When President Obama attributed the rise in Iraq of the Islamic State, or ISIS, to the failures of the U.S. intelligence community earlier this week, naming and blaming directly National Intelligence Director Gen. James Clapper, he was attempting to deflect criticism of his own incompetence. He was discussing the fact that ISIS, right under his own and the general’s noses, gained control of nearly half of the landmass of Iraq. This is the same Iraq that the United States supposedly liberated from the clutches of a dictator, strengthened as a regional military power and fortified as the Middle East’s newest democracy as a result of our invasion in 2003 and our subsequent 10-year occupation.
Many who supported the war then realize now that we were duped into it by a deceptive and shortsighted Bush administration that was looking to deflect blame for its intelligence failures of 9/11, for which, unlike the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor, not a single human being in the federal government has been charged with anything. But that is a topic for another day.
ISIS captured Fallujah and Ramadi, two major cities in Iraq, eight months ago. Surely the president knew about that when it happened. He receives an intelligence briefing every day; more often than not, he prefers a written briefing rather than one where he and his briefers can zero in on problem areas in a face-to-face conversation. Yet since the February takeover of the Iraqi equivalent of Chicago and Los Angeles, the president has told the American people that ISIS is junior varsity and he had no plans to address it, and he seemed not to care about it until ISIS went over his head, so to speak, and beheaded two innocent young Americans and posted grisly videos of their horrific murders on the Internet.
I'm glad to see so many zooming in on what C.I. did on Sunday.
However, it's worth noting that C.I. didn't just call out Barack for throwing Clapper under the bus.
She also called Barack out, for the same remarks, for distorting and lying about Iraq.
It would be nice if others could point out, for example, that Barack lied about the 'surge.'
But I guess that's too much to ask for.
Finian Cunningham (ICH) at least called out Barack's lies to the UN.
"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Wednesday, October 1, 2014. Chaos and violence continue, Barack's
'plan' continues to falter, Barack steps away from fears of civilian
casualties from US bombings, monthly totals for Septembers dead and
wounded are released, Antiwar.com does a better job of counting the dead
than does the United Nations, England joins in bombing Iraq, Senator
Patty Murray works to address the issue of homeless veterans, TRICARE is
failing some military families in the US, and much more.
We're going to start with veterans by noting this press release from Senator Patty Murray's office:
Senator Murray works tirelessly for veterans and deserves much praise for that.
However, if there were 19 clones of her and the original serving in the Senate, it still wouldn't be enough.
TRICARE.
I am hearing the same story over and over from veterans and their spouses with children.
TRICARE is supposed to be coverage for service members and for veterans -- there's TRICARE for retired, etc. Think of it as Blue Cross Blue Shield if you need to simplify it.
John and Joan are married and have a daughter named Jill.
John is not oversees, he's a service member but he gets stationed here and there. They do a seven month stint in Colorado. Five months in, Jill is vomiting and can't stop. She's taken to the emergency room of the local hospital where they stabilize her. Jill is taken to a doctor's office or clinic the next day and Dr. Michelle Wong says Jill needs to see a specialist, Dr. Andre Kumar.
I hope everyone's following example, it's pretty straight forward.
En route to Dr. Kumar's office, or after being seen, John and Joan are informed that the visit isn't 'authorized' so TRICARE won't be covering it.
I've heard this basic story over and over in the last four weeks when speaking to veterans groups.
TRICARE wants a PCP -- a primary care physician. That would be your family doctor, the doctor you or your children see when you're sick.
John and Joan are not living in X and never moving. The military wants them at this base for a limited time and then at that base. And if there's no reason to change the PCP -- if the child isn't sick or can be treated in a clinic, for example -- the parents don't change the PCP. Sometimes TRICARE does.
So when their child does get sick and they seek care, they're suddenly faced with costs and expenses they shouldn't have to deal with. But TRICARE says their sick child can't see that specialist -- even if a doctor has made the referral -- because they didn't see their PCP.
