David Corn CIA HONEY POT DAVID CORN HAS TAKEN EVERY POINT HE EVER COULD FROM THE CIA -- IN EVERY ORIFICE THE GOOD LORD GAVE HIM.
SAYS CORN NUTS TODAY, "IT WAS MY EARLY ADOLESCENT AFFAIR WITH ALLEN DULLES THAT POSITIONED ME -- ON ALL FOURS -- TO BE SO RECEPTIVE TO CIA LEAKS -- THAT AND THE FACT THAT ALLEN, WHO ALWAYS MADE ME CALL HIM BIG POPPA, DIDN'T BELIEVE IN RUBBERS. AS THE YEARS PASSED, I LEAKED SO MUCH MY CODE NAME BECAME STRETCHED OUT SPHINCTER. AND I HAVE TO SAY, JAMES WOOLSEY WAS A REAL TIGER IN THE SHEETS. WE BARELY HAD TIME TO PLOT MY TAKE DOWN OF REAL JOURNALIST GARY WEBB. BUT POUND FOR POUND -- AND I DO MEAN "POUND" -- THE BEST HAS BEEN MICHAEL MORELL. HE WAS THE FIRST LOVER I'VE HAD TO INCORPORATE MY 6 FOOT, STUFFED HELLO KITTY DOLL INTO SEX PLAY."
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
Yet again, the neoliberals are out for war and eager to send other people's children off to die. The Center For Progress is getting it's war on as we noted in Wednesday's snapshot. And then there's Zaid Al-Ali.
He did such a bang up job working in Iraq (that's sarcasm) that he's decided he's an expert.
He has an insipid column that was apparently too pathetic for even THE GUARDIAN to run so he took to ALJAZEERA. Here's a typical passage:
Analysts and commentators in various parts of the world claimed that Mosul's population took sides in the conflict, throwing their lot in with ISIL. A video was widely circulated on social media, supposedly showing Mosul's inhabitants stoning Iraqi army vehicles on their way out of the city - never mind that the video was actually from Sadr City in 2008.
Second sentence first: Social media is global. Not everyone speaks or reads Arabic. It is very easy for a posted video to be shared with unintentional misrepresentations on social media. I really have no idea what point the idiot thought he was making with that.
The first sentence?
It's a paragraph in a September 2015 column by Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group.
A word on the International Crisis Group. Early on, we were asked to note them by someone inhouse there and I blew it off. We ignored them for probably the first three years. As coverage on Iraq in the west continued to dwindle, we began to cite them.
In a perfect world, we probably would never have. Their larger goals are in conflict with my own concepts of peace. So I'm not a fan.
I know Joost only through his public writing.
Here's what he wrote in September 2015:
In Iraq, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s autocratic tendencies and sectarian-imbued repressive policies further alienated a Sunni population that, as soon as the opportunity presented itself, threw in its lot with the Islamic State (IS), despite the latter’s brutal rule. Iran could have acted to moderate Maliki’s behavior but neglected to do so, content that a friendly Shi’ite Islamist coalition ruled a neighbor that, barely a generation ago, had launched a destructive eight-year war against it. The Iraqi army’s collapse in the face of Islamic State’s advance in June 2014 created a security vacuum that Iranian military advisers have tried to fill by commanding urgently mobilized Iraqi Shiite militias. But what will the proliferation of such militias do for the unity of the Iraqi state, which Iran claims to want to preserve? The country’s breakup into warring fiefdoms is now a more likely scenario.
That's paragraph ten of a 21 paragraph column.
Iraq is not his focus in that column.
From his other writing does he believe the Sunni population in Iraq acts in unison?
No.
From his other non-Iraq writing, does he believe any group of people act in unison 100%?
No.
He was writing on another topic, Iran, and he did a short cut.
It happens.
I do short cuts here and hear about it. "You say THE NEW YORK TIMES reported in September of 2012 that Barack Obama sent Special-Ops back into Iraq but there's no link because it didn't happen!"
No, there's no link because I'm not here to spoon feed you.
Check it out, we've linked to that report over 570 times since it first ran.
Here's one random example:
There's the fact that Barack sent a brigade of Special-Ops in during the fall of 2012. Tim Arango (New York Times) reported, "Iraq and the United States are negotiating an agreement that could result in the return of small units of American soldiers to Iraq on training missions. At the request of the Iraqi government, according to General Caslen, a unit of Army Special Operations soldiers was recently deployed to Iraq to advise on counterterrorism and help with intelligence."
So after 570 times linking to it when I'm mentioning it in passing to make another point I'm still required to link to it? A five year old article that was outright ignored in real time but that we covered in real time and that we have linked to over 570 times since?
Sorry, I don't have that time or kind of space.
Joost took a short cut because he wasn't writing about Iraq.
Joost took a shortcut.
Zaid Al-Ali lies outright which is a wrong.
Yes, there are Sunnis who support the Islamic State -- Sunnis in Iraq.
Sorry, that's reality. If you can't deal with it, stick with lying, Zaid Al-Ali.
The majority position of Sunnis in Iraq as the Islamic State began rising was: It's not my fight.
That was conveyed in social media as well as in strong journalism done by NPR and other outlets.
The Sunnis were being persecuted by Nouri al-Maliki.
The Islamic State rises up in response to Nouri.
Nouri had made clear that Sunnis were not part of his vision of Iraq.
It wasn't their fight.
There were some Sunni Iraqis who were against the Islamic State. They were quoted in real media early on. They saw it as a foreign effort (the Islamic State) and read it as an incursion in the way Iraqis see Iran's attempts to expand their border (I'm referring to cartography here, not political influence -- though it doesn't get much western media attention, Iran is frequently seen as attempting to redraw the actual border it shares with Iraq).
There were some Sunni Iraqis who were horrified by what they knew of the Islamic State and were against them for that reason.
But there were some who supported them.
And you have to remember when they rose up -- it's not a fact that the western media ever gets correct because it would require them confessing to their own failure.
Iraqis had been peacefully protesting for over a year -- demonstrations and sit-ins.
And the western media that built up the Eygpt protests as the great change in the world (didn't turn out that way, did it?) ignored the protests in Iraq.
Ignored it as Nouri used the Iraqi forces to attack the protesters.
Ignored it as Nouri used the Iraqi forces to attack journalists covering the protests.
Ignored it as Nouri used the Iraqi forces to kill the protesters.
As this became the reality and Nouri began threatening the peaceful protesters blocking the road between Baghdad and Falluja, as he began calling them terrorists and speaking (publicly) of setting them on fire, that's when the Islamic State goes public.
They are the black garbed figures that show up with guns to protect those protesters.
In their earliest public form, that's what they were -- defenders of the Sunni population who protected the peaceful Sunni protesters.
And they did protect them.
Nouri didn't kill them on that road the way he did elsewhere.
That's reality.
And that's why there were some Sunnis who saw them in a better light.
That probably would have continued for some if the Islamic State had not decided it should take and hold areas.
Once it did that, it was not just extremely fundamental, it was also corrupt.
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