Neocons Dragging US Back to Iraq

Now that the region is erupting anew with the storming of Iraq by radical jihadist elements such as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) and ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) and the franchise that is al Qaeda the warmongers and neocons in The Homeland are shrieking like banshees over Obama's "loss" of Iraq. The current chaos though would not be possible were it not for the original sin of attacking Iraq in 2003, toppling Saddam Hussein who was subsequently lynched and showing that America was no better than it's former puppet in continuing the torture at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison. The country was also plunged into sectarian violence, bombed to smithereens - the civilian death toll is staggering - and had the indignity of having to see one US puppet replaced with another with no real benefit to the country nor the people. Now it is all going up like a flaming bag of dogshit in Uncle Scam's hand.

To be fair on this one the disaster in Iraq is not Obama's fault, were the Bushreich not to have lied the American public into an illegal and unnecessary war based on a pack of lies about Saddam's phantom weapons of mass destruction there would still be stable country, granted that Saddam was a bastard but he was our bastard. Obama has been far too busy avenging his offense at being humiliated by Russian leader Vladimir Putin over his giving asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and later intervening to stop what would have been a catastrophic war in Syria. Obama has more important things to do than dick around with Iraq with pushing to start a new Cold War and perhaps stumble into World War III. Robert Parry at Consortium News puts it best in his latest piece over at Consortium News entitled "Blaming Obama for Iraq's Chaos" from which I excerpt:

After Islamic militants captured the major Iraqi city of Mosul on Tuesday, the danger of Official Washington’s false narratives again asserted itself, a direct consequence of the failure to enforce any meaningful accountability on the neocons and others who pushed the Iraq War.

The emerging neocon-preferred narrative is that the jihadist victory in the northern city of Mosul and the related mess in neighboring Syria are the fault of President Barack Obama for not continuing the U.S. military occupation of Iraq indefinitely and for not intervening more aggressively in Syria’s civil war.

For instance, the New York Times on Wednesday wrote that “the swift capture of large areas of [Mosul] by militants aligned with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria represented a climactic moment on a long trajectory of Iraq’s unraveling since the withdrawal of American forces at the end of 2011.”

What is perhaps most striking about such accounts, which are appearing across the major U.S. media, is that the narrative doesn’t go back to the most obvious starting point: President George W. Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. It was that invasion and the ensuing occupation that hurtled Iraq and – to an extent – Syria into their current chaos.

Bush’s invasion, which was justified by bogus claims about Iraq hiding weapons of mass destruction, was in clear violation of international law, lacking the explicit approval of the United Nations Security Council. Yet, even after the WMD falsehoods were exposed and the body counts soared, there was almost no accountability enforced either on the public officials who carried out the aggressive war or on the opinion leaders who rationalized it.

In many cases, the same pundits and pols continue to shape U.S. public opinion today and are dominating the narratives on Iraq and Syria. Thus, there is almost no attention to the fact that before the U.S. overthrow (and subsequent hanging) of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, there was no al-Qaeda threat in Iraq or Syria.

Mr. Parry goes on to debunk the myth of "The Surge" which was nothing more than a propaganda term for a brief escalation of violence led by the hallowed General David Petraeus and his rat pack of media whore supporters as well as the always bloodthirsty Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham. The "Surge" was of course bullshit and primarily targeted at putting a sunny side up spin on what was in essence a humiliating defeat for the US and the neocons of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) whose lunacy had contributed to the disaster in the first place. Now in 2014 many of the same culprits for the Iraq debacle are being afforded legitimacy that then don't deserve by a corrupt media whose only purpose it to shill for wars and protect the interests of the oligarchy and the political elite who serve them. Case in point - the New York Times has once again featured a story by the dutiful neocon lackey Michael Gordon "Iraq Said to Seek U.S. Strikes on Militants" which will be what the war party will push along with their standard "stabbed in the back" whining as they agitate for a re-engagement of US forces in Iraq to "finish the job" this time.

The neocon propaganda beacon over at the Washington Post has a real knee-slapper today, a column by an Iraq war veteran decrying the overrunning of Iraq entitled  "Iraq veteran: This is not what my friends fought and died for" rehashing the old Vietnam canard of "they didn't let us win".  The writer is described in the sub-header as:  John Nagl, a veteran of both Iraq wars, is the headmaster of The Haverford School and author of the forthcoming "Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War." - just another death pimp hustling a book and playing on the gullibility of Americans whose bogus concern for veterans only surfaces when political fodder is needed. So the neocons will be doing what they always do in caterwauling about the global Islamic takeover and calling for the government to send more US servicemen and women to die for their vainglorious stupidity and failed ideology.  This should do wonders for the collapsing house of cards economy that has already been gutted by wars of choice as well as the entire Veterans Administration healthcare system that is understaffed, underfunded and can't book appointments fast enough for the victims and buddies of guys like Nagl let alone a new wave of permanently damaged victims who will be sacrificed upon the neocon altar of lies. 

Curveball Redux: Iran War Propaganda Escalates

The  anti-Iran war propaganda is setting new standards of what constitutes hogwash with each passing news cycle. one of the most recent lurid tales comes courtesy of Reuters which devoted major space last week to a series on the assets of the ruling Ayatollah Khamenei conjures up memories of the great Neocon hope that was Iraqi dissident “Curveball”. The story is told in an article entitled Iranian dissidents say Iran has built a secret new nuclear site plumbs the depths of credibility although it will sell well to the usual low information mouth-breathers who still to this day believe that Saddam Hussein was behind the September 11, 2001 attacks. The propaganda piece cites the source for the latest sinister effort by the Iranians to conquer the world, destroy Israel and reestablish the Caliphate as being an organization that calls itself “The National Council of Resistance of Iran” that is - get this - based in Paris. This will further bolster the French (formerly known as cheese eating surrender monkeys) in the esteem of the Neocon warmongers.

