This is looking very, very bad

While the Iraqi government made a big deal over the weekend of arresting some members of their allied Shi’ite militias for kidnapping, torturing, and killing refugees from ISIS-held Fallujah, the problem appears to just be growing, with the Iraqi military itself now reportedly rounding up people on the same pretext as the militias were, and shipping them to a detention center, just like the militias were....
Those people that have turned up were tortured, with many dying of their wounds. The government’s official stance was that this was a militia thing, but the military was already talking up the idea that a large chunk of the fleeing population was ISIS fighters with “fake IDs.”
All of this is adding to the appearance that the mass detentions and tortures weren’t a case of “rogue” militias, but rather the government’s policy all along, and that with the militias now under pressure to stop, they’re just going to switch to the military and keep the program going.

This tragedy was telegraphed

In a video uploaded to the internet on May 23, a commander from the Abu al-Fadhl al-Abbas, a subsidiary of the League of the Righteous, told his paramilitaries that there were neither any civilians nor any true Muslims left in Fallujah—language that suggested a categorical disregard for protecting civilians. Other videos show militias meeting out corporal punishment to accused “collaborators” with ISIS.

I have an idea. Let's bomb Iraq!

Both candidates neglected to consider that no operational links between ISIS and the alleged Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, have been discovered. While Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIS shortly before the attacks, he had reportedly previously claimed connections to two groups that oppose ISIS: the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah and al Qaeda.
And neither explained how escalating bombardments in Iraq and Syria would do anything to stop self-radicalized and/or unhinged attackers in the United States.
If ISIS is not doing anything to help coordinate or assist these sorts of mass killings, then destroying it — even if that were possible — wouldn’t make any difference.
And even if you blame ISIS for “inspiring” such attacks, the fact remains that there are any number of extremist ideologies that a deranged would-be killer could derive inspiration from — and you cannot bomb them all.

summing it up

In the final analysis, it’s a little hard to say which candidate won the heated contest to offer the worst positions in the wake of the Orlando Shooting. Trump’s nonsensical immigration ban probably still puts him over the top, but Hillary certainly made him work for it.
What is important to understand is that this is what our mainstream political debate on terrorism has come down to. No one offers solutions with any probability of success. No one contemplates a policy of nonintervention, which is dismissed out of hand even though it’s the one foreign policy approach we haven’t attempted since terrorism became a major issue in the US. And no one explains the simple truth that 100% security is an unattainable goal – that living in a free society necessarily entails some risk, and that, media attention notwithstanding, the risk posed by terrorism should be near the bottom of our concerns.
Instead, we’re stuck with a useless competition to see who can take the worst position first. Donald Trump may have won this round. But we can rest unassured that, on the question of terrorism, Hillary Clinton will be right on his heels throughout this election season.

This is stupid even for Trump

Over time, the total added up to billions of dollars — $12 billion to $14 billion, according to the New York Times; 363 tons of cash, per the Guardian — in shrink-wrapped bundles of $100 bills. It was sent to Iraq with the intent that the money be used to help introduce some liquidity into the local economy and to use as a form of petty cash. An investigation from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, SIGIR, found that a large portion of the money had gone missing. (More than a billion later turned up in a bunker in Lebanon.)
“How about bringing baskets of money, millions and millions of dollars, and handing it out,” Trump said Tuesday night. “I want to know: Who were the soldiers that had that job? Because I think they’re living very well right now, whoever they may be.”
Trump’s use of the word “soldiers” immediately prompted questions about the people to whom he was referring. Was he accusing U.S. soldiers of having dipped into the cash, enriching themselves in the process? Ben Kesling, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and a Marine veteran, heard it that way.

Newt chimes in

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich proposed the creation of a new version of the controversial House Un-American Activities Committee to root out American citizens who plan to commit terrorist attacks in the U.S.
“We originally created the House Un-American Activities Committee to go after Nazis. We passed several laws in 1938 and 1939 to go after Nazis and we made it illegal to help the Nazis. We're going to presently have to go take the similar steps here,” Gingrich said in a Monday appearance on “Fox and Friends.”
...
Gingrich also suggested that the U.S. will inevitably “declare a war on Islamic supremacists” living here due to the number of terrorist attacks that have been committed by American citizens, such as those in San Bernardino, California and at the Fort Hood military base.
“We're going to say, if you pledge allegiance to ISIS, you are a traitor and you have lost your citizenship,” Gingrich said.
Under current law, the U.S. cannot revoke the citizenship of natural-born U.S. citizens against their will.

Party like it's 2007

Fitch and DBRS have rated the first subprime mortgage-backed securitisation since the financial crash, according to the Financial Times.
The $161.7m bond is backed by mortgages from US lender Caliber Home Loans and is marketed by Credit Suisse.
Hedge fund Lone Star bought the bond.
Fitch says the deal will be a “trailblazer” and that similar deals are likely to follow in the third quarter.

Keep partying

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