to stave off the accusation of “losing” Iraq to “the terrorists.” Already the Idiot Choir of the political-media class is placing the blame for the current turn of events on the fact that America did not retain a troop presence in Iraq — as if THIS was the great error, the great “failure” of American policy, instead of the decision to invade the country in the first place.
(And also forgetting, as Cole points out, that the Iraqis themselves would not have accepted a continuing American presence; Maliki’s own hold on power depended on his image as a leader of a “sovereign,” independent nation, even as his power was entirely beholden to a political system set up by invaders. And of course, a continuing American presence during the past three years would have provoked even more resistance, more attacks on the American troops, more “force protection” by the occupiers, more raids, more atrocities, provoking more resistance — the same insane cycle we saw throughout the original occupation.)
But it’s pointless to dwell on the hair-splitting schisms of these fanatics of the Violence Cult. We already know that whatever response they come up with will adhere to the Cult’s orthodoxy: it will be violent, it will involve the death and suffering of innocent people, it will breed more chaos and extremism, and it will exacerbate the very problems it is ostensibly trying to resolve. These are the only results the Cult can produce; and there is no one in power — or even near power — in America who is not an adherent of the Cult.
And so the suffering — the pointless anguish and ruin — will go on
by conniption » Fri Jun 13, 2014 5:32 am
Fern says:
June 12, 2014 at 7:17 pm
This is slightly off-topic but vaguely related. The events is Mosul seem, at least to me, to have the appearance of a black op to arm the Syrian rebels. The official story just seems too convenient. ISIS stormed a prison thereby freeing hundreds if not thousands of their comrades, the Iraqi army ran away, the jihadists then went on a bank robbing spree more-or-less literally striking gold and then, best of all, armed with the stolen loot, they equipped themselves with military hardware helpfully supplied by the US, ostensibly destined for the Iraqi army. Meanwhile the government forces couldn’t get one plane in the air to bomb the equipment to prevent it falling into jihadi hands. So, what’s the effect of all of this? In the wake of the Syrian elections, we have the US determined to up the ante and arm the rebels with serious munitions and now we have a group that’s a leading player in Syria having all the heavy weaponry and the money it needs to wage war and the US administration hasn’t had to bother getting anything through Congress or any face any other pesky constitutional controls. Lucky eh?
Turning on the TV this morning and there was Jen Psaki bashfully reading out a list of the hardware now in the hands of ISIS – nice that they had it to hand – and there was not a trace of concern in her manner that this equipment – including weapons which, sooner or later, will be used to down a civilian airliner – was in the hands of such dangerous individuals. Similarly, note the reaction or, rather, the lack of it from NATO with Rasmussen simply saying there was no role for NATO in Iraq whereas you might expect him to say ‘hey, we’ve got a big f**king problem here’. Compare the muted response from Washington with the screams of outrage that greeted the Crimean referendum.
by JackRiddler » Fri Jun 13, 2014 12:12 pm
The Iraq Gamble
At the pundits' table, the losing bet still takes the pot
By Jebediah Reed
{The link was at http://radaronline.com/features/2007/01 ... iraq_1.php}
MERITOCRACY OF DUNCES - David Brooks
A few years ago, David Brooks, New York Times columnist and media pundit extraordinaire, penned a love letter to the idea of meritocracy. It is "a way of life that emphasizes ... perpetual improvement, and permanent exertion," he effused, and is essential to America's dynamism and character. Fellow glorifiers of meritocracy have noted that our society is superior to nepotistic backwaters like Krygystan or France because we assign the most important jobs based on excellence. This makes us less prone to stagnancy or, worse yet, hideous national clusterfucks like fighting unwinnable wars for reasons nobody understands.
At Radar we are devoted re-readers of the Brooks oeuvre and were struck by this particular column. It raised interesting questions. Noticing our nation is stuck in an unwinnable war (or two), we wondered if America hasn't stumbled off the meritocratic path. More specifically, since political pundits like Brooks play such a central role in our national decision-making process, maybe something is amiss in the world of punditry. Are the incentives well-aligned? Surely those who warned us not to invade Iraq have been recognized and rewarded, and those who pushed for this disaster face tattered credibility and waning career prospects. Could it be any other way in America?
So we selected the four pundits who were in our judgment the most influentially and disturbingly misguided in their pro-war arguments and the four who were most prescient and forceful in their opposition. (Because conservative pundits generally acted as a well-coordinated bloc, more or less interchangeable, all four of our hawks are moderates or liberals who might have been important opponents of the war—so, sadly, we are not able to revisit Brooks's eloquent and thoroughly meritless prognostications.)
