Showing posts with label iraq. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iraq. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 12, 2025

12: Iraq



Ukraine agrees to U.S.-led ceasefire plan if Russia accepts

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Friday, March 13, 2020

It Was Stupid To Inject 1.5 Trillion Into The Stock Market

But then you fight the war you trained for. That is why Bush went into Iraq. He needed a standing army to tussle with, even though that standing army had nothing to do with 9/11.

And so they injected 1.5 trillion into the stock market. This is the financial Iraq.

The right response would be to give everyone $1,000 a month. For 300 million people that was enough money for five months, perhaps enough to tide over the worst part of the pandemic, although there is no data yet to suggest this virus will get shy during summer.


Coronavirus News (2)
Coronavirus News (1)
The Coronavirus Pandemic Is Like The Spanish Flu (1918-1922)
The Most Responsible Head Of State On The Planet

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Tuesday, January 07, 2020

Excellent Opportunity To Not Retaliate

Iran had to do something and it did. But there are no casualties. And this is an excellent opening for the US to not retaliate.

The other powers that are actively trying to help de-escalate should be allowed to play their roles.

This thing has to be steered to dialogue.

Trump replaced NAFTA with something that looks and smells like NAFTA. Perhaps Trump would like to cut a nuclear deal with Iran.

Restraint Would Be A Good Idea
Trump-Khameini Tit-Tat: This Is Not Looking Good
The Strong Case For No War
Suleimani Episode: Bizarre Turn Of Events
Trump's Suleimani Move: Politically Bad
Qassem Suleimani: Dialogue Beats Escalation (2)
Qassem Suleimani: Dialogue Beats Escalation



The Nightmare Stage of Trump’s Rule Is Here Unstable and impeached, the president pushes the U.S. toward war with Iran. ........ NATO has suspended its mission training Iraqi forces to fight ISIS. Iraq’s Parliament has voted to expel American troops — a longtime Iranian objective. (On Monday, U.S. forces sent a letter saying they were withdrawing from Iraq in response, only to then claim that it was a draft released in error.) On Sunday, Iran said it will no longer be bound by the remaining restrictions on its nuclear program in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the deal that Trump abandoned in 2018. Trump has been threatening to commit war crimes by destroying Iran’s cultural sites and tried to use Twitter to notify Congress of his intention to respond to any Iranian reprisals with military escalation. ...... The administration has said that the killing of Suleimani was justified by an imminent threat to American lives, but there is no reason to believe this......... Defense officials who might have stood up to Trump have all left the administration. ....... James Mattis, Trump’s former secretary of defense, instructed his subordinates not to provide the president with options for a military showdown with Iran. ........ presented Trump with the possibility of killing Suleimani as the “most extreme” option on a menu of choices, and were “flabbergasted” when he picked it. ........ “His maximum pressure policy has failed,” Nasr said of Trump. “He has only produced a more dangerous Iran.” ....... ISIS benefits from the breach between Iraq and America. “ISIS suicide and vehicle bombings have nearly stopped entirely,” said Brett McGurk, who until 2018 was special presidential envoy to the coalition fighting ISIS. “Only a few years ago, there were 50 per month, killing scores of Iraqis. That’s because of what we have done and continue to do. These networks will regenerate rapidly if we are forced to leave, and they will again turn their attention on the West.” ....

an establishment that has too often failed to treat him as a walking national emergency. Now the nightmare phase of the Trump presidency is here. The biggest surprise is that it took so long.



GOP Rep. Michael Waltz Says Iranian Missile Attack Could Be Sign of ‘Future De-Escalation’ “If they are hitting infrastructure, that could be a signal that while they had to respond, they did so in a way that would lead to some type of future de-escalation.”

Opinion: How inevitable is war with Iran? war with Iran is not to the president’s advantage. .... Trump has only one strategic imperative in 2020, and that’s vindication in an impeachment trial and reelection. A messy, all-out — and if the past is any guide unwinnable — war that results in skyrocketing oil prices, a meltdown in financial markets, economic dislocation and a surge in U.S. deaths at Iranian hands will not help him at the ballot box. ......

Like Trump, Khamenei in Tehran wants to stay in power. He’s a crafty leader committed to expanding Iran’s regional reach, but his main objective is survival of the Islamic Republic and regime maintenance.

