The Obvious Point Is That the Kurds Don't Have Their Sh%$ Together

I'd like to see a Kurdish homeland some day, but it's not going to happen until Kurdish dynastic conflicts don't take precedence over their own sense of nationhood.

Until then, they will be played off against each other for the benefit of other peoples:

After weeks of threats and posturing, the Iraqi government carried out a military assault on Monday to curb the independence drive by the nation’s Kurdish minority, wresting oil fields and a contested city from separatists pushing to break away from Iraq.

The deadly clashes pitted two crucial American allies against each other, with government forces seizing Kirkuk from Kurds who had intended to build a separate nation in the northern third of Iraq.

The Kurds voted overwhelmingly for independence from Iraq in a referendum three weeks ago. The United States, Baghdad and most countries in the region had condemned the vote, fearing it would fuel ethnic divisions, lead to the breakup of Iraq and hobble the fight against the Islamic State.

Iraqi government troops and the Kurdish forces, known as pesh merga, are both essential elements of the American-led coalition battling the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Both forces are supplied and trained by the United States.

Despite the resounding success of the referendum, Iraqi forces were able to take Kirkuk in a single day and with little fight, partly because it is a multiethnic city of Kurds, Turkmens and Arabs, and partly because the Kurds themselves were divided.

Baghdad had forged an agreement with the Kurdish faction that controlled most of the strategic points of Kirkuk, allowing government forces to sweep into much of the city without firing a shot. But skirmishes with another Kurdish faction left nearly 30 dead and dozens wounded, according to local hospitals.

(emphasis mine)

They are a people, but they are not yet a nation.

Things Just Went Pear Shaped in Iraq

Kurdistan has just overwhelmingly backed a referendum for independence, and the government in Baghdad is going postal:

The Iraqi government escalated its confrontation with its northern Kurdish region on Wednesday, threatening to send troops and seize oil fields there and taking steps to shut down international flights to and from the region.

The moves came in retaliation for a referendum on Monday in which the region, Iraqi Kurdistan, voted decisively to seek independence from Iraq. Kurdish officials announced Wednesday that nearly 93 percent of voters approved the referendum, which aims to create an independent state for the Kurds, an ethnic minority in Iraq.

Iraq’s Parliament asked the country’s prime minister on Wednesday to deploy troops to the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, one of several disputed areas held by Kurdish troops but claimed by Baghdad, and to take control of all oil fields in the Kurdish region.

A decision to send troops would be up to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. He gave no public indication of his intentions on Wednesday, except to say he wanted “no fighting among the people of the country.”

He also sent a delegation from the Iraqi military to Iran to “coordinate military efforts,” a military statement said.

Iraq has called the vote illegal and has vowed to ignore the results. The vote has also provoked the Kurdish region’s two powerful neighbors, Turkey and Iran.

All three countries have been conducting military exercises near the border of Iraqi Kurdistan this week.

………

Iraqi aviation authorities notified foreign airlines on Wednesday that it would cancel all permits to land and take off from two international airports in the Kurdish region as of Friday afternoon. The action followed an ultimatum by Prime Minister Abadi on Tuesday for Kurdistan to surrender control of its two international airports or face a shutdown of international flights.

This Business Will get out of Control. It Will get out of Control and we'll be Lucky to Live Through It.

This is going to get very crazy very fast.  I honestly expect both Iraq and Turkey to threaten invasion with a reasonable chance of this leading to an actual invasion.

To quote Freddie Dalton Thompson from The Hunt for Red October:

Tweet if the Day

a good statue:
a bronze shoe statue built for Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, who threw his shoes at Bush pic.twitter.com/oGg0fuZpR0

— SubMedina (@SubMedina) August 22, 2017

H/t naked capitalism for finding this engaging bit of history.

These days, we have a surfeit of targets for such a protest.

Yeah, That Would Be Great

It appears that the House of Saud has finally noticed that the majority of the citizens of Iraq are Shia, and they are determined to reestablish Sunni hegemony in the region, because, after all, it's worked so f%$#ing well in Syria and Yemen:

Iraq and Saudi Arabia are negotiating a new alliance that would give Riyadh a leading role in rebuilding Iraq’s war-torn towns and cities, while bolstering Baghdad’s credentials across the region.

Meetings between senior officials on both sides over the past six months have focused on shepherding Iraq away from its powerful neighbour and Saudi Arabia’s long-time rival, Iran, whose influence over Iraqi affairs has grown sharply since the 2003 ousting of Saddam Hussein.

Iraq and Saudi Arabia have long been considered opponents in the region, but a visit by the Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to Riyadh last week and a follow-up trip to the UAE further thawed relations which had already been much improved by high-profile visits between the two countries.