Then we did a career check ... and found that something is rotten in the fourth estate.GETTING RICH BY BEING WRONG
Tom Friedman: WAR PROFITEER
Pre-war position: Re-reading Friedman's columns from the six months or so prior to the invasion of Iraq can induce vertigo. Unlike many of his hawkish colleagues, he grokked all the vital details of the situation. He understood that there were alternatives to war ("Bottom line: Iraq is a war of choice"). He understood that the WMD casus belli was for the most part a convenient line (cautioning that it was merely the "stated reason" for the war, and early on calling out Bush and Blair for "hyping" the evidence). He took a shine to the idea of regime change, but seemed clear-sighted about its low chances for success ("Setting up the first progressive Arab state ... would be a huge undertaking, though, and maybe impossible, given Iraq's fractious history"). He grasped that the consequences of failure would be dizzying ("if done wrong, the world will never be the same") and that to succeed, at the very least, would require exceedingly deft execution on the diplomatic front as well as the military one. Yet he also noted that the Bush Administration was incompetent in at least the former respect, and recognized them as essentially a bunch of pathologically insensitive and hyperaggressive bumblers ("we are talking about nation-building ... [and] the Bushies seem much more adept at breaking things than building things").
So even a Webelo-grade logician knows where to go from here, right? You connect the dots and conclude that while it would be very nice to get rid of Saddam, it would also be stupid and dangerous.
But somehow he still managed to come out in favor of the war. And if the whole thing weren't so tragically misguided, his reasoning would be worth a chuckle. Says Friedman: "something in Mr. Bush's audacious shake of the dice appeals to me." A nice ballsy gamble of a war. Sure, it could throw the region into chaos, bankrupt this country, and dye the fertile crescent red with the blood of civilians; yet an audacious war is like a red lollipop—who isn't powerless to resist it?
Career status: At the peak of his field. Before the war he was charging less than $40,000 to give a speech; these days it's a rumored $65,000. And afterward the audiences are encouraged to scoop up copies of the World is Flat, his love letter to corporate globalism that has been on the Times best-seller list for 91 weeks. The royalties certainly help defray the costs of a $9.3 million mansion in Bethesda and a second home in Aspen that—if the local phone book and Google Earth are to be trusted—is a massive chateau with its own lake on the swanky northern side of town, where Prince Bandar has his monstrosity.
Friedman was feted by Queen Elizabeth in 2004, and also received a lifetime award from the Overseas Press Club. Though he was probably the most influential pro-war voice in the American media, he still hasn't had to own up to his mistake. If you ask him about it—as Don Imus did recently—he quotes a few misgivings from his columns to demonstrate that he was quite aware the war could be a fiasco and a bloodbath. But let no one say it wasn't audacious.Peter Beinart: DONKEY WRONG
Pre-war position: In 1999, at age 28, Beinart emerged into prominence when Marty Peretz named him editor of the New Republic. For the next three years he cranked out wonky commentary for the journal. But just prior to the war, like a ginger ale no longer relevant to today's youth, TNR underwent a rebranding campaign with an aggressive new visual design and a promise from its publicist that Beinart would be taking "several daring political stances." The apparent aim was to add some Mountain Dew-style 'tude to the world of low-circulation, high-influence political weeklies. The editorial effect of this brand enhancement campaign was an aggressive pro-war stance and sustained attacks by Beinart on war critics for being "blind," "intellectually incoherent," and purveyors of "abject pacifism"—essentially calling them pussies while advancing the manly position that we needed to go war "even without the U.N." One Democratic advisor complained to Beinart: "You're doing Rove's work for him."
Analytically though, Beinart is even less astute than Friedman. He swallowed the WMD line and called any other rationale "disingenuous." Of course, it's now increasingly accepted that the prospect of Saddam ever using WMDs against the U.S. was overblown. Bush Administration insider and national security expert Philip Zelikow reportedly acknowledged this even in 2002 and some of Beinart's more clear-eyed colleagues were making this case compellingly. They were called pussies.
Career status: Prognosis positive. Beinart is steadily climbing toward the penthouse of punditry. Just named as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (a favorite among conspiracy theorists searching for the secret clique that runs the world), Beinart is also now a columnist at the Washington Post. He's a staple on the cable networks, with a list of the shows that regularly feature his insight filling out two paragraphs in his bio. A recent book, published by HarperCollins, was prominently (and positively) reviewed in all the best places.
Beinart has copped to being completely wrong about the war. Which is a good thing, of course. But in an interview last spring with the Columbia Journalism Review, he made another uncomfortable admission: He said that by early 2003, in advance of the invasion, it was becoming clear that the WMD accusations could be mistaken, and that he "was not suffiently attuned to... the evidence." Maybe his war bonnet was obstructing his vision. And he still has no shame about presenting himself as a font of foreign policy wisdom.Fareed Zakaria: THE INSIDER
Pre-war position: In State of Denial, Bob Woodward delivers this sparkling scoop: Fareed Zakaria attended a secret gathering convened by Paul Wolfowitz in late 2001. The task at hand, according to a fellow participant, was to draft "a forceful summary of the best pro-war arguments" which became a blueprint for the Bush Administration's PR campaign. Although he was a columnist at Newsweek and was editor of the magazine's international edition, Zakaria didn't attend in a journalistic capacity—in fact, he signed a non-disclosure agreement beforehand.
