Category Archives: Iraq

Arab Politics, Iraq, Terrorism

As the Last American Soldiers Leave, Iraqis are at it Again………

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“An arrest warrant has been issued against the Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi late Saturday for being the mastermind behind the recent bombing targeting the parliament, spokesman of Baghdad police operations said. The car bombing which took place on November 28, was an attempt to assassinate one of the members of the parliament, he added. According to the Iraqi government, evidence pointed at al-Hashimi’s embroilment in the parliament blast incident after deriving confessions from four arrested Islamic Party members……… Hashimi was the head of the Islamic Party, a political party representative of the Muslim Brotherhood in Iraq, in 2004, but in 2009 he announced that he is no longer a member of the party. Instead, he created the Tajdeed movement, which is considered to be one of the political parties component of the secular Iraqiya block. Meanwhile, the allegations against Hashimi came hours after the Iraqiya bloc which won most of the votes of Iraq’s disenchanted Sunni Arab minority Walked out of parliament………..”

A serious charge: Tareq al-Hashimi doesn’t look like a master terrorist. Lucky for Iraqis, they have three vice presidents.

Iraqis couldn’t seem to wait for the last departing American soldier to cross the Kuwait border before they started at each other again. All this may give senator John McCain and Lieberman (Joe not Avigdor), and Gingrich and Romney, the excuse they need to re-invade Iraq and restore a Republican order.

It is interesting how roles have shifted in post-2003 Iraq. Early on the southern provinces were talking about ‘federalism’ while the likes of al-Anbar tribals and former Ba’athists were against it, claiming that it would lead to fragmentation. Most neighboring Arab despots were also against it: the usual Arab obsession with centralized authority. Now it is the likes of al-Anbar tribals and former Ba’athists who are calling for “federalism” with some of the neighboring Arab media cheering on.
Cheers
mhg


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Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Arab Counterrevoltion, Espionage, Finance, Hezbollah, Iraq, Latin America, Lebanon, nuclear Iran, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, WTF

Mel Brooks and Oliver Stone of Persia: a Taliban-Hezbollah-Colombian-Iranian-alQaeda-Mexican-Texan-African Network………

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“The court action, filed in Manhattan federal court, seeks nearly half a billion dollars in penalties from three Lebanese financial organizations — the now-defunct Lebanese Canadian Bank and two Beirut-based money exchange houses — and 30 auto dealers in the United States. The $480 million in penalties is the sum of the drug proceeds that are alleged to have been laundered; the government is also seeking to freeze and seize assets traceable to those companies………… Thursday’s complaint offers fresh details about the workings of what it says was a scheme to launder South American cocaine cash and Hezbollah’s own money, naming the American-based auto dealers and people it says were Hezbollah operatives. For example, the action charges that Oussama Salhab was a Hezbollah operative in Togo who ran a network that transported cash from cars sold in Benin on flights to Beirut. Prosecutors say he worked with Maroun Saade — suspected of being a member of the Free Patriotic Movement, a Lebanese Christian political party allied with Hezbollah — who has been charged in a separate case with aiding the Taliban………”

I wonder what Mel Brooks is up to these days? Is he teaming up with Oliver Stone? Could those two be working on something like this, this topic of my piece here?
Is it just the holiday season or is the world going crazy around me? At least from my current perspective in the Pacific Northwest it seems like many heretofore otherwise sensible people are going mad. Look at all this:

