FOR THE SECOND TIME IN 2 WEEKS, CINCINNATI HAS WITNESSED A HOUSE FIRE THAT RESULTED FROM A RESIDENT ATTEMPTING TO KILL BEG BUGS THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER REPORTS.
AND THIS TIME, THEY NOTE 3 INDIVIDUALS HAD TO BE CARRIED TO THE HOSPITAL.
AND 10 PEOPLE WERE DISPLACED.
BUT THE BED BUGS?
DID THE BED BUGS DIE IN THE FIRE?
ARE THEY DISPLACED?
DID THE USE OF ALCOHOL KILL THE BED BUGS.
WITH 2 ATTEMPTS IN 2 WEEKS, IT MAY BE TIME TO CLEAR UP WHETHER THIS ALCOHOL AND FIRE TREATMENT KILLS THE BED BUGS OR NOT.
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
Starting with a report from last night's THE NEWHOUR (PBS -- link is video and transcript):
- Reza Sayah:
At a training camp just outside of the city of Kirkuk, a rare glimpse of America’s newest problem in Iraq, the Popular Mobilization Forces, PMF, for short, Hashd al-Shaabi in Arabic, an armed militia more than 100,000 fighters strong who helped crush ISIS in Iraq, many armed, funded, and trained by America’s longtime foe the Islamic Republic of Iran, with no plans to disband. - Abu Ali Beyk (through Interpreter):
The PMF has reached a place where no one can stop it, and this is a blow to U.S. interests in the Middle East. - Reza Sayah:
Abu Ali Beyk is the face of America’s newest problem, a battle-scarred PMF commander committed to God and driven by duty, and in no small measure, revenge.
When Beyk was a child, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim, executed his Shia father. Beyk and his family fled to neighboring Iran, the leading Shia power in the region, where they lived for more than a decade. Twenty years later, he was back in Iraq fighting ISIS, a terrorist organization many here believe was made up of Sunni remnants of Saddam Hussein’s forces, and supported, Beyk says, by Washington’s Sunni Arab allies. - Abu Ali Beyk (through Interpreter):
Everyone knows ISIS was manufactured by America’s allies in the region. The PMF, backed by Iran, defeated ISIS, so those American allies are not happy. - Reza Sayah:
It was the threat of ISIS in Iraq that spawned the PMF in 2014. With most U.S. forces gone and Iraqi forces too weak to take on ISIS, the Iraqi government called on Iran for help, and Iraq’s highest religious authority, Shia cleric Ayatollah Ali Sistani, called for volunteer fighters.
Within weeks, armed militias mobilized, backed by Iran. - Abu Ali Beyk (through Interpreter):
While the whole world watched as Iraq was collapsing, in fact, it was only Iran that stood with us by providing us moral and material support. - Reza Sayah:
The PMF acknowledged support from Iran. Many fighters say they have traveled there. We heard several speak the Iranian language of Farsi. - Haji Jawdat Assaf:
We love Iranians. - Reza Sayah:
But PMF spokesman Haji Jawdat Assaf insists they’re not beholden to Iran, and never use Iranian soldiers.
But armed militias didn't mobilize within weeks.
Why can't PBS demand accuracy?
The militias existed. They were barred from participating by Iraqi law.
But they existed -- and they usually terrorized local communities.
The remarks by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani didn't mean new groups sprung up.
It just meant these thugs went in and became part of the Iraqi armed forces -- something that Hayder al-Abadi and the Parliament then illegally enforced.
In fact, why can't PBS point that out?
Without context, it's not news, it's just blather.
I also missed, in last night propaganda, the fact that the militias have threatened US forces.
#Breaking US ally against ISIS War in Iraq, Shiite paramilitary Harakat Hezbollah Al-Nujaba threatened to attack the U.S. military in Iraq following President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s.
20 hours ago?
Thursday morning. More than enough time to make Thursday night of a 'news' broadcast by PBS.
And that wasn't the first threat to attack US troops made by Shi'ite militias.
We've discussed this topic repeatedly -- most recently in the November 30th snapshot, following militia leader Hadi al-Ameri's threat to US troops who did not leave Iraq.
In 2015, Maria Fantappie and Peter Harling (International Crisis Group) observed:
Here is a new Iraqi paradox: whatever progress the Shi’ite Muslim-dominated Baghdad government makes against jihadi insurgents occupying large swathes of north-western Iraq, it is simultaneously undermining what is left of the Iraqi state, whose frailty and malfunctions created the environment in which jihadism was able to surge in the first place.
The dereliction of the Iraqi state was already powerfully illustrated by the takeover of one-third of Iraq, including the city of Mosul, by Islamic State (also known as ISIL or ISIS) in June 2014. Security forces proved rotten to the core despite a decade of training and expansion. Local Sunni Arab elites were revealed to have turned their backs on their constituencies in favor of a corrupt, corrosive relationship with authorities in Baghdad. Power struggles in the capital often deteriorated into sectarian fear-mongering.
Since June, matters have got worse, particularly in the current battle for the Sunni-populated town of Tikrit, where much of the fighting is by Shi’ite militias under the guidance of Iranian Revolutionary Guard commanders. Though Iraqi elites and foreign officials alike have signaled they understand the gravity of such shortcomings, they have done little beyond professing intent to shore up the military, re-empower Sunni Arabs through local governance and provision of security and launch an inclusive political process in the capital.
At the same time, the new prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, has been all but sidelined by the massive expansion, multiplication and professionalization of so-called “popular mobilization” groups (Hashid al-Shaabi) – in effect Shi’ite militias – that enjoy considerable support in some segments of society and have taken the lead in the single-minded pursuit of defeating Islamic State by military means.
This decentralized fight has reduced the army to playing a bit role at best, which in turn has reduced the role of the prime minister, its commander in chief. In the vacuum, these militias operate beyond the control of the state, erode its credibility and cannibalize its resources. Their victories — in Tikrit and elsewhere — most likely will further entrench and normalize their role at the state’s expense, which would mark a decisive turn away from the state-building process meant to be ushered in by the 2003 U.S. invasion.
Abadi professes a reform agenda, but he has not been empowered to deliver on it. On one side, he derives little power from control over national security institutions that have been thoroughly discredited; the interior and national security ministries, in particular, are in the hands of political rivals and essentially serve as the militias’ logistical backbone. On the other, he faces open resistance in parliament, especially from Iran-backed hardline Shi’ite factions, to efforts to reach out to Sunni Arabs and return them to politics.
The risk is that, as the balance of forces tilts further to the militias’ advantage, they will have the power to decide what happens during and after military operations. There have been troubling signs that, calls for restraint notwithstanding, they have engaged in the same brutal, sectarian-based practices as their Islamic State adversaries, including summary executions and population displacement in mixed Sunni-Shi’ite areas.
Moreover, there is danger the aftermath of battle might include reprisals against local elements under the banner of transitional justice, targeting anyone thought to be associated with Islamic State, reminiscent of de-Baathification after 2003. Without local institutions or acknowledged leaders to govern Sunni Arab areas, militias could end up having to promote local proxies lacking legitimacy. This would be especially damaging for the process of appointing and recruiting local police.
2015 is the same year that Michael Weiss and Michael Pregent (FOREIGN POLICY) observed:
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey told Congress on March 3: “What we are watching carefully is whether the militias — they call themselves the popular mobilization forces — whether when they recapture lost territory, whether they engage in acts of retribution and ethnic cleansing.” He needn’t watch any longer. They are engaging in exactly that.
The crimes of war
On March 10, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) released a comprehensive study of human rights violations committed by both IS and pro-Iraqi forces. The Islamic State, OHCHR concluded, has likely committed genocide against the Yazidis, a ethno-religious minority in Iraq, in a catalogue of war crimes and crimes against humanity that include gang-rape and sexual slavery. But OHCHR’s language is equally unambiguous in condemning the other side on the battlefield: “Throughout the summer of 2014,” the report noted, “[PMUs], other volunteers and [Shiite] militia moved from their southern heartlands towards [Islamic State]-controlled areas in central and northern Iraq. While their military campaign against the group gained ground, the militias seem to operate with total impunity, leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake.” [Italics added.]
Sunni villages in Amerli and Suleiman Bek, in the Salah ad-Din province, have been looted or destroyed by militiamen operating on the specious assumption that all inhabitants once ruled by IS must be IS sympathizers or collaborators. Human Rights Watch has also lately discovered that the “liberation” of Amerli last October — another PMU/Iranian-led endeavor, only this one abetted by U.S. airstrikes in the early stages — was characterized by wide-scale abuses including the looting and burning of homes and business of Sunni residents of villages surrounding Amerli. The apparent aim was ethnic cleansing.
And a year earlier, Tirana Hassan (FOREIGN POLICY) was documenting the ethnic cleansing taking place in the name of 'liberation':
There is mounting evidence that Iraq’s Shiite militias are using the fight against the Islamic State as cover for a campaign of sectarian violence targeting Sunni Arab communities. The Baghdad authorities have turned a blind eye to these militias’ crimes, while foreign governments have ignored the militias’ use of their military aid to pursue their campaign against Sunni Arabs. If the central Iraqi government doesn’t rein in Shiite militias and hold them and their commanders to account for their crimes — including war crimes — Iraq may enter even more terrible times.
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