Hmm. I notice in the graphic, that the name "Bellngcat" is a mipsplepping.

I also note that the National Endowment for Democracy is among the organizations China recently said it would sanction, in response to the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act being signed into law.

NATO Dinosaur Plods On
 

[URL]http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52663.htm[/URL]
Cunningham nails it on several issues related to the US lap dog.

[QUOTE]The splits and rancor at the NATO summit this week could not be concealed, even by strained calls for “unity”. The US-led military alliance is a dinosaur well past its extinction date.

Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, did his best to rally a sense of unity as the two-day summit hosted by Britain came to a close. The event was supposed to be a celebration, marking the 70th anniversary of NATO’s founding.

Far from being a “happy birthday” party, the NATO gathering descended into embarrassing farce with bickering and jibes. Video footage appeared to show the French, British and Canadian leaders making fun of American President Donald Trump over his rambling press conferences. Trump then hit back, accusing Canada’s Justin Trudeau of being “two-faced”.

There were other spats, between France and Turkey over Ankara’s military incursion into northern Syria against Kurdish militants, whom France and the US regard as allies. Turkey was also chided for buying the S-400 air defense system from Russia.

However, the biggest clash came between Trump and France’s Emmanuel Macron, who was taken to task by the American leader for his recent media remarks about NATO being “brain dead”. Trump said those comments were “very, very nasty” and “disrespectful”. Macron bridled at their joint press conference, saying he stood by his earlier critical comments.

It was toe-curling stuff, especially the lecture on politeness coming from Trump who himself has several times in the past disparaged NATO as “obsolete”.

Jens Stoltenberg, the Norwegian secretary-general, tried to smooth over the ruffled relations by claiming: “NATO is the most successful alliance in history because we’ve changed at the world has changed.” He went on to describe the 29-nation military bloc as “agile, active… adapting.”

That was after he pointed out that the combined NATO military spend was set for massive increases. An extra $400 billion will be forked out by the alliance by 2024, said Stoltenberg, on top of the current $1 trillion.

Already NATO’s total budget is 20 times that of Russia and five times that of China.[/QUOTE]

Someone Interfered In The UK Election, And It Wasn’t Russia
 

-Caitlin Johnstone
This might have been better placed in Establishment Media Wretch.


[URL]http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52704.htm[/URL]
[QUOTE]Ladies and gentlemen I have here at my fingertips indisputable proof that egregious election meddling took place in the United Kingdom on Thursday.

Before you get all excited, no, it wasn’t the Russians. It wasn’t the Chinese, the Iranians, Cobra Command or the Legion of Doom. I’m not going to get any Rachel Maddow-sized paychecks for revealing this evidence to you, nor am I going to draw in millions of credulous viewers waiting with bated breath for a bombshell revelation of an international conspiracy that will invalidate the results of the election.

In fact, hardly anyone will even care.

Hardly anyone will care because this election interference has been happening right out in the open, and was perfectly legal. And nobody will suffer any consequences for it.[INDENT] The centrists and mainstream media outlets are responsible for the right wing win in the UK. They spent all their time bashing and smearing Jeremy Corbyn bc they will always prioritize smashing the left, even if it means allying with the far right. Shameful.
— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) December 13, 2019
[/INDENT]Nobody will suffer any consequences for interfering in the UK election because the ones doing the interfering were extremely powerful, and that’s who the system is built to serve.[/QUOTE]

[url=https://www.thenation.com/article/afghanistan-papers-forever-war/]We Have Just Been Handed the Pentagon Papers of Our Generation[/url] | Maj. Danny Sjursen, The Nation

[url=https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/afghanistan-wapo-us-defense-strategy-926897/]Washington Post’s Afghanistan Story Reveals Core Folly of American Defense Strategy[/url] | Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

[url=https://nypost.com/2019/12/14/lying-by-bush-and-obama-over-afghanistan-is-this-eras-pentagon-papers/]Lying by Bush and Obama over Afghanistan is this era’s Pentagon Papers[/url] | NY Post

[url=https://fair.org/home/afghan-papers-inadvertently-document-wapos-role-in-spreading-official-lies/]Afghan Papers Inadvertently Document WaPo’s Role in Spreading Official Lies[/url] | FAIR

But no impeachable offenses in any of that, apparently, so how serious could it really be? /sarc

[QUOTE=ewmayer;533247][url=https://www.thenation.com/article/afghanistan-papers-forever-war/]We Have Just Been Handed the Pentagon Papers of Our Generation[/url] | Maj. Danny Sjursen, The Nation

[url=https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/afghanistan-wapo-us-defense-strategy-926897/]Washington Post’s Afghanistan Story Reveals Core Folly of American Defense Strategy[/url] | Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

[url=https://nypost.com/2019/12/14/lying-by-bush-and-obama-over-afghanistan-is-this-eras-pentagon-papers/]Lying by Bush and Obama over Afghanistan is this era’s Pentagon Papers[/url] | NY Post

[url=https://fair.org/home/afghan-papers-inadvertently-document-wapos-role-in-spreading-official-lies/]Afghan Papers Inadvertently Document WaPo’s Role in Spreading Official Lies[/url] | FAIR

But no impeachable offenses in any of that, apparently, so how serious could it really be? /sarc[/QUOTE]
I read about this a week and a half ago. I thought you'd be all over this, and was beginning to get worried.

You forgot to link to the original news story, [url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/]AT WAR WITH THE TRUTH[/url]. It took WAPO three years to gain access to the documents, pursuant to a FOIA request.

It's impossible, of course, to impeach presidents who are no longer in office. It is [i]not[/i] impossible to indict and prosecute them, if you can name any applicable charges.

I despaired of our having any achievable objectives in Afghanistan when Shrub decided to embark on [b][i]O[/i][/b]peration [b][i]I[/i][/b]raqi [b][i]L[/i][/b]iberation, er, Freedom. I still recall fondly his Admin's plan for a northern flank of the invasion. They seemed to take for granted that NATO ally Turkey would grant permission to use their territory to do it. And then, [i]with the troop ships already en route[/i], the Turks said "No."
:missingteeth:

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;533252]I read about this a week and a half ago. I thought you'd be all over this, and was beginning to get worried.[/quote]
Extremely busy with Christmas-prep activities in the past week, accumulated a bunch of links, only partway through the backlog as I type this.

[quote]It's impossible, of course, to impeach presidents who are no longer in office. It is [i]not[/i] impossible to indict and prosecute them, if you can name any applicable charges.[/QUOTE]

I was referring e.g. to Nancy Pelosi's recent admission that as a member of the House Intelligence Committee during the W. Bush years, said committee knew the WMDs-in-Iraq claims were false at the time they were made. Perhaps this is a case of the ensuing bipartisan charge into an illegal and highly destructive war making all the parties guilty. With Obama, there was also plenty of impeachable-at-the-time activity, to cite just two example, the mass domestic surveillance program (begun under W. Bush but ramped-up bigly under Obama) and the wanton destruction of Libya. But the truism "there is only one War party in Washington" is applicable. Same truism applies to the many war crimes charges which could be laid against more or less every US president in recent memory, with the possible exception of Carter (and even there it might simply be a case of not having "many" but only a few, such as those relating to arming and financing the mujahedin in Afghanistan - oh, look, and we're right back in that country! Funny, that.)

[QUOTE=ewmayer;533290]Extremely busy with Christmas-prep activities in the past week, accumulated a bunch of links, only partway through the backlog as I type this.



I was referring e.g. to Nancy Pelosi's recent admission that as a member of the House Intelligence Committee during the W. Bush years, said committee knew the WMDs-in-Iraq claims were false at the time they were made.
<snip>[/QUOTE]
Ah, Christmas prep! At least it isn't spending days without power
:-D

Yes, you mentioned that about the Intel Committee before, IIRC. I'm not sure what law that sort of thing might violate, but even if it isn't a violation of law it might be impeachable notwithstanding.

I wonder if members of the Intel Committee were legally bound not to disclose the information that informed them Shrub was lying. If it was classified, it might have made impeachment iffy.

OTOH they could have just said, "[i]Screw[/i] 'classified'. This is too important."

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;533293]Yes, you mentioned that about the Intel Committee before, IIRC. I'm not sure what law that sort of thing might violate, but even if it isn't a violation of law it might be impeachable notwithstanding.

I wonder if members of the Intel Committee were legally bound not to disclose the information that informed them Shrub was lying. If it was classified, it might have made impeachment iffy.

OTOH they could have just said, "[i]Screw[/i] 'classified'. This is too important."[/QUOTE]

To me the actual offense was not related to any public disclosure, i.e. whether they were bound by law to not disclose what they had heard in committee hearings is moot - rather, the offense lay in know what Pelosi admitted they knew at the time, and then voting to support the illegal (under international law) invasion anyway. That made them active aiders and abetters of war crimes.

And as you note, if ever there were a case where whistleblowing - with all the attendant legal cover for same - were warranted, this was it.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;533660]To me the actual offense was not related to any public disclosure, i.e. whether they were bound by law to not disclose what they had heard in committee hearings is moot - rather, the offense lay in know what Pelosi admitted they knew at the time, and then voting to support the illegal (under international law) invasion anyway. That made them active aiders and abetters of war crimes.

And as you note, if ever there were a case where whistleblowing - with all the attendant legal cover for same - were warranted, this was it.[/QUOTE]
Could you please be a bit more specific here? Which "international law" would this war be in violation of? What "war crimes?" And what court would the trial be held in? I had in mind violations of US law by the President as grounds for impeachment. I believe Congress critters are generally immune from prosecution for what they do in the course of discharging their official duties. Bad policy is not a crime.

As far as an "illegal" war goes -- what if Shrub Admin officials claimed they believed the intel was good, and they were acting in good faith?

IMO timely public disclosure of the intel being bad would have been the best remedy. It might well have prevented the Second Iraq War, and Shrub's second term also.

Remembering America’s First (& Longest) Forgotten War on Islamists
 

[URL]https://consortiumnews.com/2019/12/23/remembering-americas-first-longest-forgotten-war-on-islamists/[/URL]
This is quite a long article, but it concerns US actions well over a century ago which have fallout continuing today.

[QUOTE]For a decade and a half, the U.S. Army waged war on fierce Muslims in a remote land. Sound familiar?

As it happens, that war unfolded half a world away from the Greater Middle East and more than a century ago in the southernmost islands of the Philippines. Back then, American soldiers fought not the Taliban, but the Moros, an intensely independent Islamic group with a similarly storied record of resisting foreign invaders. Precious few today have ever heard of America’s Moro War, fought from 1899 to 1913, but it was, until Afghanistan, one of America’s longest sustained military campaigns.

Popular thinking assumes that the U.S. wasn’t meaningfully entangled in the Islamic world until Washington became embroiled in the Islamist Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, both in the pivotal year of 1979. It simply isn’t so. How soon we forget that the Army, which had fought prolonged guerrilla wars against tribal Native Americans throughout the 19th century, went on — often led by veterans of those Indian Wars — to wage a counterinsurgency war on tribal Islamic Moros in the Philippine Islands at the start of the new century, a conflict that was an outgrowth of the Spanish-American War.

That campaign is all but lost to history and the collective American memory. A basic Amazon search for “Moro War,” for instance, yields just seven books (half of them published by U.S. military war colleges), while a similar search for “Vietnam War” lists no less than 10,000 titles. Which is curious. The war in the Southern Philippines wasn’t just six years longer than conventional American military operations in Vietnam, but also resulted in the awarding of 88 Congressional Medals of Honor and produced five future Army chiefs of staff. While the insurgency in the northern islands of the Philippines had fizzled out by 1902, the Moro rebels fought on for another decade. As Lieutenant Benny Foulois — later a general and the “father” of Army aviation — reflected, “The Filipino insurrection was mild compared to the difficulties we had with the Moros.”[/QUOTE]

What Upstanding Citizens Believe Vs. What Crazy Conspiracy Theorists Believe
 

[URL]http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52791.htm[/URL]
By Caitlin Johnstone
[QUOTE]Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe a mature worldview requires skepticism toward power.

Smart upstanding citizens believe the government is your friend, and the media are its helpers.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe that powerful people sometimes make immoral plans in secret.

Smart upstanding citizens believe the TV always tells the truth and the CIA exists for no reason.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe that extreme government secrecy makes it necessary to discuss possible theories about what might be going on behind that veil of opacity.

Smart upstanding citizens believe that just because a world-dominating government with the most powerful military in the history of civilization has no transparency and zero accountability to the public, that doesn’t mean you’ve got to get all paranoid about it.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe it’s okay to ask questions about important events that happen in the world, even if their government tells them they shouldn’t.

Smart upstanding citizens believe everything they need to know about reality comes out of Mike Pompeo’s angelic mouth.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe the very rich sometimes engage in nefarious behavior to expand their wealth and power.

Smart upstanding citizens believe billionaires always conduct themselves with the same values that got them their billions in the first place: honesty, morality, and generosity.[/QUOTE]
And so it goes and goes and goes.

I found this to be a good summary on the US assassination of Iran's top military commander via airstrike in Iraq:

[url=https://fx.substack.com/p/well-that-escalated-quickly]Well, that escalated quickly[/url] | Foreign Exchanges
[quote]A story that began Thursday evening with sketchy reports about one or possibly two missile attacks outside Baghdad airport has developed into a confirmed report that the United States has killed Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad. In the same (presumably drone) strike, the US also reportedly killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy leader of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Committee, which is the body that oversees Iraq’s myriad militia factions. Although technically the deputy head of the PMC, Muhandis was also the leader of arguably Iraq’s most influential militia, Kataʾib Hezbollah, which made him arguably the most powerful figure within the Iraqi militia community. His death is a huge escalation in Iraq’s latest political crisis, which we’ll discuss presently. But obviously his death, and its repercussions, are totally overshadowed by Soleimani’s.

If you’ve been keeping up with the updates for the past couple of months, then you know that Iraq has been teetering on the edge of complete chaos, as protesters angry about corruption, government ineffectiveness, and foreign influence (mostly via Tehran) have been in the streets demanding wholesale political change. The Iraqi government’s violent response, most of it probably spearheaded by the Popular Mobilization militias, has left hundreds of people dead and ultimately forced the resignation of Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi. But Iraqi politics are so thoroughly broken that Abdul-Mahdi remains in office as caretaker PM because Iraqi political leaders have been unable to agree on a replacement. So that’s part of the context in which recent events have taken place.

In parallel with the collapse of Iraq politically, the country has experienced an escalation of violence involving the militias. That (probably) includes the killing of protesters, but it also includes sporadic rocket attacks on Iraqi military bases where US forces are stationed and it also also includes sporadic airstrikes, unattributed but probably carried out by Israel (and/or Saudi Arabia, but more likely Israel), targeting militia bases and weapons caches. Militia leaders have blamed the United States for either assisting or, at least, permitting these attacks. The final piece of context here is the escalating tension between the US and Iran since the Trump administration tore up the 2015 Iran nuclear deal last year, which has already led to several violent incidents in and around the Persian Gulf. It would be impossible to recap that whole saga here but the key thing to remember is that the instability that’s gripped that region over the past several months all stems from the administration’s decision to scrap an international agreement that a) was working and b) offered an easy path toward deescalating US-Iran tensions and stabilizing the Persian Gulf.

That brings us to December 27, when one of those sporadic rocket attacks hit an Iraqi military base in Kirkuk and killed a US civilian contractor while injuring several US and Iraqi personnel. “Civilian contractor” could cover anything from an office worker to a mercenary security officer who hadn’t engaged in combat, as far as I know, but regardless it was a US citizen killed, and the US determined that Kataʾib Hezbollah—which was founded in 2003 and became one of the principle militias resisting the postwar US occupation in Iraq, and which has sent fighters to aid Bashar al-Assad in Syria—was behind the attack. And so it retaliated, striking five Kataʾib Hezbollah targets in Iraq and Syria over the weekend. Kataʾib Hezbollah said that at least 24 of its personnel were killed in the strikes, and Muhandis vowed some kind of response.

The initial response came on Monday from the Iraqi government, which angrily condemned the US strikes as, first and foremost, a violation of Iraqi sovereignty. Underpinning that condemnation is a deep and very understandable Iraqi fear that any war between the US and Iran (and its proxies) is likely to do more damage to Iraq than anywhere else. The US government dismissed the Iraqis’ complaints with a complaint of its own, accusing the Iraqi government of failing to protect its personnel. The bigger response came throughout the day Monday and then on Tuesday, when a mob of Kataʾib Hezbollah fighters and supporters stormed the US embassy in Baghdad. They set fires but were prevented from breaking into the compound by security. Perhaps more importantly, two major players in Iraqi politics—populist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, joined the crowd in condemning the US attack. Sadr called on the mob to stop attacking the embassy and said he would use political means to try to force the United States out of Iraq. Neither Sadr nor Sistani could conceivably be described as “pro-American,” but both had been much more concerned about Iranian interference in Iraqi affairs in recent months. Those US airstrikes appear to have changed that.

Now the US has killed Muhandis and Soleimani, one of the most powerful and popular figures in Iran, who has lost some of his sheen over the past couple of years but who is still one of maybe two or three people whose influence within Iran is eclipsed only by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It’s obviously far too early to know what the fallout will be, but it is inconceivable that the Iranian government will not retaliate somehow, and that retaliation doesn’t need to come in the form of a full-scale war. Its proxies throughout the region, from Pakistan to Lebanon and Israel-Palestine, can undertake plenty of retaliatory attacks against the interests of the United States and its allies. It’s also inconceivable that the Iraqi government will just allow this to stand. Leaving aside Baghdad’s political dependence on Tehran, this is the second time in a matter of days that the United States has treated Iraqi sovereignty as a punchline, and this time it’s resulted in the assassinations of a high-ranking Iraqi official and a high-ranking Iranian official who was under Iraqi security guarantees. There’s a very strong possibility that the Iraqi government will demand that the US military completely vacate the country, and if the safety of diplomatic personnel and their families in the US embassy in Baghdad was at risk before, that risk has just been magnified considerably.

It must also be stressed that whatever comes next will be the responsibility of a US president who claims to be anti-war, claims to understand what an incredibly stupid, vindictive thing the Iraq War was, and yet may have just provoked an even more catastrophic conflict. Everything he’s done since taking office has brought the United States closer to war with Iran, to the glee of a Washington foreign policy establishment that’s been after just such a thing for over 40 years now. It is undoubtedly true that, as the parade of “experts” on my TV this evening have been reiterating over and over, not very many people outside of Iran and a select few spots in the Middle East will mourn Soleimani’s passing. But his assassination is not, as Donald Trump will certainly claim in the next few hours, some spectacular feat of American military might. Soleimani wasn’t in hiding like Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Killing him was comparatively easy, but it was also extremely stupid. Soleimani now stands as a martyr to US bullying, and his killing will almost certainly make the Middle East less safe.[/quote]

[QUOTE=kladner;534120][URL]http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52791.htm[/URL]
By Caitlin Johnstone
[quote]Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe a mature worldview requires skepticism toward power.

Smart upstanding citizens believe the government is your friend, and the media are its helpers.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe that powerful people sometimes make immoral plans in secret.

Smart upstanding citizens believe the TV always tells the truth and the CIA exists for no reason.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe that extreme government secrecy makes it necessary to discuss possible theories about what might be going on behind that veil of opacity.

Smart upstanding citizens believe that just because a world-dominating government with the most powerful military in the history of civilization has no transparency and zero accountability to the public, that doesn’t mean you’ve got to get all paranoid about it.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe it’s okay to ask questions about important events that happen in the world, even if their government tells them they shouldn’t.

Smart upstanding citizens believe everything they need to know about reality comes out of Mike Pompeo’s angelic mouth.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe the very rich sometimes engage in nefarious behavior to expand their wealth and power.

Smart upstanding citizens believe billionaires always conduct themselves with the same values that got them their billions in the first place: honesty, morality, and generosity.[/quote]
And so it goes and goes and goes.[/QUOTE]

As an alternative I offer the lyrics from [i]What did you learn in School Today?[/i] which I heard long, long ago on the 1963 Pete Seeger album [b]We Shall Overcome[/b].
[indent]What did you learn in school today
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today
Dear little boy of mine?

I learned that Washington never told a lie
I learned that soldiers seldom die
I learned that everybody's free
And that's what the teacher said to me

That's what I learned in school today
That's what I learned in school

What did you learn in school today
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today
Dear little boy of mine?

