The New World Disorder

By Jeralyn, Section Foreign Affairs
Posted on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 06:14:49 AM EST
Tags: ISIS, Iraq (all tags)

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Dozens killed in Kenya where Islamic militants set fire to a hotel.
Pakistan launches air strikes in North Waziristan, killing 10 militants.
Israel conducts air strikes in Gaza on military sites used by Hamas
Syria intensifies airstrikes on ISIS bases
ISIS takes another Iraqi town, Tal Afar, not far from Mosul.

As the mideast burns, the West trades blame and accusations. ISIS is the fault of (take your pick): Bush, Obama, the Saudis, Syria, Iraq'a prime minister Malaki, or the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. It's funded by: (take your pick): stolen artifacts, and bank robberies, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the U.S., or lax money laundering laws in Kuwait. Republicans predict ISIS doomsday scenarios here in the U.S.

ISIS, meanwhile, is loving the media attention resulting from its barrage of twitter posts, web photos and videos of its macabre killings and sweep on Iraq.

ISIS is also quite the multi-tasker. While all this fighting and killing is going on, its recruiters held meetings this weekend with tribe leaders in Syria's Aleppo province. Here's what was discussed. The recruiter "announced the meeting was to speak with the tribes, look after their needs and cooperate in piety and good action. The meetings ended with the tribes pledging allegiance (bayah) to ISIS. Some reasons (according to ISIS): The many Islamic state services the group will provide in the new Islamic state. They include: the "recovery of rights for families"; "Spending millions for the welfare of the Muslims, providing safety and security in Islamic State lands." Apparently, the recruiters were very successful as the tribes agreed to "aid the Islamic state with their wealth, their weapons, their men and their children."

Not only is the group providing English translations of its media releases, it just added German translations.

Here's ISIS' latest map with its showing of its progress around Baghdad Saturday and Sunday.

ISIS is also pretty cagey. For example, in February, when they learned men in Syria were dressing as women and donning burkas to pass through ISIS checkpoints, they created their first Women's divisions. Their jobs? To search women to ensure they were really women, not males in disguise. (cross-gender body searches aren't allowed.)

Establishing female battalions was the only solution (for the ISIS) to stop this. The organization’s (men) cannot search women but now that these battalions have been established, it can.”

My vote for the most suspect news article of the day: This Guardian article about how ISIS acquired its $2 billion war chest and why ISIS went beserk and started killing Iraqi soldiers. It claims U.S. Intel and Iraqi forces captured an ISIS courier last week (two days before ISIS took Mosul), and after a night long interrogation (read "torture"), gave up his boss who was a local ISIS commander. The Iraqis then went to his house and killed him and while there, seized 160 thumb drives that had every detail of ISIS's finances and membership rosters on them, down to email addresses and phone numbers and comments about which members were valuable and which were not. ISIS is now retaliating, the article says, for the killing of the commander. The article is designed to make the reader believe the U.S. and Iraq have been on top of ISIS and successfully tracking it for a long time. It reads like a piece that was planted by the U.S. in the guise of a leak by intelligence officials, in an attempt to save face for being caught off guard.

Welcome to the New World Disorder.

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The New World Disorder | 49 comments (49 topical)

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Your chosen most suspect article (5.00 / 1) (#2)
by Militarytracy on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 07:38:53 AM EST

Finishing with the Iraqi official claiming they would find them....find them? You sort of know where they are, what do mean find them?

ISIS has such steam because it is about being Sunni, granted they are extremist Sunni, but when Sunnis have been marginalized that's what it's going to breed and empower because anything less just leads to Sunni doormats.

I don't know what anybody can really do about this, the Sunni populations will hide the ISIS members and I will bet new membership numbers are shooting through the roof. What is anyone going to do? Kill every Sunni in Iraq and Syria? Sunnis are showing up from all over the world too to fight for ISIS, much like they did when the US attempted to control Fallujah and Ramadi.

I'm still wondering why those banks had (5.00 / 2) (#4)
by Mr Natural on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 09:06:16 AM EST

half a billion in cash sitting around. Was it spoils from those planeloads of palletized $100 bills George Dubya dispatched from our Federal Reserve, way back when?

Half a billion in cash is a lot of currency to have sitting around. It means the banks aren't doing their job, at least not in our sense of the word, (however depraved that may be).


