As he left his Marine One helicopter Wednesday evening and walked to the residence of the White House, President Obama did not respond to a question shouted out by ABC News’s Mary Bruce about when he would begin to provide answers to the numerous questions building up about what exactly what went wrong in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012.
The president smiled and continued walking.
Perhaps he couldn’t hear the question over the din of the chopper’s blades, but either way the smile and wave – almost Reagan-esque in style – underline the apparent strategy the president specifically and his administration in general have seemed to adopt when it comes to the myriad inquiries about the decisions that led to the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens: they are deferring detailed answers to the investigation and – critics say –running out the clock until Election Day.
As of now, the White House has disclosed that President Obama was informed about the attack on the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi at roughly 5pm by his National Security Adviser Tom Donilon as he was in a pre-scheduled meeting with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey. At that meeting, senior administration officials say, the President ordered that the U.S. begin moving military assets into the region to prepare for a range of contingencies.
Mr. Tapper notes claims that footage does not exist. It is noted in passing. I wish he would establish which footage the administration is claiming does not exist. Footage does exist and if you have read C.I.'s reports on the House Oversight Committee hearing, you know that. The State Department, Patrick Kennedy, confirmed that in the hearing and the video was discussed in the hearing in terms of it not being handed over to Congress despite Congress requesting it.
So footage does exist.
The Benghazi attack claimed the lives of Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods, Sean Smith and Chris Stevens.
Harald Doornbos and Jenan Moussa (Foreign Policy) have traveled to Benghazi and explain what they found:
When we visited on Oct. 26 to prepare a story for Dubai based Al Aan TV, we found not only Stevens's personal copy of the Aug. 6 New Yorker, lying on remnants of the bed in the safe room where Stevens spent his final hours, but several ash-strewn documents beneath rubble in the looted Tactical Operations Center, one of the four main buildings of the partially destroyed compound. Some of the documents -- such as an email from Stevens to his political officer in Benghazi and a flight itinerary sent to Sean Smith, a U.S. diplomat slain in the attack -- are clearly marked as State Department correspondence. Others are unsigned printouts of messages to local and national Libyan authorities. The two unsigned draft letters are both dated Sept. 11 and express strong fears about the security situation at the compound on what would turn out to be a tragic day. They also indicate that Stevens and his team had officially requested additional security at the Benghazi compound for his visit -- and that they apparently did not feel it was being provided.
One letter, written on Sept. 11 and addressed to Mohamed Obeidi, the head of the Libyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs' office in Benghazi, reads:
"Finally, early this morning at 0643, September 11, 2012, one of our diligent guards made a troubling report. Near our main gate, a member of the police force was seen in the upper level of a building across from our compound. It is reported that this person was photographing the inside of the U.S. special mission and furthermore that this person was part of the police unit sent to protect the mission. The police car stationed where this event occurred was number 322."
Eli Lake (Daily Beast) has a really important report and it includes details about the State Department and a great deal more but here is what really stands out to me:
Representative Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of a House oversight subcommittee investigating the Benghazi attacks, told The Daily Beast that General Carter Ham, the outgoing U.S. commander of Africa Command, “told me directly that he had no directive to engage in the fight in Benghazi.” Spokesmen from Africa Command declined to comment for this story.
There is a story here and reporters need to be investigating. Four Americans were killed in a terrorist attack. The White House refuses to answer questions, after weeks of lying and blaming it on a YouTube video, and that is unacceptable.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for today:
Thursday,
November 1, 2012. Chaos and violence continue, someone involved in the
2011 negotiations between the White House and Nouri to keep US troops
in Iraq speaks, Nouri moves towards the majority-government, Jalal
Talabani feels betrayed, the alleged Israeli spying devices on the US
supplied F-16s continue to be covered by the Iraqi press, Tareq
al-Hashemi gets a second death sentence, and more.
Starting with Munaf al-Saedi (Niqash) who explores a new Facebook campaign:
One
young Baghdad woman has ambitious plans for Iraqi women's rights – and
she has started a Facebook campaign to back them. She already has 10,000
online supporters. NIQASH asks Ruqaya Abdul-Ali how this will translate
to action/
She's not even 20 years old but Baghdadi university student Ruqaya Abdul-Ali has started a wildly successful Facebook campaign.
It is called "Revolution Against Patriarchal Society" and it's only
three months old – and already Abdul-Ali has got almost 10,000
supporters involved.
