Tag: CIA

Gaining a Middle East Perspective, Apart from the Official US Empire/Media Narrative

Lebanese ‘Vision for Peace’ for a brighter future for the people in North America

Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
Don’t get fooled again
No, no!

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

The Who – “Won’t Get Fooled Again”

By now, one has to understand that it really makes no difference who is president, except for maybe if one has the gift of eloquent speech, another a gift of making it to 3rd base with an intern, another a gift of “duh” while targeting countries that had nothing to do with 9/11, another the gift of racial equality and finally a politician that can create tweets on Twitter and trigger millions. We sure have made “progress”.

However, in the real world, the US Empire has been marching on from CIA assassinating other nation’s democratically elected presidents (1953, Iran) to open US military assassination of other nation’s #2 national leader and hero from his strategy to defeat ISIS (2020, Iran), nothing has halted the evil empire’s advance. Yes, I agree with Oliver Stone that the evil of the USSR in the 1980s has been replaced by the US Empire of the 2000s and beyond.

Things have changed a lot since then, at least for Stone. “Empires fall. Let’s pray that this empire, these evil things… because we are the evil empire,” he said in an interview to RT. “What Reagan said about Russia is true about us.” – Sputnik / Alexei Druzhinin

To get a real picture of what has evolved in the Middle East and how we (US Empire) are not helping, I believe that Eric Margolis’ experience is something that can be drawn on as a starting point where one can research for themselves from there. In his latest piece picked up by the Ron Paul Institute from Lew Rockwell, called “Grand Theft Property”, Eric outlines how this latest Trump “Peace Plan” is nothing more than continued theft of Palestinian land that will only serve to ensure continued violence in the region that the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) will love so that their profits are assured. Eric explains:

As they ask in my native New York City, “Is it good for the Jews?”, the answer is a resounding no! The Trump-Bibi theft of ancestral Arab lands condemns Arabs and Jews to another five decades of violence and hatred. The Promised Land was not supposed to be like this.

Ain’t that the truth. The fact is, visions do not create rights. They have no legal grounds. They do not convey legality to anything.

Don’t go away, for the backstory is even better. One needs to know the context and history that brought us to this point where it seems to be accepted that Israel and the US can decide how to partition up the Middle East:

In 1916, as World War I raged on, a British diplomat, Mark Sykes, met with his French counterpart from the Quai d’Orsay, Monsieur Picot, and signed an agreement to partition the Ottoman Empire once victory was achieved.

The heart of the Mideast – Palestine, Syria, and Iraq – was divided between Britain and France. Italy and Russia were offered other Ottoman lands: southern Turkey was promised to Italy and Constantinople to Russia. All this was top secret but was later revealed by the Bolsheviks after their 1917 revolution.

Do you see this? World powers, the empires, can just decide where to draw the lines, the benefits of wars go to the state while the cost of war is the burden that those who fought and sometimes died along with their families and the innocent civilians caught up in these great conflicts where life is never the same.

I have heard the term that bigger is better, however, when it comes to states, the bigger the state they more tyrannical they can be. This tyranny extends from the politicians who enable the state and give the state legitimacy, because politicians were “voted” in, all the way to all the people who follow orders blindly, from CIA assets, to the military all the way to the police, from the capital, to the states all the way to the local governments that are dependent on federal funding.

I agree with G.K. Chesterton who said:

“The men whom the people ought to choose to represent them are too busy to take the jobs. But the politician is waiting for it. He’s the pestilence of modern times. What we should try to do is make politics as local as possible. Keep the politicians near enough to kick them. The villagers who met under the village tree could also hang their politicians to the tree. It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.”

That kind of local government could easily have prevented the following:

  • 70 million killed in China
  • 60 million killed in USSR
  • 4 million killed in Cambodia
  • 5 million killed in North Korea
  • 1 million killed in Yugoslavia
  • 1 million killed in Ethiopia
  • 1 million killed in Indonesia
  • 800,000 killed in Rwanda
  • 800,000 killed in US Civil War

Anyway, it appears that the US Empire train, similar to the USSR and Roman ones before it, will continue on down this track until it self destructs, no matter who is the president.

-SF1

Safe Place: When a Nation is Triggered in Thinking National Security is at Risk

Whether it be a nation or an empire, leaders always know that the fear card can produce unity and an excuse to utilize totalitarian measures against their own people, and the masses will love it, because the feels.

