The present problems of Iraq are 100% down to our murderous invasion and occupation. The idea that further western bombing will make things better is so deluded as to beggar belief.
I was surprised to find during my Burnes research that the imperialist powers of Britain and Russia were explicitly exploiting Sunni and Shia divisions to further their conquests of Islamic lands as early as the 1830’s. This has been the major tool of the neo-con Middle Eastern gameplan for some time, spreading disunity and crippling war throughout the Middle East, with the hope that this will benefit the interests of Israel.
The peculiar result has been that in general the West is very actively supporting Sunni armies and miscellaneous forces, but in Iraq is supporting the Shia. ISIS – which is heavily backed by the Saudis, who hate al-Maliki – brings this paradox into sharp relief. The current US and UK strategy is to persuade Saudi Arabia to get ISIS to reconcentrate their efforts against Assad, on the understanding they will be allowed to keep the Sunni areas of Iraq (the old neo-con plan of dividing Iraq is firmly back on the agenda).
The BBC News this morning said that ISIS would not be capable of using the billions of dollars of sophisticated western armaments they have captured. I think you will find the Saudis remedy that one quite quickly. It is quite possible we will see some token airstrikes to kill civilians in Mosul, in order to appease Obama’s domestic backers who are never happy if Americans aren’t killing enough people, but only after agreement has been reached with the Saudis that no serious harm will be done – except to the ordinary people neither Obama, the Saudis or al-Maliki care in the least about.
Apart from William Hague, BBC Radio 4’s guests all really laying in to Tony Blair this morning. David Starkey particularly damning. Looks like BBC news management’s charm offensive has failed.
“Fred not been shown on the news at all anywhere in UK.”
It’s on this BBC News broadcast at 5 minutes in.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b045wm4v/bbc-weekend-news-15062014
What was particularly blameworthy of the BBC was giving material from Blair’s self-promoting website prominence in its original news bulletins. I can’t help wondering if the machine isn’t using the wide public distaste for anything advocated by Blair as a get-out clause to avoid getting in too deep in Iraq. Actually, I hope so.
Johnson’s reported description of the latest turd on the doorstep as ‘unhinged’ is too mild, but true enough.
BBC woman on the red sofa to Simpson in Baghdad about the executions carried out by ISIS which are all over the papers this morning.
‘Tell us more John about this atrocity, the worse that has happened in Iraq since Saddam was overthrown in 2003.’ !!!
No mention by her of the US and UK atrocities in Iraq 2003 to date.
After he did his piece in that world weary voice (think of all the wars I have witnessed) she signs off – Thanks very much John. That was John Simpson the BBC World Affairs Editor live from Baghdad’. Were not the viewers fortunate to hear the words of the sage?
He thought the photos were genuine and had no reason to doubt their veracity………
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The Guardian view on the Iraq crisis: a case of blame and shame
Posted by The Editors on June 16, 2014, 8:28 am
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/15/iraq-crisis-blame-shame-tony-blair
In a nutshell: ‘If there has to be a hierarchy of blame for Iraq, however, it must surely begin with Saddam.’
Surely! Only if the Guardian’s editors want to keep selling the right message to its audience.
Yes, muted words are added about Western countries and the ‘deficiencies’ (sic) of the occupation. But that’s the liberal establishment for you.
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1402903722.html
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The ISIS slaughter if you want to see photos. Note Mr Roth of Human Rights Watch appears to praise them cf Maliki. Same old same old from him as with Syria.
http://handsoffsyria.blogspot.com.au/2014/06/isis-terrorists-mass-execution-iraqi.html?m=1
Blair is not ‘mad’ or ‘unhinged’. He is a psychopath. How many more times?
Peacewisher
“Just as it is beyond doubt, Habby, who are the trolls on this site…”
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Thanks for that cogent and thoughtful response to my comment on the importance (or otherwise) of comments on this blog for developments in the real world.
Faced with unpalatable truths, the reaction is either (1) ignore, or (2) shout “troll!”.
Join the Monkey Brigade, Peacewisher. 🙂
More surmising about the identities of Peter Kemp.I think you will find that Ba’al Zevul posts Monday to Friday.” Oh, OK, I hadn’t realised that some surmising had already taken place. Anyway : perhaps the Old Devil posts as Ba’al Monday to Friday and as Peter Kemp at weekends…..
Nah, I’m from the Antipodes, twitter @peterkemplawyer don’t you guys ever google? 🙂
Mr Goss
““Well, Mr Goss, whether people on this blog support or don’t support the democratic govt of Ukraine is completely unimportant.”
That’s nonsense. It is very important for getting the real news out.”
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No, it’s common sense itself. Your belief about the importance of commenters on this blog reveals a disturbing degree of self-importance. It is also predicated on your belief that the “news” you provide is the only “real” news, and that is something that many light be inclined to query.
Take no notice of the interjections, Peter Kemp, wherever you’re from…they stopped googling when they couldn’t get nearer my nick than stone-age Canaan…
You may find this help to plug the persistent assholes:
https://greasyfork.org/scripts/246-habbabreak
Recommended.
