Watching and listening to Sean Hannity makes my skin crawl. This neo-con propaganda spewing hack is a lying sack of shit. He continuously badgers Rand Paul with his neo-con talking points that are entirely false.
George Bush signed the agreement with Iraq to withdraw all American troops from Iraq. Maliki told Obama to get out. It was the right thing to do.
Iraq is a sovereign country. It is none of our business to intervene in their civil war.
Rand Paul rightly points out we should have never gone to war in the first place. Hannity doesn’t want to hear that truth and blathers about the tremendous stability after the surge. Bullshit. We paid the two sides millions to not kill each other. There have been bombs going off every day in that country since 2005 killing innocent Iraqis. Just because Hannity and Faux News didn’t report it, doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening.
When Hannity tries to get Rand to commit to sending troops or bombing Iraq, he puts it back in Hannity’s face. Following the Constitution never entered dimwit Hannity’s mind. He is no better than Obama or the idiots on MSNBC when it comes to shitting on the U.S. Constitution. He was left speechless when Rand said he doesn’t want U.S. troops fighting next to Iranian troops in Iraq.
Fuck Sean Hannity and his neo-con brethren.
Iraq Update: Fighting Continues, Battle For Refinery, PM On The Rocks
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/20/2014 08:03 -0400
Here are all the latest news and updates from the rapidly-changing situation in Iraq, courtesy of Bloomberg.
FRONT-LINE FIGHTING
Iraqi govt troops retain control of 310k b/d Baiji refinery, but facility surrounded by territory held by ISIL-led militants
Aerial photos yday showed some storage tanks on fire
Fierce battles near Baiji and Tal Afar airport: BBC
Fighting continues around Tal Afar, halfway between Mosul and Syrian border
Clashes reported between ISIL and Kurds south of Kirkuk
FOREIGN POLITICS
U.S. to send 300 military advisors to Baghdad; lack sufficient intelligence for imminent air strikes: Gen. Dempsey
Saudi Arabia warns against outside intervention in Iraq, blames “exclusionary policies” of Iraqi cabinet: Saudi ambassador writes in Telegraph
ISIL hands over captured foreign workers to police
PRESSURE ON MALIKI
Obama declines to endorse Maliki, but stops short of calling for him to step down
Challengers emerging to replace Iraq PM: NYT
OIL PRODUCTION IN NORTHERN IRAQ
Current output from Iraq’s northern fields cut to 30k b/d; supplying Kirkuk refinery
Northern fields were producing ~650-700k b/d before March 2 closure of export pipeline to Turkey
IRAQ’S NORTHERN EXPORTS
Exports from Iraq’s northern fields cut since March 2 when the Iraq-Turkey pipeline was bombed
Exports of Kirkuk crude from Turkish port of Ceyhan fell to 24k b/d in March, zero in April: Oil Ministry
NOTE: Iraq still exports crude from southern fields via Persian Gulf
ROLE OF KURDISTAN
Kurdish forces have taken control of Kirkuk oil field and city after central govt forces fled
Kurds fighting ISIL forces at Bayshir, south of Kirkuk
Ashti Hawrami, Kurdish Regional Govt’s natural resources minister, offered to export Kirkuk via Kurdish pipelines, but was rebuffed
Kurds to boost exports to 200k-250k b/d in July from 125k b/d now; targeting 400k b/d by end-2014
BAIJI REFINERY
Sprawling complex of storage tanks, processing units
Primary source of products for N Iraq; also supplies Baghdad
Linked power plant provides electricity to region
Represents ~40% of Iraq’s refining capacity; processes crude delivered by pipeline and rail from Kirkuk, Ajeel (formerly Saddam) and other fields operated by North Oil Co.
Lies on Iraq-Ceyhan pipeline; important source of fuel for both govt and ISIL
Storage tanks full: Iraq Oil Ministry
Capture would provide immediate source of fuel for insurgents’ vehicles and for sale in N Iraq.
OIL PRODUCTION/EXPORTS FROM SOUTHERN IRAQ
Production in south unaffected by fighting so far
Iraq plans to ship 2.79m b/d from Basrah Oil Terminal in July; most since before 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War
BP, Exxon, CNPC and Petronas started to evacuate non- Iraqi staff from nation
Shell ’monitoring the situation very carefully’: Andy Brown, head of Shell Upstream International
Lukoil has increased security at West Qurna field, where it started production in March
Southern oil facilities not beyond ISIL’s reach: Barclays
WHO IS ISIL?
Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is also known as Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)
A Sunni jihadist group led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
Broke away from al-Qaeda in 2013
Want to create a Sunni caliphate across Iraq, Syria and neighboring countries
Control large parts of northern Syria
Well funded through sales of Syrian oil and antiquities
Vowed to attack Baghdad and Shiite holy cities of Karbala and Najaf
WHAT IS THE CORE ISSUE?
ISIL insurgents have overrun large parts of northern and central Iraq; Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite Muslim-led govt now seeking to regain control
2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and subsequent rise to power of Shiite-Muslim majority alienated Sunni Muslims; Sunnis felt marginalized under Maliki; some support ISIL
Maliki accuses ISIL of an alliance with Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party
Shiites constitute majority in southern Iraq
Source: BBG
What a douchebag. We need to stay the hell out of Iraq. Let them murder each other, like they’ve been doing for centuries. We let the Africans murder each other and commit genocide (in the USSA and Africa), why not the Muslims? What difference does it make about the oil anymore? Obama has pissed off so many oil producers (Russia, Saudi, Iran, Venezuela, Brazil) the petrodollar will be history very shortly. Obama the incompetent imbecile and his evil minions have pissed away 50 years of diplomacy and foreign relations by competent leaders. There shouldn’t be another American life lost in our failed rule the world bullshit hegemony. We’re finished as a country, bankrupt, trying to police the world, even thought were a corrupt fascist police state that spies on every person on the planet, imprisons more people than any other country, and produces nothing but death and destruction wherever we go. It’s time for it to end.
Thanks Obama, for funding, supplying and training ISIS. You can be proud, lighting the whole Middle East on fire, from Libya to Afghanistan. Imam Obama loves and supports Muslims, and committed treason in the process. Obama says “long live Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Taliban”.
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CREEPING SHARIA? – WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Infuriating to the utmost! How much more can our nation take, when and where will this end? – Or will it continue on and on…hmm?
After your read this report, see what you would do if you were in Duy Tran’s shoes. Also, since when does the Muslim community rule? I’m short on time at the moment and cutting directly to the chase. – Here’s one of many reports about this matter via this site:
Since when did it become offensive to display the American flag in America? According to Webster, TX resident Duy Tran, that is precisely what he has been told by his apartment complex management. They have told him that he must remove the flag because it was a “ threat to the Muslim community.” (Watch Video Below)
KHOU, the CBS affiliate in Houston, reports on this demand by the Lodge on El Dorado. After moving into the community, Tran proudly hung an American flag from his balcony. He says the flag means a lot to him because he has had a lot of friends who have died defending it.
Tran says he was shocked when the apartment manager told him the American flag had to be taken down. He said, “What really stunned me is that she said it’s a threat towards the Muslim community. I’m not a threat to anybody.”
The station reports that, upon asked for the manager’s account of what happened, the property had an officer escort them off of the property and only provided the following statement.
While the Lodge on El Dorado admires our resident’s patriotism, we must enforce our property rules and guidelines. Such guidelines maintain the aesthetics of our apartment community and provide for the safety of all residents. The apartment community already proudly displays our country’s flag in a safe and appropriate manner at the entrances to our community.
KHOU indicates that there were numerous other patriotic symbols that could been seen on balconies throughout the property. Tran insists that he will not remove his American flag stating, “I’m gonna leave my flag there, as an American, until she shows me proof that I don’t have the right to leave my flag there.
Read more at http://angrywhitedude.com/2014/06/question-day-2/#xSyg11ir14Th0lmm.99
Obama’s Lying Again: We’re Going Back to Iraq
by Justin Raimondo • June 20, 2014
President Obama’s announcement that the US is sending 300 “advisors” back to Iraq to stave off the rising Sunni insurgency was couched in assurances that “American forces will not be returning to combat in Iraq” – but who really believes that? A proven liar – “If you like your health insurance you can keep it” – this President has absolutely no qualms about engaging in systematic deception if it serves his purposes. Indeed, his version of the numbers is in itself a blatant lie: in reality, we are sending 575 military personnel into Iraq, including the 275 marines and troops sent to guard the now-imperiled US Embassy – and that’s just what they’re announcing publicly. God knows what the real numbers are.
Furthermore, the President told us “we will be prepared to take targeted and precise military action if and when we determine that the situation on the ground requires it.” This will presumably come in the form of air strikes, but the vague wording gives Obama lots of leeway.