………

“This visit was an important step in ensuring that Iraq returns to the Arab fold and is supported in doing so by friendly partners,” said the former Saudi minister of state Saad al-Jabri. “This necessitates limiting Tehran’s continued attempts to dominate Iraq and spread sectarianism. Broader engagement between Riyadh and Baghdad will lead the way for enhanced regional support for Iraq, especially from the Gulf states. This is essential after the capture of Mosul from Isis and as Iraq looks towards national reconstruction.” 

The House of Saud created ISIS, and now these arsonists want a piece of the action rebuilding after the conflagration.

A rapprochement between Sunni and Shia in Iraq is essential to the nation's future as a unitary state.

Involving Riyadh in this process would be an unmitigated disaster.

For All Your Craft and Hobby Needs, Now with Grave Robbing

I am referring, of course to Hobby Lobby, which has been caught smuggling antiquities to provide exhibits for their "Museum":

The packages that made their way from Israel and the United Arab Emirates to retail outlets owned by Hobby Lobby, the seller of arts and craft supplies, were clearly marked as tile samples.

But according to a civil complaint filed on Wednesday by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, they held something far rarer and more valuable: ancient clay cuneiform tablets that had been smuggled into the United States from Iraq.

Prosecutors said in the complaint that Hobby Lobby, whose evangelical Christian owners have long maintained an interest in the biblical Middle East, began in 2009 to assemble a collection of cultural artifacts from the Fertile Crescent. The company went so far as to send its president and an antiquities consultant to the United Arab Emirates to inspect a large number of rare cuneiform tablets — traditional clay slabs with wedge-shaped writing that originated in Mesopotamia thousands of years ago.

In 2010, as a deal for the tablets was being struck, an expert on cultural property law who had been hired by Hobby Lobby warned company executives that the artifacts might have been looted from historical sites in Iraq, and that failing to determine their heritage could break the law.

Despite these words of caution, the prosecutors said, Hobby Lobby bought more than 5,500 artifacts — the tablets and clay talismans and so-called cylinder seals — from an unnamed dealer for $1.6

million in December 2010.

In addition to the complaint, the prosecutors on Wednesday filed a stipulation of settlement with Hobby Lobby that requires the company to return all of the pieces, and to forfeit to the government an additional $3 million, resolving the civil action.

………

Hobby Lobby’s purchase of the artifacts in December 2010 was fraught with “red flags,” according to the prosecutors. Not only did the company get conflicting information about the origin of the pieces, its representatives never met or spoke with the dealer who supposedly owned them, according to the complaint.

Instead, on the instructions of a second dealer, Hobby Lobby wired payments to seven separate personal bank accounts, the prosecutors said. The first dealer then shipped the items marked as clay or ceramic tiles to three Hobby Lobby sites in Oklahoma. All of the packages had labels falsely identifying their country of origin as Turkey, prosecutors said.

Multiple transfers to accounts, deliberate and varied mislabeling of their country of origin, and the CEO of Hobby Lobby is claiming that they should have been better at dotting their "I"s and crossing their "T"s.

This is bullsh%$.  This was an organized effort by Hobby Lobby boss Steve Green to smuggle artifacts into the United States: He went to the UAE to inspect the artifacts, ignored conflicting data regarding provenance, and was scrupulous in using an intermediary to avoided dealing directly with the dealer of the artifacts.

Prosecutors should be pursuing him personally over this.  The federal conspiracy statutes should cover this nicely.

Same as It Ever Was………

It appears that ground troops are back in combat in Iraq:

U.S. forces assisting Iraqi troops to retake Mosul from Islamic State are embedding more extensively, a senior commander said on Friday, a move that could accelerate a two month-old campaign which has slackened after quick initial advances.

More than 5,000 American service members are currently deployed in Iraq as part of an international coalition that is advising local forces in a bid to recapture the third of the country the jihadists seized in 2014 when Iraq's army and police dropped their weapons and fled.

Coalition advisors were initially concentrated at a high-level headquarters in Baghdad but have fanned out over the past two years to multiple locations to stay near advancing troops.

Now, as Iraqi forces controlling around a quarter of Mosul - Islamic State's last major stronghold in Iraq - proceed deeper into the northern city and encounter fierce counter-attacks that render progress slow and punishing, U.S. troops are stepping up their involvement.

………

"We have always had opportunities to work side-by-side, but we have never been embedded to this degree," he [U.S. Army Colonel Brett G. Sylvia, commander of Task Force Strike] said. "That was always a smaller niche mission. Well, this is our mission now and it is big and we are embedded inside their formations."

Obama said that he would get us out of Iraq.

Not so much.

Well, Our Adventure in Syria is Working So Well

In addition to flying missions from the Khmeimim Air Base in Latakia, Russia is now flying missions from against Isis from Syria as well:

Russian warplanes on Tuesday flew out from an Iranian air base to conduct strikes against jihadist groups in war-torn Syria, the defense ministry in Moscow said.