Abdul-Ali
says she aims to educate Iraqi women about their rights, to stop sexual
harassment in Iraqi society and to get some of the country's most
discriminatory legislation changed. NIQASH asked her exactly how she
plans to achieve those grand plans.
NIQASH: Could you tell us exactly what you mean by a "Revolution Against Patriarchal Society"?
Abdul-Ali:
It is a revolution against tribal, patriarchal norms and the traditions
that deprive women of their basic rights, ones that cause them to live
like machines whose sole purpose is to give birth and to do household
tasks. It is a revolution that will make women more aware of their
rights and help them become more informed, introducing them to new
ideas. The campaign is about encouraging women to read and to educate
themselves.
NIQASH: Why are you doing this?
Abdul-Ali:
I launched this campaign on Facebook because of the pressures being put
on women as a result of the revival of tribal traditions in Iraq
[following the 2003 US-led invasion that ended former Iraqi leader
Saddam Hussein's regime]. There are also increasing levels of violence,
discrimination and verbal and sexual harassment.
The
phenomenon of early and underage marriage also seems to be becoming
more widespread and this prevents women from getting an education, not
to mention the societal impact this has on divorced and widowed women.
And
I used Facebook because I wanted to remind Iraqi women of their rights.
Many women both inside and outside Iraq have joined the Facebook page
and that number has almost reached 10,000. Many of them are human rights
activists.
Iraqi women
suffer in a multitude of ways as a result not limited to the hardships
involved of war turning your nation into a country of widows and
orphans. In 2005, Ghali Hassan (Global Research) explained how Iraqi women were being robbed of their rights:
Prior
to the arrival of U.S. forces, Iraqi women were free to go wherever
they wish and wear whatever they like. The 1970 Iraqi constitution, gave
Iraqi women equity and liberty unmatched in the Muslim World. Since the
U.S. invasion, Iraqi women's rights have fallen to the lowest level in
Iraq's history. Under the new U.S.-crafted constitution, which will be
put to referendum on the 15 October while the bloodbath mounts each day,
women's rights will be oppressed and the role of women in Iraqi society
will be curtailed and relegated to the caring for "children and the
elderly".
Immediately after the invasion,
the U.S. embarked on cultivating friendships with religious groups and
clerics. The aim was the complete destruction of nationalist movements,
including women's rights movements, and replacing them with expatriate
religious fanatics and criminals piggybacked from Iran, the U.S. and
Britain. In the mean time the U.S. moved to liquidate any Iraqi
opposition or dissent to the Occupation.
Iraqi
women were not helped by the exiles the US government put in charge of
Iraq or by the unrest the US government encouraged in an attempt to
intimidate, silence and control the people. No one has been more
damaging than Nouri al-Maliki. This can be seen by women in his
Cabinet. In his first term as Prime Minister, Nawal al-Samarraie served
as Minister of Women's Affairs. February 6, 2009,
she was in the news when she resigned because her ministry was not
properly funded (a meager monthly budget of $7,500 a month was slashed
to $1,400) and she states, "I reached to the point that I will never be
able to help the women." That was very embarrassing for Nouri. So
naturally the New York Times worked overtime to ignore it. (See Third Estate Sunday Review's "NYT goes tabloid.") NPR's Corey Flintoff covered it for Morning Edition (link has text and audio).
Nouri didn't care for Nawal al-Samarraie or the needed attention she raised. Which was reflected in his second term when he tried to erase women completely. From the December 22, 2010 snapshot:
Turning to Iraq, Liz Sly and Aaron Davis (Washington Post) note, "A special gathering of the nation's parliament endorsed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for a second term in office, with lawmakers then voting one by one for 31 of the eventual 42 ministers who will be in his cabinet." AFP notes that all but one is a man, Bushra Hussein Saleh being the sole woman in the Cabinet. And they quote Kurdish MP Ala Talabani stating, "We congratulate the government, whose birth required eight months, but at the same time we are very depressed when we see the number of women chosen to head the ministries. Today, democracy was decapitated by sexism. The absence of women is a mark of disdain and is contrary to several articles of the constitution. I suggest to Mr Maliki to even choose a man for the ministry of women's rights, as you do not have confidence in women." Ala Talabani is the niece of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. Imran Ali (Womens Views On News) reminds, "The new constitution stipulates that a quarter of the members of parliament be women and prohibits gender discrimination." Apparently concern about representation doesn't apply to the Cabinet (and, no, Nouri's attempts at offering excuses for the huge gender imbalance do not fly).
