Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

The willow is too close to the house.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Too little, too late, ftfnyt. fuck all the way off.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

So fucking stupid, and still doing a tremendous amount of damage.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Everybody saw this coming.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Giving up is unforgivable.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

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Scary Developments and Open Thread

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Well, this is rather alarming; via Vox:

The Iraqi political system is in crisis, with the country’s parliament electing a new prime minister to replace Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is so far refusing to leave office. It’s not clear whether or how Maliki, who has taken an increasingly authoritarian turn during his eight years as Iraq’s leader, might try to cling to power.

Recall that this is the situation McCain and Graham are urging the US to go in all bull-in-a-China-shop. We’ve dodged so many bullets — literally and metaphorically — since 2008.

Please feel free to discuss whatever.

ETA: President Obama will be making a statement on the political developments in Iraq any minute now. You can watch a live stream here.

Reader Interactions

112Comments

  1. 1.

    Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937

    If Iran is willing to support Maliki, then it looks like civil war. I doesn’t make sense that he would would push the political system this far without some benefactor supporting him.

  2. 2.

    Schlemizel

    Betty, you just don’t understand, those people only understand a dictatorial strongman and we should have gone all in on supporting one, a real leader that could control these rebellious groups . . . you know, a guy Like Saddam Hussein. Now there was a leader we could get behind & solve all these problems with.

  3. 3.

    gene108

    I wonder, if we could find out who is funding ISIS/ISIL and freeze their bank accounts.

    That would solve part of the current mess pretty quickly.

  4. 4.

    Yatsuno

    @gene108: The Islamic banking system has gotten rather sophisticated. We have no idea which accounts go where but a lot of that is based in Dubai now over London or New York. And putting pressure on the rich Saudis writing checks? Yeah good luck with that.

  5. 5.

    bago

    Yo dawg, I heard you like arming Middle Eastern factions to fight against Middle Eastern factions, so I thought I’d arm factions inside your faction so your enemy factions can be armed too!

  6. 6.

    KG

    @gene108: the Rand Corporation studied their funding, apparently ISIS was mostly self funded at the start and now that they’ve been taking territory, they are pillaging to keep the cash flowing.

  8. 8.

    Schlemizel

    @Yatsuno:
    We need to make a giant withdrawal. Not from the banks, from the region. Let the Saud family fight it out with the Mullahs on their own. We can sell them munitions but tell them all up front that if they want to fight and die for their beliefs they can do it without our direct involvement. Would that mean a lot of death and a whole new crop of nasty dictators around the region? Maybe but they are getting that anyway & blame us for it.

    “Have fun storming the castle!”

  9. 9.

    KG

    @Yatsuno: the Saudis don’t want ISIS to win. ISIS would probably look at the House of Saud as heretics and patsies for the Crusaders. Yeah, they supported some terrorist organizations in the past, but that was a classic pissing out vs pissing in proposition. If the Saudis think ISIS would be a threat to their power, and if we make it clear to them that if the cash keeps flowing, we will pull up stakes, the Saudis will get in line… if only to protect their own self-interest.

  11. 11.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    So much for the Democracy@Gunpoint experiment. I guess Maliki figures he’s a dead man either way, best to go out on top.

  12. 12.

    Betty Cracker

    @KG: I read an article somewhere recently that the Saudis are paying Lebanon $1 billion to keep ISIS off their doorstep. How do you like your monster now, Herr Dr. Frankenstein?

  13. 13.

    DTTM

    And we are off the races regarding HRC’s Atlantic interview now being featured on the front page of the New York Times.

    “Sharp divide between BO and HRC”, etc., etc.

    Though the article then goes on to show her frequent flip flops at State, motivated by political calculation.

    I know Sullivan is disliked here, but I do urge a read of his essay about his fear that there is essentially no difference between her, McCain and Bibi on foreign policy.

    She is a neo-con, plain and simple and it offends me that she is actively running against her former boss with vacuity (“We need to tell the American story more clearly”) and coyness (…just looking forward to being a grandmother…”).

    I predict there will be much more of this and she won’t do anything to help the Dems keep the Senate in ’14.

  14. 14.

    mdblanche

    @Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937: The most recent reports and/or rumors I’ve heard were that Iran is in the anti-Maliki camp. Maliki is probably some combination of mad with power and legitimately afraid for his and his loved ones’ safety should he lose power. He probably thinks he doesn’t have any choice but to cling to office.

  15. 15.

    Liberty60

    The fact that we don’t know who is supporting whom, or who has made alliances with whom, is reason enough to stay the hell out.

  16. 16.

    David Hunt

    @KG: Ah, they use the economic model of the medieval warlord. OR part of it anyway. The other part would be to ransom captured nobles(i.e. rich guys) back for money and concessions or exchanges of prisoners. I haven’t heard of them doing this…yet.

  17. 17.

    mai naem mobile

    Its all and good telling the Saudis to fuck off but theyve invested money here especially in banks, the market and big re so we’re all kind of fucked. I want the rwst of theb 9/11 report declassified because it supposedly involves the saudis. The saudis are at the bottom of a lot of this crap. The former soviet republic wahabi stuff. The afghan stuff. Anything to keep the attention off the saudi rulers.

  18. 18.

    shortstop

    Nothing to add except that whoever said “Burns McCain and Smithers Graham” yesterday cracked me up.