The raids are the first Russia has reported carrying out from a base in Iran since the Kremlin launched its Syrian bombing campaign in support of long-time ally Bashar Assad last September.

“On August 16 Tu-22M3 long-range bombers and Su-34 frontline bombers, flying with a full bomb load from the Hamedan air base (Islamic Republic of Iran), conducted a group air strike against targets of the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist groups in the provinces of Aleppo, Deir Ezzor and Idlib,” the ministry said in a statement.

The strikes resulted in the destruction of “five large warehouses with weapons, ammunition and fuel” and jihadist training camps near Aleppo, Deir Ezzor, the village of Saraqeb in the Idlib region and Al-Bab, an IS-held town in Aleppo province, the statement said.

First, this means that Iran and Russia military ties have become significantly tighter.

What this also means is that Iraq allowed their aircraft to transit their airspace, which also says something about the direction of that nation's foreign policy.

Yeah, that whole Syrian adventure of ours is bearing such wonderful fruit.

The Chilcot Report is Out, and It's 12 Volumes of Whup Ass

The reporting is reveals the mendacity, incompetence, and complete impotenceof Tony Blair on Iraq:

The Chilcot inquiry has delivered a damning verdict on the decision by former prime minister Tony Blair to commit British troops to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. It says:

The UK chose to join the invasion before peaceful options had been exhausted
Chilcot is withering about Blair’s choice to join the US invasion. He says: “We have concluded that the UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Military action at that time was not a last resort.”

Blair deliberately exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein
Chilcot finds that Blair deliberately exaggerated the threat posed by the Iraqi regime as he sought to make the case for military action to MPs and the public in the buildup to the invasion in 2002 and 2003. The then prime minister disregarded warnings about the potential consequences of military action, and relied too heavily on his own beliefs, rather than the more nuanced judgments of the intelligence services. “The judgments about Iraq’s capabilities ... were presented with a certainty that was not justified,” the report says.

Blair promised George Bush: ’I will be with you, whatever’
Tony Blair wrote to George W Bush eight months before the Iraq invasion to offer his unqualified backing for war well before UN weapons inspectors had complete their work, saying: “I will be with you, whatever.” In a six-page memo marked secret and personal, the then British prime minister told Bush, US president at the time, in July 2002 that the removal of Saddam Hussein would “free up the region” even if Iraqis may “feel ambivalent about being invaded”. It was one of 29 letters Blair sent to Bush in the run-up to the Iraq war, during the conflict and in its devastating aftermath, released on Wednesday as part of the Chilcot report.

"I will be with you whatever".

He really was Bush's Poodle.

I would also note that current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is suggesting that the parliament should take some sort of action against blair, which implies that he is generally supportive of efforts by some Scottish National Party MPs to draft bills of impeachment against Blair: (Impeachment is a very different thing in the UK)

Senior figures from Labour and the Scottish National party are considering calls for legal action against Tony Blair if the former prime minister faces severe criticisms from the long-awaited inquiry into the war in Iraq.

A number of MPs led by Alex Salmond are expected to use an ancient law to try to impeach the former prime minister when the Chilcot report comes out on Wednesday.

The law, last used in 1806 when the Tory minister Lord Melville was charged for misappropriating official funds, is seen in Westminster as an alternative form of punishment that could ensure Blair never holds office again.

Triggering the process simply requires an MP to propose a motion and provide supporting evidence as part of a document called the article of impeachment which has no time limit placed upon it. If the impeachment attempt is approved by MPs, the defendant is delivered to Black Rod [kind of like a sergeant at arms] before a trial.

A simple majority is required to convict, at which point a sentence can be passed which could, in theory, involve Blair being sent to prison. However, MPs have said the attempt will be symbolic and is unlikely to result in imprisonment.

Salmond, the former Scottish first minister, said there “has to be a judicial or political reckoning” for Blair’s role in the Iraq conflict. “He seemed puzzled as to why Jeremy Corbyn thinks he is a war criminal, why people don’t like him,” he told Sky News.

“The reason is 179 British war dead, 150,000 immediate dead from the Iraq conflict, the Middle East in flames, the world faced with an existential crisis on terrorism – these are just some of the reasons perhaps he should understand why people don’t hold him in the highest regard.

“[MPs] believe you cannot have a situation where this country blunders into an illegal war with the appalling consequences and at the end of the day there isn’t a reckoning. There has to be a judicial or political reckoning for that.”

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, did not disagree with the suggestion that he and Corbyn were going to “crucify” the former leader for “being a war criminal”.

I really hope that Blair is impeached.

It would result in his living he rest of his life in well-deserved disgrace, and it would also mean that his lucrative consultancy business would likely be dashed.

I'd like to see jail time, but that won't happen, so disgrace is the best one can hope for.