  • Hezbollah alliance with the Taliban (across fourteen centuries of separation, across five nations of separation)?
  • Iranian alliance with al-Qaeda which is the mortal Wahhabi enemy of the Shi’as (including Iranians and Iraqis and Lebanese and Bahrainis and Pakistanis and all others)?
  • Iranian and al-Qaeda alliance allegedly but ridiculously improbably going way back to the 1990s, mostly via the good offices and miraculous guesswork of Judge John D. Bates of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia?
  • Iranian-Mexican Drug Cartel-Texan Nutcase alliance to blow up a restaurant in Georgetown and its famous clients just because it serves mediocre food to smug bureaucrats and charges too much? This last one allegedly courtesy of the DEA and the U.S. Department of Justice, and possibly Mujahideen-e-Khalq, among others.
  • Iraqi-Iranian-Syrian (wtf?)-Lebanese alliance to conquer Bahrain as a prelude to conquering the rest of the world and forcing Rick Santorum and Rick Perry to become Muslims and make the Hajj to Mecca?
  • Lebanese-Columbian-Taliban-Hezbollah-Maronite Christian plot to make money from a new triangular trade but without the rum and the African slaves.
  • Hezbollah-IRGC-Wehrmacht-Goldman Sachs…….. oh zut, sorry. Got carried away.


WTF is going on here? Is everyone going paranoid or are all of these plots real? Should we start looking under our beds each night for Iranian mullahs and Lebanese Shi’as? Are the Wahhabi princes now financing the hated Shi’a militants as well? Or is it just that the ‘plots’ are thickening?
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Iraq, Middle East Nuclear, nuclear Iran, Persian-American Gulf, War on Iran, WMD

The Beatles and Iranian Intentions: Western Fools on the Hill of Nuclear Intelligence……….

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“But the fool on the hill,
Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning ’round.
Well on the way,
Head in a cloud,
The man of a thousand voices talking perfectly loud
But nobody ever hears him,
or the sound he appears to make,
and he never seems to notice,……” Les Beatles

“It was the Little Interventionist Tony Blair who first began sanctions on Iran. And the build-up of hostilities has unnerving parallels with the case for war conjured by Blair and George Bush against Iraq. We have another dodgy dossier, in the shape of the report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which claims Iran is developing nuclear weapons but says so largely on the basis of intelligence which ends in 2003. It relies on documents on a laptop, found in 2004 by the Israelis, whose reliability prompted deep scepticism among Western intelligence at the time. The foreign scientist said to have worked on a bomb with the Iranians turned out to be a nanotechnologist. And a former IAEA chief inspector has said the type of explosion chamber referred to in the report could not be used in a nuclear test. On that, is based hawkish noises and sabre-rattling sanctions. Intelligence chiefs publicly say such things as, the West must use covert operations to sabotage Iran’s nuclear programme. Politicians make thinly veiled threats of military attack using weasel words such as “all options are on the table”. Pardon me if it feels like Iraq all over again……… But Iran is a big, politically sophisticated country whose constitution of parliament, president, councils and assemblies of religious experts, creates a system of checks and balances in which change is possible. Reformers have held sway at times in this political pluralism. The Iranian establishment is fragmented into factions; a third of MPs did not vote for the measure to reduce the diplomatic status of Iran’s relations with Britain last Sunday. But it is precisely the wrong reactionary factions which are strengthened by the bellicosity of the West. And make no mistake, the war has begun. …………”

The West gets some of its ‘intelligence’ from certain Iranian exiles, and from the Israelis, not exactly an impartial source. The Israeli Likud would love for the Iran nuclear program to dominate the news so much that people would forget all about the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They would love for the world to focus on any other issue, HIV-AIDS, Global Warming, Tax Cuts, the War on Drugs, Dr Phil, anything but the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Israelis get some of their ‘intelligence; from certain Iranian exiles.
Everybody else relies on Tony Blair and the Saudi royal family and Alarabiya (which belongs to the Saudi royal family) for intelligence on the Iranian nuclear program. Some are beginning to rely on the ruling al-Nahayan clan of Abu Dhabi for ‘intelligence’.
 
This does not mean that I have reliable intelligence that the Iranians are NOT working on a nuclear weapon. For all I know they could be in the last stage of making a Doomsday Bomb. I have no idea, but I would never believe what the IAEA or the UN or the US intelligence or British Intelligence or Israeli intelligence or Iranian intelligence or Ahmadinejad say about the Iranian program. That is what I learned from Iraq. And the writer is right, they are pushing the same arguments they used before the invasion of Iraq (which I supported at the time), and it is very likely based on faulty or downright fake information. The true goal is not nuclear weapons, it has to do with a balance of power in the Middle East.
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

U.S. Campaign Hiking: Gingrich goes to CMU instead of Iraq-Iran Border, no Rice & Rice………….