I learned that policemen are my friends
I learned that justice never ends
I learned that murderers die for their crimes
Even if we make a mistake sometimes

And that's what I learned in school today
That's what I learned in school

What did you learn in school today
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today
Dear little boy of mine?

I learned our country must be strong
It's always right and never wrong
Our leaders are the finest men
And we elect them again and again

And that's what I learned in school today
That's what I learned in school

What did you learn in school today
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today
Dear little boy of mine?

I learned that war is not so bad
I learned about the great ones we have had
We fought in Germany and in France
And someday I might get my chance[/indent]

Thanks for the wonderful Tom Paxton quote. That song drives in lots of nails....err..hits them on the head. I've heard one line as "We fought in Vietnam (just like/and in) France....."
[INDENT]Jimmy Newman
(Tom Paxton)


Get up Jimmy Newman the morning is come
The engine's are rumbling the coffee's all brewed
Get up Jimmy Newman there's work to be done
And why do you lie there still sleeping

There's a waiting line forming to use the latrine
And the sun is just opening the sky
The breakfast they're serving just has to be seen
And you've only to open your eyes

Get up Jimmy Newman my radio's on
The news is all bad but it's good for a laugh
The tent flap is loose and the peg must be gone
Why do you lie there still sleeping

The night nurse is gone and the sexy one's here
And she tells us such beautiful lies
Her uniform's tight on her marvellous rear
And you've only to open your eyes

Get up Jimmy Newman you're missing the fun
We're loading the plane Jim it's time to go home
It's over for us there's no more to be done
And why do you lie there still sleeping

It's stateside for us Jim the folks may not know
We'll let it be such a surprise
They're loading us next Jim we're ready to go
And you've only to open your eyes

Get up Jimmy Newman they won't take my word
I said you sleep hard but they're shaking their heads
Get up Jimmy Newman and show them you heard
Jimmy just show them you're sleeping

A joke is a joke but there's nothing to gain
Jim I'd slap you but I'm too weak to rise
Get up damn it Jimmy you're missing the plane
And you've only to open your eyes.

[/INDENT]

Trio of Moon of Alabama posts re. the US assassination of Iranian General Soleimani. (Note MofA comments section is lightly moderated if at all, so some of the comments are quite vile, I value the site for its Middle East insights, not its reader comments sections). The bit about the late-1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland actually being an act of Iranian retaliation for the US downing of an Iranian civilian flight 5 months before, an act which the U.S. blamed on then-Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, was news to me, I had not heard that particular allegation of false-flaggery before, but I see now that the IRGC publicly claimed responsibility, which is presumably not something it would do lightly. I vividly recall the event - was hosting a small holiday party for some fellow grad students and neighbors in the graduate student housing complex at UM Ann Arbor at the time, one pair of neighbors I'd invited stopped by late to say they would not be able to join the festivities, she was in tears, he explained that their church pastor had been on that flight. Anyhow, see original articles below for embedded links, which are numerous:

2 Dec: [url=https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/01/what-will-the-trump-administration-do-when-iraq-asks-us-troops-to-leave.html]What Will The Trump Administration Do When Iraq Asks U.S. Troops To Leave?[/url]
[quote]It were [sic] U.S. and Israeli interest that made Iraq [url=https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2019/12/31/wearing-out-a-welcome-in-iraq/]into a battle field[/url] against Iran:
[i]
U.S. military personnel are in Iraq supposedly on an anti-ISIS mission. Under the Trump administration, there appears to have been mission creep, in Iraq as well as Syria, in which somehow confronting Iran has become part of a new mission. That mission has never been justified. No one has explained exactly how the current state of Iraqi-Iranian relations threatens U.S. interests—beyond any threat to the very same U.S. military personnel in Iraq, which brings circular reasoning into play. Seemingly forgotten among all this is how Iran, and the Iraqi elements it supports, also have been performing an anti-ISIS mission.[/i][/quote]

3 Dec: [url=https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/01/us-will-come-to-regret-its-assassination-of-qassim-soleimani.html]U.S. Will Come To Regret Its Assassination of Qassim Soleimani[/url]
[quote]Today the U.S. declared war on Iran and Iraq.

War is what it will get.

Earlier today a U.S. drone or helicopter killed Major General Qassim Soleimani, the famous commander of the Iranian Quds ('Jerusalem') force, while he left the airport of Baghdad where he had just arrived. He had planned to attend the funeral of the 31 Iraqi soldiers the U.S. had killed on December 29 at the Syrian-Iraqi border near Al-Qaim.

The Quds force is the external arm of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Soleiman was responsible for all relations between Iran and political and militant movements outside of Iran. Hajji Qassim advised the Lebanese Hisbullah during the 2006 war against Israel. His support for Iraqi groups enabled them to kick the U.S. invaders out of Iraq. He was the man responsible for, and successful in, defeating the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In 2015 Soleimani traveled to Moscow and convinced Russia to intervene in Syria. His support for the Houthi in Yemen enabled them to withstand the Saudi attackers.

Soleimani had arrived in Baghdad on a normal flight from Lebanon. He did not travel in secret. He was picked up at the airport by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes, the deputy commander of the al-Hashd al-Shaabi, an official Iraqi security force under the command of the Iraqi Prime Minister. The two cars they traveled in were destroyed in the U.S. attack. Both men and their drivers and guards died.

The U.S. created two martyrs who will now become the models and idols for tens of millions of youth in the Middle East.
...
The outright assassination of a commander of Soleimani's weight demands an Iranian reaction of at least a similar size. All U.S. generals or high politicians traveling in the Middle East or elsewhere will now have to watch their back. There will be no safety for them anywhere.

No Iraqi politician will be able to argue for keeping U.S. forces in the country. The Iraqi Prime Minister Abdel Mahdi has called for a parliament emergency meeting to ask for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops...[/quote]

4 Dec: [url=https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/01/the-revenge-for-the-assassination-of-qassem-soleimani.html]The Revenge For The Assassination Of Qassem Soleimani[/url]
[quote]The Trump administration is telling fairytales about its murder of Major General Qassem Soleimani. He was not planing any "imminent attacks" on the U.S. or its interests in Iraq. Reports which claim that while calling Katyusha rockets "sophisticated weapons" can obviously be ignored. In no way was Soleimani a legitimate target for a U.S. attack. No Orwellian State Department briefing can change that.

Fact is that Trump is following the plan of the Foundation of the Defense of Democracy (FDD) which was originally founded as EMET (Hebrew for "truth"), "to provide education to enhance Israel’s image in North America." Undercover video from Al Jazeerah caught the Israeli ex-intel official Sima Vakhnin-Gil in 2017 saying "We have FDD" when she was asked how Israel lobbies for its interests.
[i]
Dan Cohen @dancohen3000 - 5:23 UTC · Jan 4, 2020
FDD is an Israeli government front group. Trump mega donor Bernard “Iran is the devil” Marcus pays 1/3 of its budget. FDD advisor Richard Goldberg was appointed to National Security Council to push for attacking Iran. [url=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-03/u-s-official-central-to-hawkish-iran-policies-departs-nsc]FDD continued to pay his salary[/url].
[/i]
FDD was tasked by Israel to instigate a U.S. war on Iran. Following FDD's plans Trump and his advisors are trying to provoke Iran to retaliate in a way that allows them to launch such a war.

There is a historic example of how Iran reacts to such U.S. provocations.

The U.S. attack:
[i]
Iran Air Flight 655 was a scheduled passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai via Bandar Abbas, that was shot down on 3 July 1988 by an SM-2MR surface-to-air missile fired from USS Vincennes, a guided missile cruiser of the United States Navy. The aircraft, an Airbus A300, was destroyed and all 290 people on board, including 66 children, were killed.
[/i]
The Iranian retribution:
[i]
Pan Am Flight 103 was a regularly scheduled Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt to Detroit via London and New York. On 21 December 1988, N739PA, the aircraft operating the transatlantic leg of the route was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew in what became known as the Lockerbie bombing.
[/i]
The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) claimed to be responsible for the bombing of the plane. It had used a Palestinian cutout in Lebanon to plant the bomb. But for political reasons the official investigation was manipulated and the blame for the Lockerbie bombing was put on Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi who had absolutely nothing to do with it.

The murder of the passengers and crew of Iran Air Flight 655 and the retribution for it were five and a half month apart. This gives us a hint of how long it might take for Iran to prepare the retribution for the U.S. assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani. There is also the political calender that has to be considered. If an Iranian revenge act is of a kind that could help Trump to get reelected it must wait until after the U.S. election. If the revenge act is of a kind that could hurt Trump's poll numbers it must come during the last few months of the campaign.

We will know that it has happened when this flag comes down:
[snip]
[i]SIFFAT ZAHRA @SiffatZahra - 10:52 UTC · Jan 4, 2020
First Time In The History, Red Flag Unfurled Over The Holy Dome Of Jamkarān Mosque, Qom Iran.
Red Flag: A Symbol Of Severe Battle To Come.
#Qaseemsulaimani[/i][/quote]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;534244]4 Dec: [url=https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/01/the-revenge-for-the-assassination-of-qassem-soleimani.html]The Revenge For The Assassination Of Qassem Soleimani[/url][quote]First Time In The History, Red Flag Unfurled Over The Holy Dome Of Jamkarān Mosque, Qom Iran.
Red Flag: A Symbol Of Severe Battle To Come.[/quote]
[/QUOTE]

I am truly impressed. Moon of Alabama has the gift of prophecy.

The red flag is often described as symbolizing blood unjustly shed. The inscription on the flag is variously translated as "Those who want to avenge the blood of Hussein" or "Revenge for Hussein."

The reference is to Hussein Ibn Ali (various transliterations) who was a grandson of the Prophet Mohammed. From the [url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/al-Husayn-ibn-Ali-Muslim-leader-and-martyr] Encyclopaedia Britannica article[/url] (my emphasis) [quote]After the assassination of their father, ʿAlī, Ḥasan and Ḥusayn acquiesced to the rule of the first Umayyad caliph, Muʿāwiyah, from whom they received pensions. Ḥusayn, however, refused to recognize the legitimacy of Muʿāwiyah’s son and successor, Yazīd (April 680). Ḥusayn was then invited by the townsmen of Kūfah, a city with a Shīʿite majority, to come there and raise the standard of revolt against the Umayyads. After receiving some favourable indications, Ḥusayn set out for Kūfah with a small band of relatives and followers. According to traditional accounts, he met the poet al-Farazdaq on the way and was told that the hearts of the Iraqis were for him, but their swords were for the Umayyads. The governor of Iraq, on behalf of the caliph, sent 4,000 men to arrest Ḥusayn and his small band. They trapped Ḥusayn near the banks of the Euphrates River at a place called Karbalāʾ (October 680). When Ḥusayn refused to surrender, he and his escort were slain, and Ḥusayn’s head was sent to Yazīd in Damascus (now in Syria).

In remembrance of the martyrdom of Ḥusayn, Shīʿite Muslims observe the first 10 days of Muḥarram (the date of the battle according to the Islamic calendar) as days of lamentation. [b]Revenge for Ḥusayn’s death was turned into a rallying cry that helped undermine the Umayyad caliphate and gave impetus to the rise of a powerful Shīʿite movement.[/b][/quote]

It seems the flag-raising ceremony invoked another figure in Shia Islam. According to an article in the [url=https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7851515/Iranians-raise-blood-red-flags-revenge-vow-hit-killed-Qassem-Soleimani.html]Daily Mail[/url],

[quote]As the flag was raised in Qom, the mosque speakers called, 'O Allah, hasten your custodian reappearance,' a reference to the end-times reappearance of the Mahdi.

In Shia Islam, the faith of Iran, the Mahdi is a divine figure who will appear to bring a Day of Judgement and rid the world of evil.[/quote]

@DrS: Yes, the symbolism - and we know how big the cultures of that region are on symbolism - doesn't get any deeper for Shia muslims than that of the red flag. Apparently said flag was never raised even during the Iran/Iraq war. Latest from MofA and Consortium News:

o [url=https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/01/iraqi-parliament-expels-foreign-militaries-from-iraq.html]Iraqi Parliament Expels Foreign Militaries From Iraq[/url] | Moon of Alabama
[quote][Quote frome a news report]:
[i]Parliament voted on a five-point action plan that would require the Iraqi government to end the presence of foreign troops in the country, and withdraw its request for assistance from the anti-ISIS global coalition. This would require new legislation to cancel the existing agreement.

Parliament also called on the government to ban the use of Iraqi airspace by any foreign power.

The Iraqi foreign minister has been directed to head to the UN to lodge an official complaint against the US strike.[/i]

The Iraqi Prime Minister and the whole cabinet supported the resolution.

Before the vote Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi told the parliament that he was scheduled to meet with Soleimani a day after his arrival to receive a letter from Iran to Iraq in response to a de-escalation offer Saudi Arabia had made. The U.S. assassinated Soleimani before the letter could be delivered by him. Abdul-Mahdi also said that Trump had asked him to mediate between the U.S. and Iran. Did he do that to trap Soleimani? It is no wonder then that Abdul-Mahdi is fuming.

The Prime Minister's letter to the General Secretary of the UN and the Secretary of the UNSC is [url=https://twitter.com/AlSuraEnglish/status/1213832862576697345]here[/url].

Foreign troops in Iraq included about 5,000 from the U.S. as well as a number of other NATO countries engaged in training Iraqi troops. There are also Turkish troops in north Iraq who fight against the PKK. Those will also have to leave but may not do so voluntarily.

Without any bases in Iraq the U.S. position in Syria will become untenable.[/quote]

o [url=https://consortiumnews.com/2020/01/03/pepe-escobar-us-kick-starts-the-raging-20s-by-declaring-war-on-iran/]US Kick Starts Raging ’20s Declaring War on Iran[/url] | Pepe Escobar, Consortium News: [i]Iraq is the preferred battleground of a proxy war against Iran that may now metastasize into hot war, with devastating consequences.[/i]
[quote]According to my best Southwest Asia intel sources, “Israel gave the U.S. the coordinates for the assassination of Qassem Soleimani as they wanted to avoid the repercussions of taking the assassination upon themselves.”

It does not matter that Trump and the Deep State are at war.

One of the very few geopolitical obsessions that unite them is non-stop confrontation with Iran – qualified by the Pentagon as one of five top threats against the U.S., almost at the level of Russia and China.

And there cannot be a more startling provocation against Iran — in a long list of sanctions and provocations — than what just happened in Baghdad. Iraq is now the preferred battleground of a proxy war against Iran that may now metastasize into hot war, with devastating consequences.

We knew it was coming. There were plenty of rumbles in Israeli media by former military and Mossad officials. There were explicit threats by the Pentagon. I discussed it in detail in Umbria last week with sterling analyst Alastair Crooke – who was extremely worried. I received worried messages from Iran.

The inevitable escalation by Washington was being discussed until late Thursday night here in Palermo, actually a few hours before the strike. (Sicily, by the way, in the terminology of U.S. generals, is AMGOT: American Government Occupied Territory.)

Once again, the Exceptionalist hands at work show how predictable they are. Trump is cornered by impeachment. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been indicted. Nothing like an external “threat” to rally the internal troops.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei knows about these complex variables as much as he knows of his responsibility as the power who issued Iran’s own red lines. Not surprisingly he already announced, on the record, there will be blowback: “a forceful revenge awaits the criminals who have his blood and the blood of other martyrs last night on their hands.” Expect it to be very painful.

[b]Blowback by a Thousand Cuts[/b]

I met al-Muhandis [Iraqi militia commander killed in same air strike] in Baghdad two years ago — as well as many Hashd al-Shaabi members. Here is my full report. The Deep State is absolutely terrified that Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces), a grassroots organization, are on the way to becoming a new Hezbollah, and as powerful as Hezbollah. Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the supreme religious authority in Iraq, universally respected by Shia, fully supports them.

So, the American strike also targets Sistani — not to mention the fact that Hash al-Shaabi operates under guidelines issued by the Iraqi Prime Minister Abdel Mahdi. That’s a major strategic blunder that can only be pulled off by amateurs.

Major General Soleimani, of course, humiliated the whole of the Deep State over and over again — and could eat all of them for breakfast, lunch and dinner as a military strategist. It was Soleimani who defeated ISIS/Daesh in Iraq — not the Americans bombing Raqqa to rubble. Soleimani is a super-hero of almost mythical status for legions of young Hezbollah supporters, Houthis in Yemen, all strands of resistance fighters in both Iraq and Syria, Islamic Jihad in Palestine, and all across Global South latitudes in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

There’s absolutely no way the U.S. will be able to maintain troops in Iraq, unless the nation is re-occupied en masse via a bloodbath. And forget about “security”: no imperial official or imperial military force is now safe anywhere, from the Levant to Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf.[/quote]
Escobar's "strategic blunder" wording echoes the famous quote by Talleyrand (French statesman who became head of the new government after the fall of Napoleon in 1814), who in reference to another seriously misguided execution, of Louis Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Enghien, on orders of Napoleon, in 1804, said "it was worse than a crime. It was a blunder".

[QUOTE=ewmayer;534324]@DrS: Yes, the symbolism - and we know how big the cultures of that region are on symbolism - doesn't get any deeper for Shia muslims than that of the red flag. Apparently said flag was never raised even during the Iran/Iraq war.
<snip>[/QUOTE]
I wonder who ordered the raising of the red flag over the mosque. Perhaps it was Khamenei. Perhaps the Revolutionary Guards or Quds Force. But I think the raising of the red flag is political theater, stage-managed by the government.

There was no shortage of important Iranian officials who died violent deaths during the early years of the revolutionary government. Some of them were important religious figures, like Ayatollah Mohammed Behesti. He got a big funeral, but no red flag. One of the people Iran held responsible for the bombing that killed him was living under an assumed name in the Netherlands when he was shot twice at close range and killed, in December 2015.

Unlike Behesti, or the martyr Hussein, General Soleimani was not a religious figure. He was the Iranian Hegemon-in-Chief. His methods were disconcertingly similar to those used by the CIA in years gone by -- recruit and organize locals, get them money and weapons, and use them to destabilize or locally usurp the regimes of the countries they live in. Only he had the full backing of his government, and was at it for decades. Iran's proxies, led by Quds Force (Quds means "holy" BTW) hold sway in significant parts of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

The shades of CIA chieftains and operatives from years gone by, must be in awe of his success with their methods, and Soleimani's ghost is no doubt getting on with them like a house on fire -- which would be fitting, since the place where they're meeting surely [i]is[/i] on fire.

Sad to say, the good ol' USA handed him opportunities. Most recently, after Shrub toppled Saddam Hussein, and, after him, Obama propped up Maliki while he tried to turn Iraq into a one-party state run by his loyalists, and wound up turning it into such a failed state that soldiers deserted in droves rather than fight ISIS on his behalf. But I can't say that Iran's proxies have made it a better place.

In the second edit below, I lost the previous part of the comment. Reconstructing....
[QUOTE]But I can't say that Iran's proxies have made it a better place.[/QUOTE]Can you say that the Saudi and Israeli Proxy, the US of A has made it a better place?


[QUOTE]Yes, the symbolism - and we know how big the cultures of that region are on symbolism[/QUOTE]Whilst we, in our not-at-all-benighted region are unswayed by the brandishments [SIC] , er, blandishments, ah, brandishing of symbols, be they visual, verbal, musical, or what have you? :razz:

[QUOTE=kladner;534378]In the second edit below, I lost the previous part of the comment. Reconstructing....
Can you say that the Saudi and Israeli Proxy, the US of A has made it a better place?[/quote]While I disagree with your characterization of the US as a "Saudi and Israeli proxy," my answer to the question of whether our intervention in Iraq has made it a better place is NO. And, what is worse, from a US standpoint, it has not served US interests. Bush the Elder was smart enough to realize it would be foolhardy to topple Saddam (but, alas, [i]not[/i] smart enough to refrain from telling Iraqis to do it themselves, without being willing to back them).

Saddam Hussein was a monster, who learned his methods of repression by studying those of Stalin, but his presence served US interests by checking the regional ambitions of Iran. This is one reason the Reagan Administration supplied Iraq with intelligence to assist it in its war of aggression against Iran. (It is possible that the Reagan Admin reckoned the war would [i]also[/i] check the regional ambitions of Saddam, which it did -- at least until that war ended.)

