Category Archives: Iraq

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab League, GCC, Gulf states, Iraq, Saudi Arabia

Gulf GCC Gemütlichkeit: Expanded Membership and Wahhabi Rah Rah Rah……..

 

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So what happened to the Saudi plan to have Morocco and Jordan to join the Gulf GCC? I said at the time the invitation was issued last year when the Arab revolts were raging that it won’t get anywhere. It is not getting anywhere. 


The Saudis, in a moment of warmth and gemütlichkeit with the SCAF marshal and his generals, even spread the report that Egypt will also be invited to join the kingdom without magic. At the time I suggested Iraq for membership, since it is more of a Gulf state than any other Arab country. They don’t all have to be Wahhabis to qualify: Bahrainis are not Wahhabi (although their rulers and the small elite may have converted by now or at least going through the motions), nor are the people of the UAE or Oman, nor are MOST Kuwaitis (the Salafis and local Muslim Brothers are definitely Wahhabis as are some among the tribes).

Egyptians may have taken a step closer to Wahhabi conversion by electing Salafis to control at least 25% of their parliament. Tunisian Salafis are agitating with their Ennahda cousins, as are the armed Libyans. The Syrians may become eligible if and when Bashar al-Assad is overthrown and Damascus is taken over by the Islamist militants (whether pro-Saudi or pro-Qatari, or even pro-both). Before you know it, the whole ficking Arab league would be chanting: “Give me a W! Give me an A! Give me an H or two! Give me an A! Give me a B! Give me an I! What do we have? Wahhabi! Wahhabi! We are Wahhabis! Rah rah rah………..”
Cheers
mhg


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Economics, Iran, Iraq, OPEC, Sanctions, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela

Petroleum Chat: from Tehran through Baghdad to Riyadh and Caracas…………

 

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“The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) has announced the discovery of a huge oil field with considerable crude reserves in southern Iran. NIOC’s Director for Exploration Seyyed Mahmoud Mohaddes said Saturday that an exploratory oil well has already been drilled in the area. “The newly-discovered oil field must be considered among the biggest fields ever discovered in Iran,” he said. The Iranian official also added that initial tests have indicated the high quality of the oil in the new field. Mohaddes went on to say that the details about two or three more oil fields will be announced in the near future. A total of 18 heavy and extra heavy oilfields have so far been discovered in Iran, including Ferdowsi oil field in the Persian Gulf, which is one of the country’s biggest heavy oil fields with proven reserves of more than 31 billion barrels. Iran’s total in-place oil reserves have been estimated at more than 560 billion barrels with about 140 billion barrels of extractable oil……….”

According to the CIA
 (2011) Iranian reserves were pushed back to the 4th largest in the world, behind Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Canada. Last year, Venezuelan reserves jumped with some OPEC estimates putting them ahead of both Iran and Saudi Arabia. Iranian and Iraqi ‘proven’ reserves have been hampered over the past 30 years by wars, sanctions, and Western economic blockades. It is possible, nay very likely, that one or both of these countries has more reserves than the current leaders. The Iranians note their “in-place” reserves are 560 billion barrels, but that is only ‘potentially’ recoverable oil. As more explorations and studies are done, as well as more investments in technology and machinery, some of this ‘in-place’ oil becomes extractable.
Both Iran and Iraq suffered from lack of serious exploration and investment in new oil fields over the past three decades, and their reserves can only shoot up noticeably in the next few years. On the other hands there are reports that Saudi production capacity is declining as the country has been producing large amounts as a ‘swing’ producer. But Saudi Arabia has a huge land mass: there may be more oil reserves hidden under the sands, and not necessarily in the Eastern Province.

