Friday, May 25, 2018

THE NATION plays games again


 
The current issue of The Nation carries a cover story headlined “Texas Showdown,” which overstated the prospects of three Sanders-type candidates for Congress—Mary Wilson, Rick Trevino and Laura Moser—all of whom lost badly on Tuesday to candidates backed by the Democratic Party establishment.
These results underscore the bankruptcy of the perspective advanced by various pro-Sanders pseudo-left organizations of turning the Democratic Party into a progressive party of “the people.”
 
Doesn’t that say it all?  As does the fact that THE NATION has ignored the military-intelligence aspect of the election.  It’s out of control.  But the John Nichols will forever be worthless and say nothing of importance.  Except maybe, in 2002, when he blamed the coming Iraq War on . . . Barbra Streisand.  I am not making that up.  He blamed her in one of his poorly scribbled columns.  Yes, it was all Barbra’s fault – according to the loon that is John Nichols.  He’s such a curly headed Cabbage Patch Doll.
 

I hope most people get that WSWS is covering real issues.  I can’t take COUNTERPUNCH of late.  It is as though there is nothing in the world but Donald Trump.  He has the power you give him and a lot of people are giving him everything.  They end up sounding like wackos.

Wackos?  Did someone say "Tina Fey"?

"TV: SNL goes out on a sad and sour note" (Ava and C.I., THE THIRD ESTATE SUNDAY REVIEW):
Once upon a time, Tina was a big name -- a name that conjured up the notion of hilarity and a solid future.  That was long ago.  Her most recent film, WHISKEY TANGO FOX TROT, couldn't even make up its shooting budget with ticket sales.  Her film before that did a little bit better, SISTERS made $87 million in ticket sales in north America.  If this were 1985, people would be applauding that box office.  But for a heavily promoted film in 2018, it just underscored that she couldn't connect with a larger audience.  (Most analysis of the film's box office notes that Amy Poehler was the draw.) TV hasn't been any kinder.

30 ROCK is gone (more on that in a minute).  Worse, NBC just axed GREAT NEWS.  That was Tina's big foray into producing.  She was going to sport her comic genius and her business sense.  Well, she tried anyway.  Season one was a disaster in the ratings.  Season two saw her trying to pump up the ratings by appearing on the show.  It didn't help at all.  At one point, season two saw an episode garner only 1.8 million rating.

Well there's Broadway -- where Tina's MEAN GIRLS is currently playing.  Ticket sales started off well but are now sluggish and, in fact, you can easily purchase half-price tickets online because the house is never filled these days.  There's hope that the show will score some major Tony awards and that will help the box office.  But the reality is a tween film favorite doesn't make for a long running Broadway hit.

She's striking out everywhere.  So why not go back to SNL?

All hail the faded glory.

As if to demonstrate just how much in the past her glories are, she trotted out her Sarah Palin impersonation.  Ah, yes, she was riding high back in 2008.  She was going to be the biggest thing in everything.  Only it didn't work out that way.

Riding the social media sharing buzz for her Palin impersonation, her 30 ROCK's season three debuted with 8.7 million viewers -- a record high for the show, one it would never achieve again.  Six episodes later, it was back to the likes of five million because people just didn't watch the show.  The show would continue to run off viewers.  There's a reason Tina needed to become a successful TV producer: No one wanted to watch a show she starred in.

Not many even wanted to watch her return to SNL.  Last year's season finale posted a 5.3 million audience while this season, wrapping up with Fey, was down to 4.5 million.

Isn't the hometown gal supposed to increase ratings?

Maybe if she ever had something to offer.


Exactly.


"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Thursday, May 24, 2018.  The war goes on even as one of the people who used to protest it dies.


Joan Wile has passed away.  We've long noted her here.  Sam Roberts (NEW YORK TIMES) offers:


Joan Wile, a former songwriter and actress who in her 70s weaponized the power of grandmotherhood by organizing a nine-year-long weekly vigil by fellow venerable protesters against the war in Iraq, died on May 4 in Nanuet, N.Y. She was 86.
The cause was complications of diabetes, her son, Ron Wasserman, said.
Ms. Wile had written letters and marched against the war, but it was a horrific photograph in Time magazine — of a 12-year-old Iraqi boy who had been burned and lost both arms and whose family had been killed by American bombs — that galvanized her to do even more.



