Tag Archives: Baghdad

Swift Boat 2.0 Is Now Underway. Where’s the Press?

Mother Jones

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As we all know, the loathsome Swift boating of John Kerry in 2004 worked a treat. So this year Trump supporters are engaging in Swift boat 2.0: a surprisingly overt campaign claiming that Hillary Clinton is seriously ill but covering it up. Sean Hannity has been the ringleader, talking it up almost nightly on his show. Rudy Giuliani joined the fun this weekend, and Katrina Pierson, the Baghdad Bob of spokespeople, suggested that Hillary has “dysphasia.” Even the candidate himself has gotten into the act:

Trump has followed this up with references to Hillary not having the “mental and physical stamina” to be president—wink-wink-nudge-nudge.

This is all literally built on nothing. There’s a video of Hillary slipping on an icy step outside a church a few months ago. There’s a video of her making a funny face while talking to some supporters. That’s it. Unlike Trump himself, Hillary has released a detailed statement from her doctor, and there’s nothing wrong with her.

I know how tiresome it is to wonder how the press would treat something like this if it came from the other side, but, um, how would the press treat this if it were coming from the Hillary Clinton campaign? My guess: it would be like World War III. They would be demanding proof, writing endlessly about how this “once again” raised trust issues, and just generally raising front-page hell over it. Which would be perfectly fair! But when Trump does it, it’s just another boys-will-be-boys moment. Yawn.

Trump has done so many disgusting things that I know it’s hard to keep track sometimes. But this ranks right up there, and he deserves brutal coverage over it. He’s not really getting it, though. All the usual liberal suspects are on this, but the mainstream press has treated it like yet another occasional A14 blurb. Where’s the outrage, folks?

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Swift Boat 2.0 Is Now Underway. Where’s the Press?

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Your City Is Probably Not Going to Be Hit By A Terrorist Attack

Mother Jones

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Americans are understandably terrified of terror attacks. But good news! These fears have nothing to do with actual data. According to a new tool released last week, no US cities are among the world’s 50 most at risk of terror attacks.

The index, designed by UK based Verisk Maplecroft, a global risk assessment firm, calculates the risk of terror attacks in “1,300 of the world’s most important commercial hubs and urban centers” using historic trends. By logging and analyzing every reported attack or event per 100 square meters and calculating the frequency and severity of those incidents, Maplecroft’s tool establishes a baseline for the past five years. Then, it compares that data with the number, frequency, and severity of attacks for the most recent year. Depending on the most recent statistics, cities move up or down on the list of cities at risk for terror attacks.

What cities are in danger? Cities near ISIS. Baghdad is the most terror prone city, followed by five other places in Iraq—including Mosul, an ISIS stronghold in northern Iraq, and Al Ramadi, ISIS’s most recent hostile takeover. In just one year, as of February, over 1,000 residents of Baghdad lost their lives in one of the almost 400 terror attacks the city endured.

A total of 27 of the 64 countries at “extreme risk” are located in the Middle East, and 19 are in Asia. Residents living in the capital cities of Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, and Tripoli face some of the strongest risks of terror attacks as well. Maplecroft points to the risk of terror incidents in high-ranking countries like Egypt, Israel, Kenya, Nigeria, and Pakistan as major threats to US commercial interests.

And, recent events have triggered some cities to climb in the rankings. Prior to the Charlie Hebdo attack, Paris didn’t even make the top 200 most at risk cities. But according to the current index, the French capital jumped over 100 spots, now coming in at 97. Increasing violence purported by African militant groups, including Boko Haram in Nigeria and Al Shabaab in Somalia, have heightened the risk of terror incidents in African nations, landing 14 countries in the top 64.

So stop freaking out about terror attacks, America.

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Your City Is Probably Not Going to Be Hit By A Terrorist Attack

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Water Supply Key to Outcome of Conflicts in Iraq and Syria

Mother Jones

This story originally appeared in the Guardian and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The outcome of the Iraq and Syrian conflicts may rest on who controls the region’s dwindling water supplies, say security analysts in London and Baghdad.

Rivers, canals, dams, sewage and desalination plants are now all military targets in the semi-arid region that regularly experiences extreme water shortages, says Michael Stephen, deputy director of the Royal United Services Institute think tank in Qatar, speaking from Baghdad.

“Control of water supplies gives strategic control over both cities and countryside. We are seeing a battle for control of water. Water is now the major strategic objective of all groups in Iraq. It’s life or death. If you control water in Iraq you have a grip on Baghdad, and you can cause major problems. Water is essential in this conflict,” he said.

Isis Islamic rebels now control most of the key upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates, the two great rivers that flow from Turkey in the north to the Gulf in the south and on which all Iraq and much of Syria depends for food, water and industry.

“Rebel forces are targeting water installations to cut off supplies to the largely Shia south of Iraq,” says Matthew Machowski, a Middle East security researcher at the UK houses of parliament and Queen Mary University of London.