On October 9, the New York Times picked up Woodward's scoop and ran a small but damning article about it in the Business (?!) section. It was one of those important stories that, for whatever reason, faded away before most people ever heard about it. (A Nexis search today on the key terms produces only two hits: the Times item and one in an obscure publication called the Frontrunner.) But we are left with the astounding fact that one of the war's crucial media proponents—apart from Zakaria's ubiquity and sterling reputation as a foreign policy analyst, his is by far the most prominent Muslim voice in the press—helped craft the arguments that Bush used to take the country to war. Then for 16 months leading up to the invasion, he wrote columns, edited news coverage, and appeared as an analyst on television putatively evaluating those same arguments for his vast audience.
Needless to say, Zakaria found the case for war a strong one. His role as confidential advisor to the administration was never mentioned though. And his most priceless bit of public prediction? A scenario for democratic revolution in the Middle East based on the idea that "oil goes to $10 a barrel." Today it hovers near $60.
Career status: Telegenic, debonair, with burnished intellectual credentials, Zakaria has emerged as the golden boy of media pundits. (Being a Muslim who supports a hawkish foreign policy hasn't exactly been a hindrance to his career either.) Far above the teeming masses of commentators who fight for face time on cable, he's a staple presence on ABC—as a panelist on This Week—and PBS, which gave him his own show in 2005. Recently, he's even cultivated an "alternative" following with his regular appearances on the Daily Show, where much to the delight of Jon Stewart and the audience he seems to loosen his tie and launch into vicious fusillades against Bush and the whole blood-soaked debacle in Iraq.
The assumption is that the pundit now "gets it." But it's possible that Zakaria has played it perfectly all along. When he couldn't afford to be labeled as a wimp or pacifist—the kind of guy who Peter Beinart would use as target practice—he made a "looking at the bright side" argument for war: sure there are huge risks, but everything might work out beautifully. When it became clear that the occupation was not going to be a happy affair, he became politely skeptical. Now that the failure of the Bush presidency and the Iraq war are assured, he has found in the Daily Show a forum and a fresh audience for becoming a savage critic of those same people he secretly helped a few years ago.
Zakaria today makes the unlikely claim that he didn't understand the purpose of Wolfowitz's intimate gathering. He says he mistook it for a "brainstorming session." Robert Kaplan, the only other day-job journalist present, was asked by the Times if that contention was credible. "No," he replied, "that's not possible."Jeffrey Goldberg: FEAR MONGER
Pre-war position: As Judy Miller pursues freelance projects out in Sag Harbor, doggedly accompanied by the rotting corpse of her career, she likely has much time for rumination. And it's tough to imagine these sessions of thought don't sometimes include spleen toward Jeffrey Goldberg. How did she end up getting screwed by Ahmed Chalabi and the neocons— metaphorically, of course—while Goldberg, who also demonstrated a remarkable willingness to channel their war-enabling disinformation, managed to keep both his job and his reputation? It's a tough task to argue that his work was any less influential in the pre-war debate than hers, or that he was any less of a go-to guy for the Rumsfeld gang. For instance, when Doug Feith had a hard-on about launching military action against Arab terrorists in Paraguay, who stepped forward and wrote the scare piece? Now we have a big special-ops base in Paraguay! And when Chalabi wanted to disseminate a dodgy tidbit about Saddam having a secret evil plan to kill 100,000 Israelis in a single day with bioweapons, was it not Goldberg who duly pimped it to the New Yorker's million discerning readers? It was indeed.
Goldberg did this, in fact, in his (in)famous 2002 feature "The Great Terror," which helped create the well-worn media portrait of Saddam as a genocidal lunatic with WMDs on hair-trigger ready to exterminate every hamburger-eating, freedom-loving person in the world. Both Bush and Cheney spoke approvingly of the 16,000-word article and singled it out as a good explanation why a war effort was justified. But the "Great Terror" is a J-school nightmare: bad sources, compromised sources, unacknowledged uncertainties, and the whole text spun through with an alarmist rhetoric that is now either laughable or nauseating, depending on your mood. (How did Remnick let this stuff go to print?) Goldberg floated sketchy theories that the dictator was working closely with Al Qaeda and was so irrationally villainous that he was developing a super-duper WMD from wheat mold that, in the author's words, had "no military value [except] to cause liver cancer, particularly in children."
