The present problems of Iraq are 100% down to our murderous invasion and occupation. The idea that further western bombing will make things better is so deluded as to beggar belief.
I was surprised to find during my Burnes research that the imperialist powers of Britain and Russia were explicitly exploiting Sunni and Shia divisions to further their conquests of Islamic lands as early as the 1830’s. This has been the major tool of the neo-con Middle Eastern gameplan for some time, spreading disunity and crippling war throughout the Middle East, with the hope that this will benefit the interests of Israel.
The peculiar result has been that in general the West is very actively supporting Sunni armies and miscellaneous forces, but in Iraq is supporting the Shia. ISIS – which is heavily backed by the Saudis, who hate al-Maliki – brings this paradox into sharp relief. The current US and UK strategy is to persuade Saudi Arabia to get ISIS to reconcentrate their efforts against Assad, on the understanding they will be allowed to keep the Sunni areas of Iraq (the old neo-con plan of dividing Iraq is firmly back on the agenda).
The BBC News this morning said that ISIS would not be capable of using the billions of dollars of sophisticated western armaments they have captured. I think you will find the Saudis remedy that one quite quickly. It is quite possible we will see some token airstrikes to kill civilians in Mosul, in order to appease Obama’s domestic backers who are never happy if Americans aren’t killing enough people, but only after agreement has been reached with the Saudis that no serious harm will be done – except to the ordinary people neither Obama, the Saudis or al-Maliki care in the least about.
I think I got carried away there with the word Trade.
It is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.
Further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investment_Partnership
No Fred, it is you who are wrong. And it is not the end of the story. The BBC has failed, and failed miserably, to report so many goings on in Eastern Ukraine you might forgive somebody for having missed one marginalised report of an incident in Kiev. It’s a bit like The Boy Who Cried “Wolf”. The wolf, or in this case report, was not expected. So do you think it is right that the BBC, for which most of us pay licence fees, should not report the killing of innocents? That’s what I think you’re trying to say. Am I right?
A Node,
” For example.?”
http://newsjunkiepost.com/2014/05/08/benghazi-the-insecure-crossroad-of-oil-mercenaries-and-jihadists/
A Node,
” For example?”
Vietnam.
Jives and John Goss,
I would say that your examples are cases of “objective achieved” rather than plans gone wrong. I have to go out now but I’ll answer in more detail later.
@Mary: Great that Boris is back on side. Do you remember his campaign with Adam Price – when he was editor of New Statesman) to get Blair impeached? I seem to remember that he then got sent to Basra.
@Mike: Plenty on the radio 5 phone in this morning… contributors almost unanimous in blaming Saudi (and the West) for funding ISIS.
Just as a lot of people are still deluded about US as an infinitely benign empire, a lot of otherwise good people remain deluded about Blair because they are devoted to the Labour Party, and therefore hooked onto one of their former leaders emotionally. But when such people turn against him… THEN he’d better watch out!
@Patrick: Good for you, but you/we need to try harder with that petition. Only 32 signatures so far. Needs a shorter link…
The bees and the other pollinating insects will just love Lord de Mauley’s ‘Agri Tech Strategy’. It should finish them off for good once the GMOs are introduced and us too. Waaay! Monsanto and Cargill here we come.
A Lancashire farmer directs attention to DEFRA’s Lord de Mauley: responsible for GM crops
http://gmandchemicalindustry9.wordpress.com/2014/06/16/a-lancashire-farmer-directs-attention-to-defras-lord-de-mauley-responsible-for-gm-crops/
Lord de Mauley Eton of course. Don’t you just love his one liner. Why isn’t he in the DWP with IDS ffs?.
‘On 6 October 2013, he expressed his opinion that the poor should “learn to go without”.’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Ponsonby,_7th_Baron_de_Mauley
http://feedingthefuture.info/introduction/the-commissioning-group/professor-chris-pollock-cbe/
Wonder what ‘releases into the environment’ are or consist of?
Mary
16 Jun, 2014 – 2:14 pm
“The jury has been out for a long time”
The longer a jury is out the more likely a not-guilty verdict.
Is Blair being set up to take a fall.