The Intrigue Behind New Labour's Attempted Coup

As you may or may not have heard, the PLP (Parliamentary Labour Party) just voted no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn.

The ostensible reason for this is that Corbyn was not sufficiently supportive of the EU in the recent Brexit vote, which is not a surprise, given that he has always been a Euroskeptic on the left.

The absurdity, of course, is that they are saying that he should have been more supportive of Tory Prime Minister David Cameron's exercise in stepping on his own dick.

Someone does not understand the concept of "Opposition Party", methinks.

The reality, of course, is that this has been in the works ever since Corbyn won party elections 9 months ago, because 3^rd way politicians are more than willing to destroy the chances of their party to win an election in order to maintain their own power within the party.

It's the Iron Rule of Organizations Institutions, wherein power WITHIN an organization is pursued at the expense of the power OF that organization.

The PLPs will claim that they fear that Corbyn would lead them to an electoral catastrophe, but they were the ones who put Ed Miliband, who is a poster child for electoral incompetence in charge the last time around.

That being said, it appears that there is a method to this madness: On July 6, the Chilcot Report, an investigation into how the UK found itself part of the invasion of Iraq, will come out, and Corbyn has been very clear that once it does come out, he will apologize on behalf of Labour, and will (depending on the specifics) label Tony Blair a war criminal:

No rational person could blame Jeremy Corbyn for Brexit. So why are the Blairites moving against Corbyn now, with such precipitate haste?

The answer is the Chilcot Report. It is only a fortnight away, and though its form will be concealed by thick layers of establishment whitewash, the basic contours of Blair’s lies will still be visible beneath. Corbyn had deferred to Blairite pressure not to apologise on behalf of the Labour Party for the Iraq War until Chilcot is published.

For the Labour Right, the moment when Corbyn as Labour leader stands up in parliament and condemns Blair over Iraq, is going to be as traumatic as it was for the hardliners of the Soviet Communist Party when Khruschev denounced the crimes of Stalin. It would also destroy Blair’s carefully planned post-Chilcot PR strategy. It is essential to the Blairites that when Chilcot is debated in parliament in two weeks time, Jeremy Corbyn is not in place as Labour leader to speak in the debate. The Blairite plan is therefore for the parliamentary party to depose him as parliamentary leader and get speaker John Bercow to acknowledge someone else in that fictional position in time for the Chilcot debate, with Corbyn remaining leader in the country but with no parliamentary status.

Yes, they are that nuts.

If the fault line for the Tories is Europe, for Labour it is the Middle East. Those opposing Corbyn are defined by their enthusiasm for bombing campaigns that kill Muslim children. ……… Never underestimate the Blairite fury at being shown not just to be liars but to be wrong. Iraq is their Achilles heel and they are extremely touchy about it.

See also here, where Martin Odoni memorably tells the MPs opposing Corbyn, who he calls, "Red Tories", to "Get Stuffed":

………

With the Chilcot Report into the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War due for release net week, that ‘riddance’ is now urgent. Corbyn made clear months ago that he is in favour of 2003 Prime Minister Tony Blair being tried for war crimes, should Chilcot find solid evidence of deceit to get a war declaration – which seems inevitable. If Corbyn is still Labour leader on 6th July, he will condemn Blair and his allies in the Chilcot debate without reservation. The ‘New Labour’ brand of watered-down Toryism will be finished, and every member of the party who voted for the Iraq War will be permanently tarnished by it. The only way of avoiding it is to have a leader who will fight to protect them, which Corbyn will not do.

Of interest is that as leader of Labour, Corbyn does not have need to be nominated by at least 15% of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), and I can see no way that he loses a popular vote if an actual leadership election occurs.   (Just 9 months ago, he scored the largest victory in a Labour leader election ever).

I'd make a Game of Thrones reference here, but I don't watch the show.

So Not Surprised

It turns out that our attempt to create a viable Iraqi military has largely failed:

A 17-month U.S. effort to retrain and reunify Iraq's regular army has failed to create a large number of effective Iraqi combat units or limit the power of sectarian militias, according to current and former U.S. military and civilian officials.

Concern about the shortcomings of the American attempt to strengthen the Iraqi military comes as Iraqi government forces and Shi’ite militias have launched an offensive to retake the city of Falluja from Islamic State. Aid groups fear the campaign could spark a humanitarian catastrophe, as an estimated 50,000 Sunni civilians remain trapped in the besieged town.

The continued weakness of regular Iraqi army units and reliance on Shi’ite militias, current and former U.S. military officials said, could impede Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s broader effort to defeat Islamic State and win the long-term support of Iraqi Sunnis. The sectarian divide between the majority Shi'ite and minority Sunni communities threatens to split the country for good.