...... The drone attack on the second most powerful man in Iran and in a third country was an act untethered from any coherent, long-term strategy. ..... The killing has not made Americans more secure or limited Iran’s regional influence. What it has done is cripple the U.S.-Iraqi relationship, strengthen Iran’s power in the region and undermine the fight against Islamic State.

Oil prices soar after Iran attacks airbases housing US troops in Iraq Iran used ballistic missiles from inside Iraq, indicating a significant escalation. ..... A spike in oil prices could deal a blow to the world economy, which is already struggling from weak manufacturing activity. Dow (INDU) futures tumbled more than 300 points, or 1.2%, late Wednesday.

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Restraint Would Be A Good Idea

In business, they say, don't throw your good money after bad.













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Trump-Khameini Tit-Tat: This Is Not Looking Good

This is yet another escalation, larger than the last attack this is a response to. This is not looking good.

Iran fires missiles at Iraqi bases hosting U.S. troops attack with tens of ballistic missiles on Al Assad military base ..... We warn all allied countries of the U.S. that if attacks are launched from bases in their countries on Iran, they will be a target of military retaliation. ..... more than a dozen ballistic missiles against U.S. military and coalition forces in Iraq ...... at Al-Assad and Irbil. ...... Attacking the U.S. directly, and not through proxies, would be an extremely bold move for Iran ..... most analysts argued Tehran would not take any steps it believed would lead to war with the U.S. ...... Iran has threatened "more crushing responses" if the U.S. retaliates with another attack. Trump, meanwhile, threatened to strike 52 Iranian sites if Tehran took action like it has tonight.

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The Strong Case For No War

Even if everything Trump is saying about Suleimani is true (and that is not the case), it does not make sense to spend a few trillion dollars to go to war with Iran. That would be like taking a US Army to a one on one knife fight. The US Congress has every right to make sure the Iran War does not happen. A full-fledged war with Iran will give the global economy a heart attack. The world could be back in the 1930s, and we would see a Trump on every island on earth.

Trump's threats to Iraq totally discredit his arguments as to why economic sanctions need to be imposed upon Iran. Iraq is a sovereign country. The US troops are in Iraq because they got invited in by the sovereign government of Iraq, duly elected, mind you. Looks like that welcome is over. A better political mind could have seen this coming.

Two parliaments have voted to give a clear message to Trump. That is enough. Trump has to listen. Iran War is not an option. Trump can not legitimately go to war with Iran.





Here's what could be lost if Trump bombs Iran's cultural treasures If carried out, Donald Trump’s threat to target “cultural sites” in Iran would put him into an axis of architectural evil alongside the Taliban and Isis, both of which have wreaked similar forms of destruction this century. The Taliban dynamited Afghanistan’s sixth-century Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001; Isis has destroyed mosques, shrines and other structures across Iraq and Syria since 2014, some in the ancient city of Palmyra. Not, you might have thought, company the US president would prefer to be associated with. ......... With a civilisation dating back 5,000 years, and over 20 Unesco world heritage sites, Iran’s cultural heritage is rich and unique, especially its religious architecture, which displays a mastery of geometry, abstract design and pre-industrial engineering practically unparalleled in civilisation. This is is not just Iran’s cultural heritage, it is humanity’s....... Iran has a long Christian history, particularly associated with Armenia at its northwestern border. Three of the oldest churches in the region are Unesco world heritage sites. Vank Cathedral, near Isfahan, was built by Armenians fleeing the Ottoman wars in the 17th century. The interior is a riotous patchwork of frescoes and gilded carvings.



“They said it’s a draft. OK, it’s a draft. But we received it. As a state, how are we supposed to act? We should get a second letter to clarify so we can clarify to our people too,” Abdul-Mahdi, who resigned in November but has stayed on in a caretaker role, said, according to the Agence France-Presse. “If I don’t trust you and you don’t trust me, how are we supposed to proceed?” ...... In a prerecorded television address he insisted the US would have to leave....... “We have no exit but this, otherwise we are speeding toward confrontation,” Abdul-Mahdi said, adding that Iraq would have to take a “historic decision” to implement the expulsion. “Otherwise we will not be taken seriously,” he added.
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Monday, January 06, 2020

Suleimani Episode: Bizarre Turn Of Events

Restraint can look like you are doing nothing. But restraint is a lot of hard work, it is a great skill.

Emotions are running high on both sides. There is great chance at graver error. But one hopes the forces of de-escalation are out in full force.