: Yes, at this point (5.00 / 1) (#23)
by KeysDan on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 02:56:51 PM EST

it is good to wonder about much of the reporting. The war stories may well be completely accurate, somewhat accurate, or not accurate at all. Propaganda is a critical weapon of warfare. It will be important to have all reports verified, certainly, before acting.
For example, the amount of money could be on the button, or exaggerated by either side or both sides, for their own purposes (e.g., inculcation of fear of vast funding for war). Similarly, the reports of atrocities may be exaggerated, staged, partially staged or on the mark.
Of course, even one extrajudicial killings is too many but reports of atrocities may be a part of a plan for one side to instill terror (to cause the Iraq army's Sunni members to flee) and for the other, to instill terror (to mobilize Shia and their militias)
We need only recall the false claims by a Kuwait mystery woman who said she witnessed Saddam's soldiers take babies out of Kuwait hospital incubators and throw them on the floor to die. An atrocity claim that was sure to inflame. And, it worked.
Of course, it turned out that the mysterious witness was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US, and the story was organized by the P.R. firm, Hill Knowlton as a rationale to back Kuwait in the Gulf War.
The media is at the hysterical point, calling up all the shameless out-of-office experts who distinguish themselves by being reliably wrong on most everything, and in-office experts, such as Miss Lindsey, who is getting a lot of free senate campaign television advertising by criticizing the president--and, thereby, endearing himself all the more to his SC constituents. And, CNN is found a good replacement story for that missing aircraft.

: That's a gooooood question (none / 0) (#7)
by Militarytracy on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 09:19:07 AM EST

That's an awful lot of money when reports on the economic situation for the average Iraqi are very grim.

In case you forgot (none / 0) (#16)
by jimakaPPJ on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 12:02:19 PM EST

Tracy, I still don't understand your "explanation" of why the Sunnis and the ISIS are doing what they are doing.

Through the 1970s, Saddam cemented his authority over the apparatuses of government as oil money helped Iraq's economy to grow at a rapid pace. Positions of power in the country were mostly filled with Sunnis, a minority that made up only a fifth of the population.

Saddam was a Sunni and his government was Sunni and he dominated Kurds and Shias by killing them by various means including poison gas.

Was it the evileee US that made him set up rape rooms and feed people feet first through industrial size paper shredders?????

What should the world do?? Ignore the minority Sunnis attempt to return to power by revolt and setting up an Islamic Theocracy of the Sunni fabric??

Let's recap. Saddam was a stone cold killer. He maintained power by killing and terror.

Iraq is now ruled by the majority Shia population who came to power by elections that the Sunni mostly ignored. They now want to return to power by killing and terror.


Learn your history, Jim, and don't rewrite it. (5.00 / 2) (#18)
by Donald from Hawaii on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 12:52:11 PM EST

The Reagan administration was Saddam's primary sponsor for his invasion of Iran, and then looked the other way while he did his number.


Learn to read what I write (none / 0) (#22)
by jimakaPPJ on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 02:24:19 PM EST

before you comment.

I didn't say a word about the Iraq - Iran war.

And the US did some small amount of support but not to the extent you want to claim.

But even then that has nothing to do with what he did for years and years to his own people after the war.


: Here's exactly what you said, Jim: (5.00 / 2) (#27)
by Donald from Hawaii on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 05:51:43 PM EST