Of course, the expanded reserves do not help the Iranian people in the short term as the Western powers, under Israeli and ‘princely’ pressure, tighten their squeeze on the economy.
Cheers
mhg


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9/11, Arab Revolutions, Iran, Iraq, NATO, Syria, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Asinine Views of Evil: What the West Thinks, What Muslims Think………

    

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“Of course, it’s difficult to ascertain the views of Iranians. State censorship is tight, and foreign journalists are rarely allowed into the country. Nevertheless, it is possible to make contact with some Iranians. And when you speak with them, you learn something quite surprising: Even if they oppose Ahmadinejad, their radical president, most of these Iranians still view their country as the victim in the current circumstances. They also view the West as an enemy and fail to consider or acknowledge that there are massive differences between hawks in Israel and doves within the Obama administration. “After 9/11, George W. Bush systematically portrayed Iran as the bogeyman. That’s happening again now. I have seen no indication that we are building a nuclear bomb,” says one professor in Tehran…………..”

The problem with many in the West is that they often try to think for others, often assuming anyone who is against a repressive regime automatically agrees with the West on all issues.
Take Iran and the nuclear issue: most Iranians support their country’s nuclear program even as many of them are opposed to the regime. Many of the Syrian “rebels” are probably more militant than the Assad regime about the occupied Golan Heights (John McCain and Joe Lieberman have somehow missed that one). Many, but not all, of these Syrians certainly are Islamic fundamentalists who have no use for Western values, although they’d love Western weapons and Western troops to help against their dictator.
After 9/11, George W Bush and the neoconservatives could not exactly put the blame where it belonged, on the one country that provided the ideology, the fatwas, the volunteers, and the money for the terrorist attacks. The Bushes and the Cheneys could not offend their pals the petroleum princes in Riyadh. They focused on softer targets like Iraq and Iran. Hence the nonsense about “Axis of Evil” (so far the most asinine catch phrase of the first decade of the new century) that excluded the Salafi swamp. The West blockaded Iran; the West liberated Iraq soon after it ‘liberated’ Afghanistan, before the West went on to liberate Libya last year and is thinking of liberating Syria later this year.
Many idiotic neoconservatives, other sanctimonious Republicans, and a few Democrats seeking reelection are now pondering ways to liberate Iran.
Cheers
mhg


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Iraq, Islamophobia, Israel, Middle East, Muslims, Palestine, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

(1) Newt Gingrich and the Middle East: Calculated Muslim-Baiting…….

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“Gingrich’s faltering presidential campaign was completely resuscitated by a 5 million donation from Las Vegas casino king and super-Zionist Sheldon Adelson. (According to Wikipedia, Adelson is currently the 8th wealthiest American and 16th wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of $23.3 billion.) Rising from the ashes, Gingrich now has won the South Carolina primary and has a decent chance of becoming the Republican presidential nominee…… Adelson and his Israeli-born wife, Miriam, have spent time and money lobbying for a bill to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Gingrich has promised that his first executive order as president would be the embassy move. Adelson is an ardent Zionist. Since 2007 the Adelson Family Foundation has made contributions totaling $100 million to Birthright Israel, which finances Jewish youth trips to Israel, Adelson is such a hard-line Zionist that he even stopped supporting AIPAC when it appeared to support a 2007 peace initiative championed by Olmert, President Bush, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In 2009, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), which is a hard-line Zionist group that wants Israel to retain the occupied territories and expand the Jewish settlements, presented Adelson its most distinguished and historic award, the Theodor Herzl Gold Medallion for outstanding achievement in Zionism. His wife received the Louis D. Brandeis Award. The couple now have their names on one of ZOA’s major awards, the Dr. Miriam & Sheldon Adelson Defender of Israel Award. Adelson is intimately involved in Israeli politics………..”

Newt Gingrich has promised to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. That is a standard promise for most presidential candidates in the United States, and reneging on the promise afterwards is also standard procedure. The idea of where the embassy is located has no strategic implications, and I suspect that most Arab regimes will just do some posturing and then accept it. Unless it is moved to East Jerusalem.