Or even less.  We noted Joan here regularly.  She was a nice person with a very limited vision.  Her loss will be personal for those who knew her.  Pretending that it's a blow of any sort is pretending that what she did mattered.  I'm not speaking out of turn, I shared that with her long before she gave up on protesting (with the wars still ongoing):


By late 2012, though, the weekly gathering had dwindled to fewer than a dozen. By then, past 80 and with Barack Obama, a more sympathetic president, in the White House, Ms. Wile decided to call it quits.



Joan's activism didn't matter because her vision was so limited.  She was always looking for some man to save her.  In 2007, she became convinced that Barack was just that man.  That led to loudest exchanges between us because I refused to put several pieces she wrote up here.

In 2007, I was not supporting anyone.  In January of 2008, a little after Joe Biden dropped out, I decided to support Hillary because Clintons are poll driven and that might mean they'd heed the people.  Hillary's vote for the Iraq War was an issue but so was Barack's telling Elaine and I (when he ran for the US Senate) that US troops were in Iraq now and it no longer mattered (protesting the war).  A choice between two War Hawks, I went with the one who could be influenced.  (Hillary would go on to stand with MoveOn in Congress  and MoveOn would repay her by . . . endorsing Barack.)

I had no problem with criticism of Hillary when it was equal to criticism of Barack.  That didn't happen with Joan.

The pieces in question were disgusting.  Not pornographic, just disgusting.

They were skits of Hillary in bed with Bill.

Would she do the same to Barack?  Of course not, but she would ridicule Hillary as a woman in 2008 and claim this was fair and the way to go.  It was sexist and it was offensive.

Joan could be very smart but she could also be a fool and, as a fool, she just knew some man was going to come along and save her.  Didn't happen in her real life but she was raised to believe in fairy tales and was forever a princess waiting for a Prince Charming to show up.

Privately, she shared her huge disappointments in Barack with me beginning around mid-2010.  But she refused to make those public.  She knew the drawdown in Iraq was not a withdrawal and called that out privately.  She wouldn't do so publicly.  When I'd ask her, she'd insist she was focused on other things -- such as The Occupy Movement.

And I'd say whatever and move on.  But then, in 2012, she was back to her old tricks -- trashing Mitt Romney to justify voting for Barack.

Barack was a "huge liar" and "the biggest disappointment" (I'm quoting one e-mail there) but she wouldn't call him out.

That's not a peace activist.  That's a whore for a political party.

I liked Joan and she knew that.  I found her actions to be ineffectual because they weren't about change and they weren't about truth.  She knew how I felt.  Her book GRANDMOTHERS AGAINST THE WAR: GETTING OFF OUR FANNIES AND STANDING UP FOR PEACE is a strong book, it's just a shame she couldn't live that.

I recommend the book.  I recommend her strong sense of humor and her heart which was able to care about so many.

But she circumvented her own activism and I don't recommend that. On a personal level, her death is very sad.  But that's it, her activism actually alternated between banging your head against a wall and sticking your head in the sand.

No one is going to save us, we have to save ourselves.  We need to stand on our feet and demand change.  Joan wasn't able to do that.


Gray-haired, relying on walkers and canes, they turned out every Wednesday for nine years to protest United States involvement in Iraq. Their founder was Joan Wile, who died at 86.
 
 





Here's the last piece she wrote that we fought over.  Link goes to OPED NEWS, I refused to post it here.  It's from 2015 and calling Hillary out for the Iraq War.  I call Hillary out for it, so what's the problem?  I've also called Barack Obama out for it.  Joan never did.  He was president and she knew he didn't end the war.  She wasn't comfortable calling him out but she would call Hillary out.  I told her it was a double standard and I didn't want to play that game.  I believe that after that back and forth she didn't ask for us to post anything she'd written again.


The Iraq War continues.



Breaking: At least 4 dead and 15 injured after a suicide bombing in Baghdad, Iraq.
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AP's Murtada Faraj notes that the death toll is now 7 (eight, really, the suicide bomber is also dead) and that sixteen more people were left injured.


The British Embassy in Baghdad strongly condemns this morning’s terrorist attack in Shula . We extend our deepest condolences and sympathies to the victims, their families and friends. The timing of the attack in Ramadan reflects the callousness of terrorism.
 
 


Elsewhere, XINHUA reports, "Three civilians and two Islamic State (IS) militants were killed in clashes between the IS and the security forces in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, the Iraqi military and a local official said on Thursday."