jimakappj: "Was it the evileee US that made him set up rape rooms and feed people feet first through industrial size paper shredders????? [...] Let's recap. Saddam was a stone cold killer. He maintained power by killing and terror."
We did one helluva lot more than provide "some small amount of support" to Saddam Hussein. We enabled him.
President Reagan used Donald Rumsfeld's December 1983 and March 1984 visits to Baghdad to open a backchannel to Iraq, through which flowed U.S. classified intelligence and hundreds of millions of dollars in loan guarantees, even as Washington officially professed neutrality in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War. In February 1982, he had the State Department remove Saddam from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, clearing the way for U.S. aid and trade. The following month, he ordered a review of US policy in the Middle East which resulted in a marked shift in favor of Iraq over the next year, and included a consideration to lift the ban on the sale of dual-use equipment to Iraq's nuclear program!
It was the expressed policy of the Reagan administration to do everything short or armed U.S. military intervention to ensure an Iraqi victory, regardless of cost. We provided critical battlefield intelligence that allowed the Iraqis to target Iranian infantry with chemical weapons, most notably deadly sarin gas.
By March 1985, the United States had issued export permits to Baghdad for high tech equipment, which proved absolutely crucial to the development of Saddam's WMD programs. Sales of hundreds of UH-1H attack helicopters and Hughes MD-500 Defender helicopters were approved by the Reagan administration, ostensibly as civilian aircraft, though nobody in the administration objected when they were subsequently converted for military use. And Reagan encouraged our allies to arm Saddam, too. Roughly 40% of all French and German arms exports during the 1980s went to the Iraq military.
What Iraq got was a large, expensive, and well-armed military, with lots of accompanying training and expertise as to how to use it. And what we got in exchange for our support was a temporary firewall against Iranian expansion in the Middle East, Saddam's agreement to support Arab peace negotiations with Israel, and oodles and oodles of barrels of cheap oil. (In fact, Iraq from 1987-90 became the second biggest exporter of petroleum to the United States, after Saudi Arabia.)
Even when an Iraqi warplane fired two Exocet missiles into the guided missile frigate USS Stark in May 1987, killing 37 American sailors, the Reagan administration decided to look the other way and accepted Baghdad's claims at face value that it was all a mistake, and that the Iraqi pilot who fired on the ship it was subsequently executed. In fact, indications are that the pilot was never punished.
So, it's once again readily apparent that like most every other issue of foreign policy upon which you deign to profess expertise, you actually know diddly squat about this subject, other than whatever revisionist and fact-free nonsense you've picked up on from your fellow crackpots on the worldwide web.
Rather, you're once again just pulling crap out of your own a$$ and then trying to fling it at the audience in these threads, hoping against hope that some of it sticks. It's both sad and pathetic, because one would have hoped that by now, even at this late date, you'd have finally learned better that to continue flinging it into a 60 mph headwind.
Adios, my ignorant little right-wing piñata.

: They weren't really... (none / 0) (#26)
by unitron on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 05:40:50 PM EST

..."his own people", they were just Kurds and Shia who happened to live inside those Sykes-Picot lines, but I'm not sure you can get very far discussing modern day Sunni vs Shia and leave out the Iraqi invasion of Iran and the nearly 8 years of bloodshed that followed.
I assure you, the Shia haven't forgotten it.

Seven People who need to STFU about Iraq (5.00 / 2) (#6)
by Mr Natural on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 09:13:14 AM EST

- at the usually temperate Juan Cole site, Informed Comment.

We at Raw Story's Oh God Here We Go Again desk know that we can't be the only ones whose stomachs are turning at the thought of a renewed military engagement in Iraq.
We marvel at the Big Brass Ones on some people who feel the need to offer their opinions about how the U.S. should conduct itself with regards to recent rise of extremist elements in the country and the loss of two of its major cities to al Qaeda. These people seem to believe that their previous dire wrongness on everything about the topic of Iraq shouldn't preclude them from opining about our nation's current course of action, goodness no.

Pathetic (5.00 / 1) (#14)
by koshembos on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 11:36:59 AM EST

The Sunni/Shia war started way back. Welcome to the current generation. The focus on Syria the last several years by almost everyone has missed the increase turmoil in Iraq that was quite visible if you looked. Most intelligence services decided not to look or to watch and and keep quiet.

It's doubtful whether powers outside the Arab world could have done much. In my opinion, the west could have done about nothing. Either way all we can do is watch and avoid Guardian type crap.

Interesting (5.00 / 1) (#17)
by CaptHowdy on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 12:17:20 PM EST