I note that one of the phony ideas used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq was that Saddam was involved in 9/11, which he wasn't. Now, it seems, Mike Pence is forwarding the unevidenced notion that [url=https://apnews.com/eba793fad25f603b0fbdfa31d59118db]Soleimani was supposedly involved in 9/11[/url]. Gary Trudeau wrote truly in his December 11, 2005 comic strip [i]Doonsbury[/i] when he called 9/11 "The Swiss Army knife of excuses."[quote]Whilst we, in our not-at-all-benighted region are unswayed by the brandishments [SIC] , er, blandishments, ah, brandishing of symbols, be they visual, verbal, musical, or what have you? :razz:[/QUOTE]I think that visual symbols have traditionally, and until relatively recent times, had an importance in Iran which we could be overlooking.

During the days of the Iranian Revolution, I was amazed at the visual symbols being used in the parades. There would be huge banners, with [i]much[/i] larger than life-sized figures. One especially memorable one had Ayatollah Khomeini and the Shah. Ayatollah Khomeini was depicted standing serenely in his robes, and had a [i]halo[/i], while the Shah was depicted cringing in fear and bounding away. And the Shah did not have feet, but, rather, [i]cloven hooves[/i]. Such a depiction may, I think, properly be called [i]iconic[/i]. It seemed reminiscent of religious images from the Middle Ages.

And it could be that the power of visual symbols has decreased somewhat since then, due to one of the real successes of the revolution, laid out in this [url=https://www.mei.edu/publications/educational-attainment-iran]Middle East Institute[/url] page from 2009,

[quote]Statistical analysis of literacy rates in the years 1966, 1976, 1986, 1991, and 2006 indicates that educational attainment improved considerably in the Islamic Republic of Iran, especially for women. Over this period, the literacy gap between women and men has narrowed. Before the Islamic Revolution (specifically, in 1978), over 60% of the Iranian female population was illiterate. In the post-revolutionary years, women have shown an increasing willingness and effort to become literate and highly educated. Currently, more than 55% percent of first-year university students are women.

According to national census data, in 1966, only 17.42% of the Iranian female population or 1,628,000 was literate (Table 1). In the same year, the male literacy rate was 39.19% (3,928,000). These figures were 47.49% for men and 35.48% for women in 1976.

The first post-revolutionary national census in 1986 indicated that the women’s literacy rate had climbed to the level of 52.1% and that 9.8 million women had become literate by that year. Based on the second post-revolutionary national census in 1996, 74.2% of the Iranian female population over the age of six (25.7 million) were literate. This figure was 74.7% for men (26.5 million). Finally, the 2006 census showed that 80.3% of the total female population over the age of six was literate. The corresponding figure for the male population was 88.7%.[/quote]

o [url=https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/01/iraq-parliament-calls-for-u-s-troops-to-be-expelled-plus-cavalcade-of-stupid.html]Iraq Parliament Calls for U.S. Troops to Be Expelled (plus Cavalcade of Stupid Tweets)[/url] | naked capitalism

o [url=https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/01/the-axis-of-resistance-announces-the-project-that-will-avenge-qassem-soleimani.html]The Axis Of Resistance Announces The Project That Will Avenge Qassem Soleimani[/url] | Moon of Alabama
[quote]The media continue to tell fairytales about Qassem Soleimani and about Trumps decision to assassinate him and PMU leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Meanwhile the Resistance Axis announced how it will avenge their deaths.

In their descriptions of Qassem Soleimani U.S. media fail to mention that Soleimani and the U.S. fought on the same side. In 2001 Iran supported the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. It used its good relations with the Hazara Militia and the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, which both the CIA and Iran had supplied for years, to support the U.S. operation. The Wikipedia entry for the 2001 uprising in Herat lists U.S. General Tommy Franks and General Qassem Soleimani as allied commanders.

The collaboration ended in 2002 after George W. Bush named Iran as a member of his "Axis of Evil".

In 2015 the U.S. and Iran again collaborated. This time to defeat ISIS in Iraq. During the battle to liberate Tikrit the U.S. air force flew in support of General Soleimani's ground forces. [i]Newsweek[/i] reported at that time:
[i]
While western nations, including the U.S., were slow to react to ISIS's march across northern Iraq, Soleimani was quick to play a more public role in Tehran's efforts to tackle the terror group. For example, the commander was seen in pictures with militiamen in the northern Iraqi town of Amerli when it was recaptured from ISIS last September.
...
Top U.S. general Martin Dempsey has said that the involvement of Iran in the fight against ISIS in Iraq could be a positive step, as long as the situation does not descend into sectarianism, because of fears surrounding how Shia militias may treat the remaining Sunni population of Tikrit if it is recaptured. The military chief also claimed that almost two thirds of the 30,000 offensive were Iranian-backed militiamen, meaning that [b]without Iranian assistance and Soleimani's guidance, the offensive on Tikrit may not have been possible[/b].
[/i]
It is deplorable that U.S. media and politicians blame Soleimani for U.S. casualties during the invasion of Iraq. Shia groups caused only 17% of all U.S. casualties and fought, like the Sadr Brigades, without support from Iran. There are also revived claims that Iran provided the Iraqi resistance with Explosive Formed Penetrators used in roadside bombs. But that claim had been proven to be was false more than 12 years ago. The "EFP from Iran" story was part of a U.S. PSYOPS campaign to explain away the real reason why it was losing the war. There were dozens of reports which proved that the EFPs were manufactured in Iraq and there never was any evidence that Iran delivered weapons or anything else to the Iraqi resistance:
[i]
Britain, whose forces have had responsibility for security in southeastern Iraq since the war began, has found nothing to support the Americans' contention that Iran is providing weapons and training in Iraq, several senior military officials said.

"I have not myself seen any evidence -- and I don't think any evidence exists -- of government-supported or instigated" armed support on Iran's part in Iraq, British Defense Secretary Des Browne said in an interview in Baghdad in late August.
[/i]
Iran is not responsible for the U.S. casualties in Iraq. George W. Bush is. What made Soleimani "bad" in the eyes of the U.S. was his support for the resistance against the Zionist occupation of Palestine. It was Israel that wanted him 'removed'. The media explanations for Trump's decision fail to explain that point.[/quote]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;534427]o [URL="https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/01/iraq-parliament-calls-for-u-s-troops-to-be-expelled-plus-cavalcade-of-stupid.html"]Iraq Parliament Calls for U.S. Troops to Be Expelled (plus Cavalcade of Stupid Tweets)[/URL] | naked capitalism

[B][U]o [URL="https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/01/the-axis-of-resistance-announces-the-project-that-will-avenge-qassem-soleimani.html"]The Axis Of Resistance Announces The Project That Will Avenge Qassem Soleimani[/URL] | Moon of Alabama[/QUOTE]
[/U][/B][B][/B][QUOTE]Iran is not responsible for the U.S. casualties in Iraq. George W. Bush is. What made Soleimani "bad" in the eyes of the U.S. was his support for the resistance against the Zionist occupation of Palestine.[U] [B]It was Israel that wanted him 'removed'[/B].[/U] The media explanations for Trump's decision fail to explain that point. [/QUOTE]
Hence my designation of the US as a proxy of Israel and Saudi Arabia. Both of those players want to take down Iran.

Regarding Iran not being "responsible" for the deaths of US soldiers, you may find the case [i]Karcher v. Islamic Republic of Iran[/i] of interest. [url=https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.176973.1.0.pdf]The original complaint, filed 02/12/16[/url] describes the case as follows:

[quote][b]I. [u]NATURE OF THE ACTION [/u][/b]

1. This is a civil action pursuant to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1605A (hereinafter "FSIA") for wrongful death, personal injury and related torts, by the estates and families of United States nationals and/or members of the U.S. armed forces (as defined in 10 U.S.C. § 101) who were killed or injured by Iran and/or its agents in Iraq from 2004 to 2011.

2. Iran's aforementioned agents included the U.S. - designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (as that term is defined in 8 U.S.C. § 1189 of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA")) Hezbollah; the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ("IRGC"), whose subdivision known as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force ("IRGC-QF") is a U.S. - designated Specially Designated Global Terrorist; and other terrorist agents that included a litany of Iraqi Shi'a terror groups referred to herein collectively as "Special Groups."

3. The United States officially designated Iran a State Sponsor of Terrorism on January 19, 1984, pursuant to § 6(j) of the Export Administration Act, § 40 of the Arms Export Control Act, and § 620A of the Foreign Assistance Act.

4. The United States designated Hezbollah a Specially Designated Terrorist on January 25, 1995. Hezbollah was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States on October 8, 1997, and it has retained that designation since that time. Hezbollah was designated a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the United States on October 31, 2001, pursuant to E.O. 13224.[/quote]

The designation of the Revolutionary Guards and Qods Force was done [url=https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/pages/hp644.aspx]in October 2007[/url].

A Memorandum Opinion ([url=https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4656167/karcher-v-islamic-republic-of-iran/]text here[/url], [url=https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/district-of-columbia/dcdce/1:2016cv00232/176973/95/0.pdf?ts=1566897947]image here[/url]) issued in August indicates the case is moving along -- thanks in no small part to Iran's refusal to recognize the court's jurisdiction, it has suffered default judgement in preliminary "bellwether" cases.

So Iran may be held [i]financially[/i] responsible (liable) for the deaths and injuries of hundreds of US soldiers through its supplying of its proxies with "explosively formed penetrators."

I'm not sure whether Soleimani had a hand in the 1983 Marine barracks bombing, but it seems likely enough.

As to any sort of real legal justification for killing him with a military operation, I'm not holding my breath. The Admin belatedly "notified" Congress, but the notification was [i]classified[/i], so the public isn't allowed to read it. Hmm, what's the Admin trying to hide? Oh, I know -- [i]Everything![/i]

At the same time, [i]Il Duce[/i] is insisting that Iranian cultural institutions are legitimate targets, despite this being a war crime. I wonder what would happen if he gave the order to destroy such a place, and the order was refused on the grounds that it was not lawful. Oh please, oh please, oh please please please please [i]please![/i]

Leave all that aside. WHY is the US in the ME in the first place? One obvious answer is that the US is the successor to British colonial activities in the region. Another, complimentary answer is one word: Oil. By what legal theory is the US engaged in LEGAL military activities in foreign countries with which no state of declared war exists?

The US is an illegal occupying force in the region. It is fallacious propaganda to ascribe evil to a man who very effectively engaged in resistance to the illegal occupying force.

Oh, yeah. As to blood on hands, who is responsible for the deaths of easily a million Iraqi civilians? How about all the dead Libyans and Syrians? It is true imperial hypocrisy to accuse others of excessive bloodshed.

Finally, don't take any of this as admiration for any sort of military behavior. It is all odious, but size does matter when it comes to wanton slaughter. The US is an aggressor in this situation, and the ten ton gorilla of slaughter. Those who resist aggressors rank lower in blame.

The USA is now at war, de-facto and de-jure, with BOTH Iraq and Iran
 

By The Saker

[URL]http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52809.htm[/URL]
The blowback has begun

January 05, 2020 "Information Clearing House" - First, let’s begin by a quick summary of what has taken place (note: this info is still coming in, so there might be corrections once the official sources make their official statements).

1 Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdl Mahdi has now officially revealed that the US had asked him to mediate between the US and Iran and that General Qassem Soleimani to come and talk to him and give him the answer to his mediation efforts. Thus, Soleimani was on an OFFICIAL DIPLOMATIC MISSION as part of a diplomatic initiative INITIATED BY THE USA.

2 The Iraqi Parliament has now voted on a resolution requiring the government to press Washington and its allies to withdraw their troops from Iraq.

3 Iraq’s caretaker PM Adil Abdul Mahdi said the American side notified the Iraqi military about the planned airstrike minutes before it was carried out. He stressed that his government denied Washington permission to continue with the operation.

4 The Iraqi Parliament has also demanded that the Iraqi government must “work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace or water for any reason“

5 The Iraqi Foreign Ministry said that Baghdad had turned to the UN Security Council with complaints about US violations of its sovereignty.

6 Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said the parliamentary resolution to end foreign troop presence in the country did not go far enough, calling on local and foreign militia groups to unite. I also have confirmation that the Mehdi Army is being re-mobilized.

7 The Pentagon brass is now laying the responsibility for this monumental disaster on Trump (see here). The are now slowly waking up to this immense clusterbleep and don’t want to be held responsible for what is coming next.

8 For the first time in the history of Iran, a Red Flag was hoisted over the Holy Dome Of Jamkaran Mosque, Iran. This indicates that the blood of martyrs has been spilled and that a major battle will now happen. The text in the flag says “Oh Hussein we ask for your help” (unofficial translation)

9 The US has announced the deployment of 3’000 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne to Kuwait.

10 Finally, the Idiot-in-Chief tweeted the following message, probably to try to reassure his freaked out supporters: “The United States just spent Two Trillion Dollars on Military Equipment. We are the biggest and by far the BEST in the World! If Iran attacks an American Base, or any American, we will be sending some of that brand new beautiful equipment their way…and without hesitation!“. Apparently, he still thinks that criminally overspending for 2nd rate military hardware is going to yield victory…

Analysis.[follows]

[QUOTE=kladner;534462]Leave all that aside. WHY is the US in the ME in the first place? [/QUOTE]So, it's all right for Iran to be illegal occupiers in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, as long as it's in the name of fighting against the good ol' USA.

I'm not sure how far back "in the first place" goes. I suppose you could go back to the time of the Pharaohs.

Invasion and conquest are nothing new to the Middle East. In [i]Lawrence of Arabia[/i], Audar tells Lawrence, "The desert has dried up more blood than you could think of."

The region didn't become Islamic because of missionaries, you know. It was made so by the "Invincible Sword of Islam," AKA the Moslem Conquests, which also invaded and illegally occupied a sizable portion of Europe.

[i]Il Duce[/i] is threatening Iraq with "sanctions like they've never seen before, ever" if they insist on US troops leaving. In view of what they [i]have[/i] seen before, that's quite a threat:

[url=https://www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/the-mongol-sack-of-baghdad-in-1258/]The Mongol Sack of Baghdad in 1258[/url]
[quote]The Islamic Golden Age -- from the 8th to the mid-13th century -- genuinely was one of the periods of greatest flourishing of human knowledge and progress. And Baghdad was its focal point. A truly global repository of human knowledge, this Arab-Muslim imperial capital also welcomed -- indeed encouraged -- scholars from across the known world. As its wealth and fame grew, more and more scholars and engineers were drawn to the city, from all over civilization. But in January 1258, a vast Mongol army reached the city's perimeter and demanded that the caliph al-Mustasim -- the nominal spiritual authority of the Islamic world -- surrender.
<snip>
For many historians, the arrival of the Mongols into the heart of Muslim faith and empire is the single most devastating moment in the history of the Muslim Middle East. It's easy to see why—and hard to argue otherwise—because the Sack of Baghdad would mark the end of the Islamic Golden Age.

Rather than submit, the Abbasid caliph challenged the Mongols to try and storm his city, if they dared. The nomadic army from Asia -- led by Hulagu Khan, one of Genghis Khan's grandsons -- did indeed dare. Doing what they are most famous for, the Mongols thrashed Baghdad. In 10 days of unremitting violence and destruction, Baghdad and its inhabitants were completely, and utterly vanquished. Almost without exception, the population was either put to the sword or sold into slavery. The River Tigris ran red -- to cite one of the most over-quoted, and overwrought phrases in history -- with the blood of slaughtered men, women and children.

After this, every building of note in Baghdad including mosques, palaces, and markets was utterly destroyed, among them the world-famous House of Wisdom. Hundreds of thousands of priceless manuscripts and books were tossed into the river, clogging the arterial waterway with so many texts, according to eyewitnesses, that soldiers could ride on horseback from one side to the other. And, of course, the river turned from red to black with ink.
<snip>
Apart from the human casualties, there was the destruction of the 500-year old city itself. Fires were set so that the fragrant scent of sandalwood and other aromatics was smelled up to 30 miles away. If you're looking for an example of a city razed to the ground, Baghdad in 1258 would be a good choice. After a week Hulagu, ordered his camp out of the city, and moved upwind, away from the stench of rotting corpses. And this from a man who'd not only engaged in numerous slaughters before Baghdad, but whose culture dictated, as we saw earlier, that they never wash their clothes.

Hulagu left Baghdad a broken and depopulated city. Even if those left alive had wanted to rebuild, they lacked the numbers, the resources, and the skills to do so. The death and destruction were such that it would be more than a decade before anyone from Baghdad performed the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. In attacking Baghdad, Hulagu also destroyed the network of canals that irrigated the arable land thereabouts. Famine and plague followed the Mongol horde to Baghdad as elsewhere. It's easy to see why they're often tagged with a reputation as the most destructive of all the great empires.[/quote]

[QUOTE]So, it's all right for Iran to be illegal occupiers in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, as long as it's in the name of fighting against the good ol' USA.[/QUOTE]Justify this assertion. Iran has been a prime factor in the defeat of ISIS, and gets credit for this outside of the US and its lackeys.
Once again, by what legal right does the "Good" Old US of A have to attempt to establish hegemony in this region?

Comparing the current US occupations to ancient history is a non sequitur. It also does not answer the question of "why" and by what right other than might.

Lawrence of Arabia is reference to previous colonial adventures from which the region is still suffering, and to which the US is the successor.

The ME produced Islamic forces which indeed invaded various places. Europe produced the Crusaders. Of course, those were holy christian warriors, so they can't be compared to the brutal Sword of Islam.

The Mongol Sack of Baghdad was undoubtedly horrific. Would you care to speculate on the numbers of casualties and displaced people that caused? Compare and contrast with the effects Shock and Awe, and the US invasion in general.

Of course, I am just an irrational hater to hold the "Good Ol' US of A" accountable for millions dead or displaced.

Enjoy your exercises in sophistry.

I'm pretty sure the Yemeni government didn't invite the Iranians in to foment rebellion. Iran's creation of the Houthis in Yemen is about as "legal" as the US's creation of the Contras in Nicaragua. The official rationale at the time was, not surprisingly, quite similar to Iran's today: we were resisting Soviet hegemony.

I'm not sure when the governments of Lebanon or Syria invited the Iranians in. Lebanon was in chaos when Hezbollah was born, having been in a state of civil war since 1975. Also, something like 20,000 Syrian troops were in residence in Lebanon starting shortly after the civil war began, staying until sometime in the 2000's.

I'm pretty sure the Iraqi government gave its official blessing to the Iranians' presence a considerable time [i]after[/i] they showed up. At this point it's hard to say who's giving whom permission to do things there.

The Iranians are of a different ethnicity, speak a different language, and are of a different sect of Islam than most of the Islamic inhabitants of the countries they're playing in. Their continued presence holds the prospect of insurgencies with both ethnic [i]and[/i] religious hatreds playing themselves out.

Now, a number of Iranians -- 56 was the last figure I've seen -- have died tragically during Soleimani's funeral ceremonies. A rush in the multitudes resulted in a lot of people getting trampled. I don't think there's any real blame to be cast; these deaths appear to be accidental. But perhaps the government of Iran will demand revenge for these deaths also.

Since Iran has sworn revenge, it will be jolly fun to blame the Iranians for [i]anything[/i] bad that happens. Let's see here -- how about the earthquake that just struck Puerto Rico? Sure -- the Iranians are to blame! It was the stampede at Soleimani's funeral that caused it! Ridiculous, you say? Well, the good ol' USA got blamed for the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami -- I kid you not.

BTW, after Acting Defense Secretary Esper -- literally -- laid down the law about military attacks on cultural centers, it seems that [i]Il Duce[/i] has backed off his foolish threat. I believe that he realized he was facing the prospect of the scenario I proposed: him ordering such an attack, and his order being refused.

I would not bet against Iran achieving its announced objective of the US being obliged to abandon the region, in the not-too-distant future. I imagine Vladimir Putin is licking his chops.

[b]EDIT:[/b]

[url=https://apnews.com/add7a702258b4419d796aa5f48e577fc]Iran strikes back at US with missile attack at bases in Iraq[/url][quote]Iranian state TV said the attack was in revenge for the killing of Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, whose funeral procession Tuesday in his hometown of Kerman prompted angry calls to avenge his death, which drastically raised tensions in the Middle East.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard warned the U.S. and its regional allies against retaliating over the missile attack against the Ain Assad air base in Iraq's western Anbar province. The Guard issued the warning via a statement carried by Iran's state-run IRNA news agency.