At NIQASH, Mustafa Habib provides analysis of Iraq's recent elections:

The morning after the preliminary announcements about who had won and who had lost in the Iraqi elections, it was clear that Iraqis did feel as though there had been a major political change. The senior politicians who had been in charge of the country for the past decade and a half had seen their popularity wane. Supporters of the winning parties came out on the streets to celebrate their victory.
Controversial Shiite Muslim leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, whose name has been associated with sectarian violence in the past but who has been undergoing a series of transformations over the past few years – most notably in his opposition to Iranian interference in the country – was ranked first in preliminary results.

The country’s sitting prime minister Haider al-Abadi came third. And this was a surprise to everyone, even Iraqis themselves. Al-Abadi’s popularity has only increased over the past few years. He is known as a man who has tackled several difficult challenges, including a security crisis sparked by the extremist group known as the Islamic State and a financial crisis that had the potential to bring down the government. He is so popular in Iraq, that he was the favourite before the elections and it seemed strange to many that he only managed to get third.
Second and third place were taken by, respectively, the Fatah alliance, which is the political body born out of some of the Shiite Muslim militias who volunteered to fight the Islamic State, or IS, group, and the coalition headed by a former, and much more unpopular, prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. Both of these bodies are known for a closer association with Iran.    
Senior politicians, who are perceived as having big personalities, also lost. For example, al-Maliki is often referred to as a strong and forceful leader, something Iraqis have liked. But he won over 700,000 votes in the 2014 elections and only managed an estimated 91,000 this year.
Further along in the queue were Sunni Muslim parties and the Iraqi Kurdish parties; there were no real surprises here with groups headed by Ayad Allawi and Osama al-Nujaifi winning seats and the two major Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, doing best with voters in their own region.  
Allawi is another one of those charismatic politicians who lost a lot of support; he garnered over 407,000 votes in both of the last two elections. This week he seems to have had only around 46,000 supporters.

But really the most dramatic developments occurred among the formerly unified Shiite Muslim politicians. “Those results are a shock and a surprise for the bigger parties but in fact they are a completely normal reflection of the country’s widespread discontent with those who ruled before,” suggests Faeq al-Sheikh Ali, an MP from a smaller, liberal party.


And Fehim Tastekin (AL-MONITOR) offers:


There are reports that Sadr wants to create a new coalition with Abadi and perhaps Hakim. If that works out, Sadr may have to ease his anti-Iran position. Sadr, who spent more than three years in self-imposed exile in Iran while his Mahdi Army was fighting against the US forces in Iraq, can't fully exclude groups like Fatah that are considered instruments of Iranian political interests. Nobody expects Iranian strongman Gen. Qasem Soleimani — a top commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force — to easily agree to withdraw Iran from Iraqi politics. There's a rumor that Iran is trying to persuade Abadi to form a coalition with Ameri and Maliki to block Sadr's aspirations, but Sadr appears to have beaten Iran to the punch by negotiating with Abadi.
The United States, which invested in Abadi in the elections, is now facing an interesting test. Sadr’s visits to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — two of the countries leading the anti-Iran front — in July and August, respectively, might be an important signal that US policy in the region is evolving.
Sadr's unexpected formation of relationships with US allies could indicate an easing up of Americans' anti-Sadr positions, which they have held since former US President George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 and sought to eliminate the cleric. This is turn may well dilute Sadr’s fervent anti-Americanism.
Sadr’s apparent rapprochement with the Gulf actually might have compounded Sadr’s distrust of Turkey. In the ongoing Gulf tensions, Turkey’s firm support of Qatar against the Saudis and the UAE has soured relations with those countries. But Sadr could soften his position when it comes to Turkey. The first significant sign of such a possibility is that Turkey’s ambassador in Baghdad, Fatih Yildiz — who had been waiting a long time for an appointment with Sadr — was invited to meet after the elections. After the meeting, Yildiz said, “I found an opportunity to talk with Sadr in a friendly atmosphere."


Very quickly, didn't realize this was actually a community issue until I was in the e-mails this morning, the NFL.  We're not a sports site.  I'm known for going to see a movie during the Superbowl.  But because it's becoming an issue (and apparently will be in the gina & krista round-robin) here's my take that's being asked for.