The ongoing vicious fighting in Iraq is often characterized as a battle between the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and the Iraqi government. Many people think of that as simply being a proxy war between Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority and Shia majority.
But it's much, much more complicated than that. There are Sunnis on both sides of the conflict, and some who are neutral. There are multiple insurgent groups that aren't ISIS. And the Kurds-- non-Arab Sunni Muslims who have a semi-autonomous state in northeast Iraq -- have a totally unique role in the ongoing fighting, and may actually be benefitting from it.
To untangle some of these threads, I spoke to Kirk Sowell, a political risk analyst and expert on Iraqi politics. Sowell's firm, Utcensis Risk Services, publishes Inside Iraqi Politics, a biweekly publication covering the latest developments in Iraq. Sowell walked me through the divisions within the Sunni groups, why both ISIS and Iraq's Prime Minister are probably going to fail, and how the Kurds are the big winners of this conflict. What follows is a transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.
Zack Beauchamp: One of the major drivers of the rise of ISIS has been Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's policy towards the Sunni Muslim minority. Can you talk about the reasons his government has persecuted Sunnis and why that's such a major problem for the country?
Kirk Sowell: The Sunnis have lots of different grievances. As someone who considers himself a neutral analyst, there are some that I think are fairly reasonable and there are others that I don't think are.

Minh more at the link. Worth a read

I say blame Sykes and Picot (none / 0) (#1)
by unitron on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 06:26:52 AM EST

It's not like they're still around to defend themselves.

: - )

You are wrong! (5.00 / 1) (#12)
by koshembos on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 11:28:06 AM EST

It all started because of what happened in Benghazi.


: No, no! (none / 0) (#15)
by Zorba on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 11:39:16 AM EST

It all started because we exchanged five Guantanamo detainees for Bowe Bergdahl.
Or maybe both reasons........
Bergdahzi? Bendahl?

From the Daily Beast so consider the source (none / 0) (#3)
by Militarytracy on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 08:01:15 AM EST

A camp Bucca commander claims that al- Baghgdadi (knowing that his MPs were out of New York) told him, "See you in New York"

Camp Bucca was named after a NYFD fire marshall who was killed on 9/11? Why would anyone do that? If I was a member of the Bucca family I'd be so pissed. What an overall embarrassment the whole camp Bucca story is at this point.

"The New World Disorder" (none / 0) (#5)
by Mr Natural on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 09:09:44 AM EST

Nice play on words, Jeralyn.

The neocon dream as our nightmare.

Optimism shortage (none / 0) (#8)
by CaptHowdy on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 10:28:03 AM EST

Even so, the events unfolding in Iraq point toward a much wider war, reaching from the Iranian frontier to the Mediterranean coast. The long open border between Iraq and Syria, and the big stretches of ungoverned space, has allowed extremists on each side to grow and to support one another. isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, two of the strongest groups fighting in Syria, were created by militant leaders from Iraq, many of whom had fought with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia against the United States. The vast swath of territory between the Euphrates and the Tigris--from Aleppo, in Syria, to Mosul, in Iraq--threatens to become a sanctuary for the most virulent Islamist pathologies, not unlike what flourished in Afghanistan in the years before 9/11. Among those fighting with isis and Al Nusra are hundreds of Westerners, from Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States. At some point, the survivors will want to go home; they will be well trained and battle-hardened.
The extremist groups dominating the fighting are beginning to take their war beyond the two countries that they now freely traverse. In January, isis carried out a car-bomb attack in Beirut near the offices of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group that has been fighting on behalf of Assad. The Nusra front has also carried out attacks in Lebanon. Meanwhile, the number of Syrian refugees who have fled to that nation exceeds twenty per cent of its population, which is not something that a state as weak and as fractious as Lebanon can be expected to sustain. In Jordan, the presence of half a million Syrian refugees is putting an enormous strain on the fragile monarchy.
The revolutionary government of Iran looms ominously over it all. Iran has been decisive in supporting Assad, and its influence over Maliki, never small, has increased enormously since the departure of the last American forces in Iraq, in December of 2011. During the war, Iranian agents trained, armed, and directed a network of Shiite militias, which killed hundreds of American and British soldiers. Those same militias are evidently being readied to confront the Sunni onslaught in Iraq; thousands of their members have already been fighting for Assad in Syria. Iran's intervention in Syria has also alarmed Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which have poured in guns and money to help the rebels. It is not difficult to imagine a multinational war, fought along a five-hundred-mile front, and along sectarian lines, waged ultimately for regional supremacy.

the new yorker

No warning? (5.00 / 1) (#9)
by CaptHowdy on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 10:32:45 AM EST

