2014 in Iraq

"Are you affiliated with Al-Qaeda, Al-Moderat, or other?"

remember how far being a uber hawk got hillary in 2008? oh yeah second place.

finally we'll have a Thatcher of our own

god it's horrible this woman is the presumed nominee – again.

and Rob Reiner has made sure "there is no one else" this time

I think Hillary can fuck this up as badly as she did last time and Warren or some other dark horse will swoop in and take it form her.

At least I can hope..

Hope was the last election bro

ERBIL, Iraq — A helicopter carrying aid from Iraq’s Kurdish autonomous government to stranded Yazidi refugees in the Sinjar mountains of northern Iraq crashed on Tuesday, killing the pilot and injuring other passengers, including a Yazidi member of Parliament and a New York Times journalist.

from NY Times

http://nation.foxnews.com/2014/08/11/obamas-drive-war-iraq

Yesterday's take, but what will they think today

the quantum theory of obama: he is either a tyrant or an empty suit, depending on how one stages the experiment

tbf the same dynamic was true of dubya

that's true, he was king george and curious george at the same time. sometimes i miss him, at least he presented streamlined evil that was easy to hate. obama is more of a crushing apathy.

obama will be remembered as a great president. bush is the posterboy for everything wrong in the invisible united states caste system. simplistic and binary perhaps but fuck it it's true

prophetic shakey:
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/08/12/us_attempts_to_build_coalition_of_the_willing_for_iraq

the good news and bad news of Malike being out of power

http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-iraq-maliki-20140814-story.html#page=1

U.S. officials hope Abadi, the prime minister-designate, will be willing to share power with Sunnis, drawing support away from the insurgency. But some officials acknowledge that the U.S. may have to get more deeply involved militarily in coming months to give Abadi time to implement the kind of political measures that Washington has long sought.

Iraq faces a massive challenge regaining the territory it has lost since Islamic State forces swept out of Syria in the spring and raced across the country’s west and north, relying on a patchwork of disgruntled Sunni militias to help hold cities and drive out government troops.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/yazidis-killed-in-kocho-near-sinjar-after-obama-calls-off-rescue-mission/2014/08/15/31478a3c-e46e-4c4c-8406-d0f27073a308_story.html?hpid=z2

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-iraq-islamic-state-fighters-capturing-yazidi-women-to-take-them-as-wives/2014/08/16/3a349cd6-24d2-11e4-958c-268a320a60ce_story.html?hpid=z1

More trouble for the Yazidis while elsewhere the Kurds & the Iraqi armi with US airsupport are trying to take back Iraq's largest dam.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/iraqi-ground-forces-us-jets-launch-offensive-to-retake-dam-from-militants/2014/08/17/d904756d-10ab-47b9-889c-d3b00343470f_story.html?hpid=z1

I know some would prefer isolationism from the US and West, but US supported (via planes and drones) Iraqi govt & Kurds have retaken Mosul dam. No further word on Yazidi women seized by IS extremists

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/18/iraqi-kurdish-forces-recapture-mosul-dam-isis

obama will be remembered as a great president. bush is the posterboy for everything wrong in the invisible united states caste system. simplistic and binary perhaps but fuck it it's true

so much for the rumor that this level of delusion was not to be found on ILX

obama probably will be 'remembered as a great president,' tbh. ppl used to speculate that bush will eventually enjoy some kind of truman-style reevaluation but i doubt it.

feel like obama will be like carter in that he will accomplish exponentially more out of office than in it

or he'll cash out something fierce and continue to confirm that he was not who we thought he was in 08

maybe he'll work pro bono for whistleblowers, refreeze those icecaps with his breath, and free Iraq as a commando

the standards for 'great presidents' have been pretty low ever since everyone decided reagan got to join the club.

I say ugh to having to boil down opinions on a president to one sentence. I cannot apply one word ("great") or sentence to the handling of NSA, whistleblowers, Wall Street, the stimulus bill, health care, Libya, Iraq, climate change and more. My opinion on his handling of each of these varies. Plus, this thread is supposed to about Iraq in 2014.

Journalist James Wright Foley beheaded by ISIS. 2011 short piece on his kidnapping by Jon Lee Anderson:
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/libya-four-missing-journalists

So what I picked up so far is that ISIS won't stand much of a chance if they try to expand north (wd mean fighting Kurds in Kurdish territory) or south or east (wd mean fighting Shia in Shia territory). Is this accurate? Are they likely to try, regardless?

I'm not sure how much of it is our airstrikes and how much of it is Kurds/Shia. But I would guess they'd have a much harder time fighting and governing in Kurd or Shia territory than they have had so far.

kinda feel like their next best move if they're serious is saudi arabia. if they don't, it'll say a lot about how tight saudi family is w/ IS

if they're serious [about reestablishing the caliphate]. they need to put off jordan + israel as long as possible

pretty much

I understand that choosing sides in Middle Eastern conflicts is difficult, but ISIS is making it pretty fucking easy.

Eh idk if its between them and the saudi royal family...

I still think that's a pretty easy call tbh

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/20/isis-militant-islamic-state-james-foley-guards-british

this is such a load of shit

this shit is so hard for me to understand. reading about this, and the couple of suicide bombers from Australia (Abu Bakar al-Australi the 18 year old for ex). like that the west has produced at least a few hundred of these guys is a fact that is harder to reconcile than it should be.

This piece is so weird

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2014/08/20/james_foley_killing_the_strangely_modern_production_values_of_isis_propaganda.html

Yep.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/world/middleeast/isis-pressed-for-ransom-before-killing-journalist.html?_r=0

This piece is in part about how mideast extremists have been getting millions kidnapping Europeans

This piece is so weird

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2014/08/20/james_foley_killing_the_strangely_modern_production_values_of_isis_propaganda.html

― polyphonic, Thursday, 21 August 2014 00:06 (3 hours ago) Permalink

If you've actually watched Clanging of the Swords IV, it's hard not to be struck by this, the production values and editing are extremely impressive for brutal totalitarian propaganda.

yeah clanging of the swords (and uh its titling like a new mixtape release or something) is absolutely the scariest thing i've ever seen, knowing that its not just some MTV-sponsored militarist fantasy but a compilation of real horror slickly packaged induces soul vertigo

http://warontherocks.com/2014/08/dont-bs-the-american-people-about-iraq-syria-and-isil/

islamic extremists so repressed that they need to make snuff porn to get off. the west needs 2 get on their level, put these culture tourist terrorists to a prime-time televised guillotine http://oi43.tinypic.com/dggkra.jpg

insha'allah, amon

waterboard obama

defend the indefensible

al-zarqawi: classic or dud

it's nuts hearing the BBC interview these Jihadis describe the beheadings they've done in crisp English accents

the btl commenters on british newspaper websites of all political complexions were enthusiastically voicing the good point well made truism that, to be quite honest with you, what is the difference between westerners joining the idf and joining isis?

one difference is that the IDF doesn't claim to be at war with the west. this guy on the radio was talking about how he encourages all english muslims to kill english soldiers.

Crisp English accents? Don't think so.