42 posts to fill and Nouri couldn't think of a single woman? And wouldn't have if Iraqi women hadn't gotten vocal on the issue. And note that Nouri increased the Cabinet from 31 in his first term to 42. That tells you just how inclusive Nouri isn't. Also note that it was Iraqi women and they did it without any help from the United Nations which is so cowed that it refuses to stand up for women in Iraq. Nouri also oversaw the appointment of commissioners to the so-called Independent High Electoral Commission. While the United Nations tried so hard to find a rainbow in manure, the reality is that one third of the members were supposed to be women. This is a point that the UN was making as late as the summer. But when only one woman was named a commissioner, the UN decided to just pretend that didn't take place -- even when the Iraqi court ruled that, yes, a third of the commissioners should be women. Maybe if the UN had pushed for the law and for women, that would have happened. But it was much more important to the United Nations to use up all their happy face stickers that day than it was to stand up for Iraqi women.
At the end of 2011, Iraqiya MP Nada Ibrahim explained to AFP, "It has been a very bad regression" for women in Iraq. Last January, Equality in Iraq featured Emily Muna's interview with Housan Mahmoud (Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq) for Workers Liberty:
What issues do women in Iraq face?
Many:
kidnapping, prostitution, sexual slavery, honour killings, stigmatising
and marginalisation from wider society, as well as lack of employment
and poor pay, so many different issues.
Also, women aren't the only ones who suffer at the hands of patriarchy in the country.
OWFI
was the only organisation that stood up against homophobia and the
murder of homosexuals in Iraq. We raised issues homosexual Iraqis face
with Shi'a Islamists.
How usual is it for women to be employed? Has it become less usual as Iraqi society
moves towards Islamism?
It depends. Some places have always been deeply religious, while others are progressing towards Islamism.
If
a woman finds a job, she works, but it is all about who you know. Even
prostitution is now an income for some women, if they get paid at all.
Prostitution
itself is illegal and we stand up for the welfare and employment and
human rights of sex workers because they are victimised and dehumanised
in such societies.
I
met some ex-prostitutes, and they were still in danger. They sought
help from many women's groups, but were turned away for moral or
security reasons.
Iraq's Journalistic Freedoms Observatory notes the investigative journalist was in Baghdad's Tahrir Square at ten a.m. Monday morning conducting meetings and interviews and she was also working on a story about prostitution and brothels in Iraq. She went to a police station to interview some of the 180 women arrested but a police officer prevented her from entering and he denied that there were any prostitutes among the arrested. He left and then moments later re-appeared telling her she could enter but without her colleagues. Zia Mehdi didn't feel comfortable with that offer and instead returned to Tahrir Square to continue her LGBT interviews. Later she was discovered dead, stabbed to death, still in her jacket that noted she was a journalist.
Zhala Aziz (Warvin) reports
that Sunday, October 21st, a marathon was held in Hawler. (Hawler is
in Erbil, a province of the Kurdistan Regional Government --
semi-autonomous area in northern Iraq.) The marathon was for breast
cancer and the city's Director of Health, Qasim Ali Aziz, explained, "To
raise awareness among women and protect themselves against this
disease, in the memory of breast cancer, we organized a marathon between
the female high schools students with the commerical high schools
girls." In addition, Jim and Deb Fine (Mennonite Central Commitee Iraq) reports on how bee keeping is creating opportunites for Iraqi women living in the KRG:
In the Yezidi
village of Beban we met our first woman participant, Aasimah (not her
real name), whose husband was kidnapped in Baghdad in 2006. The family
sold goods from the camera shop they owned to raise the $50,000 ransom
the kidnappers demanded. They paid the ransom but to no avail. The
kidnappers killed Aasimah's husband and Aasimah fled Baghdad with her
four children to live in the safety of Beban, her family village.
Aasimah
reported that she had already sold 4 kg. of honey for $50 a kg.,
although her five hives had been working for only three months.
Aasimah, like the 25 other displaced female heads of household
participating in the ZSVP project, can expect to earn some $2,000 a year
in the first years of the project and could earn much more as the bees
swarm and populate new hives. (On our visit we met one man who had been
the beneficiary of an earlier ZSVP beekeeping project. He received five
beehives in 2009. He now maintains fifty hives and sells bees as well
as honey to customers in the area.)
October 22nd, in London, the Women of the Year Lunch & Awards was held and one of the Barclays Women of the Year Award winners was "Iraqi-American women's rights activist, author and co-founder of Women for Women International Zainab Salbi." (For more on the awards, click here and read about the Lifetime Achievement Award which went to internationally known singer, actress and activist Lulu.) For more on Zainab Salbi, you can refer to Sarah Morrison's profile on her which ran in Sunday's Independent of London. As well as WBAA's From Scratch (link is audio) today which found Jessica Harris interviewing Zainab.