ERBIL, Iraq -- When Islamic militants rampaged through the Iraqi city of Mosul last week, robbing banks of hundreds of millions of dollars, opening the gates of prisons and burning army vehicles, some residents greeted them as if they were liberators and threw rocks at retreating Iraqi soldiers.
It took only two days, though, for the fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria to issue edicts laying out the harsh terms of Islamic law under which they would govern, and singling out some police officers and government workers for summary execution.
With just a few thousand fighters, the group's lightning sweep into Mosul and farther south appeared to catch many Iraqi and American officials by surprise. But the gains were actually the realization of a yearslong strategy of state-building that the group itself promoted publicly.

times


You know (5.00 / 1) (#11)
by Ga6thDem on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 11:14:27 AM EST

if we stay out of their mess, the Sunnis might take it upon themselves to get rid of these people. I'm willing to be they only look good while they're against whoever their against, the enemy of my enemy is my friend mentality. Take us out of the equation and they are going to maybe have to deal with it themselves.


IMO (none / 0) (#13)
by CaptHowdy on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 11:36:22 AM EST

Anyone who believes any other outcome is possible is deluded.


To repeat myself (none / 0) (#19)
by jimakaPPJ on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 12:59:18 PM EST

Through the 1970s, Saddam cemented his authority over the apparatuses of government as oil money helped Iraq's economy to grow at a rapid pace. Positions of power in the country were mostly filled with Sunnis, a minority that made up only a fifth of the population.
Link

So if you take us out of the picture it appears that they will return to power. Now, first how will the "moderate" Sunnis get rid of the radicals who are killing and establishing Sharia law rules ?? And why should they, given that they agree on a religious basis with ISIS??

And without us it appears that the current Shia dominated government can survive only with the help of Iran. And given Iran's statements re the West we certainly don't want that.

So Obama's failures appear to have cost us the entire ME given that the rest, with the possible exception of Egypt, will fall in line.

$8.00/gasoline coming up.

Followed by a collapsing economy.


I hate to (5.00 / 3) (#20)
by Ga6thDem on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 01:10:22 PM EST

tell you but Saddaam had a secular state and your hero Reagan was just fine with everything Sadaam was doing.

The kurds now have their own country. So if you are concerned about the kurds then you should advocate staying out of it because they seem to be able to keep everybody out of their country so far.

What is going to have to happen is what always has to happen the people there get sick of war and having their children die in this nonsense.

So it's all really about the oil with you then? Whatever. We have been through all kinds of stuff with gas over the last 30 years or so and guess what? We have not learned our lesson. If we had started getting off of fossil fuels 30 years ago LIKE WE SHOULD HAVE been we would not care about the price of gas.


Jim no need to repeat (5.00 / 1) (#32)
by Jeralyn on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 06:37:37 PM EST

yourself. Also, stop bringing up other's past comments and don't change the subject of the thread. This thread is about ISIS, not oil or Saddam.


It's Iraq.... (none / 0) (#33)
by unitron on Tue Jun 17, 2014 at 02:42:26 AM EST

...so it's going to be about oil (and who makes money off of it) no matter what else is involved.


You can't properly talk about ISIS ... (none / 0) (#37)
by Donald from Hawaii on Tue Jun 17, 2014 at 05:50:50 PM EST

... in a vacuum, Jeralyn. What's happening in Iraq is the tragic but inevitable culmination of a chain of events first set into motion many, many years ago.

Yes, in a technical sense, it's not about oil -- at least, not at this particular moment, anyway. But it soon will be, because Iraq is a country that was once manufactured out of whole cloth by the British Empire nearly a century ago in the aftermath of the First World War, for the expressed purposes of controlling the region's petroleum reserves.

And you can't rationally discuss the current events taking place on Iraq's soil, without understanding that control of its oil is the chief underlying motivation for most all that transpires there. We would never have liberated Kuwait in 1991, nor invaded Iraq a dozen years later, were it not for what lies underneath their respective national sandboxes.

And at its core, the root cause of armed conflict is most always the control and disposition of resources. Religion is simply leadership's cynical rationale for motivating the masses to do their bidding.

Aloha.


: Jim has a long history (5.00 / 1) (#45)
by Jeralyn on Wed Jun 18, 2014 at 07:14:28 PM EST

of changing the topic of the thread to challenge individual commenters about comments in other threads. Yes, oil is part of the current Iraq situation -- the last paragraph of my post was about ISIS attack on the refinery. But there's no need to repeat oneself, turn the thread into a continuation of personal disagreements from an older thread, etc.