I've tried to keep the above simple (there's also an issue of TRICARE assigning PCP's to relocated families).
TRICARE could keep things real simple by allowing service members and their families to see a specialist if they are referred by another doctor -- it should not have to be a PCP.
It is ridiculous.
Joan and John and Jill are not moving because they made the decision, they're moving because the US government is changing where they are stationed. TRICARE needs to recognize that.
No service member should have to worry about the costs of caring for their children -- that's especially true when your child is in dire need of a specialist.
I've tried to keep the above simple. I've used PCP because that's what most people are familiar with -- most with insurance -- but, for example, in TRICARE, the PCP is called the PCM.
Calling. The other big issue.
As someone who has sat in one hearing after another where members of Congress like Patty Murray, Senator Richard Burr, Senator Bernie Sanders, US House Rep Jeff Miller and US House Rep Mike Michaud have repeatedly asked the VA if they need more money for employees or training or this or that and heard the VA say no?
Will someone ask the VA, someone in Congress, how they feel about their call center because veterans with health issues -- such as the example above -- are getting real tired of the weight.
Moving to another topic . . .
Ned Parker's made his mark and then some reporting from Iraq. His time at the Los Angeles Times, for example, is noted for his breaking the news on the secret prisons tyrant Nouri al-Maliki ran. He nows heads Reuters' Iraq bureau. And he Tweeted the following:
And this followed:
To give credit where it's due, the byline for the Reuters report is Raheem Salman, Yara Bayoumy, Ned Parker and Philippa Fletcher.
And to point out that the 'correction' isn't one, let's note that BBC added Reuters to the story, it did not issue a correction ("In a previous version of this report, we wrongly . . .") or an apology.
Accidents do happen, mistakes as well. If you can't acknowledge them, that says something about you -- something much worse than an inadvertent failure to give credit.
In other image problems . . .
If you were looking at approximately two more years in office, you might try to use them to improve your image -- especially if you had six bad years so far and your second term was marked only by how increasingly unpopular you were.
You might look to improve your image.
US President Barack Obama apparently doesn't. Igor Bobic (Huffington Post) reports:
The Obama administration has exempted its current military campaign in Syria and Iraq from strict standards imposed last year aimed at preventing civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes, Yahoo News reported Tuesday.
The White House intended the standard of "near certainty" that civilians wouldn't be killed to apply "only when we take direct action 'outside areas of active hostilities,' as we noted at the time," Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, told Yahoo. "That description -- outside areas of active hostilities -- simply does not fit what we are seeing on the ground in Iraq and Syria right now."
Huffington Post reported, AP rushes to excuse. Associated Press' Ken Dilanian offers:
According to the White House, the reason the near-certainty standard is not applicable turns on a fine point of international law — the theory that the U.S. is not involved in “active hostilities” in Yemen and Somalia, but is in Syria and Iraq. Such distinctions are controversial, given the frequency with which American bombs and bullets have flown in both countries.
A more practical reason is that the self-imposed rules on drone strikes against al-Qaida are simply too restrictive for a conventional military air campaign against the Islamic State group, which the U.S. says is both a terrorist group and an occupying army, and has ordered the Pentagon to destroy.
Nothing says neutral and impartial news organization like excusing civilian deaths, justifying them, right?
Last Friday, NINA reported a Mosul bombing by US war planes killed 4 civilians. In another article, Dilanian offers, "In Iraq, the U.S. is relying for ground reports on the Iraqi military and intelligence services, whose insights into Islamic State-controlled territory are limited."
Then maybe they shouldn't be bombing?
And did Barack miss this reality before he started bombing because so many people were discussing this publicly before the first air strikes started -- Time magazine's Bobby Ghosh, for example, was on MSNBC talking about just this possibility.
Did he miss that reality or does he just not care?