There is no censorship.  They can wear a pin to protest if they want.  But in terms of kneeling at a televised game, it's not happening.  I'm not surprised.  Football isn't a sport, it's big money for big business.  They lost millions viewers last year which was millions of ad dollars.  This is not a response to Donald Trump's comments, this is a response to greed.  They don't want to lose money -- the owners, the broadcasters, the advertisers.  Football players -- many of whom are paid tons of money -- are being told by their employers that they cannot kneel on the clock.  Most people paid by the hour have even less rights when they're at work.  This decision was gong to be made and I'm surprised they waited that long.  No one's being told what they can say in an interview or anything like that.  There are serious issues out there.  If this is one to you, work on it.  To me, it's not a serious issue.  It's not the ongoing war or the homophobic Simon Rosenberg trying to slip back in as a respected voice (remember when only Rachel Maddow stood up to him on AIR AMERICA RADIO? I do, it's the one moment I'm always proud of her for).  Sports is entertainment.  I doubt ABC would let David Muir kick off a newscast by first taking a knee.  I don't applaud the NFL decision but I don't see it as surprising or worth marching for.  Again, that's my opinion, feel free to disagree.  If you do, take action.


The following community sites -- plus Jody Watley and DISSIDENT VOICE -- updated:





  •  

  • Thursday, May 24, 2018

    VANITY FAIR's Julie Miller is hateful and a stupid

    Maureen Orth, for those who don't know, is the widow of Media Whore Tim Russert.  Maureen's famous for two things:  Attacking Woody Allen and attacking Michael Jackson.

    Now Maureen, her bad breath not withstanding, has always had a problem -- she goes a little big.  Maybe Michael Jackson did sexually prey on children, maybe he didn't.  But that wasn't enough for Maureen, she also had to create other stories -- he hired a witch, he sacrificed cows, he did this, he did that . . .

    Before Maureen's done, she's produced the equivalent of one of those seventies 'books' about backward masking and how rock music is controlled by the devil and blah blah blah.

    VANITY FAIR is in the toilet and people are getting fired constantly.  That's because of Maureen who has done her best to piss off a lot of people.  She keeps insisting things that her writing doesn't prove and most agents feel like she's gone way too far with her personal vendetta against Woody Allen.

    Enter little nobody Julie Miller.

    Moses Allen has defended his father against Woody Allen so Julie Miller takes it upon herself to attack him and it's not pretty.


    He claims that, on August 4, 1992—when Moses was 14—he had “promised [his mother] to keep an eye out for any trouble. . . . I do remember that Woody would leave the room on occasion, but never with Dylan.” 

    Moses is not to believed because it was "when Moses was 14"?  But Dylan was only seven.  It's interesting which children we choose to believe and which ones we don't.

    Julie tosses this out:


     Moses does not address, for instance, the fact that “Allen had been in therapy for alleged inappropriate behavior toward Dylan with a child psychologist before the abuse allegation was presented to the authorities or made public.” Per Orth’s 1992 feature, Allen voluntarily sought treatment over two years for his alleged “‘inappropriate’ fatherly behavior toward Dylan”—several disturbing accounts of which are detailed in the report.


    Why would he?  Was Moses in therapy with them?  No.  Nor was Maureen Orth.  She took Mia's lies and ran with them.  The behavior towards Dylan was not sexual.  If it had been, the therapist would have reported it.  Mia felt that Woody focused on Dylan.  She felt his focus on the child was inappropriate when compared to his lack of interest in some of her other children.  But Julie, like Maureen, can only molest actual events as she distorts them to try to make a point that has no foundation in the truth.


    Though Moses paints the allegation as a claim manufactured by Mia and drilled into Dylan’s brain out of retribution, Moses does not discuss the fact that Mia never went to the police about the allegation. According to Orth, Mia’s “lawyer told her on August 5, 1992, to take the seven-year-old Dylan to a pediatrician, who was bound by law to report Dylan’s story of sexual violation to law enforcement and did so on August 6.” Even when Allen was in therapy, a family friend told Orth that Mia attempted to keep it out of the media: “She didn’t want Woody’s name tarnished,” the source said.

    Again, Julie's backed up nothing.

    Was that "family friend" little Casey?  The woman alleged for years to have been Mia's lover and not her friend. I know Casey and I know Mia, they are both two bitches who I wouldn't trust for directions let alone for something as important as a charge of child abuse.

    Regardless of whether its Casey and she's operating to protect a lover, a "family friend" of Mia's is not a disinterested party and shouldn't be treated as such.  Moses is an eye witness.  His comments and memories have more validity than Dylan's do because Dylan's story has changed over time and because she was 7.  He was twice her age.