Mainstream media coverage of him over the past few years has been very negative, including highlighting his dosh, and the peeps increasingly encouraged to bay at him at will.
Lately even his stoutest previous defenders are nowhere to be seen.
And there’s still Chilcot to come.
I doubt even the redactions will save whatever reputation he has left.
Any withdrawal of lucrative contracts would be very indicative of his future, and anyway, having a leader from our own side appearing at The Hague would show that we’re still the good guys, right.
Is it really true he uses that same jet all the time.
Dear, oh dear. I think a bit of lower profile and varying of movements might be in order during this difficult time.
Not necessarily, Doug:
“Twelve Angry Men”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejHKA2HI4TY
Have to disagree there, Herbie. The BBC are still protective towards him [despite what he and Alistair Campbell did to them…]
Peacewisher
Maybe, but his outing on Marr was presented by a stern-faced Marr as Blair having serious questions to answer, and this article presents all the mainstream criticisms of him:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27852832
There’s definitely a shift.
Previously such warts would not have been mentioned so openly.
If Tony Blair is to be scapegoated, then the BBC will have to find a way of making reasonable their change from hagiography to outright criticism.
They’d typically do this by pretending that there is now new information of which they were previously unaware, and that would fit with the above presentations.
But, we’ll see.
Mary’s comments at 6.05pm on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)are not on the main theme of Craig’s original post but raise a hugely important subject. So, Craig: grateful for your thoughts – in a separate posting – on these opaque negotiations which will have huge impacts on every part of GB and NI, whether united or separated and even whether in or out of the EU.
As well as the excellent John Hilary paper to which Mary gave a link, I recommend:
A)the article in Le Monde Diplomatique from December 2013 http://mondediplo.com/2013/12/02tafta ;
B) Contributing to the 38 Degrees publicity campaign [I’ve done so];
C) Writing to MPs (constituency or on relevant select committees/ APPGs) urging them to ask PQs about the unacceptable secrecy of these negotiations [I am just about to do so].
The Medialens Editors have just produced this piece.
Blair: Bombing Iraq Better. Again
http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2014/767-blair-bombing-iraq-better-again.html
@Herbie: Do you really think so?
Do you remember all those previous occasions when Blair was lambasted a little in the media, and then exonerated just as things were getting interesting. I am surprised that Boris was so outspoken this morning, but he’s losing popularity because of the water cannon… this could just be his attempt to shore up his position (and speak his mind!).
PS I hope you’re right!
@Mary. It’s worse than that… bombing Iraq AND Syria better. Perhaps he needs another visit to warmongers anonymous.
Mary
I do wish you’d get your own blog. The subject is Iraq and ISIS, about which you have relatively little to say. So you fill in with Palestinian children, GM crops, drill free dentistry, Rebekah Brooks, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Not forgetting a “melancholy song sung by Judith Durham”.
You do know you can get a free blog at Blogger.com? And they’ll even design it for you. All you need to do is put in text. Which with copy and paste can be done in the blink of an eye.
And since you’re so keen to keep Craig ‘informed’, you could post a link to your blog occasionally here. Or email him.
———
Meanwhile,
“Iraq blowback: Isis rise manufactured by insatiable oil addiction”
West’s co-optation of Gulf states’ jihadists created the neocon’s best friend: an Islamist Frankenstein
Nafeez Ahmed in the Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/jun/16/blowback-isis-iraq-manufactured-oil-addiction
———
and did someone mention ISIS wearing balaclavas?
The other odd thing is that they’re driving almost identical pick-up trucks, even down to colour-coordination.
As seen here
https://twitter.com/HuffPostUK/status/478579862936895489/photo/1
and in various videos.
Col Morris Davis seems to think they’re all Fords
https://twitter.com/ColMorrisDavis/status/478585753132621824/photo/1
So did they steal them or were they provided for them?
Peacewisher. I have no time at all for Johnson. He is a Tory of the worst type. Have you ever seen him in action at County Hall? He just walks over everyone including the chair.