Thanks peter Kemp for your modern reworking of if, adding a smile.
Blair deserves everything he gets in his frantic re write of events.
That the media is amplifying his sad excuses as if they are in trance, whilst he hold justice Chilcots choker and plays international meddler, is the saddest thing since the creation of Israel.
Where is the journalists who is doorstepping Blair and writing about his and Jack Straws torture policies, the lazy and inhuman pre Iraq war planning, the chaos that was created by installing Maliki, rather than a balanced Government of all tribes.
Just been on FB anmd saw the full on Hasbarra action that is ripping Harry Fears messages apart, these students are getting really busy trying to make out that Hamas has kidnapped these three youth, one who is a soldier. They must be in receipt of bonuses and extra shekels for whoever finds a trace of the three.
I’m sure that Mossad is looking after them well.
Fred I watched the BBC News last night and there was no mention of it. Even in the link you provide there was no footage of the overturned embassy cars or damage to the embassy, and it looks like it was marginalised at 1 pm. and not as far as I saw shown again. But you do not address the many civilians killed in Eastern Ukraine, or the refugee crisis. All this goes unreported – or marginalised.
I think Habby the “many” you refer to are yourself, RD (ESLO), Kempe and Anon, which is not many.
“But you do not address the many civilians killed in Eastern Ukraine, or the refugee crisis. All this goes unreported – or marginalised.”
That is because I was addressing the statement you made:
“All the main TV programmes and press outlets are so free that they do not cover important stories like RD’s fascists in Kiev attack on the Russian Embassy a day and a half ago.”
Brendan: I’ve yet to see a single neocon change his\her mind about the invasion. The facts speak for themselves, but still every neocon sticks by their position. I’ve no explanation for this, other than perhaps they have been advised to hold the line by their expensive lawyers. Or, they are scared of retribution …
Third option – they’re conmen. Conmen actually believe the crap they’re telling/selling you, themselves. If they don’t they can’t sell it. Established FACT.
More likely Brunei.
CIA have just twisted the Sultan’s arm to join ISIS and establish Shari’ah. Problem is, you can’t build in certain areas for fear of upsetting the resident spirits/jinns.
You establish monotheism but your people worship jinns. You establish Shari’ah because the CIA want an alternative to Diego Garcia for landing Jumbo jets.
Life is so very complicated for the very very rich. And you have to entertain the world’s greatest twits.
Opinions vary. Probably because the situation is extremely unclear and complicated. Here’s Fisk on some of the convoluted background –
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/iraq-crisis-sunni-caliphate-has-been-bankrolled-by-saudi-arabia-9533396.html
This is what happens when the strongman regimes of artificially created ‘countries’ fall apart. Proximate cause: Blair-Bush…but ultimate cause, Sykes-Picot.
John
hello Boss. How are you? The trolls went for a training day last week. The main theme was, if you don’t understand the issues, just talk gibberish. They are polyfilla for the polytheists, ok for filling the odd small holes in the decor with wood-cells, but not up to plastering over the cracks in neo-con ideology. They get their info from leaflets in DIY shops.
Courtenay is ‘Courtenay’. I believe ‘Courtney’ is a girl’s name! Just saying.
Robert Fisk
Always manages the to miss the nail so far as I’m concerned. last time it was when he was focusing his concern on the Shi’a shrines in Syria. “Bush and Blair said Iraq was a war on Islamic fascism. They lost”. No. That was the slogan of the War on Terror. We live now in a post Libya, post joint Al Qaida and USUKIS command. You can con some of the people some of the time.
Islam arrived in the UK with the Enlightenment. It was the source of the Enlightenment. Just because the powers that be didn’t want a Pope in Rome giving them orders, didn’t mean they didn’t want themselves to be giving orders to the people of this realm. The Anglican church still considers itself fervently to be a Catholic religion i.e. top>down.
Islam gives a furqan/standard, no spying, no lying at all, no stealing, no beheading innocent men women and children. That was a no no, so Islamic monotheism was mercilessly oppressed. The aspirations of Islam were recognised by everyone who had read the Bible, but the standard had to be destroyed or the powers that be would be finished.
It was finished by the extremism of Puritanism and Calvinism. That is what the CIA has been using Al Qaida for for the last bloody 20 years of our lifetimes. UKUSIS want the world to start getting ready to put Islam in the bin.
Millions of Muslims, but not the brothel creeping, i.e.gewads who grovel to the Government’s Prevent program and climb the slippery pole of UK politics by selling their fellow Muslims – are going to enjoy the Ramadhan Qur’an fest by reading and listening to the truth of the Qur’an.
“Praise be to the One who sent the Book and has not made it crooked.” Robert Fisk is entitled to his opinion. I am quite clear that ISIS is a CIA scam. Or should I say Sham.
Someone should start a new version of Fox’s Book of Martyrs ( a book I have re-bound for a customer and also own ) about the exploits of the CIA’s Al Qaida. Keep the masses scared and down!