………

Retired U.S. Lieutenant General Mick Bednarek, who commanded the U.S. military training effort in Iraq from 2013 to 2015, said the Iraqi army has not improved dramatically in the past eight months. He blamed a variety of problems, from a lack of Iraqis wanting to join the military to the resistance of some lower-level Iraqi officers to sending units to American training.

This is not a surprise.

Iraq was always a country loosely stitched together by the diktat of the new colonial rulers of the region following the First World War, and the invasion knocked Humpty Dumpty off of that wall, and we cannot put him back together again.

Oceania Had Always Been at War with Eastasia

I don't know about you, but this sure sounds like boots on the ground:

• More special forces to Iraq.
• Troops on the ground in Yemen.
• The US is running an airfield in Syria:
  The U.S. military has all-but confirmed it’s in control of an airstrip in northern Syria. For months, reports in Arabic have described the base near Rmaylan, Syria, with Americans helping expand the runway as low-flying, unmarked helicopters make daily trips to and from Turkey.
  
  On May 6, U.S. Army Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, didn’t exactly deny the existence of the airstrip when asked about it. “The soon to be 300 American forces working in Syria need to be resupplied,” Warren wrote. “Aerial resupply only makes good sense.”

Obama ran as a peace candidate.

Hillary Clinton, the next likely president, is about as bellicose as Dick Cheney.

Our policy of military interventions, and followup interventions to fix our first interventions has made us less safe, killed thousands of our soldiers, and around ¼ million civilians.

We have destabilized these societies, and strengthened terrorist organizations and made us far less safe, but our solution is more war.

This is insane.

It is Called Ticket Punching

With about 5000 US troops in Iraq, there are 21 generals leading the troops there.

Typically, a full bird colonel would command a unit with 5000 soldiers, but there are 21 Generals:

In the war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State, the U.S. military is notably short on soldiers, but apparently not on generals.

There are at least 12 U.S. generals in Iraq, a stunningly high number for a war that, if you believe the White House talking points, doesn’t involve American troops in combat. And that number is, if anything, a conservative estimate, not taking into account the flag officers running the U.S. air war, the admirals helping wage the war from the sea, or their superiors back at the Pentagon.

At U.S. headquarters inside Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, even majors and colonels frequently find themselves saluting superiors at a pace that outranks the Pentagon and certainly any normal military installation. With about 5,000 troops deployed to Iraq and Syria ISIS war, that means there’s a general for every 416 troops, give or take. To compare, there are some captains in the U.S. Army in charge of that many people.

Moreover, many of those generals come with staffs and bureaucracy that some argue slows decision-making against an agile terror group.

The Obama administration has frequently argued that the U.S. maintains a so-called light footprint in Iraq to reassure the American public that its military is not back in Iraq. Indeed, at times, the United States has not acknowledged where it has deployed troops until one of them died.

There are this many generals in Iraq because of the career needs of the general officer corps, not out of military need.

Getting a combat posting, even a useless one, paves the way to further promotions.

We saw something similar in the cruise missile attacks against Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, when the navy held off launching missiles for hours, so that more ships could get into position so that their captains could get it into their service records.

The missiles missed bin Laden by minutes as a result.

Between the military-industrial complex revolving door and up or out, our military is seriously, and deeply broken.

But He Got Us Out of Iraq!

Ground troops are back fighting in Iraq:

The Islamic State group is trying to retake control of the oil fields it lost two years ago in the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan by launching rockets at Kurdish and Iraqi soldiers. In an attempt to earn back the massive amount of cash it used to fund its international terrorism in 2014, the group has focused its resources on attacking Makhmur, a city just 75 miles miles from the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. So far, the group, also known as ISIS, has succeeded in outgunning the Iraqi forces in the city, but a new contingent of American Marines might change the outcome on the ground.

“Several weeks ago, thousands of Iraqi troops began occupying a tactical assembly area in Makhmur. This is part of the force generation associated with the liberation of Mosul,” Col. Steve Warren, spokesman for the fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, said in a press briefing this week. Mosul is the de facto ISIS headquarters in Iraq. “These Iraqi forces, along with their coalition advisers, require force protection,” Warren said. “So we constructed a small fire base to do just that.”

The U.S. Marines in Iraq are on the front line and have been tasked with protecting Iraqi units in Makhmur — a scenario President Barack Obama wanted to avoid as long as possible during his time in office.

In a statement before meeting with congressional leaders on Sept. 3, 2013, Obama talked about his plan to combat ISIS and said: “The key point that I want to emphasize to the American people: The military plan that has been developed by our Joint Chiefs — and that I believe is appropriate — is proportional. It is limited. It does not involve boots on the ground. This is not Iraq, and this is not Afghanistan.”

There are now more than 3,200 U.S. personnel in Iraq. Many have been tasked with training Iraqi soldiers, but others, such as the new contingent of Marines, are in active battles or are leading special operations to rescue hostages. Two American soldiers have died in Iraq since the U.S. deployed soldiers last year.