The Medialens editors sum him up:
Ah, this time it really will be a ‘liberation’, whereas last time, as even London mayor Boris Johnson notes:
‘It looks to me as though the Americans were motivated by a general strategic desire to control one of the biggest oil exporters in the world…’
Johnson, who voted for the war and describes it as merely a ‘tragic mistake’, is concerned not with the criminality and bloodshed but the ability to sell wars in future:
‘Blair is now undermining the very cause he advocates – the possibility of serious and effective intervention.’
I see we have a new ”Resident Inviligator’. I will continue to post, Craig and the moderators permitting, thanks. Hope my punctuation is satisfactory now. I have a long memory!
I dont trust BoJo at all.
Beneath a veneer of blundering buffoonery lurks a deeply political operator and right wing idealogue.
Everything he does is calculated despite the foppish charade.
You love to sound ‘courageous’, Mary.
What a pity you didn’t have the courage to give Resident Dissident a full answer when he/she asked if you post at the Medialens message board. The answer you gave Macky at Squonk, when he/she asked if you’d really been “hounded off” that board.
I have an excellent memory too.
383 reasons why Blair has been protected… the Labour and Conservative MPs who voted for war with Iraq, who would also be war criminals. Yes, Mary, you’re right, I’m wrong, Boris was one of them. So was that nice trades unionist chappie Alan Johnson.
I do not post on the Medialens Message Board. Would a sworn affidavit do not that it’s any of yout f’ing business what I do and where.
Dreoilin
Who knows much about Iraq? The takeover of Mosul appears to have been done with collusion between Washington and Tehran. As with all events in the last 20 years the devious machinations of the Zionists take a long time to be understood by non-devious minds.
Thanks for the link to Nafees Ahmad. Very well informed, but no clues as to why it’s in Maliki’s interests to give in to Washington’s revision of the boundaries plans.
What does Iran get out of this deal?
Terror alerts, 9/11-style bombings and murders of British citizens will soon come to London’s streets, according to chilling threats from UK citizens fighting alongside Islam’s most violent terrorist group operating in Syria and Iraq.
The threat comes from British nationals fighting for the Sunni militant group calling themselves the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/ISIS) in Syria. According to the Sunday Times, they promise that after they’re done there, Britain is next. The message comes from three such fighters, all youngsters in their teens and twenties.
http://rt.com/news/166128-isis-jihadists-threaten-britain/
The $750m US embassy in Baghdad. Plans are being made to evacuate it.
http://www.businessinsider.com/750-million-united-states-embassy-iraq-baghdad-2013-3?op=1
Note the initials KBR on the suggestion box. Kellogg Brown Root, once a subsidiary of Halliburton, are the contractors who took a fortune off the US taxpayers in Iraq.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KBR_(company)
Interesting article, Mark, and even more interesting comments. The decision to embroil the UK in Middle Eastern power politics (which started with “arms for Iraq”), looks stupider and stupider. What will the history books have to say about Thatcher and Blair, I wonder…
Margaret Cook, about Iraq, before the last election:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1248873/MARGARET-COOK-Im-proud-Robin–youre-man-emerge-honour-Iraq-debacle.html
Just read it!
“Would a sworn affidavit do, not that it’s any of yout f’ing business what I do and where.”
You write something on a blog, Mary, it’s accessible to everyone on the internet (unless the blog has been made private.) It stops being your business and becomes everyone’s. Sorry to tell you.
I found it very interesting that you were pushed off Medialens for talking about Jews (one assumes repeatedly) since there are more than a couple of people here who find your concentration on Jewish people OTT.
But I’ll let people read it for themselves.
https://squonk.tk/blog/2014/01/20/the-general-discussion-thread/comment-page-13/#comment-5835
——-
Guano
“but no clues as to why it’s in Maliki’s interests to give in to Washington’s revision of the boundaries plans.”
Who said it was? I didn’t see Nafeez Ahmed saying that. I’m sure Maliki is depending on Iran to prop him up.
I find it funny that Iran having offered to help the USA in stopping ISIS, the USA has already stated that such talks will be on the ‘periphery’ of nuclear talks. They need Iran, but want to hive off any such help from nuclear negotiations.
The Yanks don’t do irony.