In reading about why the CIA and FBI saw threats with both JFK’s and MLK’s trajectories. Jacob Hornberger states:

Why did they target Kennedy? For the same reason they targeted all those other people for assassination — they concluded that Kennedy had become a grave threat to national security and, they believed, it was their job to eliminate threats to national security.

It has to sound familiar, especially over the past few years and the Russian threats due to Trump’s ‘friendly’ attitude to Russia (as he ramps up the sanctions, sending missiles to bases in Syria that Russian troops are based, etc.). Give me a break.

Although the article specifically attributes these actions as starting after WWII as the OSS operations were then made permanent by Truman’s creation of the CIA, the very psychological mechanism of fear has been a real thing in America since the colonial days.

It was the fear of American Indian raids that had independent and autonomous farmers in the colonies agree to pay takes to raise an army to remove those threats. It was the fear of a free trade zone in the southern United States in 1861 that prompted the northern politicians to “put down the insurrection” in a way that forever altered the US government to be highly centralized and a source of significant tyranny. Many southern states were subject to 12 years of military rule that not only wrecked the south economically, but revealed the desperate measures this totalitarian US government would take to keep itself “safe”.

By the 1890s this fear extended to the world for the US government, using the USS Maine incident in Havana harbor to make war with the failing Spanish Empire and seize lands around the world. By 1918, the progressive thought that the US was to be a power for “good” in this world, to keep the world safe made the people accept that sending millions of men overseas to die in France in WWI “worth it all”. Even Franklin Roosevelt knew that the end game of war was the only way to maintain his and his political party’s power, and used deceptive embargoes and tariffs to manipulate the Japanese Empire to lash out predictably allowing the US to enter WWII.

It was after this war that included the US immorally using nuclear bombs against primarily civilian populations that had little strategic military value that the US added yet another immoral weapon in their suite of tools to keep the world safe for democracy. Assassination. How totalitarian, how Communist!

The US using tactics that their “evil” enemies use are ever apparent these days when it can be argued that the US is the largest exporter of terrorism in the 21st century. It is no accident that securing the largest opium producing area in the world to secretly fund the CIA might be what keeps the politicians in line, with drug money ..

But I digress.

I guess the point of all this is to show how the US has developed into the very totalitarian state that it was fighting against in WWII. In Jacob’s article it points out that the way the nation/empire fights abroad always comes home. The domestic “fight” to retain power will start to use tactics that were only used in “war” or in classified CIA operations:

State-sponsored assassinations to protect national security were among the dark-side practices that began to be utilized after the federal government was converted into a national-security state. As early as 1953, the CIA was developing a formal assassination manual that trained its agents in the art of assassination and, equally important, in the art of concealing the CIA’s role in state-sponsored assassinations.

In 1954, the CIA targeted the democratically elected president of Guatemala for assassination because he was reaching out to Russia in a spirt of peace, friendship, and mutual co-existence. In 1960-61, the CIA conspired to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, the head of the Congo because he was perceived to be a threat to U.S. national security.

So inside of a decade, the CIA developed the tools that the FBI could assist them with in these domestic threats ..

After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy achieved a breakthrough that enabled him to recognize that the Cold War was just one great big racket for the national-security establishment and its army of “defense” contractors and sub-contractors.

That’s when JFK announced an end to the Cold War and began reaching out to the Soviets and the Cubans in a spirit of peace, friendship, and mutual coexistence. Kennedy’s Peace Speech at American University on June 10, 1963, where he announced his intent to end the Cold War and normalize relations with the communist world, sealed President Kennedy’s fate.

This deep state action over 50 years ago has served to keep a reign on US presidents ever since. This also was extended to other leaders that threatened the deep state:

… one day after his Peace Speech at American University, Kennedy delivered a major televised address to the nation defending the civil rights movement, the movement that King was leading.

What better proof of a threat to national security than that — reaching out to the communist world in peace and friendship and then, one day later, defending a movement that the U.S. national-security establishment was convinced was a spearhead for the communist takeover of the United States?

You now know why US media is the lapdog for deep state propaganda, to keep the narrative alive that the US is perpetually fighting terror and fighting to keep itself and the world safe while the US government has developed a ..:

… totalitarian-like governmental structure that has led our nation in the direction of state-sponsored assassinations, torture, invasions, occupations, wars of aggression, coups, alliances with dictatorial regimes, sanctions, embargoes, regime-change operations, and massive death, suffering, and destruction, not to mention the loss of liberty and privacy here at home.

