Iraq is falling apart again

Submitted by gjohnsit on Fri, 09/07/2018 - 3:51pm

The nation that we've been bombing since 1990 is having problems again.

Protesters angry over poor public services clashed with security forces in the southern city of Basra on Thursday and hurled Molotov cocktails at the regional government headquarters there.

Iraq's Human Rights Commission said two protesters died during the violence, taking the death toll to 11 since the weeks-long protest escalated on September 3.

One protester died on Thursday night from burns sustained during the torching of the government headquarters, health and security sources said.

Crowds attacked the offices of the state-run Iraqiya TV and set fire to the headquarters of the ruling Dawa Party, the Supreme Islamic Council and the Badr Organisation, whose leaders are all vying to form Iraq's ruling coalition.

Protesters also torched the offices of a powerful Shia armed group, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, and those of the Hikma Movement, and stormed the house of the acting head of the provincial council.

The U.S. has responded to the unrest in the country that we've destroyed in two ways:

1) By saying that we shall never leave Iraq.

U.S. forces will stay in Iraq “as long as needed” to help stabilize regions previously controlled by Islamic State, a spokesman for the U.S.-led international coalition fighting the militants said on Sunday

2) By preparing a new "coalition of the willing" for war with Iran.

The Pentagon notified Congress in July about adjustments to deal with “the multidimensional aspects of gray zone warfare,” the Pentagon’s catch-all term for military operations that don’t cross into open warfare. While the report doesn’t mention Iran by name, the term “gray zone” is often associated with Iranian tactics.

The report comes on the heels of a 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) in January announcing that the Pentagon would seek to build a coalition of military allies in the Middle East to “counterbalance Iran,” which it fears is “asserting an arc of terrorist activities” bolstered by using proxies and its missile program.

The Iranian-backed Shia militias in Iraq are not happy about these developments.

Ten Iraqi Shia militia groups backed by Iran have warned to expel foreign troops by all possible means and threaten to act against Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi over some of his latest decisions.

On Tuesday, 10 Shia militia groups issued a joint statement vowing to fight foreign troops if they do not leave Iraq.

A few days later, mortar shells began landing in the Green Zone near the U.S. embassy.
Meanwhile, Israel has offered to bomb Iraq too.

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Submitted by DonMidwest on Fri, 09/07/2018 - 9:10pm

The U.S. Military is Winning. No, Really, It Is! A Simple Equation Proves That the U.S. Armed Forces Have Triumphed in the War on Terror

Short read: Victory is now defined as attacking our enemy & getting huge budget

For the moment, just remember: 4,000,000,029,057, Vietnam War, Kissinger.

In this century, the United States has found a way to turn Kissinger’s martial maxim on its head and so rewrite the axioms of armed conflict. This redefinition can be proved by a simple equation:

0 + 1,000,000,000,000 + 17 +17 + 23,744 + 3,000,000,000,000 + 5 + 5,200 + 74 = 4,000,000,029,057

Expressed differently, the United States has not won a major conflict since 1945; has a trillion-dollar national security budget; has had 17 military commanders in the last 17 years in Afghanistan, a country plagued by 23,744 “security incidents” (the most ever recorded) in 2017 alone; has spent around $3 trillion, primarily on that war and the rest of the war on terror, including the ongoing conflict in Iraq, which then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld swore, in 2002, would be over in only “five days or five weeks or five months,” but where approximately 5,000 U.S. troops remain today; and yet 74% of the American people still express high confidence in the U.S. military.

Think about that for a moment. Victory’s definition begins with “attacking our enemies” and ends with the prevention of possible terror attacks. Let me reiterate: “victory” is defined as “attacking our enemies.” Under President Trump’s strategy, it seems, every time the U.S. bombs or shells or shoots at a member of one of those 20-plus terror groups in Afghanistan, the U.S. is winning or, perhaps, has won. And this strategy is not specifically Afghan-centric. It can easily be applied to American warzones in the Middle East and Africa -- anywhere, really.

Decades after the end of the Vietnam War, the U.S. military has finally solved the conundrum of how to “out-guerrilla the guerrilla.” And it couldn’t have been simpler. You just adopt the same definition of victory. As a result, a conventional army -- at least the U.S. military -- now loses only if it stops fighting. So long as unaccountable commanders wage benchmark-free wars without congressional constraint, the United States simply cannot lose. You can’t argue with the math. Call it the rule of 4,000,000,029,057.

The link goes to TomDispatch.com with Tom giving an introduction then the article by Nick Turse

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Submitted by earthling1 on Sat, 09/08/2018 - 11:34am
earthling1's picture

a major conflict since 1945".
We didn't win that one either. The Russians beat us to Berlin.
We were just trying to get to the spoils before Russia got them all.
And Japan did not surrender after the two atom bombs were dropped. Hirihito surrendered when Russian troops began advancing from the north.
In both cases, Hitler and Hirihito preferred surrendering to the Americans rather than the Russians, whom had lost almost 26 million people in WW2.

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

Submitted by DonMidwest on Sat, 09/08/2018 - 12:37pm

NYT article

How the U.S. Government Misleads the Public on Afghanistan

check out the diagram about what they say vs what is going on

KABUL — Seventeen years into the war in Afghanistan, American officials routinely issue inflated assessments of progress that contradict what is actually happening there.

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Submitted by DonMidwest on Sat, 09/08/2018 - 12:42pm

From Moon of Alabama today

NYT Reconfirms U.S. Coup Plot In Venezuela - Adds Pro-Coup Propaganda

Max Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research explains on BBC (vid) how the U.S. is waging a brutal economic war against Venezuela. It is this war that caused the depression and makes a recovery from the induced hyperinflation nearly impossible. Billions of dollars that Venezuelan owns and needs are frozen in U.S. accounts. U.S. sanctions make it extremely difficult for the country to sell assets or to borrow money:

[W]ith Trump’s executive order, even if Venezuela were to stabilize the exchange rate and return to growth, it would be cut off from borrowing, investment, and proprietary sources of income such as dividend payments from Venezuela-owned but US-based Citgo Petroleum. This makes a sustained recovery nearly impossible without outside help—or a new government that is approved by the Trump administration.

Venezuela is a rich country. It has the biggest known oil reserves on the planet, though much of those are difficult to retrieve.

That is of course the reason why the U.S. wants to install a rightwing proxy government in Venezuela. It is the reason why it wages war against its people.

China is currently the only country with the necessary capacity and geopolitical standing to support Venezuela. It would the best for the country, and for the world, if China would come to its help.

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