Jason Ditz (Antiwar.com) notes the dropping of the previously announced standard and offers:
The more fast-and-loose definition of care may mirror the US occupation of Afghanistan, where airstrikes have routinely killed large numbers of civilians, and incidents of scores and even hundreds of civilians slain in botched strikes are not unheard of.
It also makes the weekend admonition by the Red Cross for the US to take care that it abides by international bans against targeting civilians and medical personnel all the more important, as their checkered track record of doing that in past wars seems to be the template they’re applying to the new conflict.
Doyle McManus (Los Angeles Times) observed earlier this week, "When the president talks about his new offensive against the extremist group that calls itself Islamic State, he sounds as warlike as George W. Bush ever did."
The war never ended in Iraq and UNAMI has issued their monthly death toll for September:
The number of civilians killed was 854 (including 79 civilian police), while the number of civilians injured was 1,604 (including 84 civilian police). A further 265 members of the Iraqi Security Forces were killed, and 342 were injured (including Peshmerga, SWAT and militias fighting alongside Iraqi Army/not including casualties from Anbar operation).
*CAVEATS: Data do not take into account casualties of the current IA operation in Anbar, for which UNAMI was unable to obtain figures for the reporting period. In general, UNAMI has been hindered in effectively verifying casualties in conflict areas. In some cases, UNAMI could only partially verify certain incidents. UNAMI has also received, without being able to verify, reports of large numbers of casualties along with unknown numbers of persons who have died from secondary effects of violence after having fled their homes due to exposure to the elements, lack of water, food, medicines and health care. For these reasons, the figures reported have to be considered as the absolute minimum.
Civilian Casualties (killed and injured) per governorate
Anbar excluded, Baghdad was the worst affected Governorate with 1,335 civilian casualties (352 killed, 983 injured), followed by Salahadin (298 killed, 383 injured), Kirkuk (59 killed, 51 injured), Diyala (36 killed, 71 injured), Nineveh (75 killed, 16 injured).
Operations in Anbar
Up to now, UNAMI has not been able to obtain the total civilian casualty figures from the Health Directorate in Anbar. Overall casualty figures for Anbar will be added if and when they become available.
Anbar is a province where a lot of violence takes place so you don't have a real count if you're leaving out Anbar. There's also the nonsens of 'civilian' casualties -- dead is dead.
The UN News Centre notes, "At least 1,119 Iraqis – most of them civilians – were killed in [September], the United Nations in the country today reported, but cautioned that the figure does not include people killed in the ongoing operation in Anbar, or those who died from the heat or hunger after being forced to flee violence in their cities."
So they do keep a tally of security forces killed.
Who's is missing?
How about the dead accused of being 'terrorists'?
Why is the UN going along with that?
I seem to remember when a group of US forces broke into an Iraqi home, murdered the parents and a five-year-old girl while gang-raping an Iraqi teenager in the other room before killing her too. And who did the press blame?
'Terrorists.'
In terms of the dead last month, there's no need to determine who is or isn't a terrorist, you just count the dead. Dead is dead. The press has no idea whether some person the Iraqi forces killed is a terrorist or not but they do know the person is dead.
Margaret Griffis (Antiwar.com) reports, "Antiwar.com has determined that at least 3,790 people were killed across Iraq during September. These numbers include militants, even foreign ones, killed in Iraq. Another 1,949 were wounded. The violence also left 126 dead and 184 wounded across Iraq on Tuesday." That's the standard the United Nations should be pursuing.
And let's further note that the UN's refusal to count Anbar's deaths really harms the United Nation's credibility.
Judith Orr (Great Britain's Socialist Worker) reports:
[Socialist Worker article © Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original.]
iraq
the los angeles times
doyle mcmanus
ned parker
bbc news
antiwar.com
margaret griffis
jason ditz
the socialist worker
cnn
chelsea j. carter
gul tuysuz
ben wedeman
We're going to start with veterans by noting this press release from Senator Patty Murray's office:
(Washington, D.C.) –
Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray, Chairman of the Senate Housing
Appropriations Subcommittee and senior member of the Senate Veterans’
Affairs Committee, announced new resources to help homeless veterans
secure stable housing. Washington state will receive 335 housing
vouchers that will be allocated to eleven different
housing authorities across the state- this includes both tenant-based
vouchers, which are used to cover rent in private housing, as well as
project-based vouchers, which are attached to specific units of housing.