Needless to say, "The Great Terror" hasn't aged well. The New Yorker hasn't made any retractions, but substantial parts of the article are simply hokum. The supposed Al Qaeda link, for instance, rested on the testimony of a drug dealer in a Kurdish prison. When a journalist from a major British newspaper tried to follow up on Goldberg's reporting he quickly determined the source to be "a liar."
Career status: Things are going swimmingly. Goldberg, as a staff writer at the New Yorker, holds one of the sexiest jobs in journalism. His stories about the Middle East and other subjects appear regularly in the venerable magazine. His new book is selling briskly on Amazon, and a dedicated signing event was scheduled into the New Yorker Festival. He won a National Magazine award in 2003. And "The Great Terror" was given an Overseas Press Club award—which in its dazzling absurdity rivals former CIA director George Tenet and General Tommy Franks winning Presidential Medals of Freedom.
But Goldberg does seem to be getting a bit touchy about his pre-war stances. In a short Q & A with New York magazine, he was asked a gentle question about that supposed link between Saddam and Al Qaeda. "Is that part of the interview?" he fired back. "Okay, fine, if you really want to go into it, the specific allegations I raised have never been definitively addressed by the 9/11 Commission." Get the sense he's ready to move on?RIGHT BUT POOR
Robert Scheer: TIMES ARE A CHANGIN'
Pre-war position: As a liberal columnist for the LA Times, Scheer argued relentlessly against the war, focusing on the dishonesty of the administration's efforts to "frighten the American people into supporting" it and seeking to bypass rational discussion and analysis by making Saddam into a cartoonish "super-villain"—the kind of guy who sacrifices military strategy to give toddlers liver cancer. His work constituted perhaps the most full-throated anti-war voice on the editorial page of a major American newspaper.
Career status: In the toilet. Fired from the Times in 2005 after a 12-year tenure, his column was handed over to the well-fed and well-connected pro-war conservative, Jonah Goldberg. Scheer wrote afterwards, "The publisher Jeff Johnson, who has offered not a word of explanation to me, has privately told people that he hated every word that I wrote. I assume that mostly refers to my exposing the lies used by President Bush to justify the invasion of Iraq."William S. Lind: PENNILESS AND PRESCIENT
Pre-war position: This arch-conservative commentator may have been the most prescient voice in the American media warning against the military dangers facing us in Iraq. His career began as a protégé of America's greatest military strategist, colonel John Boyd, and he has since achieved his own renown in that field. Prior to the war, Lind warned that invading Iraq would be of inherent benefit to both Al Qaeda and Hezbollah. He predicted, "When American forces capture Baghdad and take down Saddam Hussein, the real war will not end but begin ... as an array of non-state elements begin to fight America and each other." Bottom line: "It won't be pretty." He also pointed out that a basic tenet of military theory is that a democracy cannot win any prolonged war if the people are at all uncertain about the reasons for fighting. At that point, prior to the invasion, more than half of Americans thought Saddam had a hand in 9/11.
Career status: Still writing for a small audience. Lind is a contributor to the American Conservative and websites like military.com, counterpunch.com, and antiwar.com. No major publications have come calling, so not many people are hearing the urgent warning he's offering now. "I think we're probably going to hit Iran and that situation could be ten times worse than what we've got in Iraq," he tells Radar.Jonathan Schell: LEFT BEHIND
Pre-war position: Covering the Vietnam War for the New Yorker, where he was a staff writer for 20 years, Schell saw how armed conflicts can go awry. Writing for the Nation and Harper's in 2002 and 2003, he made the case—amply supported by history—that any attempt to "impose" democracy from the outside and with an armed occupation is a fundamental error in understanding. As he saw it, all the Friedmans of the world, in love with the audacious experiment of trying to turn Iraq into a beacon of Middle Eastern democracy, were off in the poppies. Democracy, by its nature, must originate with a popular movement, not a bunch of guys in wrap-around shades and Kevlar vests riding in on Abrams tanks. And, lo, the Bush Administration has now leaked the fact that it's considering non-democratic scenarios to try to stabilize Iraq.
Career status: The New York Times, in Schell's words, "savaged" his 2003 book The Unconquerable World, which effectively predicted the disaster in Iraq. (This as the paper of record was publishing Judy Miller stories about those famous aluminum tubes.) Schell's main audience is the committed group of lefties who subscribe to the Nation. He drily remarks that, "There doesn't seem to be a rush to find the people who were right about Iraq and install them in the mainstream media."Scott Ritter: LONE WOLF
Pre-war position: When world leaders spoke confidently about Saddam's biological and chemical weapons, Ritter was a lonely voice, saying that the arsenals had been destroyed after the first Gulf War. Having spent several years in Iraq as a U.N. inspector, the former marine had experience to support his statements. As we now know, he was correct.