No one should be surprised here in 2020 when we can see clearly how things are done, especially with Soleimani’s assassination.

The US has evolved into the very thing it was created to avoid.

The illusion of safety remains, but the reality of despotism is already here.

-SF1

Codependency: US Empire and Iraq

We cannot crusade against war without crusading implicitly against the State. And we cannot expect, or take measures to ensure, that this war is a war to end war, unless at the same time we take measures to end the State in its traditional form. The State is not the nation, and the State can be modified and even abolished in its present form, without harming the nation. – Randolph Bourne 1918

You might not have been taught this in your history class, but the United States has had its nose in Middle East affairs for over 70 years now. Specifically, there are a few dates that this relationship has in its timeline:

  • 1957 – The Ba’ath Party is a small, underground Arab nationalist group that supports the creation of a pan-Arab state and at age 20, Saddam Hussein joins the party.
  • 1959 – Saddam is selected by the Ba’ath Party to be part of seven-man hit squad to assassinate Iraqi leader Gen. Abdel Karim Kassem. The plot fails.  Saddam flees to Cairo and becomes caught up in Egypt’s own revolution under the charismatic Gamel Abdel Nasser, whose pan-Arabism Saddam finds appealing. Saddam also becomes a leader of the Ba’ath Party’s student cell in Cairo and reportedly regularly visits the U.S. embassy to meet with CIA agents interested in sparking Gen. Kassem’s overthrow.
  • 1963 – Kassem is assassinated by members of the Ba’ath Party and the CIA helps the Ba’athists by providing lists of suspected communists for the party’s hit squads, who kill an estimated 800 people. Saddam returns home to Iraq and rejoins the party as an interrogator, torturer and killer. Nine months later, the army overthrows the Ba’ath Party and Saddam is jailed.
  • 1968 -The Ba’ath Party seizes power in Iraq, this time under Ahmad Hassan Al Bakr, Saddam’s cousin. Bakr entrusts his 31-year-old relative Saddam with the most important job of all: running the state security apparatus to extinguish dissent both inside and outside the party. Within a year and a half, Saddam emerges as Bakr’s right hand man. CIA connections are intact.
  • 1970s – As Saddam’s power and influence grows, it is clear that he has designs on the presidency himself, but he also knows that Bakr has powerful support from the army. Saddam begins to plot against the military establishment and to systematically remove Bakr’s closest colleagues.
  • 1979 – Saddam stages a palace coup and President Bakr resigns for health reasons. Among Saddam’s first actions after assuming the presidency is purging the Ba’ath Party of any potential enemies.Several weeks into his presidency, Saddam calls a meeting of the Ba’ath Party leadership and insists it be videotaped. He announces there are traitors in their midst and reads out their names. One by one, the individuals are led out, never to be seen again. Tapes of the meeting are sent throughout the country, allowing Saddam to send a message to the Iraqi elite.
  • 22SEP1980 – With U.S. encouragement, Hussein invaded Iran and during this costly eight-year war, the CIA built up Hussein’s forces with sophisticated arms, intelligence, training and financial backing. This cemented Hussein’s power at home, allowing him to crush the many internal rebellions that erupted from time to time, sometimes with poison gas. In one of the largest ground assaults since World War II, Saddam sends 200,000 troops across the Iranian border, initiating what would become a bloody eight-year conflict.
  • 1981 – When Ronald Reagan becomes president, he endorses a policy aiming for a stalemate in the war so that neither side emerges from the war with any additional power. But in 1982, fearing Iraq might lose the war, the U.S. begins to help. Over the next six years, a string of CIA agents go to Baghdad. Hand-carrying the latest satellite intelligence about the Iranian front line, they pass the information to their Iraqi counterparts. The U.S. gives Iraq enough help to avoid defeat, but not enough to secure victory.
  • 1986 -The Iran-Contra scheme is conceived by Reagan administration officials. Iran had been running out of military supplies in its war with Iraq and Reagan is advised that the U.S. could strike a deal in which secret arms sales to Iran could lead to the release of U.S. hostages held by pro-Iranian terrorists in Lebanon. Public exposure of the plan — which also involved illegally diverting the proceeds from the arms sales to the U.S.-backed Contras in Nicaragua — leads to the end of the U.S. policy. However, when Saddam learns of America’s actions, he vows never to trust the U.S. again.
  • 1987 – U.S. supplied chemical weapons are used when Iraqi forces unleash a devastating gas attack in the town of Halabja, killing an estimated 5,000 Kurds.
  • 1988 – Iraq-Iran War Ceasefire
  • 02AUG1990 – (Sec. of State) James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to Iraq to emphasize that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. Apparently, Saddam Hussein took those words as a green light to invade Kuwait.
  • 17JAN1991 – Gulf War I – one of the most egregious acts that the U.S. military committed against the Iraqis was to intentionally destroy civilian water and sewage treatment centers and electrical facilities.

