Saturday, September 17, 2016

They are our debates


Like everything else, the government sold the presidential debates off.

They are our debates.

They exist for us.

They need to be open.

We've gotten 100,000 signatures. Add your name to this petition for .




Jill Stein is on enough ballots that she could win the presidency.

Put her on the stage right now.


This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Friday, September 16, 2016.  Chaos and violence continue, Hillary's role in the Iraq War went beyond one vote for it, the Ashraf community is out of Iraq, and much more.

In an article posted last night at THE WASHINGTON POST, Michael Kranish attempts to explore Hillary Clinton's support of the Iraq War.  Though probably one of the best pieces on the topic in the last two years, it actually raises more questions than Kranish is aware.

For those who may be too young to remember, in October of 2002, the Congress voted to give Bully Boy Bush power to go to war.  It's an illegal war.  Remember that because we're coming back to it -- it more than anything else demolishes Hillary's 'defense' -- a point Kranish doesn't even allude to.

Hillary voted for the illegal war.  No surprise in hindsight, she's a war monger.

Kranish notes that she now has a history of pinning her vote on Bully Boy Bush.

He then notes her advisors, including her husband Bill Clinton, were also urging her to vote for the Iraq War.

But this 'mistake' is not treated as a mistake by Hillary.

Blaming others for your vote is not taking accountability.

Krainish never even touches on it -- despite the fact that in last week's NBC forum, Hillary was again blaming Bully Boy Bush for her vote.


Ava and I explored this terrain earlier this week in "TV: NBC airs abstract art"



Here's some more reality that wasn't noted about Hillary.

She doesn't take responsibility.

She voted for the Iraq War.


She can't even be honest about that.



I was wrong.
Almost three years ago we went into Iraq to remove what we were told -- and what many of us believed and argued -- was a threat to America. But in fact we now know that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction when our forces invaded Iraq in 2003. The intelligence was deeply flawed and, in some cases, manipulated to fit a political agenda.
It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002. I take responsibility for that mistake. It has been hard to say these words because those who didn't make a mistake -- the men and women of our armed forces and their families -- have performed heroically and paid a dear price.
The world desperately needs moral leadership from America, and the foundation for moral leadership is telling the truth.



Before you say, "Good for Hillary," that's not Hillary.

That's John Edwards penning a 2005 column for THE WASHINGTON POST.

"I was wrong."

"It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002."

"I take responsibility for that mistake."

And here's Hillary:

Hillary Clinton: Look, I think that the decision to go to war in Iraq was a mistake. And I have said that my voting to give President Bush that authority was, from my perspective, my mistake. 


Going to war was a mistake, she insists.

But the only mistake she'll admit was giving Bully Boy "Bush that authority."

She's not taking responsibility.

She's bring up Bully Boy Bush, she's bringing up her opponent, she's doing everything but taking responsibility.

She won't own her mistake and she clearly won't learn from it.



That's not taking responsibility,

John Edwards, in his column quoted above, took responsibility.

Hillary tries to worm out of it by blaming everyone.

If she were your child and she'd dented the car and she started whining about how this friend or that friend --

You'd stop her right there.

You'd tell her the issue was that she dented the car.

But with Hillary Clinton, it's always drag other people into it, refuse to take responsibility.

That's a very glaring character flaw.

In the article for THE POST, this appears:


Instead, Jesse Lehrich, her foreign policy spokesman, noted in a statement that Clinton considered the Iraq vote “one of the hardest decisions of her life — one she anguished over exhaustively and, of course, one she came to regret in the end.”


No, she didn't.


She was Secretary of State.  She ran for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2008 and she's running for president this year.

Forget that she won't take accountability, where in any of her statements (or actions as Secretary of State) is there any effort to propose ways to make amends for her "mistake."

The Iraq War has not ended.

And Tuesday, Barbara Starr (CNN) reported:

The Pentagon is in the preliminary stages of discussing whether to send more Special Operations forces to advise and assist Iraqi forces as the two countries get ready for the assault to retake Mosul from ISIS, CNN has learned.