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“Former House speaker and Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has picked a foreign policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh to be his national security adviser. Kiron Skinner directs CMU’s International Relations and Politics department and also services on the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel and service on the Council of Foreign Relations. Skinner has previously served as an adviser on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as a member of the Defense Policy Board of the U.S. Department of Defense from 2001 to 2007. Skinner will continue to teach full-time on social and decision sciences at CMU, but will be on call to advise Gingrich………”

Clearly Newt Gingrich doesn’t like to stray far from the ‘reservation, at least in matters of picking policy advisers, if not in ‘other’ matters. His choice is somewhat better than Romney, who picked a veteran of the right-wing and genocidal Lebanese Forces militia (apparently Romney feels that he needs to shore up his right-wing credentials). But, hey, the day is young, and I have not looked in Mr. Skinner’s closet yet. This almost certainly means that he, Newt, will decline my advise to take a hike on the Iraq-Iran border, preferably making a two-feet sortie across the border. Dommage.
Gingrich is also eschewing the Bush-Obama-Clinton trend of seeking high profile female foreign policy advisers (Albright, Rice &Rice). Maybe ‘somebody’ has learned something after all.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, GCC, Iraq, Libya, NATO, North Africa, Syria, US Foreign Policy

On the Western Liberation of Iraq and Libya and Syria and………….

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“Al-Asaad told us that despite being grossly under-resourced, he is getting more and more recruits every day. The latest reports put the size of the armed opposition force at anywhere between 1,000 and 25,000. In his interview, the colonel told us that he unequivocally is not seeking a coup and supports the Syrian National Council as the legitimate representative of the people. He also stressed that the force he is assembling is inclusive and non-sectarian. Finally, he makes a plea to U.S. President Barack Obama to offer quick and decisive support for the resistance and underscores that the establishment of a buffer zone, as proposed by Turkey and France, could accelerate defections and change the course of the conflict……….”

The Syrians who did not like American intervention in Iraq are now eager for American and French and British (and possibly Israeli) intervention in Syria. That is after the NATO intervention in Libya, which was aided and abetted by the Arabs. The hypocrisy some Arab leaders, and some opinion-makers of the Wahhabi faux-liberal stripe, especially in the Gulf GCC, is breath-taking (I like this last word more and more these days).
These Arabs cheered and helped and participated in the invasion (or liberation) of Iraq, only to turn around and bitterly criticize it when things did not go their way. They even pushed for a second American liberation of Iraq, a retake, just to set things right from the Wahhabi point of view. They practically pushed (an eager) NATO to intervene and liberate Libya from its ruling dynasty even as they helped chain the people of Bahrain to their repressive and corrupt dynasty of thieves.
Now they want to the USA and NATO to liberate Syria from its ‘current’ despotic rulers. Some claim they want the West to liberate Syria from the Assad regime, others that they want NATO to liberate Syria (politically) from Iran, some say they want it liberated from both. Some of them also want to liberate Syria fully by aligning it with the royal theocracy of the People’s Democratic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I wonder if they also want to liberate the Golan, and from whom.
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Iraq, MEK, Mossad, Mujahideen Khalq, Rajavi, Terrorism, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

The Other Iran War: MEK, Mossad, Western Intelligence…….

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“Ynet raises the possibility that it was a deliberate act of sabotage on not just a missile base, but an intelligence facility. Teheran Bureau says the IRG is telling the Iranian media that the incident was not an act of terror, but purely an industrial accident. An Iranian who worked at the base for several months and was interviewed by Iranian media discounted the likelihood of an act of sabotage since security at the base was extremely strict. However, an Israeli source with extensive senior political and military experience provides an exclusive report that it was the work of the Mossad in collaboration with the MEK. Israeli media is humming with similar reports and Channel 10′s intelligence correspondent went so far as to say, a bit coyly perhaps: If it was the work of western intelligence it was a high successful and impressive achievement. It is widely known within intelligence circles that the Israelis use the MEK for varied acts of espionage and terror ranging from fraudulent Iranian memos alleging work on nuclear trigger devices to assassinations of nuclear scientists and bombings of sensitive military installations……….”