  • 1994 – Clinton sanctions on Iraq most effective when massive water and sewage issues plague a country, diseases such as cholera, measles, and typhoid had led to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, and a skyrocketing infant mortality rate, with many more deaths by 2000.
  • 30JAN2002 – US President Bush labels Iraq as part of the “Axis of Evil”
  • 20MAR2003 – Based on a lie, that Iraq had WMDs, the US and their coalition partners invade Iraq. Why did we invade and occupy Iraq? We were told Iraq was strong and dangerous. We were told that sanctions were not working, and Saddam Hussein was not in compliance with the UN disarmament regime. We were told that Iraq was working on a viable chemical, biological and nuclear program, had many of these weapons already, and was also working with terrorists who targeted and would target the United States. It was suggested repeatedly in Presidential and Vice Presidential speeches, in statements by the Secretary of Defense and other administration mouthpieces that Saddam Hussein had something to do with the 9-11 attacks on the United States. While the Pentagon, CIA and State Department knew Iraq had no relationship with al Qaeda. Instead, we understood that they were competitors and adversaries on both governing and religious issues. Two things angered Osama bin Laden — US forces in Saudi Arabia, and a godless Ba-ath dictatorship in Iraq. We also knew that Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11!

  • 2007 – Iraq is a country that once had 26 million inhabitants, but two million have fled, two million more are internally homeless, and nearly a million have lost their lives since we invaded in 2003. The 80% who have homes remain huddled and fearful, often behind large walls that separate them from family and friend, in the name of ethnic purification, something that the U.S. military is actively pursuing because it tends to make for better statistics. Everyone in Iraq has been touched, and not in a good way, by our invasion and subsequent occupation.
  • 2008 – Iraqi power vacuum and Syrian regime change appears on CIA vision statements prompting the birth of ISIS
  • 2011 – ISIS grows during Arab Spring as CIA vision statements also talk about regime change in Libya
  • 2014 – US and other coalition troops re-enter Iraq to ‘battle’ ISIS in Iraq
  • 2020 – The US kills the Iranian general who was most effective against ISIS forces

Symptoms of codependency:

In its most basic terms, codependency occurs at one of the extremes of relationship dynamics – when two partners draw more from each other than from their own inner strength.
This is not a stable condition.
Codependency deepens as partner feedback tends to grow in importance and self-confidence steadily diminishes as a result.
The relationship becomes highly reactive and fraught, with mounting tensions. Invariably, one partner hits a limit and seeks a new source of sustenance.
This leaves the other feeling scorned, steeped in denial and blame, and ultimately with a vindictive urge to lash out in response.

Iraq, I ask you, are you there yet?

In Eric Margolis’ latest column he reminds us of what Osama bin Laden saw:

Before he was murdered, Osama bin Laden called this monster Baghdad embassy and its twin in Kabul, `crusader fortresses.’ That is indeed their role, and to serve as the nerve center for all Mideast operations by the US. Iraq enjoys some of the world’s largest oil reserves. Where the profit from Iraq’s mammoth oil exports go remains a closely guarded secret.

He goes on to talk about Iraq’s ‘rich’ history and experience going back 100 years even with the British when they were the imperialists of the day:

Imperial Britain ruled Iraq … using the RAF to smash all opposition to the British-installed puppet ruler in Baghdad. In the 1920’s Churchill even authorized the RAF to use poison gas against rebellious Iraqi Kurds (as well as Afghan Pashtun tribes).

True to form, the US abuses Iraq in a similar way:

Washington has imposed an air exclusivity zone there. Real control of flat, largely barren Iraq comes from the air. US war planes based there and in Qatar can blast anything that moves in Mesopotamia.

It is for the following reason that the US will not be quick to exit Iraq:

Iraq has become the central military base and inexhaustible oil reservoir for the US that was envisaged by the Bush administration and its neocons. That is a major step in the total US domination of the Mideast and its energy resources.

Iraq, have you hit your limit yet? To what degree will you go to remove the US from what should be your sovereign nation with the consent of the governed?