So where's your plan, Hillary?

If I'd voted for the Iraq War and felt that vote was a 'mistake,' I'd have a plan of how to undue the damage I took part in.

If I regretted it, that's what I'd do.

We get nothing from Hillary.


Now let's go to the illegal aspect of the war.

I don't expect Michael Kranish to declare the Iraq War illegal.

It is illegal but he's a reporter not a columnist and weighing in himself would cross a line because the matter is open to debate.

But there's no acknowledgement of that debate in his report.

And it needs to be in the article.

Kranish offers a variety of places from Bill Clinton's presidency and claims that this shaped Hillary (he may be right) and that she is now of the opinion -- let's quote from the article:

As she saw the benefits of intervention, her views of executive power expanded. She argued that a president should have latitude to launch military missions because, as she starkly put it in justifying her 2002 vote, “sometimes a president has to do what he thinks is right no matter what anyone else says.” She embraced an approach to military force that in many cases argued for using it — rather than regretting not doing so.



Hillary Clinton's threadbare resume -- besides "wife of" -- includes attorney.

As an attorney, she should have knowledge of the law.

The Constitution is the supreme law of the land.  Her new gained 'knowledge' doesn't appear to reflect that.

As an attorney and someone who went to a supposedly leading university -- as well as someone who can't stop invoking her religion -- she should be aware of war and civilization and St. Augustine and just war theory -- something that the Iraq War rejected.

Her vote for the Iraq War was a rejection of just war theory, a rejection of international law and of US custom.

It's amazing how she wants to blame Bully Boy Bush.

And I get that her crowd of idiots -- uneducated all (I love the one today who Tweeted that a possible DNC pay-for-play was no big deal because there were important scandals like Watergate -- he doesn't even know what Watergate was about) -- have no grasp of what the vote meant.

They're uneducated, failed by an underfunded and poorly performing nation wide school system that teaches for a test and recitation but doesn't instill critical thinking abilities.

Hillary's vote was wrong on so many levels.

But it was also wrong for undoing the legal arguments for war that the west had accepted for several centuries.

That's no minor issue.

The Iraq War had some approval from Congress.

It's an illegal war not because it lacked Congressional backing.

It's built upon lies but that doesn't make it illegal either.

It's illegal because it violates the laws and customs accepted in western political theory and arguments on war.  It trashes centuries of established criteria.


And let's also be clear that Hillary didn't vote for the Iraq War and that was it.

She voted for it.

She cheerleaded it, she was a hawk who wanted the Iraq War to continue.

She wanted that long after US sentiment had turned firmly against the war to even begin moving away.

And, as she'd brag to Robert Gates afterwards, her 2007 vote against the military surge in Iraq was only because she knew the proposal was unpopular with the American voters (as former Secretary of Defense Gates details in his book DUTY).

So let's stop acting like she did one thing in 2002 and it's just one tiny little thing.



US House Rep Walter Jones also voted for the Iraq War.

Unlike Hillary, when he realized it was a mistake, he publicly said so and that was in 2005.

Unlike Hillary, he supported John Kerry's resolution to put an end date on the Iraq War (he supported it with remarks, it did not pass the Senate).

Unlike Hillary he sponsored bills on military actions, on grounds for impeachment, on bringing all the US troops home from Iraq, etc.


And he did all of that before Hillary became Secretary of State.

Not only did Hillary not do anything during that time, her tenure as Secretary of State found her refusing to defend Iraqi women even when a friend begged her to just include them in a speech she was giving about women around the world.

Even that was too much for Hillary.

So let's quit pretending she regrets the Iraq War.


A big topic in today's news is the late Ahmad Jabbar Kareem who died when was 15-years-old.



If UK troops allowed to get away with drowning an Iraqi child it sends message that commanders feel Iraqi lives are worthless.



UK troops who forced Iraqi boy into canal & let him drown have been condemned & acquitted. MOD: We're really sorry



British soldiers ‘forced’ Iraqi boy into canal and let him drown



MOD apologises after soldiers 'forced 15yr old Iraqi boy into canal & left him to drown' - terrible & unjustifiable.