"We are warning all American allies, who gave their bases to its terrorist army, that any territory that is the starting point of aggressive acts against Iran will be targeted," The Guard said. It also threatened Israel.

Ain Assad air base is in Iraq's western Anbar province. It was first used by American forces after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, and later saw American troops stationed there amid the fight against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. It houses about 1,500 U.S. and coalition forces.[/quote]No word yet on casualties or damage. It sounds to me like Iran wanted to do [i]something[/i] quickly. The choice of target seems to have been made with some care.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;534547]I'm pretty sure the Yemeni government didn't invite the Iranians in to foment rebellion. Iran's creation of the Houthis in Yemen is about as "legal" as the US's creation of the Contras in Nicaragua. The official rationale at the time was, not surprisingly, quite similar to Iran's today: we were resisting Soviet hegemony.

I'm not sure when the governments of Lebanon or Syria invited the Iranians in. Lebanon was in chaos when Hezbollah was born, having been in a state of civil war since 1975. Also, something like 20,000 Syrian troops were in residence in Lebanon starting shortly after the civil war began, staying until sometime in the 2000's.

I'm pretty sure the Iraqi government gave its official blessing to the Iranians' presence a considerable time [i]after[/i] they showed up. At this point it's hard to say who's giving whom permission to do things there.

The Iranians are of a different ethnicity, speak a different language, and are of a different sect of Islam than most of the Islamic inhabitants of the countries they're playing in. Their continued presence holds the prospect of insurgencies with both ethnic [i]and[/i] religious hatreds playing themselves out.[/QUOTE]
Wow, so much willful ignorance and red-scare paranoia on display in just a few paragraphs ... so let's just throw a little actual factual background in and let readers make their own more-informed judgment:

o Any analogizing between the Yemeni Houthis and Nicaraguan Contras is laughable - the Houthis have existed in Yemen for just a wee bit longer. [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthi_insurgency_in_Yemen]Wikipedia[/url]:
[quote]In 1962, a revolution in North Yemen ended over 1,000 years of rule by Zaidi Imams, who claimed descent from the Hashemites. Sa'dah, in the north, was their main stronghold and since their fall from power the region was largely ignored economically and remains underdeveloped. The Yemeni government has little authority in Sa'dah.

During Yemen's 1994 civil war, the Wahhabis, an Islamic group adhering to a strict version of Sunni Islam found in neighboring Saudi Arabia, helped the government in its fight against the secessionist south. Zaidis complain the government has subsequently allowed the Wahhabis too strong a voice in Yemen. Saudi Arabia, for its part, worries that strife instigated by the Zaidi sect so close to Yemen's border with Saudi Arabia could stir up groups in Saudi Arabia itself.[/quote]
A bit of clarification re. the connection between the Zaidis and Houthis is to be found in the Wikipedia article on the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthis]Houthi Movement[/url]:
[quote]The Houthi movement (/ˈhuːθi/; Arabic: الحوثيون‎ al-Ḥūthiyyūn [ħuːθijˈjuːn]), officially called Ansar Allah (ʾanṣār allāh أنصار الله "Supporters of God") and colloquially simply Houthis, is an Islamic political and armed movement that emerged from Sa'dah in northern Yemen in the 1990s. The movement was called Houthis because its founder is from the Houthi tribe. They are of the Zaidi sect, though the movement reportedly also includes Sunnis.[/quote]
As is the case with Iraq, Yemen has both substantial Sunni and Shia populations; the Houthi, being predominantly Shia, have an obvious religious-affiliational tie with Iran. The Saudis were the ones who escalated the civil war into major-atrocity/scorched-earth levels, and got their US pals involved as well. Colonialism and western meddling again form a backdrop. DrS's "I'm pretty sure the Yemeni government didn't invite the Iranians in to foment rebellion", in referring to the corrupt, western-and-Saudi-allied regime, now deposed, is both technically accurate and highly misleading.

o "I'm not sure when the governments of Lebanon or Syria invited the Iranians in." -- So at least you admit that said governments *did* invite the Iranians in. So let's flip the script: when did the governments of Lebanon and Syria invite the US forces in? And I don't recall the Iraqis exactly inviting the Americans in back in 2003 ... the current uncomfortable and now-moribund "status of forces" agreement re. US troops there is strictly an awkward legacy of that illegal invasion and subsequent military occupation.

o "I'm pretty sure the Iraqi government gave its official blessing to the Iranians' presence a considerable time [i]after[/i] they showed up." -- Your usual unsourced-claim-elevated-into-alleged-fact ploy. Others of us are far less sure of this than you are. W.r.to the recent assassination, it has been established beyond doubt that General Soleimani *was* in Iraq on a diplomatic mission at the official request of the Iraqi government. Your above statement is just you pissing in the wind to try to distract from that inconvenient truth.

o "The Iranians are of a different ethnicity, speak a different language, and are of a different sect of Islam than most of the Islamic inhabitants of the countries they're playing in" -- Well, you'd better be more specific about "most places", [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shia_Islam]because[/url]
[quote]Shias form a majority of the population in Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Iran, and Iraq, as well as a plurality in Lebanon. Shias constitute 36.3% of the entire population (and 38.6% of the Muslim population) of the Middle East.

Shia Muslims constitute 27-35% of the population in Lebanon, and as per some estimates from 35% to over 35–40% of the population in Yemen, 30%–35% of the citizen population in Kuwait (no figures exist for the non-citizen population), over 20% in Turkey, 5–20% of the population in Pakistan, and 10–19% of Afghanistan's population.[/quote]
On the other hand, I think it would be quite accurate to again script-flip this to "The Americans are of a different ethnicity, speak a different language, and are of a different religion than most of the Islamic inhabitants of the countries they're playing in".

Thanks for the enlightening history, Ernst.
EDIT: .....and demographics.

Good post, Ernst.

Azerbaijan? That's usually not mentioned as part of the Middle East, but no denying it's there. I'm guessing you mean the former SSR, capital Baku, rather than the region of the same name just across the border in NW Iran.

So, the Houthis emerged as an armed force in the 1990's. All on their own, I'm sure.

I guess Saudi Arabia and Egypt don't count in the demographics of the Middle East.

I also note that, while Shia may constitute upwards of 40% of the Muslim population of ME, they constitute something like 90% of the population of Iran. Giving percentages of the population of the ME exclusive of Iran might give a different picture.

I note that, in countries where the Shia form minorities, they are often impoverished minorities. Of course, Iran has its own impoverished Shia, but perhaps fewer than they might. During the Iran-Iraq war, they employed many of their poorest people as suicide soldiers. They have named streets and buildings after some of them. Desperate times... Children riding bicycles toward enemy lines fortified with machine guns, and lobbing hand grenades, suffered [i]very[/i] high casualties. There are even reports of children being issued with "Keys to Paradise" and used to clear minefields by marching through them (as mentioned, for example, in the autobiographical "graphic novel" [u]Persepolis[/u]), though such tactics would not work against antitank mines, which would probably not go off if a person stepped on them.

With Iraq, I simply had [i]my[/i] figures wrong. Thank you for the correction.

And I find your "script reversal" very apt there, in particular WRT our 2003 invasion. The cluelessness of Team Shrub in the runup to that disastrous enterprise is painful to recall. It would be a cakewalk. We would be greeted as liberators. I recall a Tom Toles cartoon of the period, with Doctor Shrub visiting the latest among a whole ward of bedridden patients -- countries we'd invaded, portrayed as dismembered people who haven't been reassembled. "I've seen this before," he says.

I note an exception, however. The "US soldiers" (so described by the regime) who protested the recent rise in gas prices in Iran were of the same ethnicity, same religion, and spoke the same language as other Iranians.

I also note, WRT the missiles Iran fired at our bases in Iraq: From the satellite image of Ain Asad Air Base, it appears that those missiles can be targeted [i]very[/i] precisely. I'm sure that this was part of the message Iran was delivering with that attack. I also note that, rather than our precautions and warning systems, there were no human casualties because Iran went to considerable effort to avoid inflicting them, both in their choice of targets, and in warning non-US foreigners who might be in harm's way.

This stands in stark contrast to the way they've run their proxy operations in Iraq.

I also note that Iraqi officials said they would be summoning Iran's Ambassador to protest the attack's violation of Iraqi sovereignty, but I haven't seen anything about that actually having happened.

I don't think I'm being "paranoid" about Russia (I'm guessing that's the object of your "red-scare" reference). In the second place, Putin [url=https://apnews.com/d7a14668d38806ae02583ce388eb09d6]hasn't been idle[/url]:[quote]DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to Damascus on Tuesday for a meeting with President Bashar Assad, a rare visit that comes amid soaring tensions between Iran and United States following the U.S. drone strike that killed a top Iranian general.[/quote]. Also, [url=https://apnews.com/3cb5bbabec703e0b22f0f92cddf037a4]US allies see Mideast strategy vacuum that Putin can fill[/url][quote]PARIS (AP) — He was the leader on the world stage, visiting troops stationed in a far-flung war zone for the holidays, shoring up alliances and economic deals in the Mideast, requesting a meeting with the German chancellor in his capital, portraying himself and his country as reliable partners in an increasingly uncertain world.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has had a busy week, stepping into the aftermath of the American drone strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Putin’s visit Tuesday to Syria was emblematic of a reality that has been playing out in recent months: The U.S. strategic position in the Middle East is a mystery to many of its allies, and Russia is more than ready to fill any vacuum.[/quote]So yes, I'd say Putin is licking his chops.

And, in the [i]first[/i] place, the Russians are certainly also strangers playing in that strange land. Their military assistance appears to have been instrumental in saving the Assad regime in Syria, but it would hardly be stretching words to say they've had to destroy the country in order to save it.

I also note that [i]Il Duce[/i] seems to be stepping back from the abyss -- in response to the missile attacks in Iraq, he is not going to do so much as issue Iran a citation for littering. I did note a sentence in his statement: [quote]By removing Soleimani we have sent a powerful message to terrorists: if you value your own life, you will not threaten the lives of our people.[/quote]Of course, the "terrorists" who actually [i]carry out[/i] attacks against Americans often do [i]not[/i] value their own lives. They are perfectly willing to die in order to kill their victims. However, the same may [i]not[/i] be true of the people who enable them. So the message may be directed at them. This would be in line with the ideas put forth in [u]The Lessons of Terror[/u] by Caleb Carr. I doubt that [i]Il Duce[/i] is familiar with it, but some of his would-be handlers might be.

I also note that, while Iran's [i]direct[/i] response to our killing of Soleimani may be finished, they may well do more through their proxies.

Just a note or two:
[QUOTE]And, in the [I]first[/I] place, the Russians are certainly also strangers playing in that strange land. Their military assistance appears to have been instrumental in saving the Assad regime in Syria, but it would hardly be stretching words to say they've had to destroy the country in order to save it.[/QUOTE]There is a difference between committing an invasion, and assisting an ally. As far as blaming Russia for destruction of Syria, you really are standing things on their heads. Syria was under assault by US armed and supported "freedom fighters" who have a great deal of personnel overlap with ISIL and al Qaeda. A better word for them is "mercenaries", or perhaps "proxies". The latter word is constantly used as in condemnation of Iran. I guess it's just peachy for the Good 'Ol Us of A to arm and bankroll terrorists as long as they attack the "right" countries. Of course, those stinking Russkies are totally evil for thwarting the US's noble attempts [STRIKE]to wipe out one of Israel's primary targets for them[/STRIKE] free the Middle East of oppressive regimes (except the Saudis and Israelis.)

There are no pristine or admirable players in this ugly game. It must, however, be endlessly repeated that the conflict and chaos in the region has be greatly enhanced by colonialist meddling, and most recently by the US destruction of Iraq and all that has followed. The fighters which opposed the invaders were in large part the Sunni Baathist forces which were purged by the invaders (remember who those are?) These are some of the foundations of ISIL and company, who have been railed against by US propagandists even as the US was privately supporting them to destabilize still more of the region.

I don't excuse bad behavior by any of the participants.You constantly whitewash the biggest single player, with many more oceans of blood on its account than any other in recent history. Believe what you like. However, the history of death and displacement of just Iraqi civilians by the US invasion is unmatched. Add to that the Iraqi war on Iran, when Saddam was our boy before he became inconvenient, and the body count multiplies greatly.

You really should try to get over your confusion between invasion, and the assisting of allies under assault by an invader.

Looking at the Wikipedia page on the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Civil_War#Casualties]Syrian Civil War[/url], it places US intervention some way down the time line. Looking a bit closer, the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American-led_intervention_in_the_Syrian_Civil_War]American-led intervention in the Syrian Civil War[/url] says [quote]During the Syrian Civil War, which began in 2011, the U.S. initially supplied the rebels of the Free Syrian Army with non-lethal aid—including food rations and pickup trucks—but quickly began providing training, money, and intelligence to selected Syrian rebel commanders. At least two U.S. programs attempted to assist the Syrian rebels. One was a 2014 Pentagon program that planned to train and equip 15,000 rebels to fight ISIL, which was canceled in 2015 after spending $500 million and producing only a few dozen fighters. A simultaneous $1 billion covert program called Timber Sycamore ran by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was more successful, but was decimated by Russian bombing and canceled in mid-2017 by the Trump administration.[/quote]

Wow! Half a billion to recruit a few platoons of "mercenaries!" Yessirree Bob, that's what I call being a major player. But wait -- this was begun in 2014, -- three years after the war began. Talk about standing things on their head!

However, I also notice that in the page on the Syrian Civil War, we see the true extent of US perfidy:

[quote][b]Socioeconomic background[/b]

Socioeconomic inequality increased significantly after free market policies were initiated by Hafez al-Assad in his later years, and it accelerated after Bashar al-Assad came to power. With an emphasis on the service sector, these policies benefited a minority of the nation's population, mostly people who had connections with the government, and members of the Sunni merchant class of Damascus and Aleppo. In 2010, Syria's nominal GDP per capita was only $2,834, comparable to Sub-Saharan African countries such as Nigeria and far lower than its neighbors such as Lebanon, with an annual growth rate of 3.39%, below most other developing countries.

The country also faced particularly high youth unemployment rates. At the start of the war, discontent against the government was strongest in Syria's poor areas, predominantly among conservative Sunnis. These included cities with high poverty rates, such as Daraa and Homs, and the poorer districts of large cities.

[b]Drought[/b]

This coincided with the most intense drought ever recorded in Syria, which lasted from 2006 to 2011 and resulted in widespread crop failure, an increase in food prices and a mass migration of farming families to urban centers. This migration strained infrastructure already burdened by the influx of some 1.5 million refugees from the Iraq War. The drought has been linked to anthropogenic global warming. Adequate water supply continues to be an issue in the ongoing civil war and it is frequently the target of military action.[/quote]And there you have it. All socioeconomic inequality, everywhere, is the fault of the USA. As are the effects of climate change, since the US is responsible for that, too.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;534686] As are the effects of climate change, since the US is responsible for that, too.[/QUOTE]Is somewhat, arguably largely, responsible for that, too. Fixed that for you.

The entire over-developed world is mostly responsible for anthropogenic global warming. IMAO anyway. China, India, [I]et al.[/I] are just playing catch-up some 250 years after the UK started the game.

I see the Admin -- and others -- are now touting the theory that the Ukraine jet that crashed near Tehran the other day was brought down by an Iranian missile. If that turns out to be what happened, it would be a dreadful mistake, full of historical irony. But I am more than a bit circumspect about declaring the case solved. Good heavens, the investigation has hardly begun.

It is clear that the crash was unusual, and almost certainly involved a catastrophic failure. According to Iran's investigators, witnesses reported the plane was engulfed in flames while it was still in the air. But the flight crew did not issue a Mayday or declare an emergency. The plane seemed to have started to turn back, but, [url=https://apnews.com/2a253e68d45381f16b89edc5cc45bba1]according to the Iranians[/url], the pilot lost control:[quote]Immediately after the crash Qassem Biniaz, a spokesman for Iran's Road and Transportation Ministry, said it appeared a fire erupted in one of its engines and the pilot lost control of the plane, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.[/quote]

There are two reasonably likely explanations for the lack of a distress call. One is, the crew was so engaged in trying to regain control, they simply couldn't radio in. Another is, the plane had lost power. The second possibility would, of course, explain both the loss of control and the lack of a distress call.

The 737-800 is a twin-engine plane, and is supposed to be able to fly -- even to take off - safely with only one engine working. And this flight was well off the ground, since reports say it disappeared from radar when it went below 8000 feet.

It is certainly possible that one of the engines did not merely stop working, but suffered a catastrophic failure and disintegrated, causing enough damage to make the plane impossible to fly, and possibly causing the power to fail.

A missile could certainly destroy an engine -- especially a heat-seeking missile.

But it is not the only possibility. Some news stories also say the plane had undergone maintenance just 2 days prior to the accident. Of course, this could suggest that a mechanical failure was unlikely, but there is another possibility. Sometimes maintenance crews make mistakes. And sometimes these mistakes can result in disaster. On May 25, 1979, American Airlines Flight 191, a DC-10, crashed shortly after takeoff from O'Hare Airport. An engine actually fell off in flight, and the hydraulic lines for that wing were severed. It was the deadliest plane crash ever to have happened in the USA -- 271 people on the plane and 2 people on the ground died.

The crash turned out to have been caused by improperly done maintenance around 8 weeks previously.

So, I am leery of making pronouncements that it was a missile at this point.

[QUOTE=xilman;534698]The entire over-developed world is mostly responsible for anthropogenic global warming. IMAO anyway. China, India, [I]et al.[/I] are just playing catch-up some 250 years after the UK started the game.[/QUOTE]Anthrogenic climate change is older than that. Glass manufacturing was an early contributor.

[QUOTE="Glass: A short history" by David Whitehouse]Despite the perfection of colourless glass for lenses, most late medieval glass produced in central and northern Europe was made of green ‘forest glass’. This was made in small glasshouses located in forests, which provided a convenient source of fuel and potash, the flux which lowered the temperature at which sand melts. The repertoire of forest glass consists mainly of vessels for drinking... and bottles for pouring or storing small quantities of liquid.
....
Stoking furnaces and making potash consumed trees on a scale that alarmed the authorities, who were already anxious because another industry made even greater demands on the resources of Europe’s forests. As the population grew and cities expanded, the construction industry flourished and required timber on an unprecedented scale. Something had to be done, and ¡n the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the consumption of wood was controlled. In the forests of the Spessart Mountains in Germany, regulations limited the quantities of glass that could be produced. In England, the problem reached crisis proportions, when the navy feared that deforestation would make it impossible to find timber for building ships. In 1615, by Royal Proclamation, glassmakers were prohibited from burning wood and compelled to use coal instead.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;534710]I see the Admin -- and others -- are now touting the theory that the Ukraine jet that crashed near Tehran the other day was brought down by an Iranian missile. If that turns out to be what happened, it would be a dreadful mistake, full of historical irony. But I am more than a bit circumspect about declaring the case solved. Good heavens, the investigation has hardly begun.
[/QUOTE]
I share and applaud your reservations at this time. Another possibility, if this was a shootdown, is that there are several parties, not all of them state actors, in the region who would love to bring the wrath of the Great Orange Satan down upon the Iranians via a Stinger, or whatever anti-aircraft missile might be available to, say, ISIS fellow travelers.

It would make negative sense for official Iran to have committed such an act at this time. Their style tends toward revenge serve cold, anyway. I've heard today that the missile attacks on US bases in Iraq were "demonstrations." Iran has said that killing Americans was not their intent. I take more as "we're here, and we [U]can[/U] hit you."

[QUOTE=kladner;534726]I share and applaud your reservations at this time. Another possibility, if this was a shootdown, is that there are several parties, not all of them state actors, in the region who would love to bring the wrath of the Great Orange Satan down upon the Iranians via a Stinger, or whatever anti-aircraft missile might be available to, say, ISIS fellow travelers.

It would make negative sense for official Iran to have committed such an act at this time. Their style tends toward revenge serve cold, anyway. I've heard today that the missile attacks on US bases in Iraq were "demonstrations." Iran has said that killing Americans was not their intent. I take more as "we're here, and we [U]can[/U] hit you."[/QUOTE]

Hmm, I hadn't thought of someone [i]else[/i] shooting down the plane [i]deliberately[/i], but I suppose it is possible. The Russian TOR ("top", torus) is a short-range missile, with a larger warhead (15 kg vs 10 kg) than the stinger. I'm not sure either type of missile would cause a commercial airliner to just fall out of the sky.

