POLITICO -- Where horny writers scratch their itches

BULLY BOY PRESS &     CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE

FADED CELEBRITY BARRY O IS (SEE PHOTO BELOW FROM 2010) YET AGAIN STROKING HIS INNER JOAN RIVERS.

UNLESS YOU WRITE FOR POLITICO WHERE LITTLE BITCHES LIKE EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE AND ANDREW RESTUCCIA TRY TO TURN BITCHY INTO 'MANLY' BY PRETENDING THEIR SMALL DICKED HERO IS MACHO FOR BEING CATTY.

THE TWO LITTLE BITCHES TRY TO COMPARE BARRY O TO BOTH A "BEAR" (GUESS WE KNOW WHICH BARS THEY HANG OUT AT) AND DON RICKLES -- DEMONSTRATING THAT THEY KNOW NOTHING ABOUT COMEDY AS WELL AS BEING IGNORANT ON POLITICS AND SEXUAL IDENTITY ("BEARS" ARE HAIRY MEN, NOT SMOOTHIES LIKE MOOBY BARRY).

BUT THEY KNOW HOW TO SUCK UP, LITTLE BITCHES USUALLY DO -- WHEN NOT SCISSORING ONE ANOTHER.


IN THE REAL WORLD, BARRY O'S CATTY NATURE'S LONG BEEN NOTED, SUCH AS IN JUNE 2008.








FROM THE TCI WIRE:



Polls this week have not brought good news for Barack Obama.  For example, Andrew Dugan (Gallup) notes that 61% of respondents in a new Gallup poll "still support President Barack Obama's 2011 decision to remove nearly all U.S. troops from Iraq" but that this has fallen from 75% in October of 2011 and that the new poll was taken as Barack "has sent 275 military troops to help secure the U.S. embassy in Iraq and 300 military advisors to assist the Iraqi government."  This on the heels of the NBC-Wall St. Journal poll.  For those who missed that poll earlier this week, Carrie Dann (NBC News) reports 71% of the respondents in that poll describe the Iraq War as not "worth it."   Fox News announced the results of their latest poll today. Dana Blanton (Fox News) reports:


President Obama’s decision to send 300 special-forces advisers to Iraq leads most voters to believe a large number of combat troops will eventually go back there.
That’s according to a new Fox News poll released Tuesday.
The poll also finds that although most voters think the terrorist insurgents will win if the U.S. doesn’t help Iraq, a majority says it is more important to keep our troops out of Iraq than it is to stop the fighting.

This has not been a good news week for Barack.

Might it get even worse?

Some think so.


"But sooner or later, honest liberals will have to admit that Obama’s Iraq policy has been a disaster." That's an argument Peter Beinart made earlier this week in "Obama's Disastrous Iraq Policy: An Autopsy" (The Atlantic).  In the essay, Beinart sketches out events so many want to avoid.

We'll note this section on The Erbil Agreement which gave Nouri al-Maliki a second term after voters and the Iraqi Constitution didn't:


For the Obama administration, however, tangling with Maliki meant investing time and energy in Iraq, a country it desperately wanted to pivot away from. A few months before the 2010 elections, according to Dexter Filkins in The New Yorker, “American diplomats in Iraq sent a rare dissenting cable to Washington, complaining that the U.S., with its combination of support and indifference, was encouraging Maliki’s authoritarian tendencies.”
When Iraqis went to the polls in March 2010, they gave a narrow plurality to the Iraqiya List, an alliance of parties that enjoyed significant Sunni support but was led by Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite. Under pressure from Maliki, however, an Iraqi judge allowed the prime minister's Dawa Party—which had finished a close second—to form a government instead. According to Emma Sky, chief political adviser to General Raymond Odierno, who commanded U.S. forces in Iraq, American officials knew this violated Iraq’s constitution. But they never publicly challenged Maliki’s power grab, which was backed by Iran, perhaps because they believed his claim that Iraq’s Shiites would never accept a Sunni-aligned government. “The message” that America’s acquiescence “sent to Iraq’s people and politicians alike,” wrote the Brookings Institution’s Kenneth Pollack, “was that the United States under the new Obama administration was no longer going to enforce the rules of the democratic road…. [This] undermined the reform of Iraqi politics and resurrected the specter of the failed state and the civil war.” According to Filkins, one American diplomat in Iraq resigned in disgust.
By that fall, to its credit, the U.S. had helped craft an agreement in which Maliki remained prime minister but Iraqiya controlled key ministries. Yet as Ned Parker, the Reuters bureau chief in Baghdad, later detailed, “Washington quickly disengaged from actually ensuring that the provisions of the deal were implemented.” In his book, The Dispensable Nation, Vali Nasr, who worked at the State Department at the time, notes that the “fragile power-sharing arrangement … required close American management. But the Obama administration had no time or energy for that. Instead it anxiously eyed the exits, with its one thought to get out. It stopped protecting the political process just when talk of American withdrawal turned the heat back up under the long-simmering power struggle that pitted the Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds against one another.”