Hope and change my ass.

This is a Big F%$# You to Turkey

Russia may be reducing its military presence in Syria, but they have started shipping weapons to the Kurds.

That sound you hear is the sound of Turkish heads exploding:

Russia delivered the first of five planned shipments of anti-aircraft weapons to Kurdish troops in northern Iraq. According to Russian experts, Moscow officially revealed this fact for the first time with the intention to change its Middle East policy and emphasize the importance of the Kurds in the region.

In Iraq arrived first shipment of Russian weapons to Kurdish volunteer movement “Peshmerga”, who fight against the “Islamic state” terrorist organization in the region. Senior officials of the Russian Foreign Ministry handed over anti-aircraft weapons ZU-23-2 (23 mm caliber) to the forces of resistance.

„Shipment of weapons arrived on March 14. It is intended for Peshmerga in Iraqi Kurdistan. At the handover of weapons was held with the presense of Ambassador and Consul General of Russia in Iraq, and Deputy Chief of Staff of “Peshmerga”, RIA Novosti quoted Artjomova Grigorjan, attaché of the Russian general consulate in the Iraqi city of Erbil.

According to him, the parties discuss the further delivery of the weapons. “After the handover of weapons Russian ambassador said that this is not the last delivery. He stressed that Russia hopes “Peshmerga” and the Iraqi armed forces will use this weapon to win against “Islamic state”, said the Russian attaché.

Do not confuse the ZU-23-2 with the ZSU23-4 radar guided self-propelled antiaircraft system.

The ZU is optically guided towed system.

In a modern battlefield, its antiaircraft capabilities are limited, but it is relative mobile and capable in a surface to surface mode.

More importantly, it implies that the Russians might be willing to send more capable surface to air systems, such as the ZSU, or surplus SA-6 or SA-8 systems, which they could  use against Turkish air strikes.

Let the shrieks or outrage from Ankara begin.

Trump Goes There

In the last Republican Presidential debate, Donald Trump noted that George W. Bush was President on 911, and that he lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction:

Jeb Bush’s campaign thinks George W. Bush is its not-so-secret weapon in next Saturday’s pivotal primary. Donald Trump couldn’t care less.

Holding a 20-point lead in the state over his nearest rival with a week to go, Trump blasted the former president for the national security record his brother’s campaign plans to tout, blaming him during a GOP debate Saturday night not just for the Iraq War but also for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“The World Trade Center came down during your brother’s reign. Remember that," Trump said to the former Florida governor, prompting a long, contentious back-and-forth.

………

In fact, Trump has blamed George W. Bush for 9/11 many times before, just never on a debate stage before a television audience of millions. It started when moderator John Dickerson asked him about a past statement in which he suggested that the 43rd president should have been impeached for lying about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction in order to justify going to war.

While this position may not be popular with mainstream Republicans, with a 20 point lead in South Carolina, I don't think that this will hurt his campaign.

I Think I Understand What Turkey is Doing

This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it.

Things in Syria are out of control, had have been since Turkey and Saudi Arabia founded ISIS to take down the Assad regime.

While silliness, like the brouhaha over a (hopefully soon to be court martialed and discharged) Russian soldier who brandished a rocket launcher while transiting the Bosporus, people are ignoring the fact that Turkey just invaded Iraq:

Turkey said on Monday it would not withdraw hundreds of soldiers who arrived last week at a base in northern Iraq, despite being ordered by Baghdad to pull them out within 48 hours.

The sudden arrival of such a large and heavily armed Turkish contingent in a camp near the frontline in northern Iraq has added yet another controversial deployment to a war against Islamic State fighters that has drawn in most of the world's major powers.

Ankara says the troops are there as part of an international mission to train and equip Iraqi forces to fight against Islamic State. The Iraqi government says it never invited such a force, and will take its case to the United Nations if they are not pulled out.

Washington, which is leading an international coalition against Islamic State that includes Turkey, Arab states and European powers like Britain and France, has told Ankara and Baghdad to resolve the standoff, and says it does not support deployments in Iraq without Baghdad's consent.

The Turkish troops' presence is an embarrassment for Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Abadi, under strong pressure from powerful Iran-backed Shi'ite political groups to kick them out.

I have made the point numerous times that evidence indicates that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is determined to remake Turkey, and Syria, into Islamic states.

This neglects some of his other behavior, where he has attempted to efface the memory of Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) and to hearken back to the Ottoman Empire.

His attempts to recreate Ottoman buildings in Gezi Park, which led to massive protests, is one of the more prominent example of this.

I am now thinking that he is not just interested in Islamizing his neighborhood.  I think that he wants the return of something like an Ottoman Empire, or at least something very much like it using spheres of influence.

