Friday 29th of March 2024

losers .....

losers .....

The US is like an incoherent drunk ….

I think Iraq will prove to be the source of its destruction. It has lost its capacity to reason; its capacity for insight. It’s ruled by fakes & phoneys on all sides of politics, with the corporate-controlled media acting as willing accomplices.

On Monday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) told radio host Bill Bennett that President Bush’s escalation is working. “There are neighbourhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today,” he said.

Yesterday, when CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked McCain why Americans still aren’t able to safely leave the Green Zone in Iraq, the senator replied that Blitzer was giving three-month-old talking points: "General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in an unarmed humvee," McCain said. "I think you oughta catch up. You are giving the old line of three months ago. I understand it. We certainly don’t get it through the filter of some of the media."

But according to CNN reporter Michael Ware, who has been in Iraq for four years, McCain is “way off base.” He stated, “To suggest that there’s any neighborhood in this city where an American can walk freely is beyond ludicrous. I’d love Sen. McCain to tell me where that neighborhood is and he and I can go for a stroll.” Ware also rebutted McCain’s assertion that Petraeus travels in an unarmed humvee: “[I]n the hour since Sen. McCain’s said this, I’ve spoken to military sources and there was laughter down the line. I mean, certainly the general travels in a humvee. There’s multiple humvees around it, heavily armed.”

And then, late yesterday, retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey released a report based on a recent trip to Iraq that included meetings with Gen. David Petraeus and 16 other senior U.S. commanders. McCaffrey - who previously served in Vietnam and commanded a division in the first Iraq war - described the situation in Iraq as a "low grade civil war" that has "worsened to catastrophic levels."

Contradicting statements made by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) yesterday, McCaffrey found that "no Iraqi government official, coalition soldier, diplomat, report, foreign NGO, nor contractor can walk the streets of Baghdad, nor Mosul, nor Kirkuk, nor Basra, nor Tikrit, nor Najaf, nor Ramadi, without heavily armed protection."

The report, which was presented to White House officials late yesterday, stands in "sharp contrast" to his previous assessments which include a statement after a trip just last year calling the "progress" in Iraq "very encouraging." As the Washington Post reports, McCaffrey found his "bottom line" in this most recent report to be that "the U.S. military is in 'strategic peril.'" The retired general, who is opposed the President's continuing escalation plan, called the insurgent militias "'in some ways more capable of independent operations' than the Iraqi army."

In concluding the report, he said the "vocal opposition" of Congress could "actually provide a helpful framework" for the U.S. government to help the Maliki administration "understand their diminishing options." But he added that "we have very little time left."

Propagandist McCain didn't complain

From the New York Times

McCain Wrong on Iraq Security, Merchants Say

By KIRK SEMPLE
Published: April 3, 2007

BAGHDAD, April 2 — A day after members of an American Congressional delegation led by Senator John McCain pointed to their brief visit to Baghdad’s central market as evidence that the new security plan for the city was working, the merchants there were incredulous about the Americans’ conclusions.

Representative Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican, said the Shorja market was “like a normal outdoor market in Indiana.”

“What are they talking about?” Ali Jassim Faiyad, the owner of an electrical appliances shop in the market, said Monday. “The security procedures were abnormal!”

The delegation arrived at the market, which is called Shorja, on Sunday with more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees — the equivalent of an entire company — and attack helicopters circled overhead, a senior American military official in Baghdad said. The soldiers redirected traffic from the area and restricted access to the Americans, witnesses said, and sharpshooters were posted on the roofs. The congressmen wore bulletproof vests throughout their hourlong visit.

“They paralyzed the market when they came,” Mr. Faiyad said during an interview in his shop on Monday. “This was only for the media.”

expendable pawns

From the Guardian

...

"Mr Banna's wife's local MP, the Liberal Democrat Sarah Teather, has remained in close touch with her and her five children. Ms Teather said: "Jamil el-Banna and Bisher al-Rawi were picked up and handed over to the CIA on the basis of the same faulty intelligence passed by British security services. Both men had been approached by MI5 to work with them.

"These cases reflect very badly on the British government who have used these men and their families as expendable pawns."

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Gus: Hello?