  19. 19.

    Morbo

    @srv: Your choice in sources is “rather” questionable. Why not go all in with their current headline: ‘US site: al-Baghdadi, a Mossad agent named “Elliott Shimon”‘?

  20. 20.

    Schlemizel

    @David Hunt:
    They have grabbed oil fields in Syria and Iraq & are paying the people who were running them to continue running them. ISIS is being run by smart businessmen not just religious madmen. As you motor home from work today a little of the dino juice you use will have compensated ISIS and made the continued fighting possible.

    We really needed to have Carter re-elected, maybe we would be energy independent today.

  23. 23.

    shortstop

    Schlemizel, how was Gettysburg? I’ve been MIA dealing with family health crises (husband diagnosed with myotonic dystrophy after almost dying under conscious sedation in what was to be a simple surgery, elderly father hospitalized and given series of ECT after meds failed to address severe depression, elderly mom hospitalized after taking a header down a flight of stairs, etc., etc.) and never saw a report, if you posted one.

  24. 24.

    Mandalay

    @Schlemizel:

    We need to make a giant withdrawal. Not from the banks, from the region.

    That is not going to happen, since that giant withdrawal would jeopardize the world’s supply of oil. Having boots on the ground in the Middle East getting killed is not a happy situation for any president, but is much better than dealing with oil at $150 per barrel.

    Some are coherently arguing that our current intervention in the north of Iraq is not entirely altruistic. It’s not all about oil, but is partly about oil:
    vox.com/2014/8/11/5988377/kurdistan-oil
    newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/oil-erbil

    We will stop meddling in the Middle East about a New York minute after we become energy independent, and not before.

  25. 25.

    ? Martin

    @Mandalay:

    We will stop meddling in the Middle East about a New York minute after we become energy independent, and not before.

    That won’t change a thing. We get almost no oil from the middle east. Canada is our biggest import and then Mexico. That’s europe’s problem.

    But what we care much more about is that virtually all oil purchases are made with dollars, which means everyone needs to hold dollars and everyone’s currency is then inexorably tied to the dollar. So long as we are the global currency, we’re stable, even if we consume none of the stuff being bought by all of those dollars.

  26. 26.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Maliki, who has taken an increasingly authoritarian turn during his eight years as Iraq’s leader,

    Honorary Death Eater Maliki learned his lessons well from his master.

    As for McBomb and Huckleberry, I suggest that they, personally, “go in all bull-in-a-China-shop” into Iraq. With “Fuck Allah and all his followers” signs on their backs, in Arabic.

  27. 27.

    Alex S.

    When I heard that the US is now arming the Kurds, I though to myself that the existence of Iraq is over and that the Obama government has decided that it’s better to hasten its demise than to prevent the inevitable.

  28. 28.

    jimmiraybob

    It’s probably time to deploy America’s secret weapon – let’s send a bevy of Republican congressional interns to get this thing straightened out again. I forget what the Bush team named this tactic the first time around but I’m sure that we can come up with something catchy.

  29. 29.

    Chris

    @Yatsuno:

    And putting pressure on the rich Saudis writing checks? Yeah good luck with that.

    There’s a surreal situation between America and Saudi Arabia (and to some extent the West and the Persian Gulf) where our economic/political elites are attached at the hip with populist movements that utterly loathe the other side… but also attached at the hip with each other.

    So we ignore their terrorist-funding hobby, and they ignore our country-invading hobby. Our respective right wing bases stay happy, and the spice continues to flow.

    @KG:

    Rumor has it they got smarter in Syria in terms of not funding jihadis, and Qatar took over what used to be their job. We’ll see what they do in Iraq. Depends what worries them more, a Shia majority, Iranian-friendly government in Baghdad, or a caliphate full of people who think they’re apostates around the same place.

    Also, the number of Saudi extreme religious nuts in the establishment being what it is, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were still people in positions of influence willing to use their positions to help out jihadis, whatever the government’s position. Sort of like how our militias hate the U.S. government, but still have politicians inside it sympathetic towards them.

  30. 30.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @? Martin:

    But what we care much more about is that virtually all oil purchases are made with dollars

    One of Saddam’s most telling sins was to openly discuss taking Euros instead of Dollars for his oil shipments. This caused REAL, not fake “terrorist alert” alarm bells to go off on Wall Street and K Street.

  35. 35.

    Betty Cracker

    @Mandalay:

    Some are coherently arguing that our current intervention in the north of Iraq is not entirely altruistic. It’s not all about oil, but is partly about oil…

    STFU! Next you’ll be telling us there’s no Santa!

  36. 36.

    Suffern ACE

    Well, on the bright side, since the army has brought the tanks to Bagdad to defend Nouri al-Maliki, at least they aren’t surrendering them to ISIS insurgents.

  37. 37.

    Glocksman

    @? Martin:

    True.
    Though oil is fungible, and if mideastern oil became unavailable, then higher prices for the remaining supply is the inevitable result.

    IOW, if Iraqi and Saudi oil ceases to flow, $150+ bbl oil is inevitable.

  38. 38.

    JustRuss

    @KG:

    they are pillaging to keep the cash flowing.

    Are they hiring? I’m ready for a new career, and always wanted to pillage.

  39. 39.