If the parties you mention had stingers or similar missiles, have they used them in the war? I haven't heard about any such thing. If they have the things but haven't used them up to now, I would wonder why not.

I mentioned Iran's obvious restraint in its missile attack in [url=https://www.mersenneforum.org/showpost.php?p=534671&postcount=613]this post[/url].[quote]I also note, WRT the missiles Iran fired at our bases in Iraq: From the satellite image of Ain Asad Air Base, it appears that those missiles can be targeted [i]very[/i] precisely. I'm sure that this was part of the message Iran was delivering with that attack. I also note that, rather than our precautions and warning systems, there were no human casualties because Iran went to considerable effort to avoid inflicting them, both in their choice of targets, and in warning non-US foreigners who might be in harm's way.
<snip>
I also note that, while Iran's [i]direct[/i] response to our killing of Soleimani may be finished, they may well do more through their proxies.[/quote] Maybe that's where you heard about it
:-D

I think it is entirely possible an Iranian air defense missile did the damage. If so, I'm sure it was a tragic mistake, a misidentification, an itchy trigger finger -- a screwup, not the deliberate shooting down of an airliner. If that's what happened, the Iranians know it, and I would advise them to make a clean breast of it. Any hedging on allowing the investigation to proceed normally will look very bad.

BTW there is a video purporting to show the shoot down.

[QUOTE]If the parties you mention had stingers or similar missiles, have they used them in the war? I haven't heard about any such thing. If they have the things but haven't used them up to now, I would wonder why not.[/QUOTE]Excellent question. one could hypothesize about some canny plotter who save a few for some really special moment. But that's just a fantasy.

For all I know, Iran did shoot it down. Or some rogue element trying to embarrass the leadership, or please his foreign Intel masters did it.

We still don't know if it was a missile, though the fireball coming down could suggest that. Perhaps something to detonate fuel tanks on one side could look like that. Something planted in the plane's structure implies a much more complicated game. You mentioned its recent servicing, which is a time something could be placed very carefully. This would imply Intel services involvement, to me.


EDIT: Wanna bet that Tehran is always in the footprint of more than one spy satellite? Interested and capable possibilities are multiple. Some people might have some pretty sharp pictures, even at night, especially if a missile plume is involved.

[QUOTE=kladner;534738]EDIT: Wanna bet that Tehran is always in the footprint of more than one spy satellite? Interested and capable possibilities are multiple. Some people might have some pretty sharp pictures, even at night, especially if a missile plume is involved.[/QUOTE]
Oh, I'm sure Iran is always under satellite surveillance. And I'll bet that surveillance of all types was maximized when [i]Il Duce[/i] decided to launch the attack that killed Soleimani.

After that attack, [i]Il Duce[/i] said the following:

[quote]Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge for our ridding the world of their terrorist leader who had just killed an American, & badly wounded many others, not to mention all of the people he had killed over his lifetime, including recently hundreds of Iranian protesters. He was already attacking our Embassy, and preparing for additional hits in other locations. Iran has been nothing but problems for many years. Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats![/quote]

So, when the Iranians decided to go ahead with their missile strike, they would have been expecting US military retaliation; or, even if discounting the threat because [i]Il Duce[/i] has a long record of making threats and not carrying them out, they would have [i]prepared[/i] for a retaliatory strike. Their air defenses would have been on hair-trigger alert. A perfect situation for a momentary screwup to lead to disaster.

I don't know what all happens when a TOR missile is fired from an AA station, but I imagine some of the things that happen would be picked up by our surveillance -- targeting systems "lighting up," military communications, and the missile launch itself.

The Iranians' statements are making them look worse and worse. In the first place, they were claiming to know an engine had caught fire and the pilot had lost control, immediately after the plane crashed. How could they possibly have known that? Well, I can think of [i]one[/i] way.

The Iranians are sticking with their claim that the plane crashed due to a "technical malfunction" (which they couldn't possibly know) and denied that [i]any[/i] missile could [i]possibly[/i] have hit the plane. Iran's head of civil aviation was quoted by the ISNA News Agency as saying Thursday that

[quote]scientifically, it is impossible that a missile hit the Ukrainian plane, and such rumors are illogical.[/quote]
:bs meter:

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;534764][QUOTE]
scientifically, it is impossible that a missile hit the Ukrainian plane, and such rumors are illogical.[/QUOTE]:bs meter:[/QUOTE]I think I found their spokesman.
[attach]21594[/attach].

Well, Iran did it.
[url]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/11/iran-admits-shooting-down-ukrainian-airliner-unintentionally[/url]

Good call.
 

[url=https://apnews.com/21f4a92a2dfbc38581719664bdf6f38e]Under pressure, Iran admits it shot down jetliner by mistake[/url]

[quote]TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's Revolutionary Guard on Saturday acknowledged that it accidentally shot down the Ukrainian jetliner that crashed earlier this week, killing all 176 aboard, after the government had repeatedly denied Western accusations that it was responsible.

The plane was shot down early Wednesday, hours after Iran launched a ballistic missile attack on two military bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq in retaliation for the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in an American airstrike in Baghdad. No one was wounded in the attack on the bases.

Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the Guard's aerospace division, said his unit accepts "full responsibility" for the shootdown. In an address broadcast by state TV, he said that when he learned about the downing of the plane, "I wished I was dead."

He said Guard forces ringing the capital had beefed up their air defenses and were at the "highest level of readiness," fearing that the U.S. would retaliate. He said an officer made the "bad decision" to open fire on the plane after mistaking it for a cruise missile.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, expressed his "deep sympathy" to the families of the victims and called on the armed forces to "pursue probable shortcomings and guilt in the painful incident."[/quote]Thank you, General Hajizadeh. You have imposed order in place of the chaos of speculation, accusation, and recrimination surrounding this tragedy. You have ended your government's foolish efforts to deny the truth of what happened. You have ended any prospect of the government impeding the investigation in order to conceal the truth. The friends and families of those killed can at least have a sense of certainly of what happened to their loved ones.

The officer who gave the order to fire wasn't furthering any diabolical plot or agenda. He made a mistake. He's going to have to live with the consequences for the rest of his life.

One good thing that may come of the tragedy of Flight 752, is that it will remind all concerned of the obvious truth that there is nothing like being on a war footing, to turn a momentary error of judgement into a major disaster, and urge them to choose a better path.

Good on the Iranians for doing the right thing here, and also for showing great restraint in their shot-across-the-bow retaliatory missile attacks on US bases in Iraq. They further say they will prosecute the people involved in the accidental shootdown ... now, see, if they followed the US' lead in such matters, they would simply pay some money to make the victims' claims go away, while admitting no fault, and awarding all the people involved in the shootdown with [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655#Post-tour_of_duty_medals]medals and ribbons for their heroic service[/url]:
[quote]Despite the mistakes made in the downing of [Iran Air 655], the men of USS Vincennes were awarded Combat Action Ribbons for completion of their tours in a combat zone. The air-warfare coordinator on duty received the Navy Commendation Medal, but The Washington Post reported in 1990 that the awards were for his entire tour from 1984 to 1988 and for his actions relating to the surface engagement with Iranian gunboats. In 1990, Rogers was awarded the Legion of Merit “for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service as commanding officer […] from April 1987 to May 1989.” The award was given for his service as the commanding officer of Vincennes from April 1987 to May 1989. The citation made no mention of the downing of Iran Air 655.[/quote]

There was actually a contingent of news media aboard the [i]Vincennes[/i] when it shot down Iran Air 655. The [i]Vincennes[/i], being closest to the scene, was the first to reach it in response to the distress call that immediately went out.

The crew, which had been jubilant over destroying what they had thought was an attacking F-14, stopped cheering. They realized what they had actually done.

While the mistake they made is understandable -- and eerily similar to the mistake the Iranian AA crew made with Flight 752 -- the same can [i]not[/i] be said for the actions of US officialdom following the disaster.

While it is true there was no delay in admitting the fact that the [i]Vincennes[/i] had mistakenly shot down the airliner (the news media was in attendance, after all), the subsequent US Navy investigation and later official actions only served to deepen Iranian suspicions that the attack had been deliberate. While the Navy investigation showed that claims that Iran Air had departed from its route [a claim also made of Flight 752] and had been descending were wrong, and that the pilot had no reason to be monitoring the frequencies the [i]Vincennes[/i] broadcast warnings over, and had no reason to respond to a transmission over civilian frequencies regarding an F-14, it failed to detect the fact that the ship's Captain had [i]violated orders[/i] to stay where he had been, and that the [i]Vincennes[/i] was in Iranian territorial waters when it shot down Flight 655. The captain had previously taken the ship into Omani waters without seeking permission, prompting the angry Omanis to order the ship to leave its waters.

Iranian ATC had failed to warn the pilot of 655 of ongoing hostilities, which it had done on previous such occasions. Such a warning might have prompted the pilot to monitor the frequencies on which the initial warnings were broadcast.

While the mistakes that led to the destruction of Iran Air 655 may be understandable, it takes a lot of comedy to laugh off the ship's captain violating orders -- especially in the process of deciding to hand out commendations. This may have been handled by the Pentagon's Chief of Career Rehabilitation, Miss Agnes Day.

It may be indicative of the disarray in the Iranian government that it took [i]three days[/i] to officially admit the bare fact that Flight 752 had been shot down by one of their own AA missiles. But the fact that it did take so long has angered many Iranians -- and rightly so, IMO.

In this regard, I note that as late as Friday, Russia's deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov said in an interview in Tokyo that there was "no reason" to accuse Iran of shooting down the plane.

Am I to believe the Russians didn't know what had happened by then? Or, if they did, that they didn't tell their Deputy Foreign Minister? Or did they perhaps think the shooting down of a civilian airliner by a Russian-made AA missile could simply be stonewalled indefinitely? I can't imagine why they would think such a thing. :whistle:

I also note that Iran has previously refused to hand over the "black box" data recorders to the plane's manufacturer as would normally be done, because "We don't trust the Americans," and said they would analyze the data themselves. In view of their admission, perhaps they will relent. As to analyzing the data, they would be hard-pressed to do it themselves. Iran does not AFAIK possess the kind of lab needed to do it. The work could be done [i]in[/i] Iran, but would require a suitable lab to be brought there. The French could do it.

Meanwhile, I think it would be a fine, fine gesture if Iran were officially to acknowledge, in the light of the present tragedy, that the shooting down of Iran Air 655 may not have been deliberate after all.

Assassination, Lies and the Trump Difference
 

[URL]https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/10/assassination-lies-and-the-trump-difference/[/URL]
[QUOTE]United States presidents have long lied about the pretexts for, and the nature of, their murderous and criminal foreign policy actions. Remember George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s fraudulent claims that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq government possessed vast stocks of “weapons of mass destruction” that threatened the world and that Iraq had participated in the September 11, 2001 jetliner attacks?

Lyndon Johnson obtained Congressional authority to escalate the crucifixion of Vietnam by spreading disinformation about a 1964 naval incident in the Gulf of Tonkin. He campaigned that year on a pledge not to “send American boy 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.” The following year he did exactly that, using the Tonkin lie as his justification.

Richard Nixon campaigned for the presidency promising to end the “Vietnam War” while working with Henry Kissinger to undermine peace negotiations in Paris to ensure Hubert Humphrey’s defeat in the 1968 election. Nixon went on to extend and expand the U.S. was on Southeast Asia with the secret bombing of Cambodia.

Ronald Reagan ludicrously justified his regime-change invasion of Grenada with the idiotic claim that the tiny Caribbean island’s radical government posed a lethal threat to the U.S.


George H.W. Bush absurdly sold the U.S. regime-change invasion of Panama as a defense of “democracy” and “human rights.”..... [/QUOTE]And so it goes, and so it goes.

[url=https://www.duffelblog.com/2020/01/nations-defense-contractors-promise-no-attack-against-us-will-go-unprofitable/]Nation’s defense contractors promise no attack against US will go unprofitable[/url] | Duffel Blog

[QUOTE=kladner;535023][URL]https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/10/assassination-lies-and-the-trump-difference/[/URL]
And so it goes, and so it goes.[/QUOTE]
Iraq trucked a lot of toxics to Syria. And Iraq had used some on its own people and on Iranians before that. Inspections don't find what's been already used up, or sold off, or given away to another despot. [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_chemical_weapons_program[/url]

On the subject of Iraqi chemical weapons, especially in the Iran-Iraq war, but also in use against domestic unrest.
[URL]https://duckduckgo.com/?q=us+assist+iraq+chemical+weapons&t=ffsb&atb=v167-1&ia=web[/URL]
[URL]https://www.counterpunch.org/2004/06/17/how-reagan-armed-saddam-with-chemical-weapons/[/URL]
[QUOTE]On August 18, 2002, the New York Times carried a front-page story headlined, “Officers say U.S. aided Iraq despite the use of gas”. Quoting anonymous US “senior military officers”, the NYT “revealed” that in the 1980s, the administration of US President Ronald Reagan covertly provided “critical battle planning assistance at a time when American intelligence knew that Iraqi commanders would employ chemical weapons in waging the decisive battles of the Iran-Iraq war”. The story made a brief splash in the international media, then died.

While the August 18 NYT article added new details about the extent of US military collaboration with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during Iraq’s 1980-88 war with Iran, it omitted the most outrageous aspect of the scandal: not only did Ronald Reagan’s Washington turn a blind-eye to the Hussein regime’s repeated use of chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers and Iraq’s Kurdish minority, but the US helped Iraq develop its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.

Nor did the NYT dwell on the extreme cynicism and hypocrisy of President George Bush II’s administration’s citing of those same terrible atrocities–which were disregarded at the time by Washington–and those same weapons programs–which no longer exist, having been dismantled and destroyed in the decade following the 1991 Gulf War–to justify a massive new war against the people of Iraq.

A reader of the NYT article (or the tens of thousands of other articles written after the war drive against Iraq began in earnest soon after September 11, 2001) would have looked in vain for the fact that many of the US politicians and ruling class pundits who demanded war against Hussein–in particular, the one of the most bellicose of the Bush administration’s “hawks”, defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld–were up to their ears in Washington’s efforts to cultivate, promote and excuse Hussein in the past.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=kriesel;535058]Iraq trucked a lot of toxics to Syria.[/QUOTE]

Link?

There's a lot of this kind of talk going around
 

[URL]http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52851.htm[/URL]
[CENTER] Iranian Flight Crash Facts Not Adding Up -By Russell Bentley
[/CENTER]
This is not the only article proposing alternative stories for what the Iranian government has already admired to.


[QUOTE] There remain a lot of unanswered questions and implausible explanations in the story of the Ukrainian airliner shot down near Tehran on January 8th, 2020. And while the Iranians have publicly and officially taken responsibility, there may be other reasons for them taking responsibility besides their actually having done it. I can think of several, and I will propose a few. But one thing I am certain of, with good reason – the “accident” story is bullshit, no matter who is telling it, and no matter why. They may have a good reason for telling it, but it’s a lie. There may be a good reason for telling it, but there’s no good reason for believing it, at all.

The first thing to understand about the SA-15 system is that it DOES have an IFF interrogator built into its radar system. The interrogator sends out a pulse that detects and interprets the IFF civilian airliner transponder signal automatically, every few seconds. Boeing 737 aircraft are equipped with two IFF transponders, which are set and activated prior to take off. Planes can be allowed to take off with only one operational transponder, and it is possible that the single transponder can fail or a pilot (and co-pilot, and even ATC) can forget to make sure it’s on before take off. My friend, a professional airline pilot, explains that if the plane is preparing for take off and the ATC does not see the transponder on his radar screen, he will remind the pilot, who will turn it on before take off. My friend has also told me that it does happen that the pilot, co-pilot and ATC can and sometimes do all forget and/or fail to notice the transponder is not on before take off. So, it could be possible for a plane to take off without an IFF transponder operating. On a flight across several international borders, into combat skies, where the IFF would be THE most important single safety system on the plane on this flight. Even flight PS-752.

Yes, it would be possible that they all overlooked it, except for one thing – we KNOW that they did not. That the flight was recorded on FLIGHTRADAR24.COM, proves that the transponder was on and working. The transponder was on and working, and the SA-15 radar, would have seen the unique flight info code for the regularly scheduled civilian flight on the radar screen, as would all ADA radars and all other civilian and military radars within range.[/QUOTE]I don't know what to make of any of this The speed and described powers of the missile system in the video are mind boggling. I will come up with related posts after I get some sleep.

[YOUTUBE]objljEE7B6M[/YOUTUBE]

Just a minor technical detail: Being visible on Flightradar24 doesn't tell anything about the IFF transponder, or secondary surveillance radar (SSR) transponder. FR24 listens to ADS-B transmissions, which are sent anyway, no radar interrogation needed. But maybe if one system is working, the other should be, too?

The fact that PS752 was shot down by a missile has, IMO been proved beyond cavil. To claim otherwise is to willfully disregard obvious facts.

The Ukrainian investigating team established within hours of its arrival that the wreckage of PS752 was riddled with small, irregular holes -- clear proof of shrapnel damage. This is exactly what would be expected from a Tor missile, which has a fragmentation warhead. And one would be hard-pressed indeed to explain such damage in any way other than the plane being shot down.

There were other facts known before this that made any explanation other than a missile shoot-down hard to swallow -- like the plane's flight transponder suddenly going dead, the lack of any call from the flight crew indicating trouble, and the plane being engulfed in flames but still mostly intact, while still in midair.

The FAA had barred American pilots from the area due to the "potential for miscalculation or misidentification," and other countries' airlines had also rerouted to avoid the area. So the possibility of just such an occurrence had in fact been [i]anticipated[/i].

It is arrogant to contest that one's own inability to explain circumstances of how something happened, somehow overcomes clear proof that it did in fact happen.

When it comes to the potential for things to go wrong when people are involved, I am reminded of something a friend of mine told me once upon a time, long long ago that his father liked to say: "It is hard to make things foolproof, because fools are so ingenious."

So let us take as given that the plane was shot down by a missile, and seek explanations of how that could have happened, safeguards notwithstanding.

It is possible that the AA battery's IFF interrogator wasn't working or was turned off. The crew [i]was[/i] operating "emissions quiet" in order to avoid detection by enemy weapons systems.

But let us assume it was on and working. Let us also assume that PS752's IFF transponder was on and working. How could the crew have launched anyway?

One possibility is, they didn't understand the meaning of what the IFF interrogator was telling them. They may have been poorly trained, and were almost certainly extremely tired after being on alert for days on end.

Another possibility is that there was some kind of "jamming" occurring in order to counter enemy weapons systems, and that this was defeating the IFF system. The first reports of Iran's admission of an inadvertent shoot-down said that the officer who gave the order to fire had tried to radio for further information before giving the order, but had been unable to get through.

Once you start going down the rabbit-hole of conspiratorialist fairy-tales based on ignoring established facts, the things that require "explaining" rapidly mushroom. In this case, one has to "explain" (1) what [i]else[/i] could have brought down the plane, yet looks [i]exactly[/i] like a missile shoot-down, (2) why in the world Iran's government would admit to something that it didn't do, and (3) why Iran's government behaved [i]exactly[/i] like a government that was desperately trying to deny it had made a terrible mistake before making its admission.

[i]My[/i] explanation is, (1) PS752 was brought down by a missile, (2) Iran admitted it because incontrovertible evidence of it was beyond their ability to suppress, and (3) Iran's government behaved exactly like a government trying desperately to deny it had made a terrible mistake, because that's exactly what it was.

I wonder whether the folks who promulgate conspiratorialist fantasies actually [i]believe[/i] the tales they're spinning. Perhaps they don't, and are merely determining whether there are enough gullible people to justify the effort to produce a "blockbuster" book or "documentary" about what "really" happened.

One thing I can [i]not[/i] explain is, after the US killed Soleimani, and the Iranians had decided to strike back, why didn't they simply close Iranian air space as their military had advised? Perhaps it was because that would have cost a lot of money. But did it not occur to them that innocent human lives are worth far more than money?

The question, as I see it, is one of intent, not the missile(s) itself. There is no arrogance involved.