Still on the topic of Iraqi women, Tupperware
is one of the few international companies that has been working to
empower Iraqi women. US Ambassador at Large for Global Women's Issues
(US State Dept) Melanne Verveer was to have spoken at Rollins College
Monday about empowering women and girls globally but the event was
postponed. The
Crummer Graduate School of Business at Rollins College has partnered
with Tupperware and the Office of Global Women's Issues to create Global
Links "a yearlong esternship designed to inspire a new generation of
Iraqi women entrepreneurs and, in turn, help strengthen the country's
struggling economy and rebuild its middle class."
Voices for Creative Nonviolence's Cathy Breen is in Iraq and she will be writing about this latest trip for The Progressive. (Good for The Progressive for remembering Iraq.) Her first report includes:
It
is almost ten years since the U.S.-led war against Iraq. The
electricity keeps going off here and all throughout the country. Sami,
whose family is hosting me in Najaf, remarked yesterday with no ill
intent, "Maybe we could send them some of our electricity!" We had to
laugh.
I read another email this morning
from an Iraqi friend of Sami's whom we were unable to see in Basra. He
spoke about the lack of electricity and the high humidity in Basra,
where temperatures reached almost 50 degrees Centigrade last summer
(about 120 degrees Fahrenheit), and this was during the fasting month of
Ramadan when no water, or food, is taken from dawn to dusk. "How is
it," this friend asks, "that the U.S. has poured billions of dollars
into Iraq and yet there was no project for a [national] electrical power
station to help cool temperatures and calm temperaments that went along
with the political instability, the insecurity and the sectarian
killings…?"
On violence, yesterday was the end of the month. Iraq Body Count's
counts 253 reported violent deaths in Iraq for the month of October.
Last month, their total was 356 which means a reduction of about 100
deaths. AFP, forgetting fairy tales are for bedtime, notes
the government total for October is 136. AFP also forgets to note that
there were over 550 reported mass arrests in Iraq in the month of
October. Nouri's round up largely focused on Sunnis.
And
not just 'terrorists.' No, Nouri brought in a new charge in the
Baghdad area: prostitution. Over 180 women were arrested for
prostitution in the Baghdad area alone. Two weeks ago, a reporter
attempting to report on that was killed: Zia Medhi. From the October 24th snapshot:
Iraq's Journalistic Freedoms Observatory notes the investigative journalist was in Baghdad's Tahrir Square at ten a.m. Monday morning conducting meetings and interviews and she was also working on a story about prostitution and brothels in Iraq. She went to a police station to interview some of the 180 women arrested but a police officer prevented her from entering and he denied that there were any prostitutes among the arrested. He left and then moments later re-appeared telling her she could enter but without her colleagues. Zia Mehdi didn't feel comfortable with that offer and instead returned to Tahrir Square to continue her LGBT interviews. Later she was discovered dead, stabbed to death, still in her jacket that noted she was a journalist.
Approximately a fourth of the deaths from violence in October took place last weekend. The Islamic State of Iraq, as Fars News Agency reported, claimed credit for the "shootings and bombings over the Eid al-Adha holiday that killed dozens of people nationwide." July 22nd,
the Islamic State of Iraq released an audio recording announcing a new
campaign of violence entitled Breaking The Walls which would include
prison breaks and killing "judges and investigators and their guards." Since they made their July announcement there have been minor and major attacks throughout Iraq. Ashley Fantz (CNN) reported
a very important detail about the Islamic State of Iraq's announcement,
"In the statement, the ISI claims that the Shiite Rafidi government
have conducted a series of arrests that targeted Sunni women in order to
pressure their relatives to surrender to authorities or to blackmail
their relatives. Attacking during Eid was intended to deliver a message:
You are not safe, even during a holiday built around peace." Yes,
we're back to the issue of Nouri's government targeting Sunni women for
arrests. Today, Michael Jansen (Irish Times) reports on the way Sunnis are shut out:
While
Iraq's Sunnis largely back Syria's rebels, the Shia prime minister,
Nouri al-Maliki, fearing the establishment of a Sunni fundamentalist
regime on Iraq's western flank, supports the secular Syrian regime.
Iraq's
armed forces and civil administration, dismantled after the US
occupation, have not been restored. The military, where most soldiers
were always from the majority Shia community, has been transformed into a
sectarian Shia force by Maliki.