    Mandalay

    @Betty Cracker:

    I read an article somewhere recently that the Saudis are paying Lebanon $1 billion to keep ISIS off their doorstep.

    Wow – you’re right! The Saudis aren’t messing around:

    Saudi Arabia has provided the Lebanese Army, battling jihadists on the Syrian border, with $1 billion to strengthen security, former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri told reporters in Jeddah Wednesday.

    Sunni-dominated regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia is already financing a $3 billion package of French military equipment and arms for Lebanon’s Army.

    With the possible exception of Haiti, Lebanon is the most abused country on earth. It’s good to see something is going their way for once.

  40. 40.

    Mandalay

    @Betty Cracker:

    I read an article somewhere recently that the Saudis are paying Lebanon $1 billion to keep ISIS off their doorstep.

    Wow – you’re right! The Saudis aren’t messing around:

    Saudi Arabia has provided the Lebanese Army, battling jihadists on the Syrian border, with $1 billion to strengthen security, former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri told reporters in Jeddah Wednesday.

    Sunni-dominated regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia is already financing a $3 billion package of French military equipment and arms for Lebanon’s Army.

    With the possible exception of Haiti, Lebanon is the most abused country on earth. It’s good to see something is going their way for once.

  41. 41.

    Comrade Dread

    And putting pressure on the rich Saudis writing checks?

    What hawk still remains in me would humbly suggest that one drone strike or a sniper shot should do the trick in scaring off some of the more visible and ‘respectable’ funders.

    The dove in me says we should start targeted sanctions of any person, family, bank, or company in the Middle East that funds any terror group, including business and travel restrictions.

    The realist in me knows that nothing will happen to them and nothing will change until the United States no longer needs fossil fuels to function.

    And the realist also knows that the United States will always need fossil fuel to function right up to the point where the rich are sealed in self-sustaining climate controlled domes while the rest of us fight it out Mad Max style in the blasted lands to acquire the meager necessities to see the next sunrise.

    Interesting times to be alive.

  42. 42.

    Svensker

    @shortstop:

    Holy moly. Best wishes to you and yours.

    As to the middle east, who the hell knows? I can’t think of a doable thing we can do that would make things better for them or less dangerous for us. Pulling out entirely seems to be the only real solution but chance of that are less than none. Given staying engaged, options seem totally terrible. And I’d like to thank Dubya, Darth and the neo-cons for their excellent work in the creative destruction department. They all get an a+ in FUBAR.

  46. 46.

    Schlemizel

    @shortstop:
    Sorry, I really owe you a letter on that but I am a bad boy. Thanks for your excellent advice.
    We had a great time & I found it very moving to stand where MN1 stood & look down into the field. Seeing the reality also solved a mystery for me. The accounts from survivors say they hit a small depression after driving the enemy back & chose to take cover there which they later felt was a mistake as they came under heavier fire once they stopped. None of the photos I had seen made that swail clear but it is very obvious from the ridge.

    We chose a 3 hour extended personal tour and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Our guide showed us many things I had not seen before though most of the stories I knew. My only complaint was that he had his lecture down & really didn’t want to be interrupted for questions. We spent time in the town and saw a lot of things plus an afternoon at the cemetery which affected me in ways I had not expected. In addition to many “unknown” graves there were markers with states & a number of unknowns, “Minnesota 53” or “Wisconsin 137” and also laid out in rows there would be a line of individual markers “Sgt. John Smith 5th Mass.” and then “Unknown 5th Mass”.

    The only negative was I have never seen a worse, cheaper or more disrespectful load of crap for sale at any historical sight. Even the National Museum, which had hundreds of books most worth reading, had a lot of crappy trinkets. We ended up not getting anything for the grandkids there. In addition to cheap junk there were a lot of “Its Heritage not hate” and the like. Made me really wish Sherman had had a couple more months on the loose.

    JAY-Zeus, what a horrific load was placed on you. My thoughts and best wishes. Feel free to email me if you need a shoulder to cry on, nobody should have to carry that without someone to bitch at.

  47. 47.

    boatboy_srq

    @Glocksman: Explain to me how, in this context, radically improved energy efficiency coupled with wind/solar/geothermal energy doesn’t dovetail with national security. Oh, right, it’s a Galtian Freedumb™ to roll coal on sound policy.

    We have always been at war with in Eastasia.

    /snark

  48. 48.

    Alex S.

    Ok, open thread…. I thought the dominance of Ohio in current electoral politics is bad… but it was much worse during the Gilded Age. The presidents Grant, Hayes, Garfield, McKinley, Taft and Harding also came from Ohio. Without the premature deaths of Garfield, McKinley and Harding which yielded some republican presidents not from Ohio, the only president of that time not coming from Ohio was Benjamin Harrison from neighboring state Indiana. Plus, Chief Justice and Treasury Secretary Chase, main Civil War financier Jay Cooke, and Senator Sherman of Sherman Antitrust Act fame, were also from Ohio. Amazing.

  50. 50.

    Morbo

    @srv:

    You know, Snowden said we funded ISIS, so you better be careful criticizing the bros here.

    When? 0 points if your source is infowars or Iranian State News.

  51. 51.

    Mandalay

    @? Martin:

    That won’t change a thing.

    Really? Why are you assuming that all we would do to become energy independent is to produce more oil?

  52. 52.

    srv

    TEEN CHOICE AWARDS RIGGED!