As a historical note, what is now Mosul was captured by the British after the armistice, and Turkey disputed its allocation to Iraq ferociously in the early 1900s.

I will note that my thesis is "Out there", and that other folks are suggesting that this is a way to sabotage the Kurds autonomy in Iraq (likely), or a way to extort a route for a Qatar Turkey natural gas pipeline to replace the now moribund plan to run such a pipeline through Syria.

In either case, this is getting really ugly really quickly.

The Military Faked Intelligence Data? Say it Isn't So!

They always say that truth is the first casualty of war.

What they don't say is that senior officers in the Pentagon have a long history of lying to their superiors in civilian leadership. Maybe they should:

When Islamic State fighters overran a string of Iraqi cities last year, analysts at United States Central Command wrote classified assessments for military intelligence officials and policy makers that documented the humiliating retreat of the Iraqi Army. But before the assessments were final, former intelligence officials said, the analysts’ superiors made significant changes.

In the revised documents, the Iraqi Army had not retreated at all. The soldiers had simply “redeployed.”

Such changes are at the heart of an expanding internal Pentagon investigation of Centcom, as Central Command is known, where analysts say that supervisors revised conclusions to mask some of the American military’s failures in training Iraqi troops and beating back the Islamic State. The analysts say supervisors were particularly eager to paint a more optimistic picture of America’s role in the conflict than was warranted.

In recent weeks, the Pentagon inspector general seized a large trove of emails and documents from military servers as it examines the claims, and has added more investigators to the inquiry.

………

Staff members at the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence are also poring over years of Centcom intelligence reports and comparing them to assessments from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and others. The committee is not just examining reports about Iraq, Syria and the Islamic State, but also about Afghanistan and other areas under Centcom’s purview. The insurrection inside Centcom is an important chapter in the story of how the United States responded to the growing threat from the Islamic State. This past summer, a group of Centcom analysts took concerns about their superiors to the inspector general, saying they had evidence that senior officials had changed intelligence assessments to overstate the progress of American airstrikes against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

………

Senior lawmakers have begun their own inquiries into the military’s intelligence apparatus. Representative Mac Thornberry, the Republican from Texas who is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in an interview that his committee was examining intelligence assessments from Centcom and other military commands to see if there was a systemic problem of dissenting voices being muffled by senior military commanders.

………

That investigation was prompted by complaints this past summer from Centcom’s longtime Iraq experts, led by Gregory Hooker, the senior Iraq analyst. In some ways, the team’s criticisms mirror those of a decade ago, when Mr. Hooker wrote a research paper saying the Bush administration, over many analysts’ objections, advocated a small force in Iraq and spent little time planning for what would follow the invasion.

Lawmakers originally said that the Centcom investigation would be completed in weeks. But Pentagon investigators have found the work painstaking and it could span months. In addition to determining whether changes were made to intelligence reports — and if so, who ordered them — the investigators, like the staff members of the House intelligence committee, are studying reports from other intelligence agencies produced at the time to determine what was actually occurring in Iraq and Syria when the reports were written.

This sort of sh%$ needs to stop.

This is simply unacceptable. It is antithetical to the idea of civilian control of the military.

Anyone in the chain of command for these actions need to be sent stateside now.

Once the investigation is done, any responsible for this should be court martialed. Anyone who should have known and did not make a report to the inspector general should be fired.

This was a deliberate attempt to deceive the SecDef and the President. It cannot, and should not, be tolerated.

Note the Quotes in the Headline

The BBC described the latest special operations action in Iraq as "US-Iraqi Rescue Operation 'Foils IS Mass Execution'."

I'm inclined to put a quote around "Foils Mass Execution" too.

It strikes me that this operation was more likely driven by concerns about increased Russian influence, and success, in the region that it is by high quality actionable intelligence.

I believe that the slang for this is "Wag the Dog".

What We are Seeing Here is an Actual Plan on Syria

And it ain't us, it's Putin that has the plan, as evidenced by Bashar Assad's surprise trip to Moscow to meet with Putin:

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad has visited Moscow on his first overseas trip since the civil war broke out in his country in 2011.

During the surprise visit, he had talks with President Vladimir Putin.

Russia launched air strikes in Syria last month against the so-called Islamic State (IS) and other militant groups battling Mr Assad's forces.

Mr Assad said Russia's involvement had stopped "terrorism" becoming "more widespread and harmful" in Syria.

For his part, Mr Putin said Moscow's hope, in providing a "positive dynamic in the fighting", was that a "long term resolution can be achieved on the basis of a political process with the participation of all political forces, ethnic and religious groups".

The visit happened on Tuesday evening, but was not announced until Wednesday - after Mr Assad had returned to Damascus.