Although it can also feel the air weighs in with the next irrational move. It could be from either side.



Trump's Suleimani Move: Politically Bad
Qassem Suleimani: Dialogue Beats Escalation (2)
Qassem Suleimani: Dialogue Beats Escalation



Tehran insisted that it remains open to negotiations with European countries and maintains that it is not seeking a nuclear weapon. Russia today urged parties to the Iran nuclear deal to treat salvaging the agreement as a 'priority', calling on European partners to fulfil their obligations. Germany also joined France and Britain in urging Iran to refrain from taking 'further violent actions or support for them'. 'It is crucial now to de-escalate,' Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson said in a joint statement last night. EU foreign ministers will hold emergency talks on the Iran crisis on Friday, diplomats said today. The United Nations' atomic watchdog agency says its inspectors are continuing to monitor and verify Iran's nuclear activities.
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Trump's Suleimani Move: Politically Bad







When both the US Congress and the Iraqi parliament tells you to back off, you gotta listen. Large masses are out in the streets. People are doing two plus two and seeing four. They absolutely don't want what by any measure would be an unthinkable war. And they are right.

Trump threatening Iraq with sanctions worse than the one on Iran shows he is desperate. He obviously did not think this through. And we are not even seeing the worse of the unintended consequences.

The reason I oppose and have opposed escalation is, every escalation is one step closer to an unthinkable war.












Qassem Suleimani: Dialogue Beats Escalation (2)
Arundhati Roy On India
Qassem Suleimani: Dialogue Beats Escalation


The People Around Trump Are Totally Unqualified to Stop the Iran Crisis There might still be a peaceful way out of the crisis with Iran—the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, and the United Nations, as well as such quite hawkish prominent Americans as retired Gen. David Petraeus and former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, are urging diplomatic overtures from both sides—but President Donald Trump isn’t likely to go that route for two reasons. First, he isn’t keen on diplomacy. Second, even if he suddenly were, no one around him is very fit for the task. .....

What would a diplomatic solution look like? First, and perhaps above all, it would involve a reembracing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal, including a gradual lifting of economic sanctions, perhaps in exchange for Iran’s cessation of attacks on U.S. targets in the region.

..... his defense secretary, retired Gen. Jim Mattis, who particularly loathed the Iranian regime, called its verification provisions as airtight as those of any treaty he’d ever read. Trump’s hatred for the deal was entirely egotistical: Congress required the president to attest, every few months, that Iran was abiding by the deal, and though Iran continued to abide, Trump could not bear to keep endorsing Barack Obama’s signal diplomatic achievement. It really is that simple. ....... We do not know what the Iranians are plotting as retaliation to Trump’s assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Neither do we know what Trump and his aides are plotting as a response to Iran’s next move. If part of that response really is an attack on Iranian “cultural targets,” as Trump warns, then we will have no active allies anywhere in the world. (We have few enough now.) ...... Many observers are saying that, surely, the Iranians won’t dare launch an attack on American interests—or, surely, Trump wouldn’t really hit cultural targets. But many unlikely things have happened in recent times, so many—some of them so outrageous—that it’s hard to gauge probabilities any longer.

Pentagon Officials Reportedly “Stunned” by Trump’s Decision to Kill Soleimani Pentagon officials usually include a far-out option when they present possibilities to the president in order to make the others seem less extreme. The other options presented to Trump in Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach resort, included strikes against Iranian ships or missile facilities or militias backed by Iran that are operating in Iraq. “The Pentagon also tacked on the choice of targeting General Suleimani, mainly to make other options seem reasonable”...... . “My staff was briefed by a number of people representing a variety of agencies in the United States government and they came away with no feeling that there was evidence of an imminent attack,” Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico said.

The Impeachment Stalemate Is Working Fine for Democrats Mitch McConnell indicated that he had no plans of acceding to Democratic leaders’ demands that a Senate trial include witnesses and document production, as past impeachment trials did ..... McConnell said on the floor of the Senate. He also suggested that he was fine with an indefinite stalemate....... “Has there ever been an instance of such broad-scale defiance of a congressional request for information in the history of the Republic? Has there ever been anything like this?” Griffith asked DOJ attorney Hashim Mooppan. “An instruction has been given from the president of the United States not to cooperate in any form or fashion with an inquiry. Has that ever happened before?”

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