The
vouchers are part of the joint Department of Housing and Urban
Development and Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing Program (HUD-VASH
program),
a program Murray helped restart in 2008 and which she has continued to fund every year since. Through the program, homeless veterans receive vouchers through HUD and case management and services through the VA.
“These vouchers are a huge boost in the effort to end homelessness among veterans in our state,”
said Senator Murray.
“Each one of these vouchers
represents a step toward finding a permanent home for someone who
sacrificed for our nation, but is struggling to find stable housing. The
HUD-VASH program provides critical support to these veterans and is a
key reason why we
are making real progress toward the goal of finally ending veteran
homelessness.”
With the assistance of HUD-VASH, veteran homelessness in the United States has
declined 33 percent since 2010.
See a breakdown of voucher allocation below (totals include both tenant-based and project-based vouchers):
Public Housing Authority
|
VA Medical Center
|
Vouchers
|
Amount
|
|
Seattle Housing Authority
|
VA Puget Sound Health Care System (HCS)/Seattle Campus
|
69
|
$485,738
|
|
King County Housing Authority
|
VA Puget Sound Health Care System (HCS)/Seattle Campus
|
92
|
$745,134
|
|
Housing Authority of the City of Tacoma
|
VA Puget Sound Health Care System (HCS)/American Lake Campus
|
23
|
$135,665
|
|
Housing Authority of the City of Longview
|
Portland VA Medical Center (VAMC)Vancouver Campus
|
5
|
$22,160
|
|
Housing Authority City of Bellingham
|
VA Puget Sound Health Care System (HCS)/Seattle Campus
|
10
|
$51,857
|
|
Housing Authority of Snohomish County
|
VA Puget Sound Health Care System (HCS)/Everett Community-Based Outreach Clinic (CBOC)
|
12
|
$95,790
|
|
Housing Authority of Thurston County
|
VA Puget Sound Health Care System (HCS)/American Lake Campus
|
17
|
$97,951
|
|
Housing Authority of the City of Spokane
|
Mann-Grandstaff (Spokane) Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC)
|
39
|
$169,622
|
|
Housing Authority of the City of Walla Walla (WA)
|
Walla Walla VA Medical Center (VAMC)/Richland Community-Based Outreach Clinic (CBOC)
|
10
|
$39,365
|
|
Housing Authority of Chelan County and City of Wenatchee
|
Mann-Grandstaff (Spokane) Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC)/Wenatchee Community-Based Outpatient Clinic (CBOC)
|
18
|
$88,119
|
|
Vancouver Housing Authority
|
Portland VAMC
|
40
|
$193,877
|
###
--
Eli Zupnick
Communications Director
U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA)
(202) 224-2834
Eli_Zupnick@murray.senate.gov
@elizupnick
Senator Murray works tirelessly for veterans and deserves much praise for that.
However, if there were 19 clones of her and the original serving in the Senate, it still wouldn't be enough.
TRICARE.
I am hearing the same story over and over from veterans and their spouses with children.
TRICARE is supposed to be coverage for service members and for veterans -- there's TRICARE for retired, etc. Think of it as Blue Cross Blue Shield if you need to simplify it.
John and Joan are married and have a daughter named Jill.
John is not oversees, he's a service member but he gets stationed here and there. They do a seven month stint in Colorado. Five months in, Jill is vomiting and can't stop. She's taken to the emergency room of the local hospital where they stabilize her. Jill is taken to a doctor's office or clinic the next day and Dr. Michelle Wong says Jill needs to see a specialist, Dr. Andre Kumar.