    The worst thing that trashy, hateful, lying Julie Miller does is right here:

    On Wednesday, Moses Farrow, the adopted son of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen, published an explosive 4,600-word personal essay in which he defended his filmmaker father against sexual-assault allegations; accused his mother of inflicting “fatal dysfunction” on their household; and recalled his memory of events on August 4, 1992


    That is from the first paragraph.  It's the first paragraph but the second time it's mentioned that Moses is "adopted."  It's also noted in the sub-heading.

    Read Julie's piece in full.  Dylan is never called adopted, but she is.

    Julie's trying to sully Moses' name by pointing out that he's adopted.  She's trying to put a stigma on it.

    I am a mother.  I am a mother by birth and by adoption.  They are my children, all of them.

    But Julie Miller and VANITY FAIR think you can smear someone by implying they are lesser because they are adopted.  Again, Julie's long piece never notes that Dylan is adopted.

    She's a hateful piece of trash.

    I'm not linking to her.

    She didn't link to Moses.

    But if you'd like to read Moses, click here.


    "Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
    Wednesday, May 23, 2018.  The Hobby Lobby of 'journalists' is in a bit more hot water.



    Can we get a MeToo! going to defend the people?  We really need one.

    Completely in awe of the work does on her podcast, Caliphate. Equal parts chilling and eye opening. If you haven’t checked it out, you should.
     
     

    '

    Are you in awe, Joshy?  Well what a piece of trash you must be.

    Continue to be fascinated by and her podcast. Certainly someone to emulate as an journalist.
     
     



    Dylan, at your university, do they not teach that theft is wrong?



    Just finished listening to the most recent episode of (#6). Any hope that I had that Abu Huzayfah might be lying is slowly disappearing...although I'm ready for a potential plot twist. Great reporting, riveting story. Just wish I could binge it!
     
     


    We can't expect JM Davis to worry about theft, she's too busy seeing a war as something she wishes she could "binge" on -- yes, she truly is that stupid.

    Now we warned you, for over a year, we warned you that Rukmini Callimachi was trash, that she was a thief and that she was worse than Judith Miller.


    We warned you.  And we mainly did so because antiwar Glenn Greenwald couldn't stop slobbering over her at his Twitter account.

    Well Glenn-Glenn's moist mouth may have finally dried up.

    Today his publication, THE INTERCEPT, is finally finding the issues others of us have already spent time on.


    Her theft which is at the basis of her wowie podcast that trash like Tommy Vietor can't stop praising.


     
     
  • There is only one problem. She is accused of stealing those documents.
     
     
  • From fleeing terrorist oppressors? That's not theft, that's called "investigative journalism."
     
     
  • How about from the Iraqi government? 'Investigative journalism' just got a new definition. To Steal important documents of a terror organization without the permission of the "democratically" elected local government.
     
     
  • Except:
     
     
  • Except, "there is no record, Oral or written, of any Official permission from the Iraqi Army or defense ministry to give these documents away".
     
     
    Here is how your "investigative journalist" responds when she has no proof to defend her claim.
     
     



    We warned you.

    Maryam Salem (THE INTERCEPT) reports:




    About a week after the piece was published, Farhan emailed Callimachi to ask if she got permission from Iraqi government officials to take the documents, and if she got consent from the people named in the files to publish their names. Farhan didn’t hear back, so she worked with two legal scholars to launch a petition calling on the Times to rethink its use of the documents. The removal of the documents violates international law, the petition authors wrote, calling for them to be returned to Iraq and warning that failure to do so would set a “dangerous precedent for the plundering of material and cultural heritage in conflict zones.” This wasn’t the only academic protest. In early May, Judith Tucker and Laurie Brand of the Middle East Studies Association published an open letter to top editors at the Times,  decrying the “myriad legal, professional, ethical, and moral issues” arising from Callimachi’s story.
    [. . .]
    In their letter to the Times, Tucker and Brand of the Middle East Studies Association said the Iraqi state alone had a right to the documents. “It is only legally designated representatives of the Iraqi state, and certainly not foreign journalists,” they wrote, “who should control the disposition of any documents found in circumstances like those in which Ms. Callimachi and her team operated, in accordance with Iraqi law and regulations governing public records.”
    [. . .]
    Tucker and Brand of the Middle East Studies Association in their public letter to the Times, wrote that the removal of the documents from Iraq with no clear plans to return them “once again empowers outsiders to unduly influence, or even control, the narration of Iraq’s history.” They accused the Times of having “no right to possess or retain these materials,” adding that possession of the files “is not a matter that you or Ms. Callimachi or any other non-Iraqi or non-Iraqi institution is entitled to decide. These materials belong to the Iraqi people.” Their letter also warned that it would be unacceptable for the Times to make the cache publicly available because doing so could endanger the lives of Iraqis named in the documents. This particular warning was in response to the Times publishing copies of about a dozen ISIS documents, including unredacted versions of a tax form, a citation for a teenage boy found to have violated ISIS rules, and a birth certificate.
    Callimachi told The Intercept that the Times is working with an outside partner to digitize and publish the documents online. She directed further questions to a company spokesperson. Danielle Rhoades Ha, the vice president of communications at the Times, did not specifically respond to The Intercept’s questions, sending a statement instead. “The New York Times recovered documents that otherwise would have been destroyed or simply abandoned,” she wrote. “Previously Iraqi security forces had been burning documents they discovered. … In every case, Times reporters were being escorted by Iraqi security forces who assisted in the collection and preservation of the documents.”
    But did those forces have the authority to give those documents away? Saad Eskander, the former director of the INLA, said they did not.