    Winners for the Teen Choice Awards are determined using the votes cast on the Site. Votes are tabulated electronically and winners are determined based on the nominees in each category with the highest number of eligible votes. Teenasaurus Rox reserves the right to choose the winner from the top four vote generators.

    And how do the producers choose the actual winners? Apparently it’s the A-list celebs who can actually make it to the ceremony.

    Now you know how the real world works.

  53. 53.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Morbo:

    When? 0 points if your source is infowars or Iranian State News.

    Better 0 points than negative points if the source is Russia Today or Pravda.

  54. 54.

    Origuy

    @KG: The House of Saud has thousands of members. I doubt the ruling elite wants ISIS to win, but there are certainly factions who would like to see them toppled, hoping for a power vacuum that would open up opportunities for advancement. There’s a reason why a new Ottoman sultan had his brothers assassinated. (Not that Europeans were any better; ask Henry II.)

  55. 55.

    Suffern ACE

    My guess? We probably did “fund ISIS”, the same way we funded pretty much everyone during the surge. We probably paid them off so that we could construct whatever it is we needed to get built. And to stop shooting at us. Skimming is a major feature of Iraq. My guess is that the whole thing would have cost $2.50, but what with the price of paying off thugs these days, ballooned to the $500 billion mark.

    So I would not discount having “funded” ISIS at some point.

  58. 58.

    Bill Arnold

    @Glocksman:

    IOW, if Iraqi and Saudi oil ceases to flow, $150+ bbl oil is inevitable.

    This is why our economy (and the world’s economy for that matter) needs to use less oil – the effect of a price shock would be reduced.

  59. 59.

    Suffern ACE

    @srv: How are we supposed to lecture the Iraqis on restoring legitimacy to their institutions when our major institutions are so corrupt?

  60. 60.

    Mandalay

    @srv:

    TEEN CHOICE AWARDS RIGGED!

    At least that is not as bad as how People Magazine pick their winners:

    Only three women of color have been chosen by People magazine as ‘Most beautiful’ in the last 24 years: Halle Berry, Beyonce Knowles and now Lupita Nyong’o.

    Two of these women (Berry and Nyong’o) have won Oscars for movies in which they were depicted on screen either being raped or sodomized by white men.

    So what’s the message here?

    Of all the beautiful women of color who have been involved in the arena of entertainment throughout its long history it seems these “honors” are only bestowed upon Black women who were willing to depict themselves being sexually exploited in some fashion to the benefit of white men.

    Or in Beyonce’s case, debasing oneself all over the world for corporate profit.

    Q. So what do you want to do when you grow up?
    A. I want to be ass-raped by a white man so People Magazine thinks I’m beautiful.

  67. 67.

    Morbo

    @srv: EVIDENCE DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY! GOOD NIGHT!

    In other words, no, you can’t find it anywhere other than propaganda outlets or conspiracy-mongering sites, can you?

  68. 68.

    Jay C

    @Alex S.:

    Ummm, kinda-sorta right: though U.S. Grant was a native of Illinois, and Chester Arthur (though he was an “accidental”) and Grover Cleveland were both from New York. Oh, and Teddy Roosevelt was a NYer, as well.

    So yeah, except for old Ben Harrison, Ohio and NY pretty much had the Gilded Age Presidency sewn up….

  70. 70.

    MattF

    @Arclite: Some odd things about the story. Like the teenage daughter who ran away in order to attend a public high school. And those anonymous reports to school officials that the children weren’t being educated. Maybe some other things going on there.

  71. 71.

    Bob In Portland

    @gene108: House of Saud, Kuwaiti royal family, Qatar. And most probably armed and trained by the US/CIA. Not enough support to overthrow Assad but too much for Iraq. It is in American foreign interests to block this.

    So what was this unfolding strategy to undermine Syria and Iran all about? According to retired NATO Secretary General Wesley Clark, a memo from the Office of the US Secretary of Defense just a few weeks after 9/11 revealed plans to “attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years”, starting with Iraq and moving on to “Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.” In a subsequent interview, Clark argues that this strategy is fundamentally about control of the region’s vast oil and gas resources.

    Much of the strategy currently at play was candidly described in a 2008 US Army-funded RAND report, Unfolding the Future of the Long War (pdf). The report noted that “the economies of the industrialized states will continue to rely heavily on oil, thus making it a strategically important resource.” As most oil will be produced in the Middle East, the US has “motive for maintaining stability in and good relations with Middle Eastern states”:

    “The geographic area of proven oil reserves coincides with the power base of much of the Salafi-jihadist network. This creates a linkage between oil supplies and the long war that is not easily broken or simply characterized… For the foreseeable future, world oil production growth and total output will be dominated by Persian Gulf resources… The region will therefore remain a strategic priority, and this priority will interact strongly with that of prosecuting the long war.”

    In this context, the report identified several potential trajectories for regional policy focused on protecting access to Gulf oil supplies, among which the following are most salient:

    “Divide and Rule focuses on exploiting fault lines between the various Salafi-jihadist groups to turn them against each other and dissipate their energy on internal conflicts. This strategy relies heavily on covert action, information operations (IO), unconventional warfare, and support to indigenous security forces… the United States and its local allies could use the nationalist jihadists to launch proxy IO campaigns to discredit the transnational jihadists in the eyes of the local populace… US leaders could also choose to capitalize on the ‘Sustained Shia-Sunni Conflict’ trajectory by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes against Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world…. possibly supporting authoritative Sunni governments against a continuingly hostile Iran.”