Gingrich does not seem to believe that the Palestinians deserve their own state(-let) on the West Bank (and Gaza?). This may seem like a strongly pro-Israeli policy, but it is not necessarily so in the long-term. It means he prefers Israel to annex territory covering anywhere between 2 to 3 million more Palestinian Arabs (in addition to Arab Israelis who are less than 24% of the population). Yet what would they do with all these Arabs? Citizenship and voting rights mean a huge, nay a seismic, political shift. An apartheid-type policy is not an option in this day and age (even the Bahrain regime on the Gulf is having trouble keeping its apartheid policy intact). Besides, it would truly upset and turn off most Jewish-Americans who would not condone such policy (in comparison Jewish-Russians probably wouldn’t give a fig about it, nor would the “Christian” right).
Gingrich has also done some of the usual Republican Muslim-baiting. He made some appropriate (to the right wingers) noises about the dangers the Shri’a law presents to the United States. He knows there is no such danger because it won’t happen. He also was slated to share the speaking stage with Dutch Neo-Nazi politician and rabble-rouser Geert Wilders at an anti-Muslim rally a couple of years ago in New York, but he was smart enough to go AWOL on that day. His Muslim-baiting is calculated, unlike that of some other republicans: that only means he is smarter than his colleagues in the Party.

I have not posted anything recently about my earlier suggestion that Newt Gingrich take a hike, literally, on the Iraq-Iran border. That was meant to shore up his foreign policy credentials.  But that hike may be impossible now, given that overt American military presence in Iraq is limited to John McCain and Joe Lieberman camping in Falluja. (Congressmen don’t get much in-depth foreign policy experience unless that sit on certain specialized committee or subcommittee. Just look at poor Rick Santorum, the subject of my next brief posting).
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Media, Iran, Iraq, Persian-American Gulf, Saudi Arabia, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Godfather of Unreliable Sources: Saudi Princes Claim Iran to Take Over Iraq Soon………..

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“Don Corleone: Tattaglia’s a pimp. He never could’ve out fought Santino. But I didn’t know until this day that it was Barzini all along…….” The Godfather

Alarabiya network is a semi-official Saudi media outlet managed by a son of the late King Fahd on behalf of his uncles. Its English headlines are relatively more moderate and are targeted to appeal to Western readers (and maybe policy makers). The English headlines represent the front, the moderate cover for the ‘unique’ Arab headlines.
The Arabic headlines of Alarabiya are the most sectarian, divisive, distorting of any major Arab media, or any other media outside North Korea. This item here is typical of the unsubstantiated rubbish it headlines in Arabic, with the goal or stoking fears and sectarian hatreds, mainly in the Gulf region where most of its website readers are. Here the topic is headlined as “Ruling parties Preparing for an Iranian Takeover of Iraq”. The network claims it has received a ‘statement’ from “Iraqi parliamentarians” about a statement Alarabiya had originally claimed was made by chief of the al-Quds Brigade of the Iranian IRGC. There is no reference to such item anywhere in Iranian news agencies. It is probably part of preparing the Saudi people, and other gullible Gulfies, for choosing the right side, the Western-Israeli side, if and when war erupts in the Persian-American Gulf region.
This is the modus operandi: Alarabiya headlines in Arabic a fake news item it ascribes to “sources”, than it creates “news” threads based on that, with more fake news from more fake ‘sources’. Many people with a sectarian bent in the Gulf GCC countries tend to believe this openly crass propaganda, especially the Wahhabi faux-liberals who dominate the media and some academic institutions of the ruling potentates.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, Europe, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey

On Israelis, Turks, Kurdish Rebels, Iranians, and Arab Oligarchs without Vision…………..

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“According to reports by Turkish intelligence agencies, Heron unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) operated by Israel that have been observed in Hatay and Adana provinces in recent months spied for the terrorist Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). Turkish intelligence agencies prepared a report after the detection of two Israeli Herons in Hatay and Adana roughly two months ago, claiming that the Herons are collecting intelligence on Turkish military units in order to aid PKK operations in those regions. The report asserts that the PKK’s training camps in northern Syria, near Turkey’s Hatay border “where Turkish military border posts are relatively weak” were established in those locations based on intelligence collected by the UAVs. The report also claims that Kenan Yıldızbakan, a PKK member who commanded an assault against a Turkish naval base in İskenderun in 2010, has made repeated trips into Israeli territory, reinforcing suspicions of a possible link between Israeli and the PKK………….”