Doubtless Daily Mail types outrage is at fact soldiers were even criticised Troops cause Iraqi boy's death in 2003



UK troops who "forced" Iraqi boy into canal & let him drown condemned by Iraq War civilian deaths investigation



British soldiers forced 15 year old Ahmed Ali into a canal and left him to drown. Brit judge calls actions 'clumsy'.






 In other violence, bombs continued to be dropped on Iraq.

The US Defense Dept announced yesterday:

Strikes in Iraq
Attack, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 10 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:

-- Near Huwayjah, two strikes engaged an ISIL chemical weapons storage facility and destroyed a rocket system, a rocket rail and a mortar system.

-- Near Qaim, a strike engaged an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed a building.

-- Near Mosul, a strike engaged an ISIL bomb factory.

-- Near Qayyarah, a strike engaged an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed three mortar systems, a fighting position, four rocket rails, a tunnel and inoperable coalition equipment.

-- Near Sinjar, a strike destroyed an ISIL tractor trailer, a front-end loader and a fighting position.

-- Near Sultan Abdallah, four strikes engaged an ISIL tactical unit, two headquarters buildings and a vehicle bomb factory. Twenty-five watercraft, a headquarters building and the vehicle bomb factory were destroyed. A mortar position was suppressed.


Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike.





Now let's turn to the issue of the Ashraf community.



The British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom (BPCIF), expresses its happiness and joy for this great achievement of Iranian Resistance
Today, we learned that after 13 years of painstaking work in defence of the security, and to protect the rights of members and supporters of the Poeple's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI), in Camp Ashraf and in later Camp Liberty in Iraq, finally, all members and supporters of the organisation, have officially been accepted by the government of Albania and all have been moved to that country.
Undoubtedly, today counts as a great and historic day for the democratic opposition and resistance of the Iranian people and all of us as supporters of this liberation movement.
During the last 13 years, the Iranian regime employed all possible destructive tactics against the PMOI in Iraq.
The regime provided extensive financial and military support for the terrorist groups in Iraq, resulting in 8 missile attacks against the innocent residents of Camps Ashraf and Liberty in Iraq.
Such assaults left 141 dead, hundreds wounded and 7 hostages, from whom, 6 are women and there is no trace of them. The regime’s intention was either to force the PMOI members to surrender or the complete destruction of the PMOI organisation. Despite the Iranian regime’s expansive and destructive efforts, thanks to their own heroic resistance in Camps Ashraf and Liberty, as well as their countless international campaigns the Iranian resistance was victorious.
We should also acknowledge the extensive and highly effective campaigns led by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) which were decisive in turning the international balance of power in favour of the Iranian people and their Resistance and against the religious dictatorship in Iran.
We would also like to use this opportunity to declare our full support for the recently launched international campaigns and lawsuits against those responsible for the massacre of more than 30 thousand political prisoners in the summer of 1988, especially with the release of audio tapes of Ayatollah Montazeri, Khomeini's successor, undermine the foundations of society and severely shook the regime.
A new era has begun in which we can clearly see the tides are turning fast towards a regime change in Iran and the fruition of the will of Iranian people for establishment human rights, and gender and religious equality and democracy.
On July 9, 2016, an all-party parliamentary delegation from both Houses of Parliament, attended the gathering of more than 100,000 supporters of the Iranian Resistance in Paris. In this gathering the statement signed by more than 400 British parliamentarians in support of the Iranian Resistance and Mrs Rajavi’s 10 point plan was announced.
Time has undoubtedly come for the British government, European Union, Unites States and the political leaders of the world to put a halt on their appeasement policy vis- a-vis the autocratic dictatorship in Iran.

Time has come to stand with millions and millions of the Iranian people and join their fight for peace and democracy in Iran.
British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom

09 September 2016


Good for them, glad they are safe.  Wish we could get the US troops out of Iraq.

