Cedric's Big Mix: It's their fault for believing her

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

It's their fault for believing her

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

CRANKY CLINTON GOT CAUGHT IN YET ANOTHER LIE.

CRANKY INSISTED -- LIED! -- THAT SHE USED HER OWN PRIVATE E-MAIL INSTEAD OF A GOVERNMENT E-MAIL WHILE SECRETARY OF STATE BECAUSE SHE DID ALL OF HER E-MAILING ON HER BLACKBERRY AND, DAMN IT, IT WOULD ONLY HANDLE ONE E-MAIL.

BUT NOW IT TURNS OUT THAT THIS WAS A LIE.

CRANKY USED A BLACKBERRY AND AN iPAD.

REACHED FOR COMMENT, CRANKY EXCLAIMED, "GIVE ME A F-TO-THE-YUCK ALREADY! NO ONE LISTENING TO ME REALLY THOUGHT I WAS TELLING THE TRUTH. I AM KNOWN FOR MY CREATIVE WORD PLAY!"

FROM THE TCI WIRE:

Today, US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter spoke to troops at Fort Drum. Among his statements? "And some of you, and this is important, will be going to Iraq. And there to train, advise and assist the Iraqi security forces so that they can be the force that sustained the defeat of ISIL after ISIL is defeated, which it will be. But in order to sustain that defeat, we need a force on the ground and that's what you'll be helping to create."

Andrew Tilghman and Michelle Tan (Army Times) note the number deploying is "about 1,250 soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division." Gordon Block (Watertown Daily Times) notes the deployment will take place "around August."

Under Bully Boy Bush, the peace movement was disturbed by announced deployments.

Under Barack Obama?

It's a 'Eh, is American Idol on?"

You have to drop back, for example, to March 26th on CodeStink's Twitter feed to find a Tweet about Iraq,

Or, to put it another way, you have to wade through 36 Tweets right now before getting to Tweet 37 which notes Iraq.

They have no Tweet about the deployment.

They have no Tweet of any consequence.

Yet they claim to be against the Iraq War.

Meanwhile, the assault on Tikrit continues and Nabih Bulos (Los Angeles Times) reports, "Shiite Muslim militias on Monday rejoined Iraqi government forces in their battle to gain control of the strategic central city of Tikrit, after a four-day retreat to protest a U.S.-led coalition's intervention in the campaign."

As we noted last Friday, either the Iranian government told the militias to pull out (only a third apparently did) or the US government did.

But now they're back.

And remember that visit to Fort Drum by Ash Carter today?

Lolita C. Baldor (AP) notes he declared that "the U.S. will continue to insist that Iranian-backed Shiite militias not participate."

Someone apparently forgot to brief Carter on the latest development before he spoke.

They also apparently forgot to brief him on another detail. Jason Ditz (Antiwar.com) reports, "Leaders from multiple major Shi’ite militias in Iraq claim to have been given assurances by Prime Minister Abadi that the United States is going to halt airstrikes against the ISIS-held city of Tikrit, allowing them to sweep in and conquer it."

While Baghdad officials have insisted that progress will be swift, Al Mada reports that local officials in Salhuddin Province declared yesterday that the progress would be slow. All Iraq News adds that Iraqi forces today "raised the Iraqi flag over Tikrit hospital." Press TV states that the Grand Mosque of Tikrit was also re-taken by Iraqi forces. Hamdi Alkhshali (CNN) reports, "The gains, according to the official, came after a slow advance into the city as the forces dealt with more than 300 improvised explosive devices planted in the city's streets. At least 26 militants were killed in the operation, the official said."

Sunday, Maria Fantappie and Peter Harling's "If Shi'ite militias beat Islamic State in Tikrit, Iraq will still lose" (Reuters) observed:

The military campaign is thus exacerbating the sense of powerlessness, disenfranchisement and humiliation among Sunni Arabs that gave rise to Islamic State.
The growing tendency in Baghdad and the south to equate Shi’ite militias with the national army, to declare oneself a patriot while expressing gratitude to Iran for its intervention, and to subsume national symbols under Shi’ite ones — with black, yellow and green flags referring to Hussein ibn Ali ibn Abi Taleb, Shiism’s third Imam, increasingly crowding out the Iraqi flag — is reshaping Iraqis’ national identity in ways that will vastly complicate well-intentioned efforts to advance inclusive politics and governance.

The editorial board of the New York Times noted last week:

The overwhelmingly Shiite ground forces battling ISIS in Sunni Tikrit have become increasingly powerful as the government army has disintegrated. The militias have a brutal record of sectarian bloodletting, including burning and bulldozing thousands of homes and other buildings in dozens of Sunni villages after American airstrikes drove ISIS out of the town of Amerli in northeastern Iraq last summer. If that happened in Tikrit, the United States would be blamed for helping to trigger yet another cycle of horrific sectarian violence.

Concerns are rightly building because there's no progress on political solutions in Iraq.

This despite Barack declaring last June that a political solution was the only solution for Iraq's various crises which threaten Iraq and threaten the region.

And these concerns take us into what was probably the biggest story out of Iraq today, we'll note this Tweet.

UN Spokesperson @UN_Spokesperson ·

#UNSG urges Iraq 2 do all it can to ensure protection of civilians & humanitarian access in conflict zones. @UNIraq

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited Baghdad today.

And his remarks were news.

Unless you were at today's State Dept's press briefing.

Not one reporter or 'reporter' bothered to note that Ban Ki-moon was in Iraq, let alone his remarks.

It wasn't news to anyone in the room and spokesperson Marie Harf certainly didn't bring up the topic.

Al Arabiya English @AlArabiya_Eng · 39 minutes ago