    Exploring different scenarios for this trajectory, the report speculated that the US may concentrate “on shoring up the traditional Sunni regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan as a way of containing Iranian power and influence in the Middle East and Persian Gulf.” Noting that this could actually empower al-Qaeda jihadists, the report concluded that doing so might work in western interests by bogging down jihadi activity with internal sectarian rivalry rather than targeting the US:

    “One of the oddities of this long war trajectory is that it may actually reduce the al-Qaeda threat to US interests in the short term. The upsurge in Shia identity and confidence seen here would certainly cause serious concern in the Salafi-jihadist community in the Muslim world, including the senior leadership of al-Qaeda. As a result, it is very likely that al-Qaeda might focus its efforts on targeting Iranian interests throughout the Middle East and Persian Gulf while simultaneously cutting back on anti-American and anti-Western operations.”

    The RAND document contextualised this disturbing strategy with surprisingly prescient recognition of the increasing vulnerability of the US’s key allies and enemies – Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Egypt, Syria, Iran – to a range of converging crises: rapidly rising populations, a ‘youth bulge’, internal economic inequalities, political frustrations, sectarian tensions, and environmentally-linked water shortages, all of which could destabilise these countries from within or exacerbate inter-state conflicts.

    The report noted especially that Syria is among several “downstream countries that are becoming increasingly water scarce as their populations grow”, increasing a risk of conflict. Thus, although the RAND document fell far short of recognising the prospect of an ‘Arab Spring’, it illustrates that three years before the 2011 uprisings, US defence officials were alive to the region’s growing instabilities, and concerned by the potential consequences for stability of Gulf oil.

    These strategic concerns, motivated by fear of expanding Iranian influence, impacted Syria primarily in relation to pipeline geopolitics. In 2009 – the same year former French foreign minister Dumas alleges the British began planning operations in Syria – Assad refused to sign a proposed agreement with Qatar that would run a pipeline from the latter’s North field, contiguous with Iran’s South Pars field, through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey, with a view to supply European markets – albeit crucially bypassing Russia. Assad’s rationale was “to protect the interests of [his] Russian ally, which is Europe’s top supplier of natural gas.”

    Instead, the following year, Assad pursued negotiations for an alternative $10 billion pipeline plan with Iran, across Iraq to Syria, that would also potentially allow Iran to supply gas to Europe from its South Pars field shared with Qatar. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the project was signed in July 2012 – just as Syria’s civil war was spreading to Damascus and Aleppo – and earlier this year Iraq signed a framework agreement for construction of the gas pipelines.

    The Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline plan was a “direct slap in the face” to Qatar’s plans. No wonder Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, in a failed attempt to bribe Russia to switch sides, told President Vladmir Putin that “whatever regime comes after” Assad, it will be “completely” in Saudi Arabia’s hands and will “not sign any agreement allowing any Gulf country to transport its gas across Syria to Europe and compete with Russian gas exports”, according to diplomatic sources. When Putin refused, the Prince vowed military action.

    It would seem that contradictory self-serving Saudi and Qatari oil interests are pulling the strings of an equally self-serving oil-focused US policy in Syria, if not the wider region. It is this – the problem of establishing a pliable opposition which the US and its oil allies feel confident will play ball, pipeline-style, in a post-Assad Syria – that will determine the nature of any prospective intervention: not concern for Syrian life.

    If you absorb this, then ask yourselves what America’s interests are in Ukraine. Hint: It’s not freedom or democracy.

  72. 72.

    Schlemizel

    @Mandalay:
    Where do you think the world oil supply would go? It is in whomever takes over’s best interest to keep right on selling it & the world will go right on setting the market for it. If they were stupid enough to cut off the supply they can eat sand. The value of US military in the region is vastly over rated.

  73. 73.

    sharknado22

    Lets all not forget that Maliki is the guy G Dubya the Texas dummy and his administration hand picked to run Iraq. Also let’s not forget the Texas sized dummy doing a “Brownie is doing a heck of a job” when referring to him on several occasions when it was already quite apparent he was going to rule in a sectarian way just like Saddam did.

    Simply amazing you do not read a peep about this in the MSM.

  76. 76.

    Schlemizel

    @raven:
    Yes, I have a high school friend & also a cousin ‘there’. Probably because it is my group I find the wall very depressing, much more painful than Gettysburg. At Gettysburg I felt awe at what was done and admiration for the people that did it. At the wall mostly I feel anger at what was done to my peers and to my nation that overwhelms the sorrow. Although those damn T-shirts did a job of moving me that way in PA.

  77. 77.

    Schlemizel

    Damn, I know I clicked twice, had a twitch.

    It was a weird day at work today, I actually had time to visit BJ for a bit.

  78. 78.

    Mandalay

    @SatanicPanic:

    Why single out Beyoncé here?

