Will Oprah Winfrey be our next president?
Gayle King said "no" last week, that she would not be running.
She should know, right?
John Stauber Retweeted
I am not jumping to the "President Obama did not wiretap/spy on Donald Trump!" camp.
Barack Obama killed U.S. citizens with drones.
I do not get where we suddenly feel there is a line he will not cross.
The charge is out there.
And before President Trump made it, we had already heard various claims from the press that back up the notion that Donald Trump was wire tapped.
As far as I am concerned, it is up to Barack Obama to clear his own name.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for today:
Monday, March 6, 2017. Chaos and violence continue, The Mosul Slog
continues, Kenneth Roth sees joy where others see anguish, and much
more.
It's day 140 of The Mosul Slog. For any who missed it, the 'big success' of the weekend was taking control of a bridge.
It's day 140 of The Mosul Slog. For any who missed it, the 'big success' of the weekend was taking control of a bridge.
US-backed Iraqi forces announce capture of Mosul's al Hurriya bridge in a new push to drive out ISIL fighters aje.io/t4yh
'Success.'
Or that's what some are desperate to claim and/or see.
Reality?
Tens of Thousands Displaced as Iraqi Forces Near Mosul City Center - NBCNews.com
The refugees are increasing.
As we noted at THIRD in "Editorial: The Mosul refugee problem is whose fault?," the Iraqi government feels this is the fault of the United Nations.
Above is a photo of Jassem Mohammed Al Jaff, the Minister of Displacement and Migration. And he's blaming the United Nations for the refugee crisis. As his title indicates, he's actually the person who should be planning for refugees.
Maybe that's why he's blaming the United Nations?
What explains what people see?
It's a question worth asking when you examine two Tweets.
Here's Human Rights Watch's Ken Roth:
Tears of joy and relief as man with daughter escapes ISIS-contolled part of Mosul, Iraq. bit.ly/2mqCcbq
Here's the same photo Tweeted by someone who doesn't have Ken Roth's complicated recent history of whoring.
This is Iraq.
A father & daughter screaming in despair, while fleeing fighting in Mosu.
Does Ken want to stand by that joy claim?
Because no one else is seeing it.
Maybe you're confused by the photo. Here's a closer take of the photo.
40,000 displaced from Mosul as Iraqi forces near old city ara.tv/mqxht via @AlArabiya_Eng
Those are not tears of joy.
As we've repeatedly said for months now, Roth is allowing politics to cloud his judgments.
He's the only one seeing tears of joy in that photo.
What he should be seeing is shame in his own reflection.
He's gone around the bend, completely nuts, his Twitter feed is as out of control as US President Donald Trump's Twitter feed.
The photo was taken by REUTERS' Goran Tomasevic and is one of at least four photos of the father and daughter that Tomasevic took. In no caption to these photos has REUETERS claimed tears of joy. Only Ken Roth sees that.
While he goes full on nuts, Human Rights Watch issues an alert which includes:
“While politicians in Baghdad are discussing reconciliation efforts in Iraq, the state’s own forces are undermining those efforts by destroying homes and forcing families into a detention camp,” said Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “These families, accused of wrongdoing by association, are in many cases themselves victims of ISIS abuses and should be protected by government forces, not targeted for retribution.”
Benjamin Hall (FOX NEWS) spoke with Iraqi Vice President Ayad Allawi:
“America has lost a lot of potential friends here in the region. … and this is something that the new administration has to address.”
Obama’s principal error, says Allawi, was his disengagement from a country and a region which desperately needed U.S. support. At a time when Iraq couldn’t stand on its own, Obama left -- leaving a vacuum for Iran to fill. Iran’s new influence, he says, is behind much of the bloodshed.
“When our American friends left Iraq in 2011 they never laid down the issues that would strengthen the Iraqis to face the challenges ahead -- their sudden withdrawal in 2011 without the necessary preparation left us many problems to face.
To be clear, FOX NEWS is confused about Allawi. Both on air and in their write up, they have the wrong time period for when Allawi was prime minister. From June of 2004 to May of 2005 was when Ayad Allawi was prime minister.
Benjamin Hall: In 2010, he won the election, he had more seats, but the Obama administration pressured him to hand over power to the Maliki government -- the Iranian-backed Maliki government. He says that that was the turning point, that was when things changed. Yes, I think he probably could have been a unifier. He talked openly about working with Sunni and Shia and Kurds and we know how the Maliki government ended up being very close to Iran, very sectarian. And so he says -- and I tend to agree with him -- that was the turning point in the country.
And Ayad Allawi is correct.
It's a shame that this turning point took place with the western press ignoring it.
But that's what they did. Especially in the United States, where the corporate press defined their mission as selling Barack Obama.
If a journalist managed to get the truth in print, it was in a book. And then, though they might have been media darlings when Bully Boy Bush occupied the White House, in the days of The Cult of St. Barack, flesh peddlers like Charlie Rose couldn't find their numbers suddenly.
The FOX NEWS report is actually disappointing.
Was Ayad Allawi that circumspect or was a decision made not to really go into details?
Allawi wasn't just pressured by then-Vice President Joe Biden to concede. There's also the issue of The Erbil Agreement -- the US-brokered contract. Barack personally called Allawi to get him to return to the Parliament and gave his promise that The Erbil Agreement would be honored.
It wasn't.
And Barack didn't do a damn thing but act like he'd never heard of The Erbil Agreement.
Unlike FOX NEWS, we covered all of that in real time, as it happened.
New content at THIRD:
- Truest statement of the week
- Truest statement of the week II
- A note to our readers
- Editorial: The Mosul refugee problem is whose faul...
- TV: FEUD as commentary on and off screen
- Roundtable
- The assholes have spoken
- Tweet of the week
- Why we really don't care about Mike Pence's e-mail...
- When is it a hate crime?
- This edition's playlist