This was bound to happen. Once the Turks realized how racist the European Union feels toward them and their application for membership. Once they realized that they are the last on the list of countries that would be admitted, if they are ever admitted. Once the Turks realized that their usefulness to the Europeans as an anti-Soviet base and as a source of scarce labor has expired. Once they realized that they do need need Europe as much as they had thought. They turned their attention back to the Middle East, which includes Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.

The Turks are in Syria now, more or less, possibly in rivalry with Iran for influence over Damascus now that the Arab leaders are helpless and have no independent vision for dealing with the situation. So far the only Arab vision seems to be pushing for the West to “liberate” Syria from its regime, just as the West “liberated” Iraq and Libya. The Turks are also in Iraq, possibly seen by some Arabs as their last hope to limit Iranian influence, at least in the north and west of Iraq. Odd, a new Turkish-Iranian rivalry over Iraq, just like the old Ottoman-Persian rivalry over Iraq.

All that because the stagnant Arab oligarchs, mainly the Saudis, decided to give up on Iraq because they did not like the way Iraqis chose their government (or maybe because the Iraqis actually had some choice, no matter how imperfect).
Cheers
mhg


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9/11, Gulf states, Iran, Iraq, Israel, nuclear Iran, Persian-American Gulf, Saudi Arabia

Remember Joe (Judas) Lieberman? He is Alive and Well and Homesick for Iraq……..

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““I don’t know that the president will order a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities even if the sanctions don’t work, but I know that he’s capable of doing that and I believe he’s prepared to do that,” he said, adding that he doesn’t think Obama would ever send ground troops to Iran. Over the New Year’s break, Lieberman visited Israel, Iraq, Tunisia, and Libya, and he said Iran was the number one concern of leaders in the region. In previous meetings, Israeli officials had focused almost entirely on U.S. red lines and their concern over whether Obama would really attack Iran if push came to shove, emphasizing that Israel would attack if the United States doesn’t. But now the Israeli government seems more willing to let the sanctions strategy run its course, Lieberman said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview this week that Iran is beginning to show signs of cracking under the international sanctions regime……….”

Now WTF rock did Joe (Judas) Lieberman crawl from under? Joe the famous turncoat of 2008. Maybe he is covering his backside for 2913: maybe he hopes Obama will appoint him secretary of state if he wins again. He might as well appoint that other (Avigdor) Lieberman.
Joe and John (McCain) and their friend Goose had wanted to establish permanent bases in Iraq, although they have plenty of bases and warships all over the Persian-American Gulf to hang around, as well as an alleged drone base in Saudi Arabia.
Anyway, Joe who single-handed derailed the original Obama healthcare plan is back and he has a whole year left of his senate term to do damage and push for a project dear and near to his heart: a new war in the Middle East.

These right-wingers like Joe Lieberman seem to have a perverse attachment to our region, to the Middle East. From Bush-Cheney to Hillary Clinton to the pandering Republicans of 2012, they all want to start yet another war or two or three in the Middle East. Oddly they never want to start a war against the only Middle East country whose citizens attacked the American homeland in September 2001. They want to start a war of choice against another country that has not attacked anyone, not yet.

Cheers
mhg


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Economics, Iran, Iraq, Israel, NATO, Sanctions, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Blockades from Cuba to Iraq to Iran, Netanyahu as King of NATO and the Confederacy ……………