………

President Assad's surprise visit to Moscow represents a sign of growing confidence by the embattled Syrian president. He feels it safe to leave Damascus for the first time since the civil war in Syria erupted.

It is also a visible symbol of Russia's confidence in the current Syrian regime. Having Mr Assad turn up in Moscow shows that there is little doubt that for now at least, President Putin is intent on shoring up Mr Assad's position.

But the trip may also mark a new stage in Russia's efforts to roll out a diplomatic plan alongside its military intervention in Syria; an illustration that Russia deals with Mr Assad, and that for now at least Mr Assad has to be part of any interim solution.

Russia is looking for an end to the civil war that serves their broader foreign policy goals.

It is clear that the Russians are not wedded to Assad's continued leadership of Syria, but neither is his removal an important goal.

Their goal is a stable state, or at least a stable rump state, that allows them to maintain their base in Tartus and influence in the region while short circuiting Jihadis who will go to kill school kids in Grozny or Moscow.

Or, as Putin pithily put it, "We are not that preoccupied with the fate of Assad’s regime."


Their tactics seem to be basically sound.

In comparison, the US is just looking to "lead" with no idea as to a final goal beyond removing Assad, preferably in a manner that demonstrates American hegemony, even if it means that we ware supporting al Qaeda factions.

BTW, the US strategy seems to be working swimmingly, with Iraq appearing to take steps to move into a closer alliance with Russia:

Iraqi Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi is alleged to be under “enormous pressure” from Shiite militiamen and hardliners to seek Russian airstrikes on Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) targets. On Oct. 1, he had announced that such Russian intervention in his country would be welcome.

On Wednesday, the largest bloc in parliament, the Shiite Da’wa Party from which al-Abadi springs, sent a letter to the Prime Minister asking for Russian intervention.

He has established a joint intelligence center in Baghdad where reports are shared among Iraq, Iran, Russia and Syria.

But this week the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, visited Iraq and said he got assurances from PM al-Abadi that Russia would not fly missions against Daesh on Iraqi soil.

He said that there had been “angst” in the Pentagon when al-Abadi mentioned this possibility.

………

In any case, the Iraqi press and parliament think that Gen. Dunford is being far too categorical in the way he describes Baghdad’s pledge. The Shiite militias, such as the Badr Corps and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haqq, intend to go on lobbying for Russian intervention. And, Parliament will take up the matter later this month.

From the point of view of the Shiite militias and politicians, the US air strikes have been way too leisurely. For the most part they seem to aim at containment of Daesh rather than rollback. The Shiite militias have been watching the extensive air strikes by Russia on rebel targets, with increasing envy. They want that kind of action.

………

My guess is that the Obama administration hasn’t wanted to roll back Daesh quite yet, precisely because it would be the Badr Corps and similar hard line pro-Iran Shiite militias that would conduct the attack on Mosul. And that configuration would enrage the Sunni Iraqis further. The US is reaching out to Sunni tribal chieftains and wants to delay the taking of Mosul until there are enough such Sunnis and they can be positioned as the leading edge of the attack.

………

The US desire to keep Russia out is likely in part a declaration of an old 19th-century style “Sphere of Influence.” Spheres of influence are exclusive. ………

Our foreign policy is morally and intellectually bankrupt, and seems to have as its only goal the maintenance of American dominance.

It really does look like the end game of an empire, doesn't it.

The Only Donald Worse than Trump

Larry Wilmore, who I had neglected to put on my list of People I Do Not Want to Piss Off, (Since corrected) was rather put out by Donald Rumsfeld's rewriting history on Iraq and claiming that he never suggested that he was bringing a stable democracy to Iraq.

Rumsfeld, 2003:

From the very beginning, we were convinced that we would succeed, and that means that that regime would end. And we were convinced that as we went from the end of that regime to something other than that regime, there would be a period of transition. And, you cannot do everything instantaneously; it's never been done, everything instantaneously. We did, however, recognize that there was at least a chance of catastrophic success, if you will, to reverse the phrase, that you could in a given place or places have a victory that occurred well before reasonable people might have expected it, and that we needed to be ready for that; we needed to be ready with medicine, with food, with water. And, we have been.

Rumsfeld, 2015:

Over a decade after presiding over the invasion of Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld admitted that the country may not have been ready for a democracy.

In an interview with British newspaper the Times, the former Secretary of Defense reflected on America's role in shaping the Middle East, and suggested expecting Iraq to seamlessly transition to a democracy was "unrealistic."

“I’m not one who thinks that our particular template of democracy is appropriate for other countries at every moment of their histories," Rumsfeld told the Times. "The idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic. I was concerned about it when I first heard those words.”

Larry Wilmore rightly said the Rumsfeld is, "The only Donald worse than Trump."

And I am saying that Larry Willmore is a part of the sacred and hermetic order of People I Do Not Want to Piss Off.