Career status: It should be stipulated that, no matter how many times he's right, Ritter will be a tough hire as a mainstream commentator. If nothing else, he hasn't done a good job of keeping a clean image. (Charges of soliciting sex from teens online doesn't play well in Topeka.)
But he's getting some face time on cable news for his recent book about Iran. On The Situation Room in a great—and highly unusual—moment of journalistic accountability, the host said, "Your skepticism about the rationale of going to war with Iraq [was] widely ridiculed. You were harassed, to put it mildly, for your views at the time. A lot of those views turned out to be accurate, so you speak [about Iran] with some credibility." (One of the people who trashed Ritter leading up to the war was Beinart, saying he had "no credibility" and should be ignored.) Like Lind, Ritter is now warning about the disastrous consequences of going to war with Iran.
Anyway, better late than never, Wolf. Now doesn't he deserve Bob Novak's job?
http://observer.com/2013/05/jeb-reed/
Jebediah Reed is the new deputy editor for New York magazine’s website. Mr. Reed, who started this past Tuesday, is going to assign stories and work on nymag.com and New York mag sites Vulture, Grub Street and The Cut.
by JackRiddler » Fri Jun 13, 2014 1:45 pm
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/world ... /iraq.html
BAGHDAD — Iraq’s top Shiite cleric exhorted all able-bodied Iraqis to take up arms Friday to combat the marauding Sunni extremist militants who have seized broad stretches of the country this week and are threatening the wobbly Shiite-led central government in Baghdad. President Obama said it was up to the Iraqis themselves to contain the crisis.
The call to arms by the cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, was the most urgent sign yet of the growing desperation of the country’s Shiite majority in the face of a resurgent Sunni militant movement drawn from the insurgency in neighboring Syria and vestiges of the Saddam Hussein loyalists toppled from power by the American-led invasion a decade ago.
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President Barack Obama spoke outside the White House.
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Iraqis fled Mosul this week after a siege by Islamic extremists, with a large number taking refuge in Erbil.
Iraqis Who Fled Mosul Say They Prefer Militants to GovernmentJUNE 12, 2014
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AR
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So inevitably some imperialist neocon types here are bemoaning the loss of Pax Americana. Got news for you people--Pax Americana died once...
M
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We will never change the thinking of people who have thousands of years of turmoil and religious fighting in their history. Why are we...
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in reality - this is a battle of Ayatollahs fighting over control of a splintered religion and they are willing to to sacrifice all the...
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Ayatollah Sistani’s plea came as both the United States and Iran, adversaries on a range of issues including the Syria conflict, were both seeking ways to help the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and avoid a collapse in Iraq that would further destabilize the Middle East.
Photo
A soldier searched volunteers to join fighting against jihadists in northern Iraq on Friday. Credit Ali Al-Saadi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
At the same time, the ayatollah’s plea also risked plunging Iraq further into the pattern of sectarian bloodletting between Sunnis and Shiites that convulsed the country during the height of the American occupation.
For the United States, the chaos now engulfing Iraq risks re-entangling the American military in a conflict that the Obama administration spent its first term winding down. President Obama, in a televised statement on Friday, said it was clear that Mr. Maliki’s government needed more help and that the United States was weighing a range of options. But Mr. Obama said that he would not be sending troops back and that American military aid alone was not a solution.
“The United States is not simply going to involve itself in a military action in the absence of a political plan by the Iraqis that gives us some assurance that they’re prepared to work together,” he said. “We’re not going to allow ourselves to be dragged back into a situation in which, while we’re there, we’re keeping a lid on things” while the political leaders fail to address the underlying fissures dividing Iraqi society.
For Iran’s Shiite leaders, the Iraq crisis represents a direct Sunni militant threat on their doorstep. The commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Suleimani, arrived in Baghdad on Thursday and has been reviewing how Iraq’s Shiite militias are prepared to defend Baghdad and other areas, according to a report on Iranwire, a website run by expatriate Iranian journalists.
“The mobilization of the Shia militias, and Qassem Suleimani’s presence, is a very good indication of how seriously they’re taking this,” Hayder al-Khoei, an associate fellow at the London-based Chatham House research group, said in an interview with Iranwire from Baghdad.
Thousands of Iraqi Shiites responded to the call by Ayatollah Sistani, whose statements carry enormous weight among not just the Shiite majority but members of other groups including some Sunnis. The statement, read by his representative during Friday prayers, said it was “the legal and national responsibility of whoever can hold a weapon to hold it to defend the country, the citizens and the holy sites.”
A poster of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Baghdad. He said Friday it was “the legal and national responsibility of whoever can hold a weapon to hold it to defend the country, the citizens and the holy sites.” Credit Khalid Mohammed/Associated Press
The representative of Ayatollah Sistani, Sheikh Abdul Mehdi al-Karbalaie, spoke in Karbala, regarded by Shiites as one of Iraq’s holiest cities. The sheikh said volunteers “must fill the gaps within the security forces,” but cautioned that they should not do any more than that.