    “The 2016 Law on the Preservation of Records, which I personally drafted when I was the Director General of INLA, states clearly that all types of official and semi-official papers should be administrated by INLA,” he wrote in an email to The Intercept. “This Law also covers records made by Iraqi NGOs. So the above mentioned Iraqi Law does not grant any civilian or military entity the right to decide the fate of Iraqi records, let alone permitting their removal from the country.”



    Again, we warned you.

    Rukmini Callimachi is far worse than Judith Miller.  In fact, she's the Hobby Lobby of so-called 'journalists.'


    March 3, 2017, she typed, "Sometimes I feel embarrassed by the extent of Iraqi hospitality."


    She certainly should.  She certainly should.


    Today, NPR's MORNING EDITION reports that the US government is hopeful that the huge win in this month's elections by Shi'ite cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr will not mean that US troops.  The report plays Moqtada's spokesperson Sheikh Saleh al-Obeidi declaring, "If the American troops are here in order to train Iraqis, help Iraqis according to certain details accepted to both governments it is accepted by Moqtada al-Sadr."

    Now the US government always claims it was about training.  For example, here's the US Defense Dept this week:


    The coalition training effort in Iraq is all about “making a good force better,” said Italian army Brig. Gen. Roberto Vannacci, the deputy commanding general for training for Operation Inherent Resolve's Joint Forces Land Component Command in Iraq.
    Iraqi security forces continue to press the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria by rooting out and destroying pockets of ISIS terrorists in the country. From the nadir when ISIS was knocking on the gates of Baghdad, Iraqi forces have taken on the terror group and liberated almost all of the territory the group once held.

    The trainers of the coalition’s Operation Inherent Resolve gave Iraqi security forces the training they needed to expel the violent extremist group, Vannacci said during a video teleconference from Baghdad to reporters in the Pentagon.  


    But it is combat.

    Tom O'Connor (NEWSWEEK) notes:

    The U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) said Tuesday that it only planned on staying in Iraq as long as it was welcome after an opponent of foreign military presence won local elections.
    The remarks come after a political bloc—comprised of Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, communists and others—managed to secure the plurality of votes in last week's Iraqi election, raising uncertainties for the future of the U.S. and other foreign militaries helping local forces battle the remnants of ISIS in the war-torn country. Italian army Brigadier General Roberto Vannacci, who serves as deputy commanding general for training the joint land forces component of the coalition, said there has been no change in policy yet, but if there was, it would be up to political leaders at home. 
    "We are here by the request of the Iraqi government. And regardless of who won the election, I think that if this request will continue to be addressed to the coalition, the coalition will remain," Vannacci told reporters during a weekly press briefing at the Pentagon Tuesday.


    But for all the pretense of just waiting to see what happens, behind the scenes?  The US government is very anxious.  REUTERS reports:

    The United States has contacted members of a political bloc headed by former foe Moqtada al-Sadr after his parliamentary election victory put the Shi’ite cleric in a strong position to influence the formation of a new government, a top aide said.
    [. . .]
    Dhiaa al-Asadi, a top Sadr aide, said there had been no direct talks with the Americans but intermediaries had been used to open channels with members of his Sairoon alliance.
    “They asked what the position of the Sadrist movement will be when they come to power. Are they going to reinvent or invoke the Mahdi Army or reemploy them? Are they going to attack American forces in Iraq,” he told Reuters.
    “There’s no return to square one. We are not intending on having any military force other than the official military force, police forces and security forces.” 



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