    Because she is a black woman who has won People Magazine’s “most beautiful woman” award. There aren’t any others who have won recently without being raped on screen. YMMV, but I think the writer had a valid objection to Beyoncé’s selection, given how she makes her living:

    Faux-feminist lyrics aside, many of Beyoncé’s lyrics are flat out sexist and often times offensive. Her lyrics suggest that women should pander to the needs of their partners. She sings, “I just wanna be the girl you like, the kind of girl you like,” while pole dancing in a tight leotard in her video for the song “Partition.” This line implies that a woman’s only ambition is to please her male counterpart. Yet again in “Jealous,” a song about doubting her husband’s fidelity, she sings “I’m in my penthouse half naked/ I cooked this meal for you naked/ So where the hell you at?” This lyric paints women’s role as a subservient housewife, working to satisfy the desires of men (a theme also seen in other Beyoncé songs such as “Why Don’t You Love Me?”). The overarching message of these songs is chauvinistic. Beyoncé depicts a misogynistic society in which the value of a woman is derived from her physical attractiveness and conjugal subjection. However, the degradation of women does not stop there. In her song “***Flawless,” she repeatedly refers to women as “bitches.” To use such a pejorative term to describe women is to debase our sex entirely.

    To be clear, these women are free to make their living however they want. That does not impact their physical appearance or beauty, and I would think most people would consider all three of them beautiful. The real problem is with People Magazine. When you look the careers of the three black women who won the People award recently, they either were raped on screen, or flaunt their body and sing about women being “bitches”.

    Just a coincidence?

  79. 79.

    PJ

    @Bob In Portland: Glad to see you figured out how to work Ukraine into a thread about Iraq. Putin’s a sociopathic gangster, but I’ll say this for him, he sure got his ruble’s worth when he hired you.

  80. 80.

    Botsplainer

    @Alex S.:

    I agree. What is actually happening is that those old post-Great War borders for Iraq and Syria are being erased in favor of a more appropriate alignment based on interrelated clans and religions. The new map is going to include a reasonably friendly Kurd nation which is being midwifed into existence, a more Western oriented, loosely confederated nation stretching from Beirut to Damascus to Baghdad, a barely governable, warlord-led hellhole from just north of Baghdad into Syria, an enhanced Iranian presence into the Tigris and Euphrates delta, and probably a larger Jordan.

    The Israeli government should be very frightened. The new governments will not be well-disposed toward it, given that their intransigence led to a lot of this destruction.

  82. 82.

    SatanicPanic

    @Mandalay: But how is Beyoncé doing anything different than Katy Perry, Lady Gaga or Miley Cyrus? Seems like an odd hill to die on. How many feminist pop stars are there?

    “Faux-feminist lyrics aside, many of Beyoncé’s lyrics are flat out sexist and often times offensive”- this is just silly.

  84. 84.

    Suffern ACE

    @Botsplainer: Those new governments will be fighting each other, so why would Israel bother? The only way to keep them from fighting would be keep their militaries weak. Which has been the policy from the beginning. It is very easy for Israel to maintain supremacy.

  85. 85.

    Schlemizel

    @Botsplainer:
    The Turks might not be thrilled to death either since half to 3/4s of Turkey is land the Kurds claim. And then there is part of Iran also. England & france sewed the wind when they laid down those borders & sat those monarchs, the US watered & fertilized in the post WWII Middle East and it looks to be one hell of a crop of whirlwind to be reaped.

  87. 87.

    Mandalay

    @Schlemizel:

    If they were stupid enough to cut off the supply they can eat sand.

    And we will buy oil at $150 per barrel. If you think that oil production in the Middle East would not decrease if the US completely left the region then no argument will sway you.

    I’m actually all in favor of doing what you propose, fully accepting that we would have to pay more for oil, but the reality is that won’t happen.

  88. 88.

    Botsplainer

    @Comrade Dread:

    And the realist also knows that the United States will always need fossil fuel to function right up to the point where the rich are sealed in self-sustaining climate controlled domes while the rest of us fight it out Mad Max style in the blasted lands to acquire the meager necessities to see the next sunrise.

    I want the role of Lord Humungous. S&M costuming and a hockey mask befit me.

  89. 89.

    The Pale Scot

    @Arclite: The Hobby lobby decision that beliefs are the supreme arbiter even if those beliefs are provably false makes this decision easily contestable, I don’t see how it is not reversed if the current interpretation of law is followed.

  90. 90.

    raven

    @Schlemizel: It’s been a few years since I’ve been but there used to be a bunch of really tacky souvenir stands on the sidewalk up toward the Lincoln Memorial.

  91. 91.

    Schlemizel

    @Mandalay:
    If it hit $150/bbl China would be a lot worse off than us, but I don’t think they could sustain that level for any length of time. If they tried there would be an economic down turn that would greatly reduce the demand and the producers would be forced to reduce price if they wanted hard cash coming in. The people who might actually suffer would be the oil companies if they lost control of the wellheads and could no longer skim the profit.

    My guess is the businessmen that run ISIS would be more than happy to collect the current market rate & are well aware the damage jacking the price up would cause. My guess is that they would use that very concept as leverage – leave us alone or we’ll cut off the supply.

  92. 92.

    Schlemizel

    @raven:
    I have not been there in 20 years and it was not that way then. There were some greasy looking bikers with banners but no cheesy junk stands.

  93. 93.

    Botsplainer

    @Schlemizel:

    The Kurds may lay claim to that, but they won’t get that.

    We fucked up by taking sides with the Israelis against secular Baathists. There was a reason why the Christian populations of Syria and Iraq supported corrupt Baath shitbags – they weren’t religiously ideological, and made sure that the goodies that didn’t get raked off trickled down.