The statement stopped short of calling for a general armed response to the incursion led by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a Sunni extremist group that has emerged as one of the most potent opposition forces in the Syrian civil war and that now controls large areas of both Syria and northern Iraq.
The sheikh emphasized that all Iraqis should join the fight, pulling together, so the country does not slide into all-out sectarian warfare. But in a time of mounting frictions and deepening distrust between the sects, it appeared unlikely that many Sunnis would answer the ayatollah’s call. Many Sunnis feel little sympathy either for the government or for the extremists of ISIS.
Volunteers began to appear at the southern gate to Baghdad, which leads to the predominantly Shiite south of the country, within an hour after Mr. Karbalaie broadcast Ayatollah Sistani’s call.
At the police post there, by the soaring arches that mark the city limits, a pickup truck driven by elders pulled up with six young men in the back.
“We heard Ali Sistani’s call for jihad, so we’re coming here to fight the terrorism everywhere, not just in Iraq,” said Ali Mohsin Alwan al-Amiri, one of the elders.
Photo
Volunteers run toward military trucks as they leave a recruiting center in Baghdad on Friday. Credit Ali Al-Saadi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Sunni insurgents continued their offensive on Friday, fanning out to the east of the Tigris River, and at least temporarily seized two towns near the Iranian border, Sadiyah and Jalawla. Security officials in Baghdad said government troops, backed by Kurdish forces, counterattacked several hours later and forced the insurgents to withdraw, a rare success.
The Kurds control a semiautonomous region in northern Iraq and have long sought independence. As the militants advanced on Thursday, their forces took full control of Kirkuk, an oil center that had been contested by the Kurds and the country’s Arab leaders for years, after the Iraqi Army abandoned its posts there.
The apparent disintegration of some units of the American-armed Iraqi Army and the loss of control of Kirkuk and the Sunni areas overrun by the militants represented the worst security crisis in Iraq since the American withdrawal in 2011, threatening the country’s future as a cohesive state.
Both the United States and Iran have watched events with alarm and have issued warnings of possible intervention.
In its language and tone, Ayatollah Sistani’s statement portrayed it as a religious and patriotic act to volunteer either for the Iraqi Army or for a Shiite militia, two forces that are becoming difficult to distinguish.
When the ayatollah’s representative, Mr. Karbalaie, said, “Whoever can hold a weapon has to volunteer to join the security forces,” the call was greeted with cheers and shouts of “It will be done!”
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The Iraq-ISIS Conflict in Maps, Photos and Video
A visual guide to the crisis in northern Iraq.
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People in Ayatollah Sistani’s office said the statement was a response to one issued by the leadership of ISIS threatening to seize not just the predominantly Sunni areas of northern Iraq, but also Baghdad and the cities of Karbala and Najaf, which are sacred to Shiite Muslims.
“Iraq and the Iraqi people are facing great danger,” Mr. Karbalaie said. “The terrorists are not aiming to control just several provinces. They said clearly they are targeting all other provinces including Baghdad, Karbala and Najaf. So the responsibility to face them and fight them is the responsibility of all, not one sect or one party. The responsibility now is saving Iraq, saving our country, saving the holy places of Iraq.”
Since the insurgents captured Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, senior officers in the army have been meeting with local committees and Shiite militias in Baghdad and asking them to round up volunteers to bolster the government forces. Maj. Gen. Abdul Jabbar, commander of the 11th Division, went to a stadium in the Hussainiya neighborhood to speak to a gathering of local sheikhs, and called on each of them to produce 50 volunteers.
On the main axis of the insurgent advance, the highway running south from Mosul to the capital, there were no indications on Friday that the militants had succeeded in taking Samarra, 70 miles north of Baghdad, which is home to a Shiite shrine and is defended by Shiite militias. “We hope that all the Shiite groups will come together and move as one man to protect Baghdad and the other Shiite areas,” said Abu Mujahid, one of the militia leaders.
Iran’s state-run news media reported this week that Tehran had strengthened its forces along the Iraq border and suspended all pilgrim visas into Iraq, but had received no request from Iraq for military help. Reports that Iranian Revolutionary Guards troops had crossed the border into Iraq to assist the government forces could not be confirmed; Shiite militia leaders in the capital said they knew of no such move and had not asked Iran to send troops.
The insurgents have pledged to march on Baghdad, but seizing and controlling the sprawling Iraqi capital, with its large population of Shiites, is likely to prove much more difficult than advancing across a Sunni heartland with little sympathy for the central government.