“It is already being used as an instrument of war by all sides. One could claim that controlling water resources in Iraq is even more important than controlling the oil refineries, especially in summer. Control of the water supply is fundamentally important. Cut it off and you create great sanitation and health crises,” he said.

Isis now controls the Samarra barrage west of Baghdad on the Tigris and areas around the giant Mosul Dam, higher up on the same river. Because much of Kurdistan depends on the dam, it is strongly defended by Kurdish peshmerga forces and is unlikely to fall without a fierce fight, says Machowski.

Last week Iraqi troops were rushed to defend the massive five mile-long Haditha Dam and its hydroelectrical works on the Euphrates to stop it falling into the hands of Isis forces. Were the dam to fall, say analysts, Isis would control much of Iraq’s electricity and the rebels might fatally tighten their grip on Baghdad.

Securing the Haditha Dam was one of the first objectives of the American special forces invading Iraq in 2003. The fear was that Saddam Hussein’s forces could turn the structure that supplies 30 percent of all Iraq’s electricity into a weapon of mass destruction by opening the lock gates that control the flow of the river. Billions of gallons of water could have been released, power to Baghdad would have been cut off, towns and villages over hundreds of square miles flooded and the country would have been paralyzed.

Iraqi men move a boat that was stuck on the banks of the Euphrates River after supplies were blocked by anti-government fighters who control a dam further upstream.

In April, Isis fighters in Fallujah captured the smaller Nuaimiyah Dam on the Euphrates and deliberately diverted its water to “drown” government forces in the surrounding area. Millions of people in the cities of Karbala, Najaf, Babylon and Nasiriyah had their water cut off but the town of Abu Ghraib was catastrophically flooded along with farms and villages over 200 square miles. According to the UN, around 12,000 families lost their homes.

Earlier this year Kurdish forces reportedly diverted water supplies from the Mosul Dam. Equally, Turkey has been accused of reducing flows to the giant Lake Assad, Syria’s largest body of fresh water, to cut off supplies to Aleppo, and Isis forces have reportedly targeted water supplies in the refugee camps set up for internally displaced people.

Iraqis fled from Mosul after Isis cut off power and water and only returned when they were restored, says Machowski. “When they restored water supplies to Mosul, the Sunnis saw it as liberation. Control of water resources in the Mosul area is one reason why people returned,” said Machowski.

Increasing temperatures, one of the longest and most severe droughts in 50 years and the steady drying up of farmland as rainfall diminishes have been identified as factors in the political destabilization of Syria.

Both Isis forces and President Assad’s army are said to have used water tactics to control the city of Aleppo. The Tishrin Dam on the Euphrates, 60 miles east of the city, was captured by Isis in November 2012.

The use of water as a tactical weapon has been used widely by both Isis and the Syrian government, says Nouar Shamout, a researcher with Chatham House. “Syria’s essential services are on the brink of collapse under the burden of continuous assault on critical water infrastructure. The stranglehold of Isis, neglect by the regime, and an eighth summer of drought may combine to create a water and food crisis which would escalate fatalities and migration rates in the country’s ongoing three-year conflict,” he said.

“The deliberate targeting of water supply networks…is now a daily occurrence in the conflict. The water pumping station in Al-Khafsah, Aleppo, stopped working on May 10, cutting off water supply to half of the city. It is unclear who was responsible; both the regime and opposition forces blame each other, but unsurprisingly in a city home to almost three million people the incident caused panic and chaos. Some people even resorted to drinking from puddles in the streets,” he said.

Water will now be the key to who controls Iraq in future, said former US intelligence officer Jennifer Dyer on US television last week. “If Isis has any hope of establishing itself on territory, it has to control some water. In arid Iraq, water and lines of strategic approach are the same thing.”

A satellite view showing the two main rivers running from Turkey through Syria and Iraq. MODIS/NASA

The Euphrates River, the Middle East’s second longest river, and the Tigris, have historically been at the center of conflict. In the 1980s, Saddam Hussein drained 90 percent of the vast Mesopotamian marshes that were fed by the two rivers to punish the Shias who rose up against his regime. Since 1975, Turkey’s dam and hydropower constructions on the two rivers have cut water flow to Iraq by 80 percent and to Syria by 40 percent. Both Syria and Iraq have accused Turkey of hoarding water and threatening their water supply.

“There has never been an outright war over water but water has played extremely important role in many Middle East conflicts. Control of water supply is crucial,” said Stephen.

It could also be an insurmountable problem should the country split into three, he said. “Water is one of the most dangerous problems in Iraq. If the country was split there would definitely be a war over water. Nobody wants to talk about that,” he said.

Some academics have suggested that Tigris and Euphrates will not reach the sea by 2040 if rainfall continues to decrease at its present rate.

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Water Supply Key to Outcome of Conflicts in Iraq and Syria

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What the Hell Is Happening in Iraq Right Now?

Mother Jones

Iraq is rapidly slipping out of government control as an army of Al Qaeda-inspired militants storms toward Baghdad. Here’s what we know about who these fighters are and what drives them.