    I’ll also add this – Arafat was a Baathist in all but name.

  95. 95.

    Ruckus

    @Alex S.:
    I believe a majority of the country was east of the Mississippi river at the starting time of your list. Many of the western states came into the Union around the middle 1800’s so there wouldn’t have even been much of a political/social/educational path to the presidency except from the east for a while. Your point about Ohio is not without merit but the northern states in the east would have been where most presidents came from just from voting population alone.

  98. 98.

    Ruckus

    @Pogonip:
    That would give the misadministration of miniscule minds way too much credit. You need to look a lot lower than any reason with any concept of real world.

  99. 99.

    Schlemizel

    @Botsplainer:
    We may know that but the Turks don’t seem to think so. They still view the Kurds as a real threat.

    I am not familiar with all the Baathist, Saddam was one & I think he had sort of a mixed record on that secular bit. He may not have demanded fealty to one branch or another but to his clan who just all happen to be Sunni. It was Kurds & Shiite that he was gassing & they might have noticed his preference as religion-base given the way they acted after we turned them loose.

  100. 100.

    Mandalay

    @SatanicPanic:

    But how is Beyoncé doing anything different than Katy Perry, Lady Gaga or Miley Cyrus? Seems like an odd hill to die on. How many feminist pop stars are there?

    You are missing the point, or maybe I am still not explaining it very well. AFAIK Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus are all white, and have not won People Magazine’s most beautiful woman award. Beyoncé is black, and has won that award.

    Now the issue isn’t with what Beyoncé is doing per se. The issue is with what black women who have People Magazine’s most beautiful woman award have done in their careers. And it just so happens that two of them were raped on screen, and the third makes a living by singing songs about being submissive, or denigrating women.

    All of these black women are beautiful, highly successful, very rich, and pretty decent human beings AFAIK. And of course any “most beautiful” award is entirely subjective, and People Magazine only does it to boost sales. But even so, couldn’t they could find a beautiful black woman who has not enhanced her career by performing in submissive roles? Apparently not.

  101. 101.

    D58826

    There is an old cliché ‘some people are born to greatness and others have it thrust upon them’. In the case of our Congress there are those born to stupidly (Stockman Gohmert, Bachmann and a host of others) and then there are those to whom stupidity is thrust upon them (McNuts, Butters and Peter King of NY and probably not many others).
    McNuts wants ISIS defeated and the initial airstrikes are worthless. Apparently anything less than a 1000 plane raid by B17s just doesn’t count. Butters is afraid that ISIS has tickets to tonight’s Yankees game. King wants a robust response but no boots on the ground. I realize that this is asking a lot from these door knobs but it just might take a couple of weeks to sort this entire thing out. Obama never said it was one airstrike and that was it. As far as the airstrikes being pinpricks, well if that is what it takes to deflate the ISIS balloon then so be it. We are not talking the German army on the Russian front here no matter how loud the Chicken Little’s cluck.

  102. 102.

    Schlemizel

    @raven:
    Nope – there were 5-6 of them & they had filthy T-shirts, torn and greasy jeans and grimey H-D leather vests, a couple wore green barets (I have a thing about that since attending a rally for returning vets where more than 40% of the guys were sporting them them, my default is that anyone who does is a phoney – I understand that is my prejudice but in this case they fit my stereotype. I wish I was knowledgeable enough to talk to them for 10 minutes & see if they are just two-bit chiselers or not). they all could have used a bath, they all had canisters out asking for donations. They did not seem terribly respectful of the place or the people listed there

  103. 103.

    The Pale Scot

    @Ruckus: Include Gadaffi,

    Gaddafi’s gold dinar

    Unfortunately all the first links are gold bug/RT type articles, but at the time not-nutjobs types had noticed that the Libyan revolution happened just after Gadaffi put in motion the set up of an oil exchange denominated in Euros, just like Saddam.

  104. 104.

    Ruckus

    @Schlemizel:
    Just pictures of the wall are very depressing for me. I have no idea what going there would be like. I imagine I’ll have to go soon though, maybe when the DC area BJers have a meet up. Too birds so to speak.

  105. 105.

    Ruckus

    @The Pale Scot:
    I was meaning our miniscule mind misadministration, that of jr, his pal death and the rover. Those are the people who couldn’t find a good idea if was tattooed on their foreheads in reverse. I’m not sure any of them can be seen in a mirror but even if they can be, understanding is not their strong suit.

  106. 106.

    SatanicPanic

    @Mandalay: I’m just saying that maybe the claim works for the two actresses, but it’s a stretch with Beyoncé. Is the whole of her career about being submissive? That’s ridiculous. I know some feminists like to parse her lyrics to make this point, but that’s just really a stretch. Sheesh, I mean, does anyone really think Beyoncé would be at home cooking for Jay Z if she didn’t want to be? They just finished up their tour together for crying out loud.

  108. 108.

    Mandalay

    @SatanicPanic:

    I mean, does anyone really think Beyoncé would be at home cooking for Jay Z if she didn’t want to be?

    Of course not, but her songs surely influence the behavior of young people who like them. She sings about women being bitches, and actively promotes the idea that self-worth for women comes from being sexy and submissive in her songs.