MEK has a history of siding with anyone who is against the Iranian regime (since 1981). In the process, it has also sided with some who are enemies of the Iranian people. Siding with Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath Party during the 1980-88 war is one example. Siding with Saddam during the Persian Gulf War (Desert Storm 1990-91) is another example. There have been reports that they participated in the suppression of rebellious Iraqis in the south after Desert Storm in the Spring of 1991.
Mujahideen Khalq, still on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations, has deep pockets and pays generously to top former and current American officials to speak at its conferences in France and other places. Among them has been Rudy Giuliani, Bill Richardson, Ed Randell, James Woolsey (briefly CIA director under Clinton). It is not clear where the money comes from, but I strongly suspect it originates from “somewhere” on the shores of my Gulf. These days the MEK are popular with many Gulf potentates (and their media) who were their friends during the 1980s before they became their enemies during the 1990s, only to become their friends again after the first Iraqi elections of 2005.
I am not sure how much support it has inside Iran, but my educated guess is that it has little popular support. It has degenerated into a marginal cult group over the past three decades. But if this report is true, it must have enough operatives inside Iran to help the Israeli and Western acts of sabotage and assassination against Iranian targets and scientists. Yet these “incidents” are sporadic and not effective for the goals of either regime change or derailing the nuclear program.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Revolutions, Iran, Iraq, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

WTF: Gingrich Foreign Policy, John-Paul II, Pizza Man, Espousing State-sponsored Terrorism……………

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Watched part of the GOP South Carolina foreign policy debate, The highlights, rather the Lowlights:


Q (Major Garrett): “How would you think outside the box in foreign policy…”
Newt Gingrich: “I would explicitly adopt the Reagan John-Paul II agenda…..”

John-Paul II foreign policy? I fully expected Garrett to retort with a resounding: “WTF”? John-Paul II had a military jingoistic foreign policy of bombing Iran and boycotting UNESCO for admitting the Palestinians? One more lie………..

Herman Cain, the Pizza Man, is reported to have said that President Barack Obama’s reaction to the Arab Spring has allowed the movement to go in the wrong direction..….

Little Ricky Santorum, in desperation, essentially endorsed state-sponsored terrorism: “there are scientists turning up dead in Iran. I hope the United States is involved in that….”

I have modified my original suggestion about “some” of these guys (and gal) going for a hike along the Iraq-Iran border. Initially I thought Newt Gingrich needs it the most. Now I think they all ought to go to the Iran-Iraq border, and quickly.
Cheers
mhg


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Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

America in Iraq: Missions (Not Yet) Accomplished from Bush to Obama………..

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“On the eve of what is likely to be a nearly complete withdrawal of United States forces from Iraq, one of the great questions is what Mr. Sadr is going to do…..” N YTimes

Iraq has had a way of making American presidents look and sound foolish, mainly because they misread it. George W Bush fell into that trap when he parachuted in front of a huge banner reading “Mission Accomplished”. Little did he know that the bloody party was just beginning in Iraq.
 
Now there are reports in the media that the United States will keep several thousand troops in Iraq after they all withdraw from Iraq. An Orwellian touch I could not help noticing, although most people are probably still digesting the administration’s last “announced” position, that ALL U.S. forces will leave Iraq next month.
Even the supremely opportunistic Republican candidates were quick to slam the withdrawal plan, even if most, almost all, Iraqis insist on it. Now all GOP candidates have to amend their statements to insist that there is a need for more than, say, 5 thousand troops.
So, Mr. Obama announced that he is keeping his promise to completely withdraw from Iraq, before he decided to break that promise and keep forces in Iraq (I wonder what Senator John Kerry is up to these days). Would be interesting if they will actually remain and if they will remain under the laws of an independent Iraqi state or under a colonial rule that exempts them from Iraqi laws. That should boost the political fortunes of an already politically extremely fortunate Muqtada al-Sadr.
Cheers
mhg