I hope everyone's following example, it's pretty straight forward.
En route to Dr. Kumar's office, or after being seen, John and Joan are informed that the visit isn't 'authorized' so TRICARE won't be covering it.
I've heard this basic story over and over in the last four weeks when speaking to veterans groups.
TRICARE wants a PCP -- a primary care physician. That would be your family doctor, the doctor you or your children see when you're sick.
John and Joan are not living in X and never moving. The military wants them at this base for a limited time and then at that base. And if there's no reason to change the PCP -- if the child isn't sick or can be treated in a clinic, for example -- the parents don't change the PCP. Sometimes TRICARE does.
So when their child does get sick and they seek care, they're suddenly faced with costs and expenses they shouldn't have to deal with. But TRICARE says their sick child can't see that specialist -- even if a doctor has made the referral -- because they didn't see their PCP.
I've tried to keep the above simple (there's also an issue of TRICARE assigning PCP's to relocated families).
TRICARE could keep things real simple by allowing service members and their families to see a specialist if they are referred by another doctor -- it should not have to be a PCP.
It is ridiculous.
Joan and John and Jill are not moving because they made the decision, they're moving because the US government is changing where they are stationed. TRICARE needs to recognize that.
No service member should have to worry about the costs of caring for their children -- that's especially true when your child is in dire need of a specialist.
I've tried to keep the above simple. I've used PCP because that's what most people are familiar with -- most with insurance -- but, for example, in TRICARE, the PCP is called the PCM.
Calling. The other big issue.
As someone who has sat in one hearing after another where members of Congress like Patty Murray, Senator Richard Burr, Senator Bernie Sanders, US House Rep Jeff Miller and US House Rep Mike Michaud have repeatedly asked the VA if they need more money for employees or training or this or that and heard the VA say no?
Will someone ask the VA, someone in Congress, how they feel about their call center because veterans with health issues -- such as the example above -- are getting real tired of the weight.
Moving to another topic . . .
Ned Parker's made his mark and then some reporting from Iraq. His time at the Los Angeles Times, for example, is noted for his breaking the news on the secret prisons tyrant Nouri al-Maliki ran. He nows heads Reuters' Iraq bureau. And he Tweeted the following:
This BBC piece http://tinyurl.com/o9uxu8l has quotes lifted from a Reuters story with no attrib. http://tinyurl.com/q5uo7m8 What's the standard?
And this followed:
BBC updates story on militants' changing tactics to attribute reporting to Reuters http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29423776 … Our story: http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/09/26/mideast-crisis-iraq-tactics-idINKCN0HL1O020140926 …
To give credit where it's due, the byline for the Reuters report is Raheem Salman, Yara Bayoumy, Ned Parker and Philippa Fletcher.
And to point out that the 'correction' isn't one, let's note that BBC added Reuters to the story, it did not issue a correction ("In a previous version of this report, we wrongly . . .") or an apology.
Accidents do happen, mistakes as well. If you can't acknowledge them, that says something about you -- something much worse than an inadvertent failure to give credit.
In other image problems . . .
If you were looking at approximately two more years in office, you might try to use them to improve your image -- especially if you had six bad years so far and your second term was marked only by how increasingly unpopular you were.
You might look to improve your image.
US President Barack Obama apparently doesn't. Igor Bobic (Huffington Post) reports:
The Obama administration has exempted its current military campaign in Syria and Iraq from strict standards imposed last year aimed at preventing civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes, Yahoo News reported Tuesday.
The White House intended the standard of "near certainty" that civilians wouldn't be killed to apply "only when we take direct action 'outside areas of active hostilities,' as we noted at the time," Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, told Yahoo. "That description -- outside areas of active hostilities -- simply does not fit what we are seeing on the ground in Iraq and Syria right now."