Sunni
fighters who helped the US defeat al-Qaeda and its offshoots have been
denied recruitment into the armed forces, creating a wellspring of
resentment in Sunni provinces that border on Syria. Youngsters are
encouraged to join radical Sunni groups. Some have gone to Syria to
fight against the Assad regime while others are mounting deadly attacks
on Shias and Iraqi regime targets.
Nouri's most famous Sunni target in recent years has been Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi.
Let's drop back to the April 30th snapshot:
The political crisis was already well in effect when December 2011 rolled around. The press rarely gets that fact correct. When December 2011 rolls around you see Iraqiya announce a boycott of the council and the Parliament, that's in the December 16th snapshot and again in a December 17th entry . Tareq al-Hashemi is a member of Iraqiya but he's not in the news at that point. Later, we'll learn that Nouri -- just returned from DC where he met with Barack Obama -- has ordered tanks to surround the homes of high ranking members of Iraqiya. December 18th is when al-Hashemi and Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq are pulled from a Baghdad flight to the KRG but then allowed to reboard the plane. December 19th is when the arrest warrant is issued for Tareq al-Hashemi by Nouri al-Maliki who claims the vice president is a 'terrorist.' .
The political crisis was already well in effect when December 2011 rolled around. The press rarely gets that fact correct. When December 2011 rolls around you see Iraqiya announce a boycott of the council and the Parliament, that's in the December 16th snapshot and again in a December 17th entry . Tareq al-Hashemi is a member of Iraqiya but he's not in the news at that point. Later, we'll learn that Nouri -- just returned from DC where he met with Barack Obama -- has ordered tanks to surround the homes of high ranking members of Iraqiya. December 18th is when al-Hashemi and Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq are pulled from a Baghdad flight to the KRG but then allowed to reboard the plane. December 19th is when the arrest warrant is issued for Tareq al-Hashemi by Nouri al-Maliki who claims the vice president is a 'terrorist.' .
al-Hashemi
has been in Turkey where he remains. He was there while a Baghdad
court controlled by Nouri pretended to hear charges against him in a
faux trial. This despite the Baghdad
judges declared him guilty in February at their press conference and
while one judge was stating that he had been threatened by al-Hashemi,
before the trial even started, they declared al-Hashemi guilty. That
press conference demonstrated that al-Hashemi was correct, he would not
get a fiar trial in the Baghdad courts (he had asked that the trial be
moved to the KRG or to Kirkuk). In May, the trial began. The judges
have also refused to allow Vice President al-Hashemi to call President
Jalal Talabani to the stand as a character witness -- in fact, they
refused all the requests for character witnesses. Among other
problems with the trial? The use of so-called confessions obtained via
torture, the refusal to make the proceedings open and transparent (the
press was kicked out during some of the trial) and the simple fact that,
even after his September 9th
'conviction,' Tareq al-Hashemi remains Vice President of Iraq. He was
never removed from his position and while he holds that position -- as
he currently does -- the Constitution does not allow for him to stand
trial. He can stand trial after he leaves office. He can be removed
from office by the Parliament immediately and then legally stand trial.
But he was never removed from office and his term has not expired so he
can't legally be tried.
He can't legally be
tried? You'd assume that Iraqi judges would grasp that Constitutional
fact and stop the trial. But that assumption would be built upon the
fact that the Baghdad judiciary was independent of Nouri and that it was
interested in practicing the law and not just delivering rubber stamp
verdicts on Nouri's orders.
Tareq and the ridiculous criminal court in Baghdad are back in the news today. Vestnik Kavkazza has the best headline, "Iraqi vice president Tariq al-Hashemi to be executed twice." AP gets this right:
"The verdict was the second death sentence for Tariq Al-Hashemi in less
than two months, and is likely to stoke further resentment among Iraq's
minority Sunni Muslims against the Shiite-led government." Press TV also notes this is Tareq's "second death sentence."
Subsequently,
and despite all the fond hopes of a diverse, secular and democratic new
order emerging in Iraq – remember all those earnest discussions post
invasion, about whether a 'liberated' Iraq would have a loosely federal
structure or a strongly centralized one? – something quite different has
emerged. Namely, a virtual Shi'ite dictatorship led by Nouri al-Maliki
and subservient to Iran. Instead of liberating Iraq and containing Iran,
the US invasion has enabled a tyrannical client regime of Teheran to be
installed in Baghdad. Nice work.