Who are these militants?

Some of the fighters are part of an Al Qaeda offshoot known as The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). A Sunni militant group led by an Iraqi named Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIS grew out of Iraq’s Al Qaeda faction. US troops fought with ISIS and its predecessor until the day they withdrew from Iraq in December 2011.

In the last year, according to the Washington Post, the group became “far more lethal, effective, and powerful” as it focused on controlling parts of war-torn Syria. “ISIS lured into its ranks the bulk of the thousands of foreign volunteers, some from Europe and the United States, who have streamed into Syria to wage jihad, further bolstering its numbers.” ISIS already controls parts of northern Syria along the Euphrates River and much of the arid western region of Iraq, from the Syrian border to Fallujah. As a result of ISIS’s increasing dominance, a rift opened between Al Qaeda and ISIS earlier this year.

ISIS has combined forces with other militants, including local Sunni groups; militias led by members of the Baath party, which ruled the country under Saddam Hussein; and at least one of Hussein’s former top military commanders. It’s not necessarily an ad hoc allegiance: One military leader has said that the planning for this strike began two years ago.

The size of ISIS is unknown. According to the Guardian, the group commands roughly 10,000 men. They are well-trained: “They’re like ghosts,” said one Iraqi officer. “They appear, strike, and disappear in seconds.” Also, there’s this scary paragraph, via the Guardian (emphasis ours):

Iraqi officials told the Guardian that two divisions of Iraqi soldiers — roughly 30,000 men — simply turned and ran in the face of the assault by an insurgent force of just 800 fighters. Isis extremists roamed freely on Wednesday through the streets of Mosul, openly surprised at the ease with which they took Iraq’s second largest city after three days of sporadic fighting.

Why are they doing this?

ISIS is seeking to establish Sunni control over Iraq and the Levant region, which includes Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. In a video posted right after ISIS forces took Tikrit, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein, the group’s spokesman ordered ISIS forces to march on Baghdad, the seat of the country’s Shiite-led government. “We have a score to settle,” he says.

The militant groups assisting ISIS share the same goal, “which is getting rid of this sectarian government, ending this corrupt army and negotiating to form the Sunni Region,” a high-ranking Baathist leader told the New York Times.

Where is this all going down, exactly?

ISIS has seized northern Iraq at breakneck speed. Militia forces first clashed with Iraqi soldiers in Mosul, a city in northern Iraq and the country’s second-largest city, on June 7, and controlled the city by June 10. By June 11, they had pushed south and taken Tikrit and Baiji, which supplies the cities of Kirkuk and Baghdad with electricity.

In Mosul, ISIS freed Al Qaeda fighters from prisons and Iraqi officers set fire to fuel and ammunition depots as they retreated. “Mosul now is like hell. It’s in flames and death is everywhere,” one refugee told Reuters.

The decisive battle will most likely take place in Baghdad. As ISIS converges on the city, hundreds of thousands of civilians are fleeing ahead of them.

In all, ISIS has some control or is fighting to take some two dozen large towns and cities across northern Iraq. Notable exceptions include Erbil and Kirkuk in the semiautonomous, oil-rich Kurdish region that borders Iran and Turkey. While reports indicate that Iraqi government troops have fled the area, Kurds say their pesh merga forces are in firm control of those key cities.

The New York Times has a useful map on where ISIS is gaining control in Iraq and Syria.

What is the Iraqi government doing about it?

The Iraqi army has skirmished with ISIS forces before, sometimes with the support of the country’s Shiite-aligned militia groups. But the Iraqi army has offered very little resistance to ISIS since this conflict kicked off last week. In Mosul, the site of the first major clash, many US-trained Iraqi soldiers abandoned their posts and stripped off their uniforms to blend in with fleeing mobs. An Iraqi military officer described witnessing a “a total collapse of the security forces” in Mosul.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has requested emergency powers in response to the threat. The Iraqi parliament delayed voting on a request, which reportedly entails the power to impose curfews and censor news media.

What is the US doing?

On Thursday, President Obama said that he and his national security team are weighing all options for helping the Iraqi government respond to ISIS advances. “I don’t rule out anything because we do have a stake in making sure that these jihadists are not getting a permanent foothold in either Iraq or Syria,” Obama said when asked whether he is considering drone strikes. (Maliki’s government reportedly wants the Obama administration to conduct targeted air strikes.) The president has the authority to intervene in Iraq without congressional approval because the original war authorization hasn’t expired. However, White House press secretary Jay Carney said that the administration is “not contemplating sending ground troops” to Iraq.

“It’s a rapidly deteriorating and grave situation in Iraq,” Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fl.), a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said.

Is anyone else doing anything?

The UK has ruled out military intervention, but may provide humanitarian aid. Iran, on the other hand, deployed Revolutionary Guard forces to help Iraqi troops, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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What the Hell Is Happening in Iraq Right Now?

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Babylon’s Ark: The Incredible Wartime Rescue of the Baghdad Zoo

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