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“But will an oil embargo work? Not as far as oil analyst Paul Stevens of London-based Chatham House is concerned. “If you look at history, oil embargoes have never, ever worked and never, ever been effective…so it’s not going to work,” he said. “It’s just going to cause a great deal of disruption.” Stevens says EU countries that depend on Iranian oil can find new suppliers – like the Gulf states. But Iran may also find new buyers for its oil in Asia. Iranian officials have downplayed the impact of Western measures – including new U.S. sanctions that could reduce Iran’s ability to sell oil and other exports. But Tehran also has threatened to close the critically important Strait of Hormuz, the entrance to the Persian Gulf………… For his part, Stevens of Chatham House doubts Iran will go through with its threat to close the Strait of Hormuz – in part because it relies on the waterway for its own oil exports. But he believes the deepening standoff between Tehran and Washington, in particular, is creating a dangerously unstable situation. “By trying to limit Iran’s oil exports, it [Washington] is essentially escalating the situation into what could very rapidly become a crisis,“………”

Every time Mr. Netanyahu threatens to wage his own war, Western powers (mainly the Obama administration) panic and tighten their sanctions, really a blockade, against Iran. It is Mr. Netanyahu, a supreme hustler if there ever was one, who calls the shots for the West over many things Middle Eastern, from Palestine to Iran. He exercises his veto power over the two branches of the American government. He has a direct route (hotline) to the leadership of the Congress, which is willing to kiss his posterior in a way he would never dream the Israeli Knesset ever would. He would never get a standing ovation in the original Knesset in Jerusalem. He is fawned upon so much by the American right (and some on the left) it is a wonder he doesn’t immigrate back to the USA and run for office in Georgia or Alabama or Tara.

Boycotts and sanctions rarely work, they never worked against Cuba (been over fifty years) or Iraq (led to an invasion). They do hurt the people. The Cuban boycott caused economic hardships, and the misery it caused only pushed many thousands of Cubans to leave their homeland and cross to Miami. It gave many U.S. administrations the alibi to blame Cuban misery completely on the Castro regime (the Castro regime was partly responsible for erecting inflexible out-dated Soviet-style institutions and stifling dissent). The Cuban boycott has no justification anymore. It has been sustained for decades only by one political pressure group in the United States and can be summarized by a seven-letter word: FLORIDA.
 
The Iranian boycott is even tougher than the Cuban one, it is nearly a blockade by all Western powers that could lead to a war. Yet it is also unlikely to work against Iran: the theocratic regime in Tehran is as confident of being on the right, as committed to not buckle in the face of foreign threats, as Castro was for so many decades. They are as ideologically stubborn, albeit at a stiff economic cost to their people. Besides, they have something the communist Castro has never had since at least July of 1956: they believe divinity (G-O-D) is with them, although I am not sure about h-i-s-t-o-r-y.

Then there are the petroleum and the gas fields. They possibly have the world’s second largest petroleum reserves and possibly the world’s largest gas reserves. Meaning they feel they can outwit and out-wait the West and its blockade. Besides, the way the petroleum markets work makes it hard to distinguish Iranian or Angolan petroleum: there will always be demand for Iranian crude and gas, probably at discounted prices. Both have been mainly sellers’ markets for some time, as countries try to secure sources of supply.
Cheers
mhg


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Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Terrorism

Anti-American Iraqi “Shi’a Taliban”, Pro-American Afghan Taliban, Godfather & Chinese Food………..

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“Tom Hagen:
Some of the other families won’t sit still for an all out war.
Sonny:
Then you tell them to hand over Sollozzo!
Tom Hagen:
Your father wouldn’t want to hear this, Sonny. This is business not personal.
Sonny:
They shoot my father and it’s business, my ass!
Tom Hagen:
Even shooting your father was business not personal, Sonny!….…“ The Godfather

“An anti-American Shia militia in Iraq backed by Iran that once killed US soldiers has agreed to give up its weapons and join the political process in a move likely to fuel US paranoia about growing Iranian influence in the country. The group, the Asaib Ahl al-Haq, which split from the Mehdi Army militia of the nationalist Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, carried out some well-organised attacks on US troops at the height of the tit-for-tat covert conflict between Iran and the US in Iraq in 2007. They were also responsible for kidnapping the British IT consultant, Peter Moore, from the Justice Ministry in Baghdad. They later killed four of his bodyguards whom they now say tried to escape. The group says it wishes to run in local and parliamentary elections and is willing to hand over its weapons………”

This business of identifying a militia as ‘anti-American’ is a favorite way for much of U.S. media to identify some of these armed foreign groups. Apparently this title is reserved for certain Iraqis, including Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the largest single party in the Iraqi parliament. These people opposed American presence in Iraq during the occupation, so they were anti-American at the time. But the American forces are out of Iraq now, so they can’t be anti-American. This is not to downplay the very violent nature of this particular group or its possible Iranian connections.