The missile is inarguable. The apparent lapses in the defense system are the real issues being suggested. Why were the Operator's calls not answered? Why was there a delay in radar information? And, as mentioned, why was the airspace not closed to civilian craft?

I would have to reread this and maybe other articles to find it, but has been mentioned that the Ukrainian crew may have chosen to fly in spite of being warned.
Here we go:
[URL]https://thesaker.is/how-and-why-iran-shot-down-ukrainian-boeing/[/URL]
[QUOTE]The data provided in the statement of the General Staff, and the press conference of the Head of the Aerospace Division of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) provide the following chain of events:
[LIST=1][*]At approximate 23:00 UTC, on January 7, the IRGC carried out a missile strike on US military targets in Iraq;[*]The country’s air defense network was on highest alert amid reports on a possible cruise missile strike by the United States and increased flights of US warplanes near Iranian airspace;[*]At 2:38 UTC, January 8, the PS752 took off from Imam Khomeini International Airport and moved close to a “sensitive” facility of the IRGC “when completing a loop”. The aircraft reportedly deviated from the general PS752 course for around 2km;[*]The altitude and the direction of the flight’s movement “were like an enemy target”. The surface-to-air missile system operator mistakenly identified as the plane as an incoming “cruise missile” 19km away;[*]The missile system operator acted independently because of a failure in the communication system;[*]The operator then “took the wrong decision” of firing on the perceived threat in a “ten-second” time span to shoot or ignore the flying object. [U]During the night, the operator repeatedly called for a halt in flights in the area. This was not done.[/U][*]A “short-range missile” exploded next to the plane. After this, the plane continued flying for a while, and “exploded when it hit the ground.” The Iranian side did not mention the missile system used. Supposedly, it was the Tor low to medium altitude, short-range surface-to-air missile system.[/LIST] Thus, Iran described the situation with the Boeing as a result of the combination of aforementioned factors in the “atmosphere of threats and intimidation by the aggressive American regime against the Iranian nation”. Nonetheless, the real picture of events may have been different.

[U]It remains unclear how the Boeing 737-800 may have been mistaken for an incoming cruise missile, especially taking into account that this situation developed near the capital’s working airport.[/U] If one takes this explanation with a grain of salt, the scenario could have been the following.

The plane experienced some technical difficulties during or immediately after the take-off and deviated from the course moving closer to the IRGC military site. [U]Information appeared that the preflight inspection checklist was not signed by Iranian airport engineers, but the Ukrainian side [B]insisted to fly at its own risk and responsibility.[/B][/U]

Therefore, the system operator, that experienced a communication failure, considered the plane as a ‘military threat’ because it may have been hijacked for a 9/11-style attack, got under control via a cyber-attack and/or used as a cover for a pinpoint missile strike on the IRGC site.

This version does not explain how the communication failure could appear at the air defense post that must have two shielded communication channels: primary tactical circuit and the alternative. The possible explanation with an electronic warfare attack does not hold up against criticism civilian communication channels remained operational with routine flights continuing from the Tehran airport. Another factor is the video of the missile hit that appeared online. How this person, could have known when and what exactly to film without advance knowledge of the developments?
[/QUOTE]Neither of these posts disputes the missile(s?). To run with that misperception as a basis for argument is a bit arrogant in itself. The questions are Who, Why, How, and perhaps others. What sequence of events and circumstances led to this event which should not have taken place? Waving the "conspiracy" flag is a standard diversionary tactic. It is a means of dismissing ideas which conflict with one's own, or which reveal uncomfortable facts. Perhaps you could address the arguments which are actually being made.

[QUOTE=nomead;535146]Just a minor technical detail: Being visible on Flightradar24 doesn't tell anything about the IFF transponder, or secondary surveillance radar (SSR) transponder. FR24 listens to ADS-B transmissions, which are sent anyway, no radar interrogation needed. But maybe if one system is working, the other should be, too?[/QUOTE]
You know this stuff better than I do. It can be a struggle just to keep up with jargon, acronyms, and initialisms. I did look up ADS-B and find that it is a plane regularly reporting its self-determined location. The explanation said that this is a transformative technology with benefits ranging from improved safety to reduced operating costs.

I looked at the site you linked to, and what to my wondering eyes should appear, but (my emphasis)[quote]And while the Iranians have publicly and officially taken responsibility, there may be other reasons for them taking responsibility [b]besides their actually having done it.[/b]
<snip>
On the other hand, [b]it may be that US/NATO/MOSSAD/ISIS/UKROPS shot down the plane in a false flag op[/b] to further inflame world opinion against Iran. Expecting Iran to deny their involvement, a powerful, emotional and ongoing good guy/bad guy drama could be created and exploited. By Iran’s acceptance of responsibility, it shuts off the propaganda narrative before it gets started. [b]Whether they actually did it or not,[/b] by taking responsibility, it becomes moot and the subject is closed. A smart move.[/quote]So, yeah, this guy [i]is[/i] talking about the missile launch never having happened, and is touting conspiratorialist nonsense.

I note a couple of factual issues: First, the claim that PS752 was deviating from course is, by all indications, just plain wrong. And, [i]two[/i] missiles were launched, apparently 20 seconds apart. This provides an explanation for something that had puzzled me -- why were people taking videos of that seemingly unremarkable patch of sky [i]before[/i] what appeared to be a missile launching and exploding? It seems that the [i]first[/i] missile launch and detonation drew peoples' attention, so they were recording by the time the [i]second[/i] launch was made.

The "defense post" was a mobile AA unit. I seriously doubt it had "shielded communication channels." In fact, they were being "emissions quiet" in order to avoid detection by any enemy.

The insistence that an "accidental" (mistaken) launch is simply "not possible," does not take into consideration the infinite human capacity for self-deception. People see what they want to see, or what they fear they may [i]be[/i] seeing. In the above quotation, for example, we have somebody seeing a Western "false flag op" instead of the Iranian AA missile launch that unquestionably happened.

But to the destruction of PS752: The AA crew had been on high alert for four days. They knew that the President of the United States had threatened military retaliation if Iran struck back for the US killing Soleimani, and that Iran [i]had[/i] struck back. Since every pilot on God's green earth knew about the situation, the crew might well have discounted the possibility of civilian air traffic, and when they got a radar blip, assumed the worst. Then, based on that assumption, they could easily have misread or disregarded everything the system was telling them about it, and acted based on the fear that there was an incoming missile. Fire! Uh-oh, looks like the target is still flying! Fire two!

And now, there does seem to be an explanation of sorts for another thing that puzzled me -- the failure of Iran's government to admit the truth immediately: [i]National security![/i] From [url=https://apnews.com/12f79660172bc1ba81bf032e78152acd]this story[/url], [quote]Not admitting the plane had been shot down "was for the betterment of our country's security, because if we had said this, our air defense system would have become crippled and our guys would have had doubted everything," said Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the Guard's aerospace program, in television footage aired Wednesday.[/quote]

How do you square "shoot down" with "never happened at all?"
Also, suggesting alternate scenarios, as in the bolded words [B]"it may be" [/B]does not assert anything other than a possibility.


Do explain more about "self-deception." Since you do not seem to be a communications engineer, your doubts about the Iranian communication channels are just blowing smoke. You don't know, but you love to insert your opinions as if they were facts. Ernst took you down quite skillfully on this sort of thing quite recently.


I imagine that you are still licking your wounds over having to acknowledge that the US does evil, nefarious things like assassinating high officials of foreign governments with which no state of declared war exists. [U]Of course,[/U] the Good Old US of A never, ever overthrew a foreign government in Iran or anywhere else.


Enjoy your self-deception. Keep them blinders on tight. You might see unpleasant truths which you would feel compelled to doubt, so save yourself the trouble.

[QUOTE=kladner;535181]How do you square "shoot down" with "never happened at all?"[/quote]
I don't understand.
[quote]Also, suggesting alternate scenarios, as in the bolded words [B]"it may be" [/B]does not assert anything other than a possibility.[/QUOTE]But it's [i]not[/i] a possibility. Even [i]you[/i] have acknowledged that Iran shot down the plane. In fact, you were the [i]very first[/i] to post here to that effect, saying, if memory serves, "Well, Iran did it."

I will mention Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence." ("Incompetence" is sometimes replaced by "stupidity" or perhaps other words.)

I would also point out that the tenor of the assertion that the taking down of the plane could "not possibly" be an accident (mistake) is based on the premise that the system is so foolproof, such a thing simply [i]couldn't[/i] happen.

It would be interesting to learn if that's what the [i]Iranians[/i] thought when they bought these infernal engines. Because if they did, it might have led them to believe that the crews didn't have to be especially well trained.

Of aircraft, horses and zebras -The Saker
 

[URL]https://thesaker.is/of-aircraft-horses-and-zebras/[/URL]
On The Saker. [URL]https://wikispooks.com/wiki/%27The_Saker%27[/URL]

[QUOTE]When you go to vet school, they teach you a simple principle: [I]if you are under a bridge and you hear hooves, think of horses first, but don’t forget there are also zebras out there[/I].
This is exactly what comes to my mind when I hear all the speculation about the shooting down of the Ukrainian airliner by a IRGC SAM.
.....................................
Lots of unanswered questions however.
Frankly, the story as presented by the Iranians makes no sense to me (not because I think that they are lying, but because there are a lot of information holes which need to be plugged). Why did the Iranian civil and military authorities not close down the Iranian airspace (which the US side, by the way, seemed to have done). Next, did the Iranian air defenses not get all the flight plans of all the aircraft in Iranian space? I had the privilege to participate in a few air defense exercises as a young man, and not only did we have full access to all the flight plans of any civilian aircraft over all of Europe, we even had their transponder signals live on our main displays. Was the Ukrainian transponder on? I strongly suspect that yes as a PIC cannot take off without this instrument in perfect working order (at least this was the case with European airlines in the 80s and 90s).
[U]The commander of the SAM unit explained that he had 10 seconds to take a decision and that he got NO order from the higher instances (regimental, divisional, national air defense authorities). I don’t have any reason to doubt him, but if he indeed speaks the truth, then this shows a glaring weakness of the Iranian air defenses.[/U] Not only was his audio/video call for instructions not answered, the air defense networks were either down or frozen. [U]HOW could that happen in a theoretically very redundant and highly survivable military network?![/U]
Then there is the Ukrainian PIC. The logical thing for him to do would have been to contact his corporate bosses in Kiev and they might even have contacted the Ukrainian authorities. [U]The question is WHO and WHY took the decision to take off when the situation was self-evidently fantastically dangerous.[/U]
....................................
Could a US drone have shot the airliner? Could the US have conducted a cyber-attack?
Maybe. But, as I often like to remind everybody, “possible” is very, very far form “likely”.
For example, what would be the US motive? I don’t see one.
Why choose a Ukrainian airliner? Again, this makes no sense to me.
Then, a cyberattack is all fine and dandy until we look into details.
Was the putative cyberattack directed at, hmmmmm what exactly?! The computers are radars of the civilian ATC? The IRGC air defense network? The specific SA-12 battery? Maybe the Ukrainian airliner? Maybe at all of these at the same time?
Yeah, maybe. But, as I think Carl Sagan, liked to say “[I]extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence[/I]” and in this case, there is ZERO evidence. Yes, tons of speculation, but speculation does not amount to evidence, not even indirect evidence.
......................................
Frankly, I would love to blame it all on the US or Israel but, alas, I don’t see even a shred of any real evidence supporting this hypothesis. Maybe we will see it in the next few days, weeks or months, and I will GLADLY admit that I was wrong. But, alas, the way I see it is that the most logical and likely explanation is a major, huge and most embarrassing SYSTEMIC problem in the Iranian air defenses.
[/QUOTE]

There is a Berton Roueche "medical detectives" story entitled, "The Hoofbeats of a Zebra." It concerns a case of myasthenia gravis which had been misdiagnosed for a long time. The doctor who figured it out says,[quote]There is a saying about diagnosis -- about why doctors often fail to recognize one of the less-common diseases. It goes, When you hear hoofbeats, you don't necessarily think of a zebra.[/quote]

I have read that nine other civilian flights had taken before PS752 without incident that evening. Also that PS752 took off an hour late.

More interesting perhaps, are reports that the PS752's transponder quit working (or at least the Tor's system quit receiving its transmissions) [i]before[/i] the first missile launched. Alas, these reports didn't specify whether it was the flight transponder, the IFF transponder, or both.

There are also the reports that the AA battery officer was unable to communicate with his superiors.

These reports suggest two possibilities. One is, the Tor battery was experiencing a [i]lot[/i] of malfunctions. That possibility is, I hope, being investigated.

What could cause such a situation? I don't know enough about the construction of the units to formulate a detailed theory. An obvious cause would be poor maintenance. Another possible contributing factor might be, some sort of driving mishap -- a collision, bottoming out, etc.

There may also have been inadequate training in what to do when things aren't working properly.

Another possibility is, there was some sort of "jamming" going on. I don't know what would be required to block both transponder signals and radio communications, but my guess would be, "a lot."

It is [i]conceivable[/i] that PS752's IFF transponder [i]could[/i] have been tampered with (hacked, reprogrammed, whatever) so as to transmit falsely that it was a hostile, but this would conflict with the reports that the Tor battery simply stopped receiving from it. It also would not explain the inability of the battery's officer to communicate with his superiors.

I also noticed in the video I watched that purports to show a missile taking down the plane, there were no navigation lights visible. Perhaps they weren't bright enough to be recorded. Perhaps they had been taken out by the first missile launch. Perhaps they weren't working for some other reason.

WRT the idea of hacking or spoofing, I note that there are reports that the Tor batteries the Iranians have, lack the anti-spoofing capability of later versions of these systems.

I did find a news story about interference with the operation of Russian AA missiles in the ME. This was in 2017, and concerned S-300 missiles (long-range AA missiles) in Syria. The Iranians couldn't help but notice that IDF planes didn't seem to be lighting up their targeting systems, which should have happened on takeoff. The Iranians concluded that the Russians were giving the Israelis the security codes, which enabled them to program their planes' transponders to signal that they were friendlies. The Iranians were able to change the codes for some of the missiles without the Russians' knowledge, and they suddenly started detecting IDF aircraft as hostiles.

The notions that the Iranians were somehow complicit, either in the assassination of General Soleimani, or the downing of PS752, are IMO so ludicrous as to be unworthy of serious consideration.

(Pretends to take a mighty swig of 130-proof absinthe, heavily laced with laudanum) But since the field has been thrown open to speculation as to who might benefit from engineering the destruction of a civilian airliner, I offer the Iranian military. The motive? To take the Revolutionary Guards down a peg or two. The IRGC are the military elite, answering only to Khamenei, who is vice-regent of the Mahdi. The regular military has resented the Guards' privileged position for a long time. This tragedy makes Iran look bad, but it makes the Revolutionary Guards look worse. (OK, so much for fantasizing)

The maxim [i]cui bono?[/i] (who benefits?) is [i]not[/i] evidence. It is at most a guide to looking for [i]possible[/i] motives. And this [i]assumes[/i] that the idea of "motive" even pertains, which means [i]assuming[/i] the subject of investigation was a deliberate act. This assumption is IMO unjustified in the present case.

The whole idea that [i]anyone[/i] would [i]deliberately[/i] target a civilian airliner just to make someone [i]else[/i] look bad is IMO completely looney tunes.

I note that, even in cases of purely accidental airplane crashes, investigations generally conclude they only happened because a [i]lot[/i] of things went wrong. I am sure that this is the case with the shooting down of PS752. It would thus be a further tragedy if the unfortunate AA officer who launched the missiles was saddled with all the blame. He would make a good fall guy, though -- that poor man is probably [i]ready[/i] to face a firing squad. But who knows? Maybe the head of the IRGC's aerospace division, who said he "wished he was dead," may get his wish.

The two most ridiculous decisions surrounding this calamity of which I am currently aware are, (1) the decision not to close Iranian airspace, and (2) the decision to deny what happened for three days.

Agreement. On the landing lights question, I think the video was shot from behind the plane. I read that anyway.

Since the video must have been of the second missile, the first may have affected the navigation/running lights. Considering the effects of the second missile, the first must not have done as much damage.

The fact of a second missile at least explains how the videographer was aimed in the right direction. Earlier, I saw implications of a planned operation asserted based on the camera orientation. This is clearly "shot down" by the existence of a second missile.

I was a bit puzzled by one thing I read about the Tor missile system: Namely, once they are launched, there is no way to prevent them from reaching their target and detonating. Yet there [i]is[/i] a self-destruct which automatically destroys the missile should it miss. So apparently there is no way for the operator to engage the self-destruct.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;535276]I was a bit puzzled by one thing I read about the Tor missile system: Namely, once they are launched, there is no way to prevent them from reaching their target and detonating. Yet there [I]is[/I] a self-destruct which automatically destroys the missile should it miss. So apparently there is no way for the operator to engage the self-destruct.[/QUOTE]
That seems like a very poor design choice. Maybe such a kill switch could be used by adversaries, as there would have to be contact with the missile by some means. I wonder if the first missile fired at the airliner was a miss, the self-destruction of which drew the attention of the person who shot the video of the second missile hitting. Has anything been published regarding the fate of the first missile (other than blowing up at some point after being fired)? Then, too, the flight time of these things must be pretty short, especially at relatively short range. The window of opportunity for destruction could be exceedingly narrow.

I went looking for information on the range of the TOR system(s). I found more information than I have time to try to absorb at the moment. Sure fire TL;DR material.

Whatever, this is from:
[URL]https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Tor_missile_system[/URL]
and it is extremely detailed as to its development history, operational hardware, and different versions.
[QUOTE]The Tor missile system (Russian: "Тор"; English: torus[1]) is an all-weather low to medium altitude, short-range surface-to-air missile system designed for engaging airplanes, helicopters, cruise missiles, precision guided munitions, unmanned aerial vehicles and short-range ballistic threats (Anti-Munitions). Originally developed by the Soviet Union under the GRAU designation 9K330, the system is commonly known by its NATO reporting name, SA-15 "Gauntlet". A navalized variant was developed under the name 3K95 "Kinzhal", also known as the SA-N-9 "Gauntlet". Tor was also the first air defence system in the world designed from the start to shoot down precision guided weapons like the AGM-86 ALCM.[/QUOTE]Here are the specs for the missiles, which include the range (12 km) that started my search. Note the emphasized feature below. It is radio command guided. The possibility of a self-destruct command seems to be there.
[CODE]Weight 167 kg
Length 2900 mm
Diameter 235 mm
Warhead Frag-HE
Warhead weight 15 kg
Detonation
mechanism RF Proximity
Propellant Solid-fuel rocket
Operational
range 12 kilometres (7.5 mi)[18]
Flight altitude 6,000 metres (20,000 ft)
Boost time Cold launch ejection for 20 m
Speed 850 m/s
[I][B]Guidance
system Radio command[/B][/I]
Steering
system Gas dynamic control system, with four control surfaces
Launch
platform 9A331 combat vehicle
Transport GM-569 tracked vehicle
[/CODE]

US claims it has right to attack Iran is not ‘restoration of deterrence,’ it's a return to Wild West
 

[URL]http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52861.htm[/URL]
[QUOTE] Donald Trump is not the first US president to be accused of using military force illegally. But this White House seems to be giving Trump greater executive license to kill – and to start wars.
This week, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper in a media interview claimed the US has the right under Article II of its Constitution to attack Iranian territory in response to offensive action by Iranian-backed militia in Iraq.

There has been a reported surge in rocket attacks on US bases in Iraq following the killing of General Soleimani and his companion, the Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

In Esper’s reasoning, the US would have the right to launch airstrikes on Iran. And in Trump’s reasoning, he does not have to seek authority from Congress.[/QUOTE][QUOTE]The allegations against the Quds Force commander of having blood on his hands for “thousands” of US troops and “millions” of civilians is more in the realm of American propaganda. It is essentially hearsay which in no way meets any standard of due legal process.

Soleimani helped organize Iranian-backed militia which were effective in defeating terrorist militia in Syria and Iraq trying to overthrow the governments. The US role and that of its allies toward the terror groups is ambiguous at best, if not covertly working with the militants, despite official talk about “fighting terrorism.”

Iranian-backed militia in Iraq have opposed US forces. But let’s not forget, American forces are in Iraq due to an illegal invasion of that country in 2003. When Trump and his aides denounce Soleimani for US troop deaths, they conveniently forget that their own country is guilty of war crimes in Iraq, and in Syria from its illegal presence there.