In the
process of setting up his new tyranny, al-Maliki has made a joke out of
those fond hopes of peaceful power sharing with Sunni legislators. Amid
terrible bloodshed since 2003, many of the Sunni fighters have been
killed or driven out, and Kurdish aspirations have been sidelined.
However, those residual Sunni elements from Iraq - and Kurdish fighters
from all over the region – have now poured into Syria to fight the Assad
regime, and as the New York Times recently pointed out, Iraq is already feeling the blowback.
Nouri is moving towards a majority government which is his effort to shut out political rivals. Dar Addustour reports
Nouri and Ammar al-Hakim (Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq) have been
meeting and bonding over this move and that al-Hakim has declared such a
move "wise." From Monday's snapshot:
With that in mind, it's ridiculous that, as All Iraq News reports,
State of Law is telling the Kurdistan Alliance that either the blocs
'come on board,' or Nouri will attempt to form a majority government. A
majority governmnent would shut out non-Shias. In other words, State
of Law's Salman al-Moussawi is stating either you drop your demand that
we honor this contract or we will move towards forming a majority
government. Possibly these threats from State of Law are why MP Hussein Mansouri of Moqtada al-Sadr's bloc states that a national conference alone will not solve the political crisis.
Dar Addustour notes
today that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani feels betrayed by this move.
Talabani was supposed to be working on getting the political blocs
together. Before the four-day holiday kicked off on Friday, Nouri and
his State of Law political slate were singing Jalal's praises, saying he
was going to fix the political stalemate. He was also saying that he
wanted the National Conference (a meet-up of the political blocs to
resolve the political crisis) that Jalal and Speaker of Parliament Osama
al-Nujaifi have been calling for since December 21st. Not only does Dar Addustour
report Jalal feels betrayed, they also report that he's met up with
Iraqiya's al-Nujaifi and the two are discussing what their options
are. Dar Addustour feels ther are three ways this can play
out: a vote in Parliament to withdraw confidence from Nouri (in which
case a caretaker government would be put in place until elections can be
held), the majority government that Nouri wants or a Nouri's using his
control of the military to seize total control of Iraq (Little Saddam
would become the Hussein he always wanted to be).
Meanwhile Josh Rogin (Foreign Policy) speaks with the second US Ambassador to Iraq during Barack's almost four years in the Oval Office:
Jeffrey
was a key player on both the Washington and Baghdad sides of the 2011
negotiations that were meant to agree on a follow on force to extend the
Bush administration's Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) after it was
set to expire last December. Those negotiations ultimately failed. The
White House has said the Iraqis refused to grant immunity for U.S.
troops in Iraq after 2011 and submit a new SOFA through their own
parliament, two things the United States needed to extend the troops'
mission.
Jeffrey said that he and Iraqi
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki personally discussed the idea of extending
the U.S. troop presence in Iraq via an executive agreement, which would
not have to go through the Iraqi parliament.
"Maliki
said at one point, 'Why don't we just do this as an executive
agreement?'" Jeffrey said. "I didn't think he was serious, and I didn't
think he had thought it through."
That was the 2011 negotiations. Remember that negotiations are going on right now. September 26th, 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.
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.
Yesterday's snapshot:
noted that the current US Ambassador to Iraq Robert S. Beecroft had
blown his credibility (claiming there were no US troops remaining in
Iraq to the Iraqi press and, as All Iraq News pointed out,
also claiming that there was no desire for US troops to be sent back
into Iraq) and that this wasn't a good time for that to happen:
All Iraq News reports
Iraqis state they have found Israeli recording devices on the F-16s the
US has supplied so far. The Iraqi Air Force leadership has sent a
letter objecting to the device to Lockheed Martin, manufacturers of the
F-16s. Fars News Agency adds,
"Iraq's air force has found out Israeli company RADA has planted
information recording systems in its F-16 fighters recently purchased
from the American Lockheed Martin Company."
Dar Addustour reports
today that the Iraqi Air Force first sought comment from the US
government and when they received no answer from the US government,
about what they see as spying devices, they asked Lockheed Martin. I
have no idea of whether they're spying devices or not. But at some
point, someone in leadership in Iraq is going to realize that if there
is one set of spying devices, there may be two or more. Someone will
shortly grasp that the set discovered may have been intended to be
discovered in order to conceal more important devices. That's sleight
of hand -- look here, not over there. Again, this wasn't a time where
the US face to Iraq should have thrown away credibility by lying that
all US troops were out of Iraq and that the US government wasn't
attempting to work on a new agreement with Iraq governing US troops.