For its part, the administration of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has seemed bewildered by the crisis. It was unable to muster a quorum in Parliament this week to approve a state of emergency.
On Friday, however, an spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Brig. Gen. Saad Maan, was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying, “We put in place a new plan to protect Baghdad.”
Alissa J. Rubin and Suadad al-Salhy reported from Baghdad, and Alan Cowell from London. Rod Nordland contributed reporting from Baghdad and Rick Gladstone in New York.
by JackRiddler » Fri Jun 13, 2014 2:01 pm
by American Dream » Fri Jun 13, 2014 2:05 pm
FRIDAY, JUNE 13, 2014
Empire nostalgia
posted by Richard Seymour
I see it's time to get back into Iraq. It's been a while and, let's be honest, we've all felt the absence of imperial omnipotence registered in daily beheadings deeply. Last time, the US promoted some Iranian clients, installed them into a new patrimonial state, trained up their death squads - and then complained like fuck when Iran seemed to make some strategic gains in the situation.
Now I see in the news that the US are teaming up with Iran to take on ISIS, which is probably a smart move on their part because Iran's proxies will fuck ISIS up (this is sober analysis). But, aside from the inevitable gruesome repeat of 2006 - execution scenes from the news today already remind one of old times - doesn't that necessarily also entail an implicit tilt back toward Assad?
This, apparently, is what it is to have an empire.
by JackRiddler » Fri Jun 13, 2014 9:29 pm
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/13/r ... nvasion_in
Sami Rasouli, founder and director of the Muslim Peacemaker Teams in Iraq. He lives in the Iraqi city of Najaf. He left Iraq in the late 1970s and eventually moved to the United States and settled in Minneapolis. He moved back to Iraq in 2004 after living abroad for nearly 30 years.
Jun 02, 2014 | Story
A representative of Iraq’s most senior Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has called on Iraqis to take up arms against what he called "terrorists" who have overrun large swaths of the country. The call comes just hours after Islamist militants seized two more strategic towns northeast of Baghdad, moving the country closer to disintegration. Over the past few days, fighters from ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, have seized several major cities including Mosul and Tikrit. Meanwhile, Kurdish fighters have taken control of the oil city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq. On Thursday, President Obama said he won’t rule anything out, including a military response. The Wall Street Journal meanwhile reports Iran is sending units of its al-Quds forces into Iraq to help stop the Sunni fighters from ISIS. We go to the city of Najaf to speak to Sami Rasouli, founder and director of the Muslim Peacemaker Teams in Iraq. He left Iraq in the late 1970s and eventually moved to the United States and settled in Minneapolis, where he was a well-known restaurateur. He moved back to Iraq in 2004 after living abroad for nearly 30 years.
Report from Iraq: U.S. Invasion in 2003 Helped Set Path for Crisis Pulling Nation Apart
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Iraq. A representative of Iraq’s most senior Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has called on Iraqis to take up arms against what he called "terrorists" who have overrun large swaths of the country. The call comes just hours after Islamist militants seized two more strategic towns northeast of Baghdad, moving the country closer to disintegration. Over the past few days, fighters from ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, have seized several major cities including Mosul and Tikrit. According to the United Nations, hundreds of people have been killed in Mosul, many of them summarily executed. Hundreds of thousands have fled Mosul, many afraid Iraqi forces would bomb the city. Meanwhile, Kurdish fighters have taken control of the oil city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq. On Thursday, President Obama said he won’t rule anything out that might aid Prime Minister Maliki.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I think it’s fair to say that in our consultations with the Iraqis, there will be some short-term, immediate things that need to be done militarily, and, you know, our national security team is looking at all the options. But this should be also a wake-up call for the Iraqi government. There has to be a political component to this, so that Sunni and Shia who care about building a functioning state that can bring about security and prosperity to all people inside of Iraq come together and work diligently against these extremists. And that is going to require concessions on the part of both Shia and Sunni that we haven’t seen so far.
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reports Iran is sending units of its al-Quds forces into Iraq to help stop the Sunni fighters from ISIS. A senior Iranian official told Reuters Shiites in Iran are so alarmed by the gains of the Sunni insurgents, Tehran may be willing to cooperate with Washington in helping Baghdad fight back.
For more on Iraq, we now go to the city of Najaf to speak to Sami Rasouli, founder and director of the Muslim Peacemaker Teams in Iraq. He moved back to Iraq in 2004 at the height of the war, after living abroad for nearly 30 years. He left Iraq in the late '70s, eventually moved to the United States, settled in Minneapolis, where he was a beloved restaurateur with his restaurant Sinbad's, but now in Najaf.
Sami Rasouli, tell us what is happening in your country right now.
SAMI RASOULI: Hi, Amy. How are you? Hope everything all right in the U.S., in New York especially, where you [inaudible]. I’m in Najaf with my family, OK, but certainly Iraq is not.