The al-Anbar terrorists were never called anti-American, although they caused more killings and damage than anyone else (meaning Iraqis). No doubt if the Chinese had occupied Iraq these people would be anti-Chinese. That wouldn’t mean they hate Chinese food (they probably do). Who knows, once the Iranians overplay their hand, in the future maybe Iranian media will start identifying some Iraqi groups as anti-Iranian (there already are several). People don’t like lengthy foreign interference in their internal politics, be that American or Iranian interference. It is all business, nothing personal, as Tom Hagen told Sonny in The Godfather.

There is no doubt that the Afghan Taliban, and their Pakistani cousins, have killed many many more Americans than this violent small Iraqi group.
Yet there is also no doubt that the Obama administration is willing and maybe eager to negotiate with them and practically hand them half the power in Afghanistan, (half for now, the rest probably later).
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Iraq, Middle East, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

American Politics: Yellow Rose of Texas to the Borders of Mesopotamia and Persia……….

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Yellow Rose of Texas

“There’s a yellow rose in Texas that I am gonna see
Nobody else could miss her, not half as much as me
She cried so when I left her, it like to broke my heart
And if I ever find her we never more will part
She’s the sweetest little rosebud that Texas ever knew
Her eyes are bright as diamonds, they sparkle like the dew
You may talk about your Clementine and sing of Rosa Lee
But the Yellow Rose of Texas is the only girl for me

Where the Rio Grande is flowin’, and starry skies are bright
She walks along the river in the quiets of her night
I know that she remembers when we parted long ago
I promised to return and not to leave her so
She’s the sweetest little rosebud that Texas ever knew
Her eyes are bright as diamonds, they sparkle like the dew
You may talk about your Clementine and sing of Rosa Lee
But the Yellow Rose of Texas is the only girl for me………” (Mitch Miller version)

Watched bits of the weekend Republican debate-acles in New Hampshire. Texas governor Rick (Boots on the Ground) Perry, who apparently has a lot missing upstairs, is promising to return to Iraq. The governor will now join John McCain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and a gaggle of Republican saboteur-senators in re-invading Iraq. (The proper conservative way to say it is Eyeraq: Iraq sounds suspiciously foreign and liberal and even wishy-washy European).
They want to re-invade Eyeraq in order to keep Eyeran, the evil enemy du jour, out. So these senators and the governor will set up camp in al-Anbar or Diyali or Baghdad and try to proselytize, convert the former Ba’athists and current Shi’as to the joys of free unfettered unregulated unaccountable jungle markets of the sort that gave us the crash of 2008 and the ongoing lousy economy. Each will give their own version, be it the outlier convert right-wing Catholicism (Gingrich), outlier-er weird twilight-zone Catholicism (Santorum), Baptism (Boots-on-the-Ground Perry), WTF hybrid Christianity (John McCain), and the violent settler version of Judaism (Lieberman).
I wish them the worst of luck in staying at their new outpost in Eyeraq. I would also continue to urge them to make tat pilgrimage to the Eyeraq-Eyeran border, dip a few toes on the other side of the border, tease the scowling mullahs to make a grab. The ayatollahs may wish to powwow, have speaks, parley, chew the fat, shoot the breeze, with them on regional issues. In the warm privacy of the notorious Evin in the heart of Tehran.

(Something about Texas is not kosher, has bothered me in recent years. How come one of the biggest richest states with great universities and many good people, a state that elected Lyndon Johnson, now elects such a fuckhead as governor? Oh, and Texas has produced some of the greatest folk songs).
Cheers
mhg


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