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi a defector who was given the code name of “Curveball” by U.S. and German intelligence officials regaled Bush administration figures with with tales of Saddam’s mobile bioweapons labs, stating that he was a former chemical engineer with insider knowledge. This led in turn to then Secretary of State Colin Powell’s testimony at the United Nations that made the case for attacking Iraq and George W. Bush's infamous 2003 State of the Union address. While the eventual discovery that “Curveball” was full of bullshit and was probably making it all up to curry favorable treatment In the words of a former CIA official at the time he was “a guy trying to get his green card essentially in Germany, and playing the system for what it was worth” the attack and invasion commenced. The Bush administration eventually created an investigative commission and unsurprisingly the revelations included comments such as “crazy”, “out of control”, a “congenital liar” and a man who just “might be an alcoholic”. There was also some speculation that “Curveball” may have been a relative of Neocon darling Ahmad Chalabi . Mr. Alwan al-Janabi finally  fessed up in a 2011 Guardian interview and expressed shock that his lies were used to bolster the case for the disastrous shock and awe military campaign and that he just had an ax to grind with Saddam - pick a number and stand in line buddy.

The exposure of the lies of “Curveball” came far too late to prevent the murder, torture and displacement of tens to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians caught up in the military strikes and the sectarian skirmishing and score-settling in the aftermath. Not that they really matter though, they were dark complected non-Christians or what a good many exceptional Americans consider subhumans and the military and political leadership considers acceptable collateral damage. Now over ten and a half years after the bombing of Baghdad was commenced, televised with all the flag-draped hoopla by U.S. state-corporate news arms the place is still a disaster and the domestic economy has been so gutted by the preference of guns over butter that without the Federal Reserve providing a heroin fix of 85 billion dollars per month it would all collapse. The war was a hot seller in the early days and Americans cheered the exploits of the invaders and the saving of private Jessica Lynch, late exposed as a total hoax right up there with the toppling of Saddam's statue in Baghdad's Firdos Square which was also a lie. The Iraq war was the manual on how to lie the nation into wars of choice and a precursor of what has been seen in recent months, from Syria to Iran to the thoroughly rotten CBS 60 Minutes fake story on Benghazi just a few weeks back. In an interesting bit of trivia CBS's Lara Logan also reported on the Saddam statue psy-op.

The main reason for bringing up “Curveball” is that with the relentless propaganda campaign to start yet another unnecessary and evil war in the Middle East there seems to be much agitation and propaganda that is culled from the same playbook that was used to lie this country into Iraq. The Obama-Kerry push for attacking Syria over a gassing of civilians including children was a rehashed version of the “he gassed his own people” meme that was invoked against Saddam (although he probably obtained the chemicals from American corporations) but fortunately that one blew up on Barry and the boys. The Ghouta gassings have still to this day not been convincingly proven to the the acts of the Assad regime and quite frankly, even if they were (which is unlikely) why do a little over a thousand who were victims of sarin gas matter in the greater scheme of things more than the tens of thousands otherwise slaughtered in Syria? Dead is after all dead and the outrage of the Obama regime, especially Secretary of Skull and Bones John Kerry over ANY use of chemical weapons given the U.S. history of depleted uranium, white phosphorus, Napalm and Agent Orange is as laughable as it is hypocritical.

But I digress..

The spigots of the lie factory are fully open pumping out the anti-Iran propaganda in a frantic effort to once and for all sink the P5+1 talks that are set to resume now seem to be headed towards some sort of an agreement despite all of the best efforts of those who have been meddlesome. Even the right-wing regime of Israeli boss Benjamin Netanyahu now appear to be resigned to some sort of accord and are focusing on other ways to start the war. So the onslaught of Iran agitprop will continue unabated. Some of it is actually pretty amusing in a sick sort of way. I particularly enjoyed the one that told a story that longtime Obama intimate from the Windy City Valerie Jarrett has been engaged in back channel negotiations with Iran in order to circumvent Secretary of State John Kerry. Not that would ever be a bad idea to get that stammering ass of a Massachusetts liberal loser out of the process but Valerie Jarrett? The story has likely been planted to sow the seeds of divisiveness and confusion in the White House - as they don't already do a good enough job of themselves. Considering that it is largely being floated on right-wing blogs and news agrregator websites notorious for being Neocon/GOP disinformation mills it is highly likely to be bullshit.  The sheer magnitude of the garbage that is put out is astounding and that many actually believe it is yet another example of how close that this country is coming to fulfilling its destiny as a historical example of what not do be, for hundreds of years into the future historians will be hauling the carcass of the U.S. empire onto an autopsy table and carving away for exactly what caused the collapse that is looming. It could be that the greed, exceptionalism, lust for power and war and the dumbing down all were just too much. The prophecy of the movie Idiocracy will soon be fulfilled here in what was once a land of plenty but thanks to decades of decay and a total abdication of adult leadership has become a pox upon the planet.

So grab some popcorn and enjoy the show, it would all be hysterical if the possibility of being turned into a cinder once the nukes start flying weren't so real. As the late George Carlin once put it - 'When you're born into this world, you're given a ticket to the freak show. If you're born in America you get a front row seat.'