Huffington Post reported, AP rushes to excuse. Associated Press' Ken Dilanian offers:
According to the White House, the reason the near-certainty standard is not applicable turns on a fine point of international law — the theory that the U.S. is not involved in “active hostilities” in Yemen and Somalia, but is in Syria and Iraq. Such distinctions are controversial, given the frequency with which American bombs and bullets have flown in both countries.
A more practical reason is that the self-imposed rules on drone strikes against al-Qaida are simply too restrictive for a conventional military air campaign against the Islamic State group, which the U.S. says is both a terrorist group and an occupying army, and has ordered the Pentagon to destroy.
Nothing says neutral and impartial news organization like excusing civilian deaths, justifying them, right?
Last Friday, NINA reported a Mosul bombing by US war planes killed 4 civilians. In another article, Dilanian offers, "In Iraq, the U.S. is relying for ground reports on the Iraqi military and intelligence services, whose insights into Islamic State-controlled territory are limited."
Then maybe they shouldn't be bombing?
And did Barack miss this reality before he started bombing because so many people were discussing this publicly before the first air strikes started -- Time magazine's Bobby Ghosh, for example, was on MSNBC talking about just this possibility.
Did he miss that reality or does he just not care?
Jason Ditz (Antiwar.com) notes the dropping of the previously announced standard and offers:
The more fast-and-loose definition of care may mirror the US occupation of Afghanistan, where airstrikes have routinely killed large numbers of civilians, and incidents of scores and even hundreds of civilians slain in botched strikes are not unheard of.
It also makes the weekend admonition by the Red Cross for the US to take care that it abides by international bans against targeting civilians and medical personnel all the more important, as their checkered track record of doing that in past wars seems to be the template they’re applying to the new conflict.
Doyle McManus (Los Angeles Times) observed earlier this week, "When the president talks about his new offensive against the extremist group that calls itself Islamic State, he sounds as warlike as George W. Bush ever did."
The war never ended in Iraq and UNAMI has issued their monthly death toll for September:
Baghdad, 1 October 2014 – According to casualty figures released
today by UNAMI, a total of at least 1,119 Iraqis were killed and another
1,946 were injured in acts of terrorism and violence in September*.
The number of civilians killed was 854 (including 79 civilian police), while the number of civilians injured was 1,604 (including 84 civilian police). A further 265 members of the Iraqi Security Forces were killed, and 342 were injured (including Peshmerga, SWAT and militias fighting alongside Iraqi Army/not including casualties from Anbar operation).
*CAVEATS: Data do not take into account casualties of the current IA operation in Anbar, for which UNAMI was unable to obtain figures for the reporting period. In general, UNAMI has been hindered in effectively verifying casualties in conflict areas. In some cases, UNAMI could only partially verify certain incidents. UNAMI has also received, without being able to verify, reports of large numbers of casualties along with unknown numbers of persons who have died from secondary effects of violence after having fled their homes due to exposure to the elements, lack of water, food, medicines and health care. For these reasons, the figures reported have to be considered as the absolute minimum.
Civilian Casualties (killed and injured) per governorate
Anbar excluded, Baghdad was the worst affected Governorate with 1,335 civilian casualties (352 killed, 983 injured), followed by Salahadin (298 killed, 383 injured), Kirkuk (59 killed, 51 injured), Diyala (36 killed, 71 injured), Nineveh (75 killed, 16 injured).
Operations in Anbar
Up to now, UNAMI has not been able to obtain the total civilian casualty figures from the Health Directorate in Anbar. Overall casualty figures for Anbar will be added if and when they become available.
Anbar is a province where a lot of violence takes place so you don't have a real count if you're leaving out Anbar. There's also the nonsens of 'civilian' casualties -- dead is dead.
The UN News Centre notes, "At least 1,119 Iraqis – most of them civilians – were killed in [September], the United Nations in the country today reported, but cautioned that the figure does not include people killed in the ongoing operation in Anbar, or those who died from the heat or hunger after being forced to flee violence in their cities."