Amy, we should look at the broader picture since 2003. One of the most important objectives of the invasion of Iraq is to destroy its military forces, that was built since the '20s, 1920s. And it was described before as the most powerful force, army, in the world. But the most important objective also is to divide Iraq. And as you see from the latest events, when the ISIS took over Mosul, right away, the Kurdish peshmerga, the Kurdish power in the northern Iraq, took over Kirkuk, the most rich city in the northern part of Iraq. So, now, if I'm right, the scenario will be—so, the ISIS forces will come down to Baghdad. There probably will be a big fight. Then, after that, the south will be south for the Shia; the Sunnis already have their area; and the Kurds have their place—I mean, the provinces, which is Kirkuk, Dohuk, Sulaymaniyah, plus Kirkuk and Erbil.
So, what we see, it’s hard to believe that 1,500 fighters with light arm took over the whole province. It’s described as a third-largest city in Iraq, Mosul, Ninawa, the province of Ninawa, where there were government forces, estimated by four military brigades, and that’s about 50,000 army personnels, who equipped with heavily—heavily armed equipment, including air power, tanks and large logistic abilities to—so, say, to protect the province of Mosul. But they fell. What they did, they left their equipment, which is purchased with lots of money, for the fighters, and at the border of Mosul and Kirkuk, the pershmerga, the Kurdish forces, took those equipments, the government equipment, as a gift, actually.
And who are those—the ISIS? I think, as it’s believed by an average Iraqi, they are part of the al-Qaeda, so-called al-Qaeda previously, were created by the CIA and—partially, and with the Saudis partially in the ’70s to fight the USSR when the USSR occupied Afghanistan in the ’70s. So, part of them, the al-Qaeda, then the other major part is the generals from the previous army, the Saddam Hussein army, who are well trained and expert in army matters. So, beside them, the Sunnis who lived in the western provinces, who felt that they were taken advantage of and not being treated by the Shia government in Baghdad. And with them, of course, some extremist Islamic extremists from Chechnya maybe, Afghanistan, North Africa and some other Arab countries, like Saudis, for example. So—
AMY GOODMAN: Sami Rasouli, we don’t have much time, but I want to get to two quick points: the significance of a representative of Iraq’s most senior Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, calling on Iraqis to take up arms against who he’s calling the terrorists; the idea that Iran sending in al-Quds forces, Iran would work with Washington, D.C., to shore up al-Maliki. You are Shia, like the—like the regime in Baghdad. What do you think needs to happen right now? Do you see Iraq falling apart? Do you see Baghdad being taken, falling?
SAMI RASOULI: Definitely, definitely, Amy. I mean, to destroy a country, it’s not enough to bomb it from the air, but to have an inner fight. And that’s what’s going on since 2003, the inner fight that’s based on dividing Iraqis to sects and ethnic groups, like Sunni, Shia, Arab, Kurds, religiously Christian and Muslims. That’s what is going on after the invasion and after—Iraq was one piece; now we see it falling apart, unfortunately. And Iraq is the first country who entered the so-called—if you remember, Condoleezza Rice call it the "constructive chaos." So, Iraq started it in 2003, then the Arab countries followed suit in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia today and Syria, as we see. So, so-called the Arab Spring is not really Arab Spring, because this spring never has borne fruits toward the countries that are affected by it. But it’s a spring for the Israelis, who used to launch wars every 10 years, then every five years. We will see no wars anymore between the Israelis and the Arab for the sake of the Palestinians to secure homeland for them, but we’re going to see the Arabs killing themselves, killing each other, unfortunately.
AMY GOODMAN: Sami, what do you think the U.S. should do? President Obama has not ruled out airstrikes, talking about shoring up the al-Maliki government. What do you think the role of the U.S. should be right now?
SAMI RASOULI: I think the U.S. should get out of the area. But what’s going on is controlled by the huge embassy in Baghdad, run by at least 5,000 employees. They have nothing to do except monitoring Iraq, advising the Iraqi government what to do, and also monitoring the area surrounded by Iraq. The 5,000, this is beside the—an estimated about 10,000 military forces who are stationed there to protect the interest of the embassy and the U.S. So, I think they should leave the area, not to intervene, end the war in Afghanistan, and pull out their forces, and let the Arabs and the countries of the area solve their problem. But it’s not going to be easy. It’s going to take some time, but eventually they will figure out a way to get—but remember, there was a security agreement between Iraq and the U.S. in 2011. And that agreement, I think, don’t oblige the U.S. to defend Iraq, but to sell some low quality of arms, of course, after the approval—
AMY GOODMAN: Sami Rasouli, we have to end it there. I thank you so much for joining us. He joined us from Najaf.
by 8bitagent » Fri Jun 13, 2014 11:00 pm
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