The President went out of his way to spin all this in a way that portrayed it as a decision to limit the use of American military force, but his bald assertion that Americans will not play a combat role is just not credible. What if the Iraqi “army” continues its dramatic collapse and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) enters Baghdad? They’re already in the suburbs of the Iraqi capital: how long before they approach the Green Zone? The rapidity of the ISIS advance militates against making any such declarative statement.
In short, we are, for all intents and purposes, back in a combat role in Iraq – and we aren’t limiting our intervention to purely military means. As the President strongly implied in his news conference, and top administration officials have been saying over the past twenty-four hours, the US is intent on regime change in Iraq – that is, getting rid of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
This has been the one point of unity on both the Obamaite left and the neoconservative right in assigning blame for the crisis: it’s all Maliki’s fault. He is charged with pursuing “sectarian” policies that somehow drove the Sunnis into the camp of ISIS – a group so brutal and sectarian that it was expelled from Al Qaeda. Maliki, says the President, must “reach out” to the rebellious Sunnis – who are even now joining ISIS in droves – and form a coalition “government of national unity.” This, we are told, will somehow defuse the well-armed ISIS cadre, who number some 15,000, and prevent Iraq from falling into their hands.
The problem with this scenario is twofold: first, it bears no relationship to reality. A political settlement of Iraq’s ongoing civil war has been out of reach since the very beginning of US involvement, and there’s no reason to believe the various factions will come together as a result of this latest crisis. That’s because it isn’t in their interests to do so: indeed, the advance of ISIS gives all three factions – the Shia, the Sunnis, and the Kurds – what they’ve always wanted: sectarian supremacy within their respective territories.
Which brings us to the second problem with blaming Maliki: Iraq was never a real country to begin with. Its borders, drawn by the British Foreign Office in 1916, were simply the result of post-World War I bargaining by the victors over who would get what pieces of the Ottoman corpse. A series of photos posted online by ISIS, titled “The Destruction of Sykes-Picot” – the treaty that established modern day Iraq – showed their fighters blowing up the berms defining Iraq’s border with Syria, and their fighters pouring through the breach. On Twitter, ISIS triumphantly hash-tagged #SykesPicotOver.
They might have done so much sooner – if Twitter had beeen in existence as early as the first day of the Iraq war. Because from that moment on, Iraq was fated to split into at least three parts, as predicted in this space and elsewhere from the outset. The Obama administration, by committing to gluing this already-pulverized Humpty-Dumpty together again, is embarking on a fool’s errand – and, as such, it suits them to a tee.
The seeds of the Sunni rebellion were planted, ironically, by the very tactics we used to secure our Pyrrhic “victory” in the first place: while John McCain, Dick Cheney, and their neocon amen corner are claiming that this administration “snatched defeat from the jaws of victory,” that alleged victory was claimed on the basis of the “success” of the so-called Arab Awakening – an effort by the US to recruit Sunni tribes in the north disgruntled by Al Qaeda’s harsh tactics. These are the very forces now marching on Baghdad under the black banners of ISIS – a fact the Obamaites (and the neocons) blame on Maliki. Yet it was the Americans who gave this group unity – and weaponry – during the “surge,” cohering them into an effective fighting force that is now being turned on Baghdad.
The “surge” was the beginning of a general reorientation of American policy in the region, the turn toward the Sunnis – in preparation for the final advance on the real target, which has always been Iran. Blaming Maliki is only a prelude to blaming the real object of Washington’s ire – Tehran.
Back in 2004, the King of Jordan, a key US ally, issued a warning about the danger posed by what he called the “Shia crescent,” a swath of territory cutting across the Middle East from Damascus to Tehran, and – with the Israelis quietly urging the Bush administration on – Washington quickly mobilized against this new “threat.” The Obama administration took up this policy with a vengeance, openly aligning with radical Sunnis to counteract the rising Shi’ite influence – which was, again ironically, the end product of years of US intervention in the region, starting with our support for the Shah of Iran and ending with the invasion of Iraq.