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

Is Condi Rice as Smart as Henry Kissinger? Iraq, Iran, and Indochina……………

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“Former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Monday that it’s time for the United States to confront Iran, and that it should never take the military option off the table, in an ABC interview with Christiane Amanpour. “I think it’s time to confront the Iranian regime because It’s the poster child for state sponsorship of terrorism, it’s trying to get a nuclear weapon, it’s repressed its own people. The regime has absolutely no legitimacy left. We should be doing everything we can to bring it down and never take military force off the table,” she said.
In addition to keeping the military option open, Rice pointed to “even tougher sanctions” as a means of confronting the Islamic Republic…………Rice also commented on plans for the United States to withdraw its troops from Iraq this year, noting that, “This is one of the downsides of having our forces out of Iraq, because we can confront the Iranians in Iraq.” ………….”

I am beginning to think that Condi Rice is almost as smart as Henry Kissinger, almost. Kissinger had a brilliant solution for the United States to stop losing the Vietnam War: escalate into Cambodia and Laos. Brilliant move: within four years the Communists were in power in South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
So Rice wanted the Obama administration to keep forces in Iraq to “confront Iran”. I assume she doesn’t mean having a few thousand American boys and girls sitting targets in a hostile environment. Maybe she would also agree to leave Palo Alto and go to Iraq to advice the troops she wants to remain in harm’s way. maybe Messrs Romney and Gingrich and Perry and some of the airwaves gasbag warriors will volunteer go go with her.
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Iraq, Middle East Nuclear, nuclear Iran, US Foreign Policy

New IAEA Iran Nuclear Report and another “Slam Dunk”………

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“This week, the International Atomic Energy Agency is expected to release its latest report on Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. If the leaks are to be believed, that report will accuse Iran of constructing a steel tank at the Parchin military complex for testing explosives associated with atomic weapons design. The allegation is hardly new. Since 2004, there have been suspicions of work at Parchin related to weapons design and in May this year the agency listed a series of research projects it suggested could not make sense unless related to weapons research. If the report is significant, it is because with each new IAEA report on Iran comes a familiar diplomatic ritual of threatened new sanctions from the US and its allies and reports of threatened military strikes from Israel. If there is a difference this time, it is in the strong impression, after years of veiled threats from Israel, that it will act alone if necessary to stop Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon, that the country’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and his closest allies in a cabinet split on the issue would like to launch a pre-emptive military strike, a view opposed by other senior figures in Israel’s security establishment…………..”

So the IAEA chief flies to Washington, media report, but not to Tehran, and soon after leaks start springing about Iran moving closer to a nuclear weapon, or is it just a nuclear capability. Maybe it is so, but it is so reminiscent of the preparations for the 2003 Iraq war and all the talk and leaks and “intelligence” about WMD, isn’t it? That one even tricked me, not that I needed much convincing of the need to get rid of Saddam Hussein and his vile Ba’ath Party rule.
So the Iranians, it is now leaked, may have constructed a steel tank at the Parchin military complex for testing explosives “associated” with atomic weapons design. And what are the sources of all this? Reports say the sources are “Western” intelligence. So some Western intelligence services supply the IAEA with new “intelligence” about Iran’s nuclear intentions, the IAEA dutifully includes it in its report, then the same Western governments scream that the IAEA has provided proof.
It is possible that the unnamed “Western” intelligence, be it the CIA, Mossad, or the Germans are correct this time. It is also possible that they are not. Remember: according to “Western” intelligence, the Iranians were supposed to have developed a nuclear bomb some six or seven years ago. The same folks who brought us “slam dunk” (no not the late Chick Hearn of the L.A. Lakers) and the Iraq invasion in 2003. These guys would never win an NBA title with the kind of “slam dunking” they are capable of.

Cheers
mhg


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