We refer to them as the Ashraf community and do that for two reasons.

They became known world wide while at Camp Ashraf.

Once you're known, you're known.  Rodney King went by Glen King but once the press went with Rodney that's how he was known.  Cheryl Ladd became famous while married to David Ladd.  She's been married to Brian Russell for over 30 years now but remains Cheryl Ladd because once you're known by a name that's pretty much your name from then forward.

The second reason is that we didn't defend the MEK.

Too many people confused the issue -- some intentionally.

What the US owed the Ashraf community was protection.  This was due to promises made.


There was nothing owed to the MEK.

Some tried to confuse the issue.

Hillary, of course, helped with the confusion by refusing to comply with court orders in a timely fashion.

The Ashraf community believed in things that most people would find strange.

And so this was used to mock them or to refuse to advocate on their behalf.

We noted Glenn Greenwald was of the opinion that people need to be noting their opinion, that reporters should, etc.

Glenn may be a journalist but he's a trained attorney.

Clearly, he missed a lot about what journalism is supposed to be.

Reporters are supposed to inform the people.
\
In a democracy, we need information to form opinions.

Slanting coverage is not a good thing.

Reporting should not be based on events and not on someone's opinion of a candidate or whatever.

We covered Barack in the 2008 April Congressional hearings, remember.

Spencer Ackerman, who was for Barack and against Hillary, covered Barack as well.

But claimed his CSPAN feed went out when Hillary came on.  (I believe he just didn't want to cover her.  I was at the hearing so possibly he did lose his feed but everyone I've asked who watched it on CSPAN did not recall the feed going out.)

You have to be factual and you have to be fair if you're doing actual reporting.

If you're shaping it, then you're not providing the raw information that people in a democracy need to have in order to form intelligent decisions.

The Ashraf community was a perfect test case in how poor the state of journalism had become as reporters -- not referring to opinion columnists -- regularly degraded and mocked the Ashraf community in coverage.

Glenn feels we need more opinions.

I'd agree we need more voices -- that's how a democracy thrives (we constrict via things like closed debates that refuse to allow Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, among others, to stand on the stage and participate) -- but we also need real journalism.

This election cycle has seen all rules for journalism tossed aside.









Thursday, September 15, 2016

Good job Jill Stein!

. on why Black people should vote for and the Green Party.




I am so happy to see Jill Stein running a real campaign for president.

She is alive, she's present.

Good job, Jill!!!!

And I praise Betty also for "Samantha Bee is . . . loud?"

I'm so sick of 'comedians' like Samantha Bee who think they look strong and truthful when they attack Jill Stein.

Samantha Bee's just a loud mouth.

She's lousy and she should be embarrassed for attacking Jill.

But, hell, she's schilling for Hillary so she clearly is incapable of embarrassment.

This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Wednesday, September 14, 2016.  Chaos and violence continue, the Iraq War continues, faux feminists are women who claim to be feminists but don't help women and don't speak out against war, we draw a line and that includes noting the institutional sexism of Jane Fonda, and much more.

As Mike pointed out last night: "TMZ exposes CBS so-called News." So let's start with the latest on Hillary Clinton's health via TMZ.  Clinton is the Democratic Party's presidential nominee.  She had to be rushed out of a 9/11 event on Sunday as she weebeled and wobbled but didn't fall down.  TMZ reports today,  "Hillary Clinton got herself a doctor's note confirming she's battling pneumonia ... and also loading up on her medications."
Last night, Elaine asked, "How sick is Hillary really?" and noted:

Lee Fang has posted on his Twitter Feed an e-mail exchange between Jeffrey Leeds and Colin Powell.

This is an e-mail that Leeds sent to Powell:



Sheldon Whitehouse, who is a huge Clinton supporter, said they were both giving speeches at the same event a few months back and she could barely climb the podium steps.


So how sick is she really?