The US Congress is right to be concerned about Trump’s increasing arrogation of powers for using lethal force against foreign targets.

However, his predecessor, Barack Obama, was a big practitioner of ordering drone-assassinations against terror suspects abroad. Almost every American president has deployed warplanes or missiles against foreign states in ways that breached constitutional law or the UN Charter. Remember Bill Clinton fired off cruise missiles on Sudan at the height of his sex scandal with Monica Lewinsky.[/QUOTE][QUOTE]The US Congress is right to be concerned about Trump’s increasing arrogation of powers for using lethal force against foreign targets.

However, his predecessor, Barack Obama, was a big practitioner of ordering drone-assassinations against terror suspects abroad. Almost every American president has deployed warplanes or missiles against foreign states in ways that breached constitutional law or the UN Charter. Remember Bill Clinton fired off cruise missiles on Sudan at the height of his sex scandal with Monica Lewinsky.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]This week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a major speech in which he put the assassination of the Iranian and Iraqi generals in the wider context of “strategic deterrence” against all adversaries. Pompeo explicitly linked the killings to the US policy of confronting Russia and China.

Tellingly, his speech was titled: ‘The Restoration of Deterrence: The Iranian Example’.

Pompeo summed up by saying: “We have re-established deterrence…We saw, not just in Iran, but in other places, too, where American deterrence was weak. We watched Russia’s 2014 occupation of the Crimea and support for aggression against Ukraine because deterrence had been undermined. We have resumed lethal support to the Ukrainian military. China’s island building, too, in the South China Sea, and its brazen attempts to coerce American allies undermined deterrence.”

The lawless reasoning here is appalling. If the Trump administration wants to use murderous force against adversaries for so-called “deterrence,” then it will, according to Pompeo. That apparently includes Russia and China.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=kladner;535299]<snip>
I wonder if the first missile fired at the airliner was a miss, the self-destruction of which drew the attention of the person who shot the video of the second missile hitting.
<snip>[/QUOTE]I wondered the same thing. It seems likely. As I understand it, Tor is designed to detonate the warhead directly in front of the target. So a direct hit would very likely destroy the cockpit and kill the flight crew. [i]Any[/i] detonation triggered by the proximity fuse would almost certainly do enough damage to bring the plane down out of control.

I also wondered about the plane's reported "turning back toward the airport" after being engulfed in flames. I suppose it is possible that a direct hit might take out one engine but not the other, which could cause the plane to turn.

I imagine the Tor system can detect that the missile has failed to implement course corrections, which should initiate a self-destruct. Statements to the contrary notwithstanding, it's [i]possible[/i] AFAIK that "in theory" the operator [i]could[/i] destroy the missile in flight in case of a misidentified target. But [i]in practice[/i], how much time has he got to make that determination and act on it after launch? Not long!

There is also a question floating around of whether the unit was operating in "automatic" or "manual" mode. But apparently the older Tor systems Iran bought don't [i]have[/i] an "automatic" mode, so, if the battery that shot down the plane was one of these, the distinction does not pertain unless they were "upgraded." Oh, joy, that would be another joker in the deck. Not that upgrades ever cause unexpected problems, of course.

I have read different things about "automatic" versus "manual" operation. In "manual mode" the commander has to initiate the launch. In systems with both modes of operation, some descriptions say that manual mode is used to overcome "strong passive interference." I'm not sure what that means. Chaff, maybe?

It is not clear to me how a launch is actually initiated in automatic mode. Some descriptions say that launch is initiated by default after the system locks on to the target, [i]unless[/i] the commander cancels launch within 10 seconds.

In addition, a Tor unit can function either linked to an air defense network, or autonomously. Which way the one that shot down PS752 was operating, is obviously an important question.

[QUOTE=kladner;535321][URL]http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52861.htm[/URL][/QUOTE]
I think what we need here is an app that notifies people of the latest change in the Admin's justification for killing Soleimani. Perhaps such an app could be used to track the shifting sands of the Admin's justification for [i]all[/i] its policies, but I fear that then it would suck up all the available bandwidth.

I noted the latest rationale for killing Soleimani, that it was to deter Iran's adventurism in the ME.

My assessment? I guess that means the sanctions aren't working.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;535342]It is not clear to me how a launch is actually initiated in automatic mode. Some descriptions say that launch is initiated by default after the system locks on to the target, [i]unless[/i] the commander cancels launch within 10 seconds[/QUOTE]

Interesting. I have read reports that the missile operator said that he had ten seconds in which to make a decision.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;535345]My assessment? I guess that means the sanctions aren't working.[/QUOTE]My assessment? Hardly anyone has more than half a clue as to what is going on.

About the "first missile" I seem to remember having read something about a warning shot... I'm afraid I'm too lazy to find the source.

Jacob

[QUOTE=S485122;535375]About the "first missile" I seem to remember having read something about a warning shot... I'm afraid I'm too lazy to find the source.

Jacob[/QUOTE]
That is an interesting idea. One which I'd not heard or thought of before. In fact, I have seen very little mention of any missile other than the one which destroyed the plane. I only became aware of the "first missile" concept in the last few days; and I like to think that I have pretty wide-ranging sources, though I encounter some stuff that makes me cringe. I do try to compare reports, though sometimes to look for outliers, rather than the consensus view.

[QUOTE=S485122;535375]About the "first missile" I seem to remember having read something about a warning shot... I'm afraid I'm too lazy to find the source.[/QUOTE]
Earlier in this thread, Iran's missile strike on the US air base in Iraq was described as a "shot across the bow." Maybe that's what you're thinking of.

The notion of firing an AA missile as a "warning shot" at an airplane in flight -- especially a commercial airliner -- makes absolutely no sense. AA missiles aren't warning devices.

The way to warn a plane -- especially a civilian aircraft -- that it needs to change course, is by radio, from whichever ATC is objecting. If that doesn't work, the next step is fighter jets.

U.S. posture in the Middle-East: preparing for disaster
 

-by The Saker

[URL]http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52931.htm[/URL]

[QUOTE]
Turns out that Trump and the Pentagon were lying. Again. This time about the true impact of the Iranian counter-strike on US forces in Iraq. First they claimed that there were no injured U.S. personnel, only to [URL="https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/jan/24/pentagon-34-us-troops-had-brain-injuries-from-iran/"] eventually have to fess up that 34 soldiers had suffered traumatic brain injury[/URL] (which Trump “re-classified” as a “headache”). Then they had to admit that it was not really 34, but [URL="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/pentagon-now-50-service-members-suffered-brain-injuries/story?id=68598126"] actually 50[/URL]!
According to some sources, not all U.S. personnel were hiding in bunkers and some were deployed to defend the base perimeter. Whatever may be the case, this adds yet another indication that the Iranian counter-strike was much more robust than originally reported by the Empire. In fact, Iranian sources indicate that following the strike, a number of wounded casualties were flown to Israel, Kuwait and Germany. Again, we will probably never find out the full truth about what happened that night, but two things are now certain:
[LIST=1][*]The Iranian attack was extremely effective and it is undeniable that all the US/NATO/Israeli forces in the region are now exposed like sitting ducks waiting for the next Iranian strike.[*]Uncle Shmuel has had to dramatically under-report the real extent and nature of the Iranian counter-strike.[/LIST] Now, let’s be clear about the quality of the warning the U.S. personnel had. We now know at the very least the following warnings were received:
[LIST=1][*]Warning through the Iraqi government (whom the Iranians did brief about their intentions).[*]Warning through the Swiss authorities (who represent U.S. interests in Iran and whom the Iranian did brief about their intentions).[*]Warning through the [URL="https://www.foxnews.com/world/us-military-iran-iraq-missile-attack-warning-officials"] US reconnaissance/intelligence capabilities[/URL] on the ground, air and space.[/LIST] And yet, in spite of these almost ideal conditions (from the point of view of defense), we now see that not a single Iranian missile was intercepted, that the missiles all landed with very high accuracy, that the U.S. base itself suffered extensive damage (including destroyed helicopters and drones) and that there were scores of injured personnel (see [URL="https://thesaker.is/analysis-of-the-iranian-missile-strikes-on-ayn-al-asad-airbase/"] this article[/URL] for a detailed discussion of the post-attack imagery).

If we look at this strike as primarily a “proof of concept” operation, then it becomes pretty clear that on the Iranian side what was proven was a superb degree of accuracy and robust ballistic missile capability, whereas on the U.S. side the only thing this strike did was to prove that the U.S. forces in the region are all extremely vulnerable to Iranian missile attack. Just imagine if the Iranians had wanted to maximize U.S. casualties and if they had given no warning of any kind – what would the tally be then?! What if the Iranians had targeted, say, fuel and ammo dumps, buildings where U.S. personnel lived, industrial facilities (including CENTCOM’s key logistic nodes), ports or even airfields? Can you imagine the kind of hell the Iranians would have unleashed against basically unprotected facilities?!

Still dubious?

[/QUOTE]

More on PS752
 

As has appeared all over creation, e.g. [url=https://apnews.com/940f1abd51a7389eb2cf36f4ae3feb25]here[/url], Ukraine has published transcripts of a recording of a conversation (in Farsi) between a pilot and Iranian ATC at the time PS752 was shot down. Ukraine's President Zelinskiy and the head of Iran's investigation team have vouched for the recording's legitimacy. In it, a pilot reports seeing "an explosion" and a "very big light." ATC then tries to make contact with PS752 without success.

Zelinskiy has renewed Ukraine's demand that the "black boxes" be sent to Ukraine for analysis. The Iranians are throwing a hissy fit about the recording being made public. The head of Iran's investigation says, "This action by the Ukrainians makes us not want to give them any more evidence."

Following up on a link from the Saker post above. This is detailed analysis of satellite imagery of Ayn Al Asad Airbase, post strike.
[URL]https://thesaker.is/analysis-of-the-iranian-missile-strikes-on-ayn-al-asad-airbase/[/URL]
Even granting some misses on (hypothetical) targets, the accuracy of these missiles is hard to deny.
[QUOTE]Several sources in the past several days have analyzed the Iranian missile strikes on US forces at the Ayn Al Asad Airbase which took place more than two weeks ago on the 8th of January 2020 as a retaliation for the US assassination of the Iranian general Qassem Sulaimani. The reports have focused on several topics and methods ranging from satellite image interpretation, videos of missile launches and incoming missile strikes to analysis of on-site photos of (unexploded) Iranian missiles in and around the targeted airbases in Iraq.

In this analysis we will look closer at the satellite imagery to give us more insight on what happened at the Ayn Al Asad Airbase and to help us answer some questions like what kind of missiles did the Iranians use, what kind of targets did the Iranians aim for (or destroy) and what kind of information can we derive in terms of accuracy of the Iranian missiles.

It is clear, even prior to conducting any analysis, that the Iranian missiles obviously targeted individual structures with a high rate of accuracy. In this analysis we look at accuracy in terms of how far the missiles landed from their targets. Since the Iranians did not make public the targets they wanted to hit or destroy, we will have to assume that the individual missiles were targeting the actual structures they destroyed or the nearest structures to their impact locations. Another possibility is that the Iranians deliberately struck areas near or outside some of the targets. We will consider both scenarios.

A term often used in precision guided munitions (artillery shells, smart-bombs, missiles, etc.) is the circular error probability (CEP). This is when a circle is drawn around 50 % of the targets that land on a single aim point. This value is not derived from actual warfare statistics but from weapons testing or claims from the weapons manufacturer. Also important to note is that the CEP accuracy is tested by firing the same type of missile many times at a single target instead of directing the same type of missile at multiple independent targets. We will attempt to derive our own statistics from the small sample size of missile strikes at the airbase. This analysis is also a follow up on the very interesting article posted by The Saker which also assessed the initial satellite images made available online of the Ayn Al Asad Airbase strikes, see here [URL]https://thesaker.is/the-anglozionist-empire-vs-iran-a-discussion-of-the-recent-events/[/URL] .
[/QUOTE]

Israeli jets bomb Damascus suburbs, use commercial flights as human shields
 

[url]https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/passenger-plane-narrowly-escaped-israeli-attack-syria-russia-200207065456327.html[/url]

“The A320 with 172 passengers on board made an emergency landing in Russia-controlled Khmeimim Air Base after Syria’s air defence nearly hit it because of Israel’s air raids.”

Imagine if the Deplorable Russkies or Evil Eye-Ray-Nians had pulled such a stunt, it would be all over the MSM and quickly followed by economic sanctions and/or military-strike retaliation.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;537021][url]https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/passenger-plane-narrowly-escaped-israeli-attack-syria-russia-200207065456327.html[/url]

“The A320 with 172 passengers on board made an emergency landing in Russia-controlled Khmeimim Air Base after Syria’s air defence nearly hit it because of Israel’s air raids.”

Imagine if the Deplorable Russkies or Evil Eye-Ray-Nians had pulled such a stunt, it would be all over the MSM and quickly followed by economic sanctions and/or military-strike retaliation.[/QUOTE]I read [url]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51411860[/url] yesterday.

Perhaps the Beeb is no longer part of the MSM.

[QUOTE=xilman;537064]I read [url]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51411860[/url] yesterday.

Perhaps the Beeb is no longer part of the MSM.[/QUOTE]
The story was also covered yesterday by the New York Times and the Washington Post.

What [i]I[/i] find interesting about the story is, that although it was a Syrian airliner (Cham Wing Airlines 6Q514) and was diverted by Damascus ATC, it's the Russians who are doing the talking.

[QUOTE=xilman;537064]I read [url]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51411860[/url] yesterday.

Perhaps the Beeb is no longer part of the MSM.[/QUOTE]

Thanks - Of course the pro-Israel bias shines through, in terms of giving-the-benefit-of-the-doubt at every turn: "alleged Israeli attack", and e.g.
[quote]The US Treasury sanctioned Cham Wings in December 2016 for allegedly transporting fighters and military equipment in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Iranian Gen Qassem Soleimani arrived in Iraq from Damascus on a Cham Wings flight shortly before he was killed in a US air strike last month, according to Reuters news agency.[/quote]
Uh, first of all, the "transporting fighters and military equipment in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad" -- you mean regular military operations by the country's armed forces, in-country? When was that a sanctionable offense? Have those forces attacked neighboring countries, as Israel is doing 24/7?

Re. Soleimani, the Beeb chooses the most anodyne possible framing - first you paint the airline as some kind of illegal jihadist-supporting pipeline (in fact all the jihadists in Syria are being supported by the West and Turkey), then "killed in a US air strike". Uh, Soleimani had arrived in Iraq on an OFFICIAL DIPLOMATIC MISSION when he was ASSASSINATED by the US.

And of course the Beeb goes on to quote the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is in reality an anti-Assad regime-change shill-blogger operating out of the UK, with similar credibility as the White Helmets and Bellingcat.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;537072]The story was also covered yesterday by the New York Times and the Washington Post.

What [i]I[/i] find interesting about the story is, that although it was a Syrian airliner (Cham Wing Airlines 6Q514) and was diverted by Damascus ATC, it's the Russians who are doing the talking.[/QUOTE]

Maybe because it was their air defense system the Israelis are trying to evade?

I see over at RIP that Freeman Dyson has died. His article [url=https://www.edge.org/conversation/heretical-thoughts-about-science-and-society]HERETICAL THOUGHTS ABOUT SCIENCE AND SOCIETY[/url] starts out ridiculing climate models. But the part of the article that fits in this thread is his "third heresy."[quote]To conclude this piece I come to my third and last heresy. My third heresy says that the United States has less than a century left of its turn as top nation. Since the modern nation-state was invented around the year 1500, a succession of countries have taken turns at being top nation, first Spain, then France, Britain, America. Each turn lasted about 150 years. Ours began in 1920, so it should end about 2070. The reason why each top nation’s turn comes to an end is that the top nation becomes over-extended, militarily, economically and politically. Greater and greater efforts are required to maintain the number one position. Finally the over-extension becomes so extreme that the structure collapses. Already we can see in the American posture today some clear symptoms of over-extension. Who will be the next top nation? China is the obvious candidate. After that it might be India or Brazil. We should be asking ourselves, not how to live in an America-dominated world, but how to prepare for a world that is not America-dominated. That may be the most important problem for the next generation of Americans to solve. How does a people that thinks of itself as number one yield gracefully to become number two?[/quote]Present circumstances suggest the possibility that he may have come a lot closer to seeing this come to pass than he thought he would.

"How does a people that thinks of itself as number one yield gracefully to become number two? " -- Hmm, I don't think any of Dyson's past-number-ones managed to that, either - both France and UK maintained overseas colonies, often quite ruthlessly, until around middle of the 20th century, and both still love their military escapades - though as often as not as best-pals of the current #1 - which serve as a kind of bloody heyday nostalgia.

One key difference between past empires and the current U.S. one - the introduction and subsequent worldwide spread of fiat currency regimes, which began in earnest as a result of the Great Depression. In the U.S., after laying the groundwork for this during WW2, in was the cost of the Vietnam war which forced it to finally completely abandon the gold standard, in the so-called "Nixon shock" of the early 1970s. So at present the U.S. enjoys the exorbitant privilege of financing its ongoing trade and budget deficits - the former being more crucial in the context of a fiat regime - with effectively unlimited IOU issuance, as the $US is far and away the world's leading reserve currency. That means that countries which have a persistent trade surplus with us are in effect forced to buy US assets by way of recycling their accumulated trade-surplus dollars. While asset purchases can consist of material things - think the Japanese buying all manner of US prime office real estate during the period of their massive surpluses with us, and the Chinese having taken ver that role in recent decades - those are much more fraught in terms of getting fair value for one's money, much less liquid and subject to much more market risk than US bonds, i.e. IOUs. In other words, to a large extent countries are trading their goods and services (trade surplus) to the US, and as a consequence funding the US' bloated military and overseas adventures. Talk about a win-win!

Of course there are limits to this, but near-term the worst thing that can happen to the US is faith in the $US's purchasing power collapsing, i.e. the value of said bonds plunging. That would of course also affect a lot of US-side bondholders which include things like pension funds, and make it harder for the US to finance its debts, but at that point the Federal Reserve (= US central bank) has the option of stepping in and beginning direct monetization of new debt issuance, much as the Japanese central bank has been doing on an ongoing basis, without any sign of the economic collapse the balanced-budget fetishists predicted would occur there as a consequence. In other words, this fiat-money free lunch can go on for a lot longer than one might think would be possible.

I was thinking more along the lines of political implosion. As I indicated long, long ago, the country I grew up in had ideals which it aspired to, if not always living up to them. And I feel that it has abandoned its ideals.

It was while looking into the complexity of the grammar of old languages over in the "Latin lovers" thread in the lounge, that I ran into a quotation that just about floored me.

In a [url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/1497614/The-moment-you-give-up-your-principles-and-your-values-you-are-dead-your-culture-is-dead-your-civilisation-is-dead.-Period..html]2005 interview[/url], Oriana Fallaci was referring to what she saw as Europe becoming "Eurabia," and the impending fall of the West to Islam, when she said something that also beautifully expresses my own view of the 2016 election:
[quote]The moment you give up your principles, and your values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilisation is dead. Period.[/quote]

[url=https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/02/syria-deadly-bombstrike-warns-turkey-to-end-its-escapades.html]Syria - Deadly Bomb Strike Warns Turkey To End Its Escapades[/url] | Moon of Alabama

Sultan Erdogan thought he could just use his Turkish-military-armed-and supported jihadist proxies to carve himself out a fat piece of Syria along the Turkey/Syria border in Idleb province, and risked directly engaging the Syrian-supporting Russian military assets to do so. Think again.

Note that MofA (a.k.a. its owner Bernhard) is good on Middle East happenings, but a mixed bag elsewhere - e.g. on the Hong Kong protests he insists on his thesis that they are a U.S.-fomented "color revolution" a la the Maidan Spring "uprising" in Ukraine a few years back, despite ample evidence that the HK protests are predominantly homegrown. And with respect to the Coronavirus pandemic, he has been taking all the official Chinese new-case and fatality numbers at face value and was until recently making rosy predictions about the whole affair being a viral tempest in a teapot. Now that we clearly have a global pandemic underway, he is still lauding the Chinese containment efforts, and [url=https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/02/coronavirus-globally.html]blaming "the other countries" for botching their responses[/url]. Well, clearly there is plenty of blame to go around, but ground 0 is China, where the government tolerated the panoply of unlicensed, unregulated wild-meat markets which are an ideal staging place for zoonotic-pathogen "experiments", like SARS a little over a decade ago, and now something much worse. Did they learn anything from the SARS outbreak? Apparently not. And as laid out in [url=http://chinamediaproject.org/2020/01/27/dramatic-actions/]this article[/url], the Chinese Communist Party is directly implicated in helping the initial local outbreak explode by disregarding clear and evidence-based warnings from their own scientists and insisting on going ahead with a lavish Chinese New year's banquet for 40,000 people right near the outbreak epicenter in Wuhan.

