Official reports are lies

The American military has failed to publicly disclose potentially thousands of lethal airstrikes conducted over several years in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, a Military Times investigation has revealed. The enormous data gap raises serious doubts about transparency in reported progress against the Islamic State, al-Qaida and the Taliban, and calls into question the accuracy of other Defense Department disclosures documenting everything from costs to casualty counts.
In 2016 alone, U.S. combat aircraft conducted at least 456 airstrikes in Afghanistan that were not recorded as part of an open-source database maintained by the U.S. Air Force, information relied on by Congress, American allies, military analysts, academic researchers, the media and independent watchdog groups to assess each war's expense, manpower requirements and human toll. Those airstrikes were carried out by attack helicopters and armed drones operated by the U.S. Army, metrics quietly excluded from otherwise comprehensive monthly summaries, published online for years, detailing American military activity in all three theaters.
Most alarming is the prospect this data has been incomplete since the war on terrorism began in October 2001. If that is the case, it would fundamentally undermine confidence in much of what the Pentagon has disclosed about its prosecution of these wars, prompt critics to call into question whether the military sought to mislead the American public, and cast doubt on the competency with which other vital data collection is being performed and publicized. Those other key metrics include American combat casualties, taxpayer expense and the military’s overall progress in degrading enemy capabilities.

5 days ago

A protracted and very serious investigation into claims of CENTCOM leaders deliberately distorting intelligence on the ISIS war before passing it along to decision-makers has concluded with an admission of a “significant problem” and a decision to more or less sweep the whole thing under the table.
This was done by way of centering on the technical definition of “falsifying” intelligence, and arguing that substantial efforts to distort the intelligence to paint a far rosier picture of the conflict did not ultimately amount to falsifying, and that they don’t recommend any punishment for anyone.

ISIS surrounded at al-Bab

Syrian government forces have advanced towards so-called Islamic State's last major stronghold in Aleppo province, cutting off the main supply route into al-Bab, a monitoring group reports.

a good step

The World Bank plans to offer Iraq financial support in parallel with projects to foster reconciliation after Islamic State's defeat, its regional director said on Monday, to ensure that reconstruction after years of conflict is sustainable...
While mainstream Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish forces are taking part or supporting the battle to dislodge Islamic State from Mosul, their politicians are yet to heal rifts that followed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Echoes of Iraq

In an eerie parallel to the George W. Bush administration’s fevered fixation on "regime change" in Iraq from its very earliest days, the freshly minted Donald Trump administration has wasted little time in laying the groundwork for a disastrous military confrontation with Iran....
Announcing the sanctions, Flynn once again indulged in perilous rhetoric by attacking "Iran’s belligerent and lawless behavior." As an example, Flynn cited "the abduction of ten of our sailors and two patrol boats in January 2016." That would be the case in which the American sailors strayed into Iranian territory and were apprehended and briefly held by Iranian authorities. The belligerent and lawless behavior in that particular case was certainly not that of the Iranians.
A day prior the announcement of further sanctions, a bipartisan group of twenty-two senators penned a letter urging the Trump administration to take a hard line on Iran. Among the ten Democratic senators to sign the letter was none other than Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential running mate.

Trump's ethics plan is laughable

Thanks to documents that ProPublica, a non-profit investigative journalism organization, first unearthed recently through a Freedom of Information Act request -- and which the New York Times subsequently reported on Friday -- we now know that Trump appears to have even less distance from his business interests than the window dressing of that press conference suggested.
According to the documents, Trump has established a trust, the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, that will house all of the president’s assets tied to the licensing and development activities of the Trump Organization. But the trust’s two managers are Donald Trump Jr. and Allen Weisselberg, a longtime Trump confidant who first worked for Trump’s father, Fred, and who has been the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer for years.
The documents note that President Trump is to receive “exclusive benefit” from any assets in the trust. In other words, he still could see profits from the Trump Organization flow directly into his wallet and he gets to keep those for himself. While Donald Trump Jr. and Weisselberg have legal authority over the assets in the trust, the president can revoke their authority at any time...
As long as Trump remains intimately tied to the Trump Organization’s deals and profits, and for as long as he refuses to be transparent about his tax returns, virtually every action he takes as president will carry an odor of self-dealing.

NEVER going to happen

But over the past month, a number of Fed officials have openly discussed the need for the central bank to reduce its bond holdings, which it amassed as part of its unprecedented quantitative easing during and after the financial crisis. The talk has prompted some on Wall Street to suggest the Fed will start its drawdown as soon as this year, which has refocused attention on its $1.75 trillion stash of mortgage-backed securities.
While the Fed also owns Treasuries as part of its $4.45 trillion of assets, its MBS holdings have long been a contentious issue, with some lawmakers criticizing the investments as beyond what’s needed to achieve the central bank’s mandate. Yet because the Fed is now the biggest source of demand for U.S. government-backed mortgage debt and owns a third of the market, any move is likely to boost costs for home buyers.
In the past year alone, the Fed bought $387 billion of mortgage bonds just to maintain its holdings.