Register that this would be long before her doctor allegedly told her on Friday that she had pneumonia.
Retired general and former Secretary of State Colin Powell exchanged e-mails with Jeffrey Leeds and they're now news in most outlets around the world.
  • Colin Powell said he 'would rather not vote' for Hillary Clinton in a July 2014 email exchange where he commented that Bill is still 'di**ing bimbos'
  • In that same exchange, his friend Jeffrey Leeds said  Rudy Giuliani thought President Obama was a 'decent' man and that Hillary would win in 2016 
  • Leeds told Powell, 79, in an email last March that Hillary Clinton 'HATES' President Obama and refers to him as 'that man'
  • In another email exchange, Leeds claims that Clinton was so sick she could 'barely climb the podium steps' before giving a speech  
  • Cheney also said that Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz were 'idiots'
  •  The emails were hacked from Powell's private GMail account 


Hillary and her bitches, I'm just not in the damn mood anymore.
Hillary cultist Lauren Young just got MS. magazine pulled from our links.
Long time coming.
It's nothing but a pro-war outlet which is why Lauren Young's simpleton and deceptive version of what's going on in Syria fits right in there.
I'm sick of these damn whores for war. 
That's you, Lauren.
Clearly, you're too stupid to write about foreign affairs.
You've shown no interest in foreign events on your Twitter feed -- though you're up the ass of JANE THE VIRGIN.
Please grasp this all whores posing as feminists: Just as Luke and Laura on GENERAL HOSPITAL could never, ever overcome the fact that Luke raped Laura, there is no way to ever pretend that a show where a woman is impregnated without her knowledge and then carries a fetus for a man -- and it was for him, not for his wife -- will ever be feminism.
It can't blossom from that s**t.
Grasp it, you stupid whores.
Whores.
That's the word.
And it's the word for Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda.
You are dirty whores.
GreenStone Media, you are so lucky it crashed and burned and that most people avoided it because they never got that your call in program existed only to promote sending US troops into Sudan.
That's the reality.
Gloria, you've never been honest about your CIA background.
That says everything so let's move on to Jane.
Jane, you're a whore.
Why do you think -- two time Academy Award winner that you are -- you can't get an Emmy nomination for GRACE & FRANKIE?
In part because you're just not good enough.
But also because we're all sick of you.
The industry is sick of you and your whoring ways.
"Activist" Jane.
What the f**k have you done?
You haven't done a damn thing for Iraq.
Oh, you gave that speech in 2007 ensuring you were all over the news, promising you were going to be protesting until the war ended.
War hasn't ended, Jane, and where are you?
I'm tired of you whores and bitches pretending you're feminist while promoting war.
Cher can support Hillary and I don't have a problem with it.
Cher doesn't present herself as an activist. (Although she actually is an activist and actually makes a difference.)
But, reality, Cher does more than you ever do, Jane.
And Cher's doing the same amount that she did during Vietnam.
I will criticize many who support Hillary, I will not criticize Cher for her support.  She's been courageous, she's stood and she's stood alone.
She didn't spend the eighties running to pay phones to call Tom Hayden begging, "What's our position!" on whatever new just broke.
She did her own thinking, she did her own standing.
By contrast, you're an embarrassment.
Joan Crawford, at the end, had more credibility than you do.