So they do keep a tally of security forces killed.
Who's is missing?
How about the dead accused of being 'terrorists'?
Why is the UN going along with that?
I seem to remember when a group of US forces broke into an Iraqi home, murdered the parents and a five-year-old girl while gang-raping an Iraqi teenager in the other room before killing her too. And who did the press blame?
'Terrorists.'
In terms of the dead last month, there's no need to determine who is or isn't a terrorist, you just count the dead. Dead is dead. The press has no idea whether some person the Iraqi forces killed is a terrorist or not but they do know the person is dead.
Margaret Griffis (Antiwar.com) reports, "Antiwar.com has determined that at least 3,790 people were killed across Iraq during September. These numbers include militants, even foreign ones, killed in Iraq. Another 1,949 were wounded. The violence also left 126 dead and 184 wounded across Iraq on Tuesday." That's the standard the United Nations should be pursuing.
And let's further note that the UN's refusal to count Anbar's deaths really harms the United Nation's credibility.
Judith Orr (Great Britain's Socialist Worker) reports:
British warplanes joined the third attack on Iraq in less than 25 years after a vote in Westminster on Friday of last week.
MPs backed prime minister David Cameron’s proposal to launch air
strikes by a majority of 524 votes to 43 after parliament was recalled.
Britain joins the US, France and a number of Arab states in their
assault on the country in the name of stopping the sectarian Islamist
group Islamic State, also known as Isis.
Within 24 hours RAF tornado jets flew from Cyprus to Iraq searching for targets.
Cameron said, “This is going to be a mission that will take not just months but years.”
To their shame most Labour MPs lined up to back the Tories’ new war.
Labour leader Ed Miliband said bombing Iraq was about “protecting our
national interest, security and the values for which we stand.”
After the vote Rushanara Ali, Labour
MP for Bethnal Green and Bow in east London, resigned as shadow
education minister over Labour’s support for the air strikes.
Labour MP and chair of the Stop the War Coalition (StW) Jeremy Corbyn refused to vote for the motion.
He spoke to Socialist Worker on the eve of the vote as StW protesters gathered outside Downing Street in London.
Corbyn said, “This is the third time I’ve been asked to bomb Iraq and the third time I’ll say no.”
He pointed to the West’s hypocrisy. “They are joining with Saudi
Arabia which frequently beheads opponents of its regime to stop Isis
which beheads the opponents of its regime,” he said.
Like Saudi Arabia the West’s other allies in the bombing—Bahrain,
Jordan, Qatar and UAE—are dictatorships that suppressed democracy
movements during the Arab Spring.
MPs congratulated themselves on what many declared was a serious
debate. They acknowledged the shadow cast by the last war on Iraq. But
in speech after speech MPs claimed that somehow this war would be
different.
The vote was on a motion to bomb Iraq, but many MPs were already
pushing to extend air strikes to Syria. Cameron asserted that he could
legally extend action without a new vote.
Even Miliband did not rule out spreading the attack to Syria, only
saying it would be “better” if there was a United Nations resolution to
justify such action.
Several MPs also refused to rule out putting troops on the ground.
Iraqi socialist Sami Ramadani told Socialist Worker, “They failed to
win a vote to bomb Syria last year because of opposition to war.
“Now they want to justify this new war with all the talk of tackling savagery of Isis.”
“But this is a chance for the US and the West to reassert itself in the region,” said Sami.
Activists across Britain need to get out on to the streets and
challenge the warmongers’ lies and the threat of increased Islamophobia
they whip up.
Demonstrate Saturday 4 October. Assemble 1pm Temple Place London WC2R 3BD. More details at stopwar.org.uk
[Socialist Worker article © Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original.]
iraq
the los angeles times
doyle mcmanus
ned parker
bbc news
antiwar.com
margaret griffis
jason ditz
the socialist worker
cnn
chelsea j. carter
gul tuysuz
ben wedeman
