Friday, June 16, 2017

Donald and Hillary

If Donald Trump's done something wrong (I have seen no evidence that he has) then he should be impeached.

If he's offering this Tweet as an excuse . . .

  Retweeted
Trump is wrong to prosecute me and my staff and to tolerate the CIA threatening our work but he's dead right here:





It's not an excuse.

If he's offering it as context?

I agree with him 100%.

I think Hillary should be behind bars.

I think her security clearance should be revoked.  (Yes, she still has it.)

I think Hillary's a criminal.

That being the case, I agree with Trump.

However, if Donald is using that as an excuse, no, it doesn't justify anything he's done.

For context, yes, he's right that this is ridiculous what's going on right now when Hillary should have been imprisoned.


"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Friday, June 16, 2017.  The Mosul Slog continues, a bishop misses the point, and much more.


It’s Going Down: ICE Arrest 199 Iraqi Christians During Deportation Sweep! [Video]
 
 




"That priest is probably still floating on a fog pillow," wrote Anne Sexton ("The Inventory Of Goodbye"). Bishop Bawai Soro's feet certainly aren't touching the ground.


Reading his column at THE HILL, it's hard to figure out whether he's stupid or dishonest?


ISIS is more in the news than the Iraqi government so he may be using them -- and lies -- to make a case.  If so, it may attract more eyeballs for being 'trendy' but it will also attract many eyeballs from the heads of people who get that Soro doesn't know what the hell he's writing about.


ICE and US President Donald Trump must not return Iraqi Christians to Iraq, he argues, because the will face the Islamic State.


The Islamic State?


Forget the corporate spin that the Islamic State is on the run, the problem for Iraqi Christians throughout the Iraq War has not been the Islamic State.

Yes, they've been victimized in the rare areas of Iraq that the Islamic State has grabbed control of in the last few years.

But stop pretending that's it.

The Iraqi government has failed them and has persecuted them.

They have passed laws against them, the forces have raided their bars and establishments to shut them down even when the law wasn't on the Iraqi forces' side.


The Islamic State is a recent thing in the long war.  It will likely be replaced by something else.

The same can't be said of the Iraqi government where thug Nouri al-Maliki was replaced by thug-lite Hayder al-Abadi.

The exodus of Iraqi Christians from Iraq begins long before the emergence of the Islamic State (as did the relocating to northern Iraq from Baghdad).

Is the Bishop a liar or just stupid?

And the argument to make, pay attention here, against deporting the group back to Iraq is that the Iraqi government has not only failed to protect them, the Iraqi government has taken part in attacking them.

The Iraqi government's history since the 2003 US-led invasion is one of persecuting religious minorities -- this includes Christians.

So why would you force Christians to return to that country?

That's the argument you make.

You rest it instead on the Islamic State?

The minute The Mosul Slog finally wraps up, people shrug and say, "Well they're over, no reason the Christians can't be sent back now."

The Bishop had a column to make a case and he didn't.

Instead, he's put out the highly damaging notion that, were it not for the Islamic State, Iraq would be a fine place for Iraqi Christians to live.


But the Islamic State did not run them off from Baghdad.

It wasn't the Islamic State, either, that reduced Baghdad's Jewish population to one elderly person.



Day 240 of The Mosul Slog.

map update. Green= completely liberated. Orange= frontline clashes. White= control.
 
 



End of ISIS: U.S. and Iraqi Forces Prepare for Final Battle After Surrounding Old City
 
 




End coming?

Good, because it's already been 240 days.


Though the operation to liberate or 'liberate' Mousl was only launched in October, Mosul was seized
by ISIS in June 2014.

Nouri al-Maliki was prime minister then.

Some have not forgotten that fact.

G.H. Renaud (KURDISTAN 24) reports:

Demonstrators called for Maliki to face justice as they marked the third anniversary of the Speicher massacre where Islamic State (IS) militants killed hundreds of students at the Air Force base near Tikrit.
[. . .]
Banners listed the three “plagues” demonstrators believe Maliki is responsible for: the fall of Mosul, the Speicher Massacre, and the squandering of Iraq’s money.


Nouri and Moqtada al-Sadr are squaring off for upcoming elections -- whenever they might be held.

Provincial elections were actually supposed to take place in April.

They have been delayed until September but there's also a proposal to combine them with next year's national elections.





The following community sites -- plus Jody Watley -- updated:


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