What the f**k does that mean, Jane?
I understand what you're saying, I'm just asking what it means.
You're a producer of GRACE & FRANKIE as well as a star of the series.
There are 26 episodes currently airing on NETFLIX.
How many were directed by women?
10.
Ten of 26.
And that's a show that you star in and you produce and you can't give us gender equality with directors on that show but you want others to do what you refuse to do?
And 26?
That's also the number of episodes of the TV show 9 TO 5 that you produced from 1982 to 1983.
Want to share how many women you hired to direct episodes of that show?
Didn't think so.
The answer is zero.
Riding high on the feminist hit film 9 TO 5 that she produced and then turned into a sitcom for ABC, feminist Jane refused to hire one woman to direct even one episode.
And, Jane, you've acted in almost 50 films but you've never acted in one where a woman directed.
Not even when you produced the films.
Academy Award winner Barbra Streisand has directed films herself (including the classic YENTL -- and my personal favorite THE MIRROR HAS TWO FACES) and she's been directed by a woman (Anne Fletcher's THE GUILT TRIP -- one of Barbra's finest performances). 
Two time Academy Award winner Jessica Lange has acted in films directed by women (including Julie Taymor's TITUS and the underrated classic A THOUSAND ACRES directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse).
Academy Award winner Diane Keaton has directed films (including HANGING UP and UNSTRUNG HEROES) and she's acted in films directed by other women (Gillian Armstrong's MRS. SOFEL, Joyce Chopra's THE LEMON SISTERS, Nancy Meyers' SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE, Callie Khouri's MAD MONEY, Jessie Nelson's LOVE THE COOPERS, and, I'd argue, BABY BOOM was co-directed by Nancy Meyers). 
Academy Award winner Susan Sarandon has acted in films directed by women (including Euzhan Palcy's A DRY WHITE SEASON, Gillian Armstrong's LITTLE WOMEN, Ann Turner's IRRESISTIBLE, Shana Feste's THE GREATEST, Lorene Scafaria's THE MEDDLER, Gaby Dellal's ABOUT RAY and Lana and Lilly Wachowski's CLOUD ATLAS and SPEED RACER.)
Academy Award winner Shirley MacLaine has directed a film (BRUNO -- she also co-directed the documentary THE OTHER HALF OF THE SKY: A CHINA MEMOIR -- but we're focusing on feature films, not documentaries) and has acted in films directed by women (including Beeban Kidron's USED PEOPLE, Randa Haines' WRESTLING ERNEST HEMINGWAY, Marleen Gorris' CAROLINA and Nora Ephron's BEWITCHED).
Four time Emmy winner Marlo Thomas is more of a stage and TV actress (including Lee Grant's amazing NOBODY'S CHILD).  But she has made nine feature films and they include Lisa Azuelos' LOL and the 90s classic IN THE SPIRIT directed by Sandra Seacat.
I'm sorry, I can't take you seriously, Jane, as you whine about how unequal things are for women in the media when you've  opened no doors for women directors despite having your own production company, when you've never acted in a film directed by a woman and when on your own TV show that you star in and produce you are unable to have an equal number of female directors -- it's just whining, Jane.
When you refuse to use your own power, it's just whining.
And we're all tired of it.
You say you care about women -- why didn't you work with a woman director on a film?
Why didn't you hire women to direct?
And don't lie to the American people and insist women weren't directing.
Elaine May was directing in the 70s -- such classics as A NEW LEAF, THE HEARTBREAK KID and MIKEY AND NICKY -- as was Joan Micklin Silver (HESTER STREET, BETWEEN THE LINES and CHILLY SCENES OF WINTER).  And as the 70s were closing and the 80s were starting, a number of women were directing -- Jane Wagner directed (and wrote) MOMENT BY MOMENT, Joan Rivers directed (and co-wrote) RABBIT TEST, Joan Darling directed FIRST LOVE, Joan Tewkesbury directed OLD BOYFRIENDS, Anne Bancroft directed (and wrote) FATSO, Claudia Weill directed GIRLFRIENDS and IT'S MY TURN, Nancy Walker directed the camp classic CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC, and Patricia Birch directed (and choreographed) GREASE 2.

Feminist Jane didn't give one woman a break at directing a feature film.
But Robert Stigwood and Allan Carr gave Wagner, Walker and Birch the chance to direct.
Jane had her own company (IPC -- later Fonda Films) during the 70s and 80s.  
But she had no desire to hire a woman to direct a film.
So if things are bad for women in media -- and they are bad -- then why don't you own your own b.s., Jane.  You didn't give women shots at directing when you were a producer of film and now that you produce and star in a TV series, you still can't hire women to direct in equal numbers.
So stop whining about the gender imbalance because, Jane Fonda, you are responsible for the gender imbalance.
I'm not in the mood for these bitches anymore.
Feminism?
Walk the talk or just sit your tired ass down and close your mouth.
In whatever time remains on this website, we'll be calling out all you fakes who claim to be feminists but every time we turn around we see that you are the obstruction that harms women.
That especially includes those of you who gave lip service to being opposed to the Iraq War when Bully Boy Bush was in the White House but don't say a damn word today.
Very low pass by B1 Bomber in al-Udeid AB in while on its way to bomb targets in &




