No hope

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

PROPAGANDA ARTIST SHEPARD FAIREY DID HIS PART AND THEN SOME TO GIFT BARRY O WITH THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY'S PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION IN 2008.

TODAY, HE LOOKS AT THE FADED CELEBRITY IN CHIEF AND FEELS THE HOPE IS GONE.

THE REALITY IS THAT THERE NEVER WAS ANY HOPE JUST DELUSION.

AND SICKNESS.

MAYBE SHEPARD CAN MAKE A PAINTING OF THAT?


FROM THE TCI WIRE:


War Hawk Down!


He helped start an illegal war and he destroyed New Labour's reputation sending the party into a downward spiral in one election cycle after another including one just weeks ago.  But Tony Blair refused to read the writing on the wall until now.  AAP reports War Criminal Blair handed his letter of resignation over to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and he will no longer be the Middle East envoy for the Quartet group.  Lindsey German, with the UK's Stop The War Coalition, tells AAP, "Tony Blair's legacy remains: a devastated and war-torn Iraq, a Middle East in turmoil, and a much more dangerous world.  We will continue to campaign against the aggressive foreign policy he championed and for him to answer charges of war crimes."


Journalist Robert Fiske (Dawn) offers an analysis of Blair's failure in his post:

For Arabs – and for Britons who lost their loved ones in his shambolic war in Iraq – Blair’s appointment was an insult.
The man who never said he was sorry for his political disaster in Iraq simply turned up in Jerusalem four years later and, with a team which spent millions in accommodation and air fares, managed to accomplish absolutely nothing in the near-decade that followed.
Blair appeared indifferent to the massive suffering of the Palestinians – he was clearly impotent in preventing it – and spent much of his time away from the tragedy of the Middle East, advising the great and the good and a clutch of Muslim dictators, and telling the world – to Israel’s satisfaction – of the dangers represented by Iran

At today's US State Dept press briefing, spokesperson Jeff Rathke attempted to spin Tony's failures by insisting that "we certainly value Tony Blair's contributions."  Pressed to cite contributions, even spin machine Rathke faltered.

QUESTION: So you assess his tenure over the past eight years as a successful tenure by the Quartet? Have the goals of the Quartet been achieved under the sort of the auspices of Envoy Blair?


MR RATHKE: Well, I think the Quartet’s goals haven’t been achieved, of course, because we’re working towards a two-state solution in which Israel lives side-by-side at peace with a Palestinian state. So until that’s achieved, I don’t think any of us can say that we’ve succeeded.

Last week, US President Barack Obama made a fool of himself publicly by attempting to minimize the fall of Ramadi to the Islamic State with Barack insisting this was not a loss.  In those footsteps follow Rathke who praises Blair's so-called "contributions" while being unable to cite any and insisting that the state of not succeeding is something other than "failure."

Jeff Rathke  also noted, "Secretary Kerry will then travel to Paris, France on June 2nd to lead the U.S. delegation to the Counter-ISIL Coalition Small-Group Ministerial. Coalition partners will review progress on the full range of our shared efforts to degrade and defeat ISIL, while affirming our support for Prime Minister Abadi and the Iraqi campaign against ISIL."

Oh, John's got strut around like he's Secretary of Defense again, is he?

John Kerry has done a pathetic job as Secretary of State.

Hillary was bad in every way except morale.  Bad for the department.  But she did use the post as non-stop self-advertising with photo-ops here and photo-ops there.   She never really accomplished anything in any of those non-stop, heavily covered global stops around the world but she certainly gave visuals that suggested she must be doing something.

John can't even promote himself.

As for the disaster that is Haider al-Abadi, France 24's Leela Jacinto observes:

When he replaced the disastrous Nuri al-Maliki as prime minister last year, Haider al-Abadi represented the hope that his predecessor’s sectarian way of doing business would end and that the new chief would be able to draw his disgruntled Sunni citizenry into the national fold.
But poor Abadi is looking more like the Viceroy of Baghdad than the prime minister of Iraq these days.  Of course he would have preferred to rely solely on the Iraqi security forces. But let’s not waste time on that so called, once-great Arab army. US Defense Secretary Ash Carter was dead right in his assessment of the Iraqi security forces showing no will to battle ISIS, White House damage control notwithstanding. I haven’t seen a great Arab army winning any wars in my lifetime. But I hear, from history books, that they once roamed this earth.
These days, we have great Arab militias, which become even more powerful and even more destabilizing with time and battlefield victories. 

And that, for Abadi -- a suave civilian politician raised in Baghdad’s affluent Karada district by his mother of Lebanese origin before moving to Britain to start an engineering business -- is a ticking bomb. The militias could present a threat to Abadi’s authority and if they do, all bets are off on how he will manage or weather that storm.  

 

Some elements of the current storm may be human-made.  This exchange took place during today's State Dept press briefing.




QUESTION: All right. I have two questions. One is about Ramadi. There are reports about Iraqi special forces retreating from the city because they received instructions from someone close to former Prime Minister Maliki or Maliki himself. Are you aware of those reports?



MR RATHKE: I’m not familiar with those reports. I don’t have any comment on that.


Nouri's long been said to be plotting -- and he always will until he's in his grave.  He wants to come back.  He has leaders loyal to him still in the ranks of the Iraqi military.  Is that why the militia is so much more effective than the Iraqi military?

It's a question worth pondering -- unless you're the US State Dept.


On the fall of Ramadi, Araw Damon and Hamdi Alkhshali (CNN -- link is text and video) offer an insider's account -- one Iraqi solider -- of what happened on the ground.

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