The agreement Peter's writing about is The Erbil Agreement.  Not only did it spit in the face of democracy, it did something even worse as time went on.  To get the political blocs to agree to sign off on this contract, the White House insisted the contract had their full backing.   The day after the contract was signed, Parliament finally held a session.  And, that day (November 11, 2010), The Erbil Agreement had the White House's backing as evidenced by a phone call Barack made.  From that day's snapshot:


Martin Chulov (Guardian) reports one hiccup in the process today involved Ayad Allawi who US President Barack Obama phoned asking/pleading that he accept the deal because "his rejection of post would be a vote of no confidence". Ben Lando, Sam Dagher and Margaret Coker (Wall St. Journal) confirm the phone call via two sources and state Allawi will take the post -- newly created -- of chair of the National Council On Higher Policy: "Mr. Obama, in his phone call to Mr. Allawi on Thursday, promised to throw U.S. weight behind the process and guarantee that the council would retain meaningful and legal power, according to the two officials with knowledge of the phone call." 

So then, that day, the contract had the full backing of the White House.

But Nouri used the contract to get his second term and then refused to honor what he had agreed to in writing, in the contract, to get that second term.  And the White House said and did nothing.  In the summer of 2011, Iraqiya, the Kurds, cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr began publicly demanding The Erbil Agreement be implemented as promised.

And the White House?

Said and did nothing.

And we could follow this through to all the later failures of the White House to back The Erbil Agreement (including May 2012 when the White House actively works to undermine it), but we've covered that before and we have a great deal to cover today.

Nouri signed a contract and broke his promise.  That's typical Nouri.  He has twice taken an oath to the Iraqi Constitution but refused to honor that oath by implementing Article 140 of the Constitution.  He breaks every promise.  Something as simple as buying weapons from Russia goes from the announcement of an over 4 billion dollar deal to months and months of on again off again -- all after a sales contract is signed -- because Nouri's word doesn't mean a thing.  He's known for breaking his word.

Despite Nouri's well known reputation for breaking his word, Barack wanted to make deals with Nouri this month.

Monday, June 16th, the New York Times explained the basics on The Diane Rehm Show (NPR):


Peter Baker:   That's the reason why President Obama's even thinking about, you know, potentially getting involved again in a place he really, really doesn't want to get involved in. 

Diane Rehm: How does he think he might be able to get involved? 

Peter Baker:  Well, for him, the first thing is trying to use this moment to leverage Prime Minister Maliki to be more inclusive, as we were just talking about, to reconcile to the extent he possibly can with the Sunni groups who have been marginalized, to take some of the political momentum out of ISIS as they are marching across Iraq. Then, in terms of military capacity, if he chooses to use it, he's not talking about boots on the ground, he says. He's talking about potentially air power, whether they'd be piloted aircraft or drone strikes, in addition to more intelligence, more equipment, more, you know advising kind of role.



It's Wednesday which means Nouri takes to TV to deliver his weekly 'I hate Sunnis and Kurds' speech.  He offered a twist today.  To form a national salvation government, Alsumaria quotes him stating, would be a coup against the Constitution.  DPA reminds:

The U.S. has pushed for an inclusive government in Baghdad, citing charges by minority Kurds and Sunnis that Mr. al-Maliki, a Shia, has marginalised them during eight years of rule.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry repeated the call on Monday during talks with officials in Baghdad.

Mr. al-Maliki, who has been in power since 2006, eyes a third term. 

Nayla Razzouk and Selcan Hacaoglu (Bloomberg News) add, "Politicians including former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi as well as Shiite leaders who had helped bring Maliki to power have called on him to step down to allow the formation of a unity government to counter the advance of Sunni militants threatening to break up Iraq. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has also urged Iraqi leaders to form a more inclusive government "  Patrick Cockburn (Independent) explains, "Mr Maliki is opposed by the Sunni, Kurds, several Shia parties, the US and the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shia spiritual leader. To have a chance of keeping his job he would need the full support of Iran, which does not want him to be replaced by a pro-American prime minister."   BBC's Richard Galpin offers an analysis which includes:

It was Mr Maliki's political rival Ayad Allawi who raised the issue of a national salvation government which the prime minister has so firmly rejected.
But it seems Mr Maliki is also firing a warning shot across the bows of the international community.
The United States in particular has been putting intense pressure on him to ensure a new government is formed as quickly as possible, with a broad spectrum of politicians.


NPR's Bill Chappell quotes Deborah Amos stating of the speech, "The prime minister lashed out, calling any attempts to form a unity government a coup against the constitution and Iraq's democracy. The U.S. has pushed for a more inclusive government, one that represents all religious and ethnic groups. Iraqi politicians widely blame Maliki for failing to reach past his Shiite Muslim political base."  Nouri's bellicose response may have been, in part, a reply to an interview John Kerry gave CBS News on Tuesday in which he noted (rightly) that Iraq has no government currently and also has military issues so US air strikes are not a possibility currently.  (They shouldn't be a possibility ever but at least they're not a possibility currently.)




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