So we should support Iran (none / 0) (#34)
by MKS on Tue Jun 17, 2014 at 08:54:05 AM EST

in its efforts against the Sunnis?

As between Iraq dominated by Iran, or Iraq controlled by an al Qaeda offshoot, does it really make all that much difference?


Agree! (none / 0) (#24)
by Militarytracy on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 04:37:44 PM EST

If we stick a toe in (none / 0) (#25)
by Militarytracy on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 05:22:10 PM EST

We bring about a dynamic of protecting the extremists.


Thank you George Dubya Bush (none / 0) (#10)
by Militarytracy on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 11:13:57 AM EST

Dick the Plant Cheney, Donald Snowflake Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Paul the "L" Bremer...who'd I miss?


The women, Tracy! You forgot the women! (5.00 / 3) (#29)
by Donald from Hawaii on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 06:12:17 PM EST

There was Condoleezza Rice, who as Bush's national security advisor first coined the infamous phrase about "not [wanting] the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

There was Judith Miller of the New York Times, that paper's self-styled "Little Miss Runamock," who dutifully assumed the role of court stenographer and did so much to ensure that all the bullsh!+ fed to her by Bush administration officials eventually found its way to print.

And then, last but most certainly not least, there was Laurie Milroie, a Harvard academic and so-called foreign policy "expert" whose simplistic and two-dimensional analysis of Middle Eastern issues proved to be the root source of so much that proved so very wrong about the Bush administration's d!ck-swinging policy in that benighted region of the world.

I did (5.00 / 1) (#31)
by Militarytracy on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 06:37:35 PM EST

Thank you Donald


: De nada. (none / 0) (#38)
by Donald from Hawaii on Tue Jun 17, 2014 at 06:01:58 PM EST

;-D

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend" (none / 0) (#30)
by CaptHowdy on Mon Jun 16, 2014 at 06:29:47 PM EST

Been hearing this a lot these last few days.

As Mr Spock pointed out in "Into Darkness" -

"An Arabic proverb attributed to a prince who was betrayed and decapitated by his own subjects"

Worth remembering.

Obama was right (none / 0) (#35)
by Abdul Abulbul Amir on Tue Jun 17, 2014 at 01:17:36 PM EST

Al Qaeda is on the run. Straight toward Baghdad.

You want to go there and stop them, ... (5.00 / 3) (#36)
by Donald from Hawaii on Tue Jun 17, 2014 at 05:27:50 PM EST

... be my guest. But you're not going to volunteer our children and grandchildren for your fool's errand.

It was the Bush administration that manufactured a false pretense for invading Iraq and decapitating its government, not Barack Obama.

It's was the Bush administration's own appointed head of the Iraqi occupation, Paul Bremer, and not Barack Obama, who ordered the Iraqi military to be dismantled in late 2003, and let them carry off their weapons and reconstitute themselves as a Sunni insurgency.

And it was the Bush administration, and not Barack Obama, who negotiated the status of forces agreement with the al-Maliki government, which required the removal of all U.S. military personnel from the country.

You right-wing cheerleaders and your mindless bellicosity are the ones primarily responsible for this mess, not Barack Obama.

This partition of Iraq was inevitable. Then-Sen. Joe Biden and Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, argued back in 2006 for the country's peaceful partition into ethnic and sectarian regions under American auspices. Even at this late date, their argument is worth revisiting:

"The idea, as in Bosnia, is to maintain a united Iraq by decentralizing it, giving each ethno-religious group -- Kurd, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab -- room to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge of common interests. We could drive this in place with irresistible sweeteners for the Sunnis to join in, a plan designed by the military for withdrawing and redeploying American forces, and a regional nonaggression pact.

"It is increasingly clear that President Bush does not have a strategy for victory in Iraq. Rather, he hopes to prevent defeat and pass the problem along to his successor. Meanwhile, the frustration of Americans is mounting so fast that Congress might end up mandating a rapid pullout, even at the risk of precipitating chaos and a civil war that becomes a regional war."

But no, you all insisted that the troop surge was working, because you knew better. Yet here we are, eight years later, and almost everything Biden and Gelb were predicting would occur is now sadly coming to pass.