Our crazy pro-Sunni policy reached its zenith during the phony Syrian “crisis,” wherein it was alleged that Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad had used poison gas against Islamist rebels; as it turned out, it was the rebels – with Turkish help – who had carried out the attacks. But we didn’t learn that until much later: what happened in the interim was a full-fledged American alliance with “moderate” Syrian jihadists in a bid to overthrow the Syrian Ba’athist regime. In tandem with Qatar, Kuwait, and the Saudis, Washington poured aid – and arms – into the rebel camp. Amid the kaleidoscopic ideological landscape of the Syrian battlefield, it was and is impossible to tell who is getting arms from where – and if you’re wondering how and where ISIS got the heavy weaponry it is now deploying in Iraq you need look no farther than arms depots in Jordan (and Libya) intended for our Syrian jihadist friends. Indeed, ISIS is proudly displaying its American-made arsenal all over social media, and the claim that all of it was captured from Iraqi forces just doesn’t pass muster.
Yes, we helped arm ISIS, along with our backstabbing Gulf allies – and now we’re sending troops into Iraq who will come under fire from weaponry paid for by American taxpayers. If ever there was a crisis entirely created in Washington, what is happening in Iraq today is a textbook case.
To top it off, in their campaign to oust Maliki the Americans are talking to none other than Ahmed Chalabi – yes, the neocons’ favorite Iraqi politician whose made up “intelligence” on Saddam’s alleged “weapons of mass destruction” was channeled onto the front page of the New York Times by disgraced former journalist Judith Miller. It doesn’t matter to US policymakers that Chalabi was credibly accused by the Pentagon of selling US secrets to Iran – by telling them we had broken the Iranian interagency code. All is forgiven! Incredibly, he is in the running to replace Maliki, with full US backing of course. While this may give the Chalabi Fan Club over at Neocon Central an enormous amount of satisfaction, the rest of us can only look on in sheer disbelief.
As usual, the policy we are pursuing on the ground in the Middle East has zero to do with defending legitimate American interests: it’s pure malarkey to run the “terrorist safe havens” argument up the flagpole, which posits an alleged danger to the United States from ISIS. We are creating more enemies in the region due to our interventionist policies than the public relations departments of ISIS and Al Qaeda combined could ever hope to recruit on their own.
Iraq War III is all about domestic politics: Obama is worried his “legacy” will be tarnished, and his party is concerned about having the “Who lost Iraq?” albatross hung around their necks in 2016.
That’s all the political class in this country cares about: maintaining their own power and prestige. And so the way to approach this issue strategically is to demonstrate that the American people have had it up to here with Iraq, and want no part of another war in the Middle East. We did it when Obama announced he was going to bomb Syria: the War Party was taken aback by the sheer spontaneous power of the protest. Many thousands called their congressional representatives and made it crystal clear that they opposed any new war in the region, whether it be on “humanitarian” or “strategic” grounds.
The American people said “Enough!” – “Basta!” – and it’s time for them to do so again, in no uncertain terms. We here at Antiwar.com are asking our readers and supporters to call Congress and tell them under no circumstances should we send even a single soldier to Iraq. Not one penny, not one GI! And please don’t tell me it’s useless because they won’t listen – they did last time, as politician after politician, inundated with calls from angry constituents, backed away from supporting the supposedly imminent bombing of Syria.
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2014/06/19/were-going-back-to-iraq/
All the MSM drones like Hannity that are making a living by swinging on Obama’s meat, are just like Obama, a bunch of fucking tools.
Hannity and Cheney are so right. The Iraqis were so thankful for what Bush had done for them. Life was good in the good old democracy of Iraq. They just had an unusual manner of showing their appreciation.
Will that Constitution be tattooed on the head of Rupert Murdoch’s dick?
American workers are struggling to find jobs and illegal immigrants flooding across the border are straining the country’s resources, but Rupert Murdoch believes amnesty legislation “can’t wait.”
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/06/18/Rupert-Murdoch-Amnesty-Unlimited-High-Tech-Visas-Can-t-Wait
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Rand Paul , another lying piece of shit.He is still pushing for amnesty for all these third world people flooding the nation. Why would he do this unless he’s getting paid a lot of money .Rand Paul is another bought and paid for political hack.He is committing subversion of the constitution right in your faces but yet you bitch aboul Sean Hannity.
bb
Suck Sean Hannity’s dick you neo-con cocksucker.
Can’t help but see the similarity with Dr.Stranglove:
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bb – Ditto Admin +100
Admin, I’m not a neo-con.I read the drudge report .Rand Paul is selling out the country for his 30 pieces of silver. I guess FACTS no longer matter to you.
So you’re a drudge packer. I thought you were just a fudge packer.
Stop touching your cat inappropriately you village idiot.
DrudgeReport is neocon. Neocon lite maybe but still neocon.