Yes, the Iraq War does continue.  Just view the clip above if you doubt it.
Today, the US Defense Dept announced:
Strikes in Iraq
Attack and fighter aircraft conducted three strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:

-- Near Mosul, three strikes engaged three ISIL tactical units and destroyed a vehicle, two tunnel entrances and four assembly areas.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike.
Again, the Iraq War continues.
And will as long as fake asses like Jane Fonda pretend to be antiwar but never call for an end to the Iraq War.
Not everyone is so cowardly, thank goodness.
After four tours with the U.S. Marines in Iraq, Representative Seth Moulton, a first-term Democrat from Massachusetts, remains focused on the country’s development and its current battle against the ISIS extremist group, and he said he has concluded that its fundamental problems are political. A military strategy that fails to address Iraq’s political weaknesses ensures that American troops—about 5,000 of whom have returned to the country—will be back again five years after ISIS is defeated, Moulton said in an address at the U.S. Institute of Peace. 
Laying out the details of a plan he is pressing to secure the peace in Iraq, Moulton was broadly critical of the Obama administration’s approach, saying the U.S. today has failed to even define what its political goals are for the country. The burden falls on the U.S. to promote reforms that would ease Sunni grievances, help in reconciliation between Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government and counter Iranian influence, the representative said. Those efforts can only take place in the context of a unified, federal state, where effective institutions win trust from Iraq’s patchwork of religious, ethnic and tribal constituencies, he said.
“This is a tricky issue that a lot of Americans want to push out of our minds and don’t want to talk about,” he said. “At the least, we owe it to our troops. When you ask young people to go halfway around the globe and put their lives on the line for something, they deserve to know what it is. We ought to be able to give them a plan to succeed.”



We'll hopefully revisit this topic tomorrow.  But we'll note the Congress representative is calling for:


  • A Defined Political Objective. The U.S. must help boost the legitimacy of the Iraqi state by pushing for militias of all stripes to withdraw from towns and cities and by encouraging distribution of political and budgetary authority away from Baghdad.
  • Support for Political Reform. The U.S., having a well-intentioned partner in current Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, should press him to tackle corruption in the Shia elite and support increased Sunni influence in parliament. “The systematic disenfranchisement of Sunnis”—a key factor in ISIS’s advance in 2014—“must end,” Moulton said.
  • Conditioning Military Support on Political Progress. Iraq is dependent on American weapons to fight ISIS, and that leverage should be used to demand political reform as a stepping-stone to long-term stability. Such pressure might slow the recapturing of Mosul from ISIS, but the lack of a post-conflict plan for the city in itself is good reason to delay the battle. “It has been a mistake to provide so much military support to date without demanding any political reforms in return,” he said. “We don’t have a plan for post-conflict Mosul at this point.”
  • Support From Congress for a Diplomatic-Led Strategy. Fewer than 2,000 State Department personnel are now in Baghdad, down from 11,500 in 2013; and $1.6 billion was cut from security and political assistance programs. Support for non-military initiatives must be restored.
This morning, I said we'd explore a number of topics including the Ashraf residents.  There's not time tonight.  My apologies.
I've looked the other way on MS and WOMEN'S MEDIA CENTER and all the fake asses and seeing the push for war with Syria posted at MS -- the fact-free propaganda -- was the last straw.  I'm drawing a line and hope others do to.
These bitches are selling war and passing themselves off as feminists.
They're not.
They can call themselves "pro women" if they want but feminism requires anti-war.  It has not morphed -- even in it's most pathetic, push-up bra, do-me-feminism stage -- out of that and it can't because feminism is global.
The following community sites updated: