Tag: iraq

Bush-Era Neocons Should Shut The Fuck Up About Iraq (And Everything Else)

David Frum and Max Boot, two neoconservatives who helped grease the wheels for the invasion of Iraq, have some thoughts they’d like to share with us as we approach the 20th anniversary of that horrific and unforgivable war. Both of these perspectives can be read in widely esteemed mainstream publications, because everyone who was responsible for inflicting that war upon our species has enjoyed mainstream influence and esteem to this very day.

Both men concede in their own ways that the war was a mistake, while simultaneously cheerleading the US proxy war in Ukraine that has brought humanity closer to nuclear armageddon than it has been at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Both men mix their Iraq War retrospectives with war apologia, historical revisionism, and outright lies. And both men should shut the fuck up. About everything. Forever.

Frum’s article is posted in The Atlantic, where he is a senior editor, and it is titled “The Iraq War Reconsidered“. Frum is credited with authoring George W Bush’s infamous “Axis of Evil” speech, which marked the beginning of an unprecedented era of US military expansionism and “humanitarian interventions” in geostrategically valuable nations after 9/11.

In just the second sentence of his article Frum opens with an absolute scorcher of a lie, saying “an arsenal of chemical-warfare shells and warheads” were discovered in Iraq to suggest that the weapons of mass destruction narrative had been proven at least somewhat true. As The Intercept’s Jon Schwartz explained back in 2015, the only chemical weapons in Iraq were either (A) munitions sealed in bunkers at an Iraqi weapons complex by UN inspectors in the nineties and left there because they were too dangerous to move, and (B) some old munitions that had been lost and forgotten after the Iran-Iraq War. In neither of these cases is it true that Saddam Hussein was hiding any weapons of mass destruction.

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Pentagon says U.S. will keep military presence in Iraq, 20 years after invasion

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says the U.S. will maintain a military presence in Iraq, 20 years after the United States invaded Iraq and overthrew President Saddam Hussein.

Austin made the announcement during an unannounced trip to Iraq on Tuesday – two weeks shy of the 20-year anniversary of the invasion.

He said after a meeting with Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani that U.S. forces would remain in the country “at the invitation of the government of Iraq,” Austin according to Reuters.

“The United States will continue to strengthen and broaden our partnership in support of Iraqi security, stability and sovereignty,” he said also said.

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‘Ain’t Your Grandma’s Rocket’: ‘UFO Footage’ Filmed by US Drone Over Iraq Emerges Online

The “UFO” in question was apparently filmed by a US military drone operating in Iraqi skies, with the footage recorded in May 2022.

As public interest in UFOs dies down after it became apparent that there was nothing extraterrestrial about the flying objects the US military downed in American and Canadian airspace last month, a batch of images supposedly depicting a UFO in Iraq has emerged.

The images appear to be stills from a video recorded by a US MQ-9 Reaper drone in the vicinity of Baghdad in May 2022.

These images feature some sort of flying object that has no visible wings or fins, with a source in the US Air Force reportedly saying that the object also had no visible propulsion and appeared to be “under intelligent control.”

Documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell, who disclosed this visual information on his and investigative journalist George Knapp’s podcast, said the object seen in the video definitely “isn’t your grandma’s rocket.”

“It shows an anomalous object which has been designated as UAP by our own air force,” he told one UK newspaper, with the UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon) being how UFOs are often officially referred to nowadays.

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The Pat Tillman Story Was Hijacked During the Super Bowl

Advocates of peace, truth, and basic human decency on Sunday excoriated the National Football League’s “whitewashing” of former Arizona Cardinal and Army Ranger Pat Tillman’s death in Afghanistan by so-called “friendly fire” and the military’s subsequent cover-up – critical details omitted from a glowingly patriotic Super Bowl salute.

As a group of four Pat Tillman Foundation scholars chosen as honorary coin-toss captains at Super Bowl LVII in Glendale, Arizona were introduced via a video segment narrated by actor Kevin Costner, viewers were told how Tillman “gave up his NFL career to join the Army Rangers and ultimately lost his life in the line of duty.”

The video did not say how Tillman died, what he thought about the Iraq war, or how the military lied to his family and the nation about his death. This outraged many viewers.

“Obviously the army killing Pat Tillman and covering it up afterwards is the worst thing the U.S. military did to him, but the years they’ve spent rolling out his portrait backed by some inspirational music as a recruiting tool is a surprisingly close second,” tweeted progressive writer Jay Willis.

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US Military Spy Plane Spots Metallic-Looking Orb UFO over City in Iraq

A tantalizing image, said to have come from footage captured by a US military spy plane, shows a metallic-looking orb UFO over a city in Iraq. The peculiar picture was released by filmmaker Jeremy Corbell and C2C’s George Knapp in conjunction with the launch of their new podcast Weaponized. “This is an example of the UFOs that our military and intelligence community is looking at,” Corbell said, explaining that the image is a still from an approximately four-second-long video which has yet to be released.

Detailing the circumstances surrounding the strange UFO encounter, he revealed that it occurred over the Iraqi city of Mosul in April of 2016. According to Corbell, the video features the moment when “this orb or metallic ball runs alongside a spy plane, and it’s shown moving beside the plane without dropping altitude at all.” The footage of the incident was reportedly included in a classified briefing to Congress by the Pentagon’s UAP task force and the object, dubbed the ‘Mosul orb,’ is believed to have been under some kind of intelligent control when it was caught on film.

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Dem Senator Says Mystery Joggers Gave Him ‘Eerie’ National Intelligence Tip In Early 2000s

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) wrote in his recent memoir that as the Senate debated war in Iraq in 2002 he was given a tip about security information by two joggers that ended up influencing his vote on the war. 

Leahy’s claims, first published in his August 2022 memoir “The Road Taken,” were highlighted Friday by journalist and historian Garrett M. Graff, who said the senator’s claims provided “a rare glimpse into the shadowy way that the intel agencies interact with Members of Congress.”

The Vermont senator, who was skeptical of the move toward war in Iraq, said in his book that he was contacted by two runners who told him to check specific intelligence briefings while out on a walk with his wife Marcelle. 

“Two joggers trailed behind us. They stopped and asked what I thought of the intelligence briefings I’d been getting. Marcelle realized this was a conversation she would normally not be involved in and kept on walking ahead,” Leahy wrote. 

He said that he was told by the joggers to ask for “File Eight” and “File Twelve,” both files which related to intelligence on Iraq. 

“Quickly thereafter, I arranged to see File Eight and it contradicted much of what I had heard from the Bush administration,” Leahy claimed. The Democrat would go on to be on of 21 senators to vote against the authorization of war in Iraq. 

He called the alleged encounter with the joggers the most “eerie” experience he had in Washington, D.C.

“It was the eeriest conversation I’d ever experienced in Washington. I felt like a sensational version of of Bob Woodward meeting Deep Throat — only in broad daylight,” he wrote. 

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On Bush’s Freudian Confession

Oh my God. It happened. I can’t believe it really happened.

During a speech in Dallas at Southern Methodist University’s George W Bush Presidential Center on Wednesday, the man himself, George W Bush, did the best thing ever. I am pretty sure it is the single best thing that has ever happened. I do not believe I am exaggerating when I say that.

While criticizing Russia for having rigged elections and shutting out political opposition (which would already be hilarious coming from any American in general and Bush in particular), the 43rd president made the following comment:

“The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia, and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean, of Ukraine.”

And then it got even better. After correcting himself with a nervous chuckle, Bush broke the tension in the empire-loyal crowd with the words, “Iraq too. Anyway.” He then quipped that he is 75 years old, leaning harder on his “Aw shucks gee willikers I’m such a goofball” persona than he ever has in his entire life.

And Bush’s audience laughed. They thought it was great. A president who launched an illegal invasion that killed upwards of a million people (probably way upwards) openly confessing to doing what every news outlet in the western world has spent the last three months shrieking its lungs out about Putin doing was hilarious to them.

There are not enough shoes in the universe to respond to this correctly.

As comedian John Fugelsang put it, “George W. Bush didn’t do a Freudian slip. He did a Freudian Confession.”

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US troops smuggle 70 oil tankers out of Syria

US occupation forces have reportedly continued looting Syrian oil from the northern Al-Jazeera region of Syria’s Hasakah governate, as a US-military convoy of around 70 oil tankers made their way towards Iraq through the illegal Al-Waleed border crossing on 14 May.

According to local sources in the Al-Yarubiyah countryside, the convoy was accompanied by an additional 15 trucks carrying military equipment bound for Iraq, as well as six armored vehicles.

This comes just one day after 46 US vehicles were reportedly transferred out of Syria through the same border crossing.

US troops and their proxy in northern Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), are in control of most of the oil fields in Hasakah and Deir Ezzor and have been regularly smuggling Syrian oil out of the country to sell it abroad.

Dozens of similar US convoys have been reported over the last year and a half. On 18 December 2021, nearly one hundred oil tankers were smuggled into northern Iraq through the same illegal crossing.

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