I keep wondering, how is it that Turkish troops are on foreign soil, and "cavorting with terrorists" no less? Erdogan's outrage at these invading troops being killed in actions by the Syrian government and its ally against remnant jihadis in Idlib rings pretty hollow.

Latest [url=https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/03/syria-a-short-note-on-recent-developments.html]update from MoA[/url]: "The current situation in Syria is confusing."

Over on the NC daily Links aggregation today, [url=https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/03/links-3-2-2020.html#comment-3304862]a reader comments[/url] on an AFP article re. the Turkish counteroffensive in Syria with a link of his own to well-respected ME-issues blogger Elijah Magnier:
[quote] Turkey confirms military operation against Syrian regime | Agence France Presse

[url=https://ejmagnier.com/2020/03/01/erdogan-idlib-is-mine/]Elijiah Magnier has a long form post on this[/url] – he thinks Putin made a major error in agreeing a ceasefire, leaving Syrian government forces very vulnerable to a drone attack mounted by the Turks. It seems they inflicted a very serious blow to the Syrians.

It was now clear that Russia, Iran and its allies had misunderstood President Erdogan: Turkey is in the battle of Idlib to defend what Erdogan considers Turkish territory (Idlib). That is the meaning of the Turkish message, based on the behaviour and deployment of the Turkish Army along with the jihadists. Damascus and its allies consider that Russia made a mistake in not preventing the Turkish drones from attacking Syrian-controlled territory in Idlib. Moreover, Russia made another grave mistake in not warning its allies that the political leadership in Moscow had declared a one-sided ceasefire, exposing partners in the battlefield and denying them air cover.

It seems likely that the Syrians will mount a major counter attack in the next week or so, Putin will have to make a decision as to whether to go all in and risk a major conflict with Erdogan (which he has been avoiding so far), or leave the Syrians on their own there.[/quote]
See also the replies/updates in response to that post.

[url=https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/03/us-breaks-its-just-signed-agreement-with-the-taliban.html]MoA - U.S. Breaks Its Just Signed Agreement With The Taliban[/url]
[quote]Today a U.S. fighter jet [url=https://tolonews.com/index.php/afghanistan/us-airstrike-hits-taliban-helmand-first-11-days]bombed a Taliban unit[/url] which was fighting with an Afghan government checkpoint.

The air attack came just a day after U.S. President Trump had a telephone call with the Taliban leaders in Doha. The Taliban will likely see this as a breach of the recent ceasefire agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban.

The Russian Presidential Envoy for Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov supports that view:

"This is a treaty violation, because both the US and the Taliban entered into legally binding commitments not to attack. The Taliban did not attack the Americans or other foreign forces. If the US did that, they violated the agreement blatantly," the diplomat pointed out.

The Russians have called the U.S. "nedogovorosposobny" (недоговороспособны) which translate to "not-agreement capable" or unable to make and then abide by an agreement.[/quote]
That Russian word would make a fine addition to the Word Puzzles thread in Lounge, where we had some fun last year with "English words having the most consecutive occurrences of the same vowel" - ISTR a run of 5 o's was the most we found in English, e.g. in 'nonmonotonous'.

And I would be remiss to not include Duffel Blog's humorous take on the peace agreement:

[url=https://www.duffelblog.com/2020/03/us-tells-18-year-old-afghanistan-war-to-get-off-couch-find-a-job/]US tells 18 year-old Afghanistan War to get off couch, find a job[/url]

[url=https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/03/syria-ceasefire-in-idleb-erdogan-loses-on-all-points.html]MoA - Syria - Another Ceasefire In Idleb - Erdogan Loses On All Points[/url]

The photo from the face-to-face is kinda priceless ... of course the fact that Erdogan & co. travel to Moscow to meet Ras-Putin in his house tells us who the Big Dog in this negotiation is.

We'll see how long this latest cease-fire holds...

[url=https://www.icc-cpi.int/Pages/item.aspx?name=pr1516]Afghanistan: ICC Appeals Chamber authorises the opening of an investigation[/url][quote]Today, 5 March 2020, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court ('ICC' or 'Court') decided unanimously to authorise the Prosecutor to commence an investigation into alleged crimes under the jurisdiction of the Court in relation to the situation in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. The Appeals Chamber's judgment amended the decision of Pre-Trial Chamber II of 12 April 2019, which had rejected the Prosecutor's request for authorisation of an investigation of 20 November 2017 and had found that the commencement of an investigation would not be in the interests of justice. The Prosecutor had filed an appeal against that decision. Judge Piotr Hofmański, the presiding judge in this appeal, read a summary of the Appeals Chamber's judgment in open court.[/quote]

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo [url=https://www.state.gov/icc-decision-on-afghanistan/]made the following statement[/url]:[quote]Today, the International Criminal Court (ICC) Appeals Chamber authorized an investigation into the alleged activities of the Taliban and U.S. and Afghan personnel related to Afghanistan. This is a truly breathtaking action by an unaccountable political institution, masquerading as a legal body.

It is all the more reckless for this ruling to come just days after the United States signed a historic peace deal on Afghanistan – the best chance for peace in a generation. Indeed, the Afghan government, itself, pleaded with the ICC to not take this course. But the ICC politicians had other goals.

The United States is not a party to the ICC, and we will take all necessary measures to protect our citizens from this renegade, so-called court.

This is yet another reminder of what happens when multilateral bodies lack oversight and responsible leadership, and become instead a vehicle for political vendettas. The ICC has today stumbled into a sorry affirmation of every denunciation made by its harshest critics over the past three decades.[/quote]

Sickening US Sanctions on Iran -By Finian Cunningham
 

[url]http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/54006.htm[/url]

[QUOTE]At a time of global crisis as seen with the coronavirus epidemic, it is heartening to witness compassion and solidarity that unites all human beings.
Russia, which has so far been relatively unscathed from the disease, is reportedly sending 50,000 test kits to Iran for detecting the virus. The Islamic Republic has recorded over 300 deaths so far and there are fears of many more fatalities to come over the next few weeks as the flu-like disease spreads to all provinces.

Meanwhile, China – where the outbreak originated in December – is sending thousands of ventilators, respirators and other equipment to Italy, which has become the worst-affected country in Europe by the disease.

In stark contrast to these international humanitarian actions, the United States continues to impose crippling economic sanctions on Iran under its policy of “maximum pressure”.

Iran’s parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani this week called on the rest of the world to demand the lifting of US sanctions because they are hampering the fight against Covid-19 in Iran.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]The Trump administration re-imposed crippling US sanctions on Iran in May 2018 after the Americans decided to dump the international nuclear accord. As the ICJ ruling above makes clear, those sanctions are unlawful. Again, let that fact sink in: US policy towards Iran is unlawful.

The American economic stranglehold has slashed Iran’s global oil exports, plunging the country’s economy into turmoil. Even before the coronavirus epidemic emerged, Iranians have been deprived of life-saving medicines because of failing import-purchasing power and skyrocketing inflation. Untold numbers of patients have died from lack of drugs for cancer treatment and other terminal illnesses – all because of the US blockade on the country.

But from the callous American point of view, this is all going to plan as part of “maximum pressure” to incite regime change. Professed concern for the Iranian people by President Trump and his administration is simply sickening.

[/QUOTE]

Iran Sanctions Are Biological Warfare Against Civilians
 

"This is not an economic policy. It is the collective punishment of civilians. It is an act of biological warfare against children, the elderly, and people of all ages."
[QUOTE]Even before the pandemic, Iranian civilians were suffering and dying as a result of US sanctions. A report from Human Rights Watch found that “current economic sanctions, despite the humanitarian exemptions, are causing unnecessary suffering to Iranian citizens afflicted with a range of diseases and medical conditions.”

An article in The Lancet medical journal concluded in November 2018 that sanctions “will inevitably lead to a decrease in survival of children with cancer.”

“A decrease in survival of children.”

An Iranian physician who practices nuclear medicine wrote in another medical journal that sanctions have made it extremely difficult for medical companies to obtain supplies, with nuclear medicine further complicated by its use of material regulated by atomic agencies. The conclusion: “The most critical patients have been affected the worst including children, patients with cancer, hemophilia, cardiovascular disease, asthma and epilepsy.”

That was before the pandemic. And now?

“Iran is Italy,” said a former State Department official, “only on steroids.”

The Iranian people are being deprived of critical medical supplies even as the pandemic strikes in its full force. Sanctions don’t target Iran’s leaders, who will in all likelihood receive the care they need. It targets civilians, which very likely violates international law, and therefore US law.

It clearly violates moral law.[/QUOTE][FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=5]
[/SIZE][/FONT][SIZE=2]Let's not forget that such crimes are perpetrated against the people of Venezuela as well.[/SIZE]

[QUOTE=kladner;541448]"This is not an economic policy. It is the collective punishment of civilians. It is an act of biological warfare against children, the elderly, and people of all ages."
[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=5]
[/SIZE][/FONT][SIZE=2]Let's not forget that such crimes are perpetrated against the people of Venezuela as well.[/SIZE][/QUOTE]
In the first place: Would that be from [url=https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/03/28/how-many-nedas-iran-sanctions-are-biological-warfare-against-civilians]this article[/url]?

In the second place: This is an obvious misapplication of the term "biological warfare." The US didn't bring the virus to Iran.

In the third place: The US offered aid to Iran to help them fight the virus. The Iranians turned it down. And, irony of ironies, the [strike]reason[/strike] excuse Ayatollah Khamenei gave for turning it down, as per [url=https://www.mersenneforum.org/showpost.php?p=540454&postcount=258]this post[/url] (note: article cited therein has been moved to [url=https://apnews.com/2cffa4c49cbf085562a71cd36a4e4378]here[/url]), was precisely that the virus was a biological warfare agent designed by the US and targeting Iranians.

The possibilities of this sort of mindless America-bashing are endless. Suppose Iran has an earthquake. Say the sanctions make it difficult to rescue people, and -- hey presto! the US is conducting [i]geological[/i] warfare against Iran! (I note in this regard that, after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the US was in fact accused of causing the earthquake.) Or, say they get a weather-related disaster of some sort. Just say the US sanctions are making recovery difficult, and all of a sudden, the US is waging [i]meteorological[/i] warfare against Iran!

So yeah, I say this is overheated rhetoric.

"Germany, France, UK circumvent sanctions to send medical goods to Iran"


[url]https://www.jpost.com/International/Germany-France-UK-circumvent-sanctions-to-send-medical-goods-to-Iran-623037[/url]
[url]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/31/britain-france-germany-bypass-us-sanctions-provide-iran-medical/[/url]

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;541471]In the first place: Would that be from [URL="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/03/28/how-many-nedas-iran-sanctions-are-biological-warfare-against-civilians"]this article[/URL]?

In the second place: This is an obvious misapplication of the term "biological warfare." The US didn't bring the virus to Iran.

In the third place: The US offered aid to Iran to help them fight the virus. The Iranians turned it down. And, irony of ironies, the [strike]reason[/strike] excuse Ayatollah Khamenei gave for turning it down, as per [URL="https://www.mersenneforum.org/showpost.php?p=540454&postcount=258"]this post[/URL] (note: article cited therein has been moved to [URL="https://apnews.com/2cffa4c49cbf085562a71cd36a4e4378"]here[/URL]), was precisely that the virus was a biological warfare agent designed by the US and targeting Iranians.

The possibilities of this sort of mindless America-bashing are endless. Suppose Iran has an earthquake. Say the sanctions make it difficult to rescue people, and -- hey presto! the US is conducting [I]geological[/I] warfare against Iran! (I note in this regard that, after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the US was in fact accused of causing the earthquake.) Or, say they get a weather-related disaster of some sort. Just say the US sanctions are making recovery difficult, and all of a sudden, the US is waging [I]meteorological[/I] warfare against Iran!

So yeah, I say this is overheated rhetoric.[/QUOTE]
Your logical rigor totally destroys this uncalled for and erroneous piece of fear mongering. Your level of divine humanitarian concern utterly shames my deviant and counter-productive efforts.

Now please justify the continued, illegal economic warfare against any country. Your concern for tiddly bits of "precision" betrays your habitually expressed US jingoism. Consider developing just a tiny bit of compassion, and just a little bit less chauvinism

[QUOTE=kladner;541513]Your logical rigor totally destroys this uncalled for and erroneous piece of fear mongering. Your level of divine humanitarian concern utterly shames my deviant and counter-productive efforts.

Now please justify the continued, illegal economic warfare against any country. Your concern for tiddly bits of "precision" betrays your habitually expressed US jingoism. Consider developing just a tiny bit of compassion, and just a little bit less chauvinism[/QUOTE]
Oh, yes, I am well known as a member in good standing of the [i]Il Duce[/i] Fan Club. Keep America Great! Rah-rah! Sis-boom-bah!

As you predicted, your most recent previous misconstruing was not the last.

I was merely pointing out that, by adopting the overheated rhetoric (The US is waging biological warfare!), the Common Dreams piece (I hope I got the citation right) undercut its credibility, at least to anyone outside the echo chamber.

No question the sanctions are causing the deaths of a lot of people from COVID-19 due to lack of resources. The whole Admin policy of scrapping the nuclear deal was IMO stupid.

That stupidity was exceeded, IMO by Khamenei's refusal to accept US Aid.

:nocomment:
Well, there is this bit of imperialsim,
[QUOTE]The whole Admin policy of scrapping the nuclear deal was IMO stupid.

[U]That stupidity was exceeded, IMO by Khamenei's refusal to accept US Aid[/U].
[/QUOTE]
So after decades of economic war by the US, Iran should have been humbly grateful for some token assistance. If they would just kiss Uncle Sam's derriere thing would be so much better.

Trump Admin’s Bounty on Venezuelan President Triggers Explosive Confession of Violent Plot
 

This is another example of criminal US sanction causing civilian deaths. Covid-19 came along long after the US embargo of Venezuela had caused tens of thousands of deaths. Causes ranged from lack of all medical supplies, intercepted food shipments, and blockage of international banking. When a world power causes civilian populations to go without medications and food, [B]that[/B] [B][U]is[/U] biological warfare. [/B]That is a crime against humanity.

[URL]https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/02/trump-admins-bounty-on-venezuelan-president-triggers-explosive-confession-of-violent-plot/[/URL]
[QUOTE]UPDATED: Washington’s indictment of Maduro and members of his inner circle has backfired and could lead to the arrest of coup leader Juan Guaidó, reports Leonardo Flores.

Editor’s Update: On Wednesday the U.S. announced it was sending a naval force to the Caribbean supposedly to combat drug trafficking coming from Venezuela. As this piece points out, relatively little drug traffic passes through Venezuela, raising concerns about what the force’s true mission is. In an article written for L’Antidiplomatico on Saturday, Pino Arlacchi, the former executive director of the UN’s Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention , wrote:[INDENT] “I was also dumbfounded because I have been dealing with anti-drugs for forty years, and I have never met Venezuela along my way. Before, during and after my position as UNODC Executive Director (1997-2002), the UN drug program, I have never had the opportunity to visit that country because Venezuela has always been outside the major traffic circuits. of cocaine between Colombia, the main country, producer, and the USA, the main consumer.

Only in the sick fantasy of Trump and associates is there any illegal narcotic trade between Venezuela and the United States. Just consult the two most important sources on the subject, the latest UNODC report on drugs, and the latest document from the DEA, the American drug police, dated December 2019.”[/INDENT][/QUOTE][QUOTE]In addition to the indictments, Attorney General William Barr offered a $15 million reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Maduro, as well as $10 million rewards for Diosdado Cabello (president of Venezuela’s National Constituent Assembly), Tarek El Aissami (vice president for the economy), Hugo Carvajal (former director of military intelligence) and [B][U]Cliver Alcalá (retired general).[/U][/B] [and prominent member of the Venezuelan opposition]

The indictment has backfired already. Hours after the announcement, Alcalá posted videos online that threaten to cause further splits in the opposition and exposed a violent plot that could result in the arrest of Juan Guaidó. Before going into those details, however, it’s important to understand just how politically biased the charges are against Maduro et al.

The myth that Venezuela is a narco-state has already been debunked by the Washington Office in Latin America (WOLA), a think tank in Washington that generally supports U.S. regime change operations in the region, as well as by FAIR, 15 y Último, Misión Verdad, Venezuelanalysis and others. It cannot be denied that Venezuela is a transit country for cocaine, but as the maps above and below show, less than 7 percent of total drug movement from South America transits from Venezuela (the Eastern Caribbean region includes Colombia’s Guajira Peninsula). These maps, produced by the Drug Enforcement Agency and U.S. Southern Command, respectively, immediately raise questions as to why Venezuela is the country being targeted.[/QUOTE]

Will this pandemic finally mark the end of the US carrier fleet?
 

[URL]https://thesaker.is/will-this-pandemic-finally-mark-the-end-of-the-us-carrier-fleet/[/URL]
You can find a fairly extensive autobiography on the Saker. Just his home page is likely to raise some hackles. He was an intelligence analyst, and then worked in IT.
[This column was written [URL="https://www.unz.com/tsaker/will-this-pandemic-finally-mark-the-end-of-the-us-carrier-fleet/"]for the Unz Review[/URL]]
[QUOTE]Frankly, I have never considered USN carrier strike groups as a “Cold War capable” element of the US Navy. Yes, in theory, there was the notion of forward deploying these carriers to “bring the war to the Soviets” (on the Kola Peninsula) before they could flush their subs and aircraft through the [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIUK_gap"]GUIK gap[/URL] and into the Atlantic. In theory, it should have been a [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/600-ship_Navy"]600 ship navy[/URL] too, but that never happened. In reality, of course, US strike groups were the ultimate “colony disciplining” instrument which Uncle Shmuel would park off the coast of a country disobedient to the demands and systematic plundering of the USA. Since most countries in the 20th century could not sink a US carrier or prevail over the comparatively advanced aircraft deployed on them, this was, all in all, a very safe game to play for the USA.

As for “bringing the war to the Soviets”, the truth is that had it ever come to a real war, the US carriers would have been kept far away from the formidable Soviet cruise missile capability (delivered simultaneously by aircraft, surface ships and submarines) for a very simple reason: every time such an attack was modeled a sufficient number of Soviet missiles successfully passed through the protective cordon around the carrier and successfully hit it with devastating results (while sinking a carrier is not that easy, damaging it and making it inoperable does not take that many missile hits). **

And that was long [I][B]before[/B][/I] hypersonic missiles like the [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kh-47M2_Kinzhal"]Kinzhal[/URL] or the [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M22_Zircon"]Zircon[/URL]!

Truly, as an an instrument to deter or defeat the Soviets the USN strike groups were already obsolete in the 1980s, that is long before the the Russians deployed their hypersonic missiles which, as my friend Andrey Martyanov explained in his books (see [URL="https://www.amazon.com/Losing-Military-Supremacy-American-Strategic/dp/0998694754/"]here[/URL] and [URL="https://www.claritypress.com/product/the-real-revolution-in-military-affairs/"]here[/URL]) and on his blog (see [URL="https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/"]here[/URL]), basically made [I][B]the entire US surface fleet obsolete[/B][/I] not only to fight Russia, but also to fight any country which possesses such missiles. Such countries already include India and China, but [I][B]there will be many more soon, probably including Iran[/B][/I]!

Today, however, I won’t discuss the missile issue, but what happened recently on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which you probably know about: her captain got fired for writing a letter (according to his accusers, bypassing the chain of command) asking for help because his crew got infected by the virus. His letter was published by the San Francisco Chronicle and you can read it [URL="https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Exclusive-Captain-of-aircraft-carrier-with-15167883.php#"]here[/URL].
[/QUOTE]
**[It took one modest-by-today's-standards torpedo to jam the Bismark's rudder assembly hard over and hasten its inevitable destruction.]