Only two things have remained constant throughout all this: (1) You guys on the right still don't know your a$$es from your elbows; and (2) You refuse to accept any responsibility whatsoever for the tragedy in Iraq, which happened on your buddy Bush's own friggin' watch.

Far easier, instead, to simply rewrite the entire history of your own fiasco, and blame others for not having the resolve to stay the unsustainable course you set for the country, as you pranced ever so blithely down a blind alley toward disaster. All because you. Know. Better.

The blood's on YOUR hands, my little right-wing wackadoodle, and not on Barack Obama's, or any of the rest od us. And no amount of ex post facto revisionism and squawking like a castrated rooster on your part is ever going to change that.

Al Qaeda WAS "on the run" ... (none / 0) (#39)
by Yman on Wed Jun 18, 2014 at 06:29:11 AM EST

... when Obama made that quote. "Mission accomplished", OTOH ...


If what you say is true (none / 0) (#40)
by Abdul Abulbul Amir on Wed Jun 18, 2014 at 10:23:54 AM EST

To what do you attribute Obama's failure to keep them on the run?


Reality (none / 0) (#43)
by Yman on Wed Jun 18, 2014 at 12:51:49 PM EST

We can't invade every country and occupy them forever.

Anything else?


Wow! (none / 0) (#46)
by Abdul Abulbul Amir on Thu Jun 19, 2014 at 10:44:35 AM EST

The only solution for Obama to keep AQ on the run was to invade and occupy every country. Thanks for clearing that up.

I was mislead into thinking his "Smart Diplomacy (tm)" was all about achieving desired results without military force.


: So Obama ... (none / 0) (#50)
by Yman on Thu Jun 19, 2014 at 07:56:34 PM EST

... was supposed to use "Smart diplomacy" to destroy AQ?
Heh.
You weren't "mislead", since no one ever made that claim. You're simply making up straw arguments to try to get out of that corner you backed yourself into.
Besides - your boy GW already accomplished that mission. Unless you want to try arguing that he was only talking about the carrier's mission. That was even funnier.

BTW (none / 0) (#41)
by Abdul Abulbul Amir on Wed Jun 18, 2014 at 10:25:51 AM EST

The crew of that aircraft carrier did in fact accomplish the mission they were tasked with.


BTW - silly spinning (none / 0) (#42)
by Yman on Wed Jun 18, 2014 at 12:49:34 PM EST

Bush already tried to blame the carrier crew for the sign, but had to walk back that lie and admit the sign was provided by the Whitehouse. Not to mention that his speech was not about the carrier's mission, but the war in Iraq.

Oops.


They (none / 0) (#44)
by Ga6thDem on Wed Jun 18, 2014 at 06:48:29 PM EST

are actually defending George W. Bush and his horrible decisions. Tells you exactly where they are--the far right 20% of the country.


Well of cource the sign (none / 0) (#47)
by Abdul Abulbul Amir on Thu Jun 19, 2014 at 10:47:17 AM EST

Well of cource the sign was provided by the White House. The crew was not going to congratulate itself on completion of its mission.


Are there really people (none / 0) (#48)
by jondee on Thu Jun 19, 2014 at 04:16:45 PM EST

who sincerely believe Mission Accomplished was simply a reference to a successful carrier maneuver and to no other recent significant events in the world?

Really?

: Maybe (none / 0) (#49)
by CaptHowdy on Thu Jun 19, 2014 at 04:24:49 PM EST

Unicorns do exist.

You forgot the actual speech (none / 0) (#51)
by Yman on Thu Jun 19, 2014 at 08:08:51 PM EST

"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended," Bush said, the infamous "Mission Accomplished" banner hovering over him. "In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."

BTW - "Well of course the sign was provided by the White House. The crew was not going to congratulate itself on completion of its mission."

"Of course"? Strange that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld would admit the "Mission Accomplished" phrase in the speech and sign were a reference to the Iraq War. Strange that WH would feel the need to lie and claim that they had nothing to do with the sign until they were caught in that same lie. Then they said the crew hung the sign, but got caught in another lie and conceded they hung the banner. Then they claimed Bush needed to fly to the carrier in a fighter because it was too far away for Marine One. Oops - another lie.

But keep swinging!