Mr Goss
“I think Habby the “many” you refer to are yourself, RD (ESLO), Kempe and Anon, which is not many.”
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Perhaps not, John, but as I’ve written before, there are at maximum 20 Excellences, of whom about half use this blog as a kind of private chatroom.
That gives an Excellences-Disenters ratio of about 2:1, which isn’t that bad.
Good enough to get you lot rattling the bars of your cage, anyway 🙂
Guano
“Robert Fisk
Always manages the to miss the nail so far as I’m concerned.”
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In that case, Guano, you could so worse than listen carefully to Ba’al Zevul or whatever The Commode calls himself these days.
After all, there must be a solid bedrock of information and fact hiding under that lofty tone, that calm, assured manner and those intimations of superior knowledge.
Musn’t there? 🙂
The ‘excellences’ contribute by informing each other and maybe the readers who come here whereas the trolls contribute nothing except dissent and diversion.
http://bitsocialmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Internet-Troll-281×300.jpg
Some people like Fisk (who could be described as a liberal?) will not ever grasp the nettle.
Sorry heeb I didn’t catch that. I don’t know if it was my fault, I’ve got an ear infection, or could you please put your teeth in.
Mary. He grasps the nettle but he isn’t a Sunni Muslim so he laments the destruction of shrines. If one good thing happens in the next few days in Iraq it would be the total destruction of the Shi’a shrines at Kerbala and Nagef. Not to mention the Anglican shrines of Buckingham Palace and St Paul’s Cathedral. I’m coming to London God willing on Thursday if anyone wants to join in.
“Bush and Blair said Iraq was a war on Islamic fascism. They lost”.
He does seem to be out of the ballpark there. Bush used the term re. Hizb’ullah, not Iraq.
Saddam was a good old-fashioned secular-style fascist. He had some idea of assuming the Caliphate mantle – as everyone in the region routinely does – but an Islamic fascist he wasn’t.
Your own interpretation, Guano, admits that this isn’t a religious issue at all. It’s about power. It’s like a game of three-dimensional Northern Ireland, with seven or eight players. It’s ironic to think that the region in Ottoman times much more closely approached the globalists’ ideal: local tribalism ensuring that no-one got too united, a mobile workforce, endemic corruption ensuring an unregulated market, and the whole thing run for the benefit of merchants.
The current batch of mad fundamentalists are the modern version of Timur Leng, and their religious affinities are very much secondary (they don’t seem to be averse to smartphones, for instance, despite the proscription of images and music). Unlike Timur, though, they don’t have a monolithic army, but a dispersed and very flexible one. A direct frontal assault is not going to be productive, and any further interference by the West is simply going to multiply the problems we have already created, even, occasionally, with the best of intentions.
That’s where I bog down, and Fisk bogs down, and anyone with a halfway open mind bogs down, leaving the field clear for simplistic globalist cretins like Blair to repeat their mistakes. It would be better (horrific as the prospect is) IMO to declare a quarantine zone around the Middle East, pull the advisors* out, embargo arms as far as possible, and let the inhabitants sort it out themselves. What would emerge would either be radioactive glass, or a set of states bearing no resemblance either to what exists now or what the West would like to exist, but would in some sense be self-motivated to succeed.
* except Blair, who should be bound, gagged and transported from combat zone to combat zone, with his family, until dead.
AFM Aaronovitch is in retreat
[..]
Events in Iraq raise concerns among fans of the most widely respected military leader the world has known since the stricken Colonel Sanders licked his fingers for the final time and expired. Armchair Field Marshal (AFM) the Lord David Aaronovitch, the bellicose Times columnist whose recent oeuvre offers such cheery headlines as 2010’s “Iraq has moved forward, it’s time we did too” – and last year’s “Now we know why we invaded Iraq” – seems to be in retreat.
Although hopes of a full recantation proved naive, on Friday the AFM revealed that he declined an offer to explain the war’s transcendent success on a TV show, positing that further discussion of the matter would be “self-indulgent”, and citing his “straightforward lack of expertise”. However refreshing, this denial of his own omniscience comes a little late in the day, and the least this tenacious warmonger should do is debate in public. Perhaps George Galloway would care to test the limits of David’s courage under fire with an invitation. If the AFM vacated his trusty armchair for that, I believe the self-indulgence would be forgiven.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/theresa-may-should-tell-boris-that-the-advent-of-philip-neville-as-an-effective-anaesthetic-means-water-cannons-are-no-longer-needed-9538993.html
What an individual! Have you got blood on your hands too Mr Aa?
…welcome to Resource Wars ™
Mary,
” Courtenay is ‘Courtenay’. I believe ‘Courtney’ is a girl’s name! Just saying.”
Yes – he is Courtenay.
The Americans most often spell it “Courtney”, but I am not American and am not of that gender.
And indeed there is only one of me – on this blog and in the living flesh.
Just saying.
Cheers.
CB