    Again, she is free to do that, and People Magazine is free to pick her as the world’s most beautiful woman.

    But the issue then becomes whether People Magazine is ever going to pick a black woman who doesn’t perform as someone who is submissive, or promotes submissiveness? They have a solid track record of failure recently.

  109. 109.

    raven

    @Ruckus: I suggest you got late at night if you are there other than Veterans or Memorial Day. People can’t help it but it’s just “Another Roadside Attraction” for many tourists.

  110. 110.

    shortstop

    Glad it was fun, Schlemizel. Fortunately we missed all the sales stuff. Wonder how much of it was connected with being there during the anniversary? But wait, we were there July 1-3 a few years back, and I don’t remember seeing all that.

    Thanks to all for the kind words, folks. We have been overwhelmed by the thoughtfulness of family and friends who have poured in to help, especially right after the third baseman’s near-death adventures. So humbling. Makes us feel like we can handle what the dystrophy brings down the road.

  111. 111.

    J R in WV

    @shortstop:

    Best of luck, friend. B-J is with you, and behind you looking out for your back. If you need help, just post the comment here and we will see it!

    @Schlemizel:

    I visited the Wall in DC late, nearly dark one December evening. A friend and co-worker dragged me over there after a class we were taking in VA, Oracle DBA if I recall.

    I cried most of the time we were there, leaking eyes all the time, but it was a good cathartic cry. My buddy was also affected. I found looking at the alphabetic list that I shared a family name with a young man who gave his all in SE Asia, which hurt. I don’t know how close (if at all) the relationship might have been, didn’t matter at all at the time, or ever. I was in the USN to avoid being sent to the swamps as so many were. Navy only went if they volunteered, and I didn’t.

    I’ll need to visit Gettysburg again, I was too young and ignorant to really understand the events and what they meant for today. Sherman should have hung more traitors in defence of slavery. All of them at the time.

  112. 112.

    Bob In Portland

    @PJ: @PJ:

    @? Martin:

    Russia has national interests. It doesn’t want NATO on its borders, you know, like NATO promised it wouldn’t do twenty years ago. It wants to sell its natural gas to Europe. It wants its base in Crimea.

    With the coup their long-term lease in Crimea was no longer guaranteed. Now it is. A violation of international law? Yeah, as if the US has any position to talk. With just Iraq we should have had hundreds of politicians and government employees in the docks in the World Court. Just consider Crimea the Kosovo exception to international law. As far as NATO goes, well, they’ve shown that they broke their promise regarding Russia’s desire not to have a hostile military force on its borders. As far as selling its oil to Europe Kiev apparently is going to cut off the gas flowing through the pipelines across Ukraine.

    If you read the article from the Guardian (from 2013), you’ll see that the US’s aims in the region are to control the petroleum supplies. Doesn’t seem like such a big deal besides realizing that oil profits for America is more important than the various brown people who live on it, and all the carnage and mayhem. The proposed Shiite pipeline was in jeopardy with the civil war that the US generated in Syria, the rise of ISIS, paid for by our allies in the Gulf, ensures it. Money.

    The same principle applies in Ukraine. If the US does not have a taste of the action it doesn’t want the other guy, be it Iran, Iraq, Syria or Russia, to have a taste.

    There is a weird presumption that Russia, personified by Putin, is basically the devil incarnate. That’s great for movies and religion and video games but in real life real countries have real national interests. I don’t know why people who pretend to be so smart here are so stupid about this. Countries have national interests, and their national interests (here’s the tricky part) usually don’t have much to do with what the occupants of them actually want or need. The national interests have to do with what powerful people want. So when the US overthrew Arbenz it was for the benefit of United Fruit Company, not any fear of Communism. The coup in Iran was to protect US and British oil interests from nationalization. Is that so hard to understand? We had national interests in Iraq that had nothing to do with WMDs.

    Russia wants to continue to sell its petroleum products to Europe. I ask you, BJers, what is the US’s interest in Ukraine?

    Okay, I realize that there’s a chucklehead plan here to ignore me. Go ahead. I’ll still post. At some point a few of you will have the light bulb go on. And I realize that I’m creating a kind of cognitive dissonance by asking you to actually view the world differently. I ask you to ask yourselves why over the course of your lifetimes the US has been routinely sending our military abroad and killing people around the world. What is the purpose?

    Martin again feels the need to defend the US by presuming I must be an agent of Putin. I don’t particularly like Putin, from what little I know of him, but I’ve been around long enough to know that countries under attack, either directly or by subversion, tend to ratchet back personal freedoms. But I think he represents his country’s interests, especially selling natural gas to Europe. Is that too hard for you to understand? Apparently, it is.

    Is everything that comes out of Moscow true? No. But it’s not untrue because it’s out of Moscow. Your default setting needs to be changed.

    We are approaching a month since the airliner went down. The Brits have the black boxes. Still no word of what was on the recordings. Why? Anyone have a theory? More likely, because there is no mention in the media your default settings tell you not to ask questions about it.

    The linked Guardian article explains that the civil war in Syria was in the works in London and Washington, DC years before it began. So has Ukraine.

    If Ballooon Juicers think that ISIS or Ukraine or Osama just suddenly spring up and there’s no back story, well, that’s direct commentary on you. If you think that the US is in the social work business, then, as the song goes, I pity the fool(s).

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