-SF1

When Desperation Demands a Plan “E” – What a Coup Can Do for You

I am a detail guy, so sometimes I get lost in the rabbit trails just 50 foot above the tree line doing my CSI work, but then there is something that demands that I soar to 10,000 foot or more to get a handle on the big picture. I wonder is that is what is behind the saying ‘can’t see the forest for the trees’?

Retired USAF lieutenant colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. has an article on Lew Rockwell today that helped me see the big picture. While I want to be aware of the details of life (micro and macro, local/state/national and global) I also do not want to be caught off guard by the trends.

Karen offers that there have been four major efforts so far in the coup that has split DC in two and a fifth effort that is already underway:

  • If the predictable election of 2016 fails to deliver the controllable neoconservative president,
  • if a pseudo-McCarthyite campaign against an economically recovering and energy-independent Russia fails again,
  • if putting your own guys in the National Security Council also fails, and
  • if an impeachment seems likewise doomed to peter out, what do you have left?

If you are a war-whoring, petrodollar-preserving, rapture-ready, neoconservative globalist…. well, you’re in luck!

  • President Pence is ready to step in.

Yes, the war party, the CIA/FBI/Deep State, a majority of Republicans and Democrats, the MIC , many evangelical Christians and all those that hate peace are aligned as never before. Their collective effort is focused to:

… stop Trump’s early promises to put America first, bring our troops home, secure borders, and spend the American taxpayer bounty on American production and infrastructure – have paved the way for a wholesale public acceptance of the neoconservative agenda.

If you doubt that these state-centric actors just happen to be able to align the stars and have MSM mimic its very words .. consider just one element of the apparatus that is a parasite to this country:

The CIA, now nearly 80 years old, has become a global power, with global influence. It should surprise no one that the CIA is also a major influence over US territory, the US Government, and the very opinions and perspectives of the average US citizen.  Media and entertainment, technology and communications, access to cash, total information awareness of our money, movements, thoughts and speech, with the complete opacity of its own budget and actions – all of this this is part of the CIA’s mission today.  If you thought it was just other country’s riots, assassinations and regime changes, you are behind the times.

Talk about power and influence .. and a whole lot of sociopaths all rolled into one, these people and this collective will not be going away any time soon, and they are not susceptible to the results of elections either (like anything is) .. but I digress.

Now about VP Mike Pence as a hedge to keep things status-quo back home in the old USA:

Mike Pence was a predictable vice-presidential choice.  A nondescript statist, evangelical “good” man, he served his role as a non-threatening, mildly competent second.  He would also be a fourth or fifth tier hedge against the uncontrollable populist and hearty sinner Donald Trump, a man who had never won an election in his life before 2016.  The CIA has decades of experience in choosing presidents, and vice presidents, manipulating both campaigns and popular opinion, creating crises on demand, and surveilling citizens and parties and candidates – in other countries.  The unexpected spontaneous and massive patriotic crowds convening for Trump throughout the 2016 campaign alone must have told the CIA what was written on the wall.  Even with then CIA Director Brennan’s assistance, and that of the FBI, Hillary couldn’t catch the imagination of voters, or bring them out to see her preach, even when she spoke in our native accents.

While Trump has been elusive enough combating the first four efforts listed above, there has been damage to what he can actually impact that would bring him anywhere close to what he promised on the election path:

In these four failures to bring down Trump, the deep state/CIA alliance has indeed achieved much, and won much. Trump has been constrained in his efforts to fulfill his most popular domestic initiatives, while the continued direct and indirect attacks on him in the mainstream, left-leaning “independent” and government media have worn down his popular support. Independents and libertarians who may have leaned Trumpward have all but peeled away and are looking at other parties and candidates. NeverTrumpers already favored Pence, and that was a major reason for his inclusion on the 2016 ticket. Troop deployments, Pentagon funding and interventionist wars have all been reignited.  The Federal Reserve, once a Trump target, is enthusiastically burning up the printing presses, with very little mainstream discussion and with Trump applauding, not auditing.  The upcoming nuclear destruction of Iran and the unleashing of a long wave of war and terror is just around the corner.

So if you are the CIA, you can’t just duplicate what you did in the 1950s (assassinate Iran’s elected president) or in the 1960s (rub out JFK who threatened to splinter the CIA into the wind) you have to get innovative:

Who will best serve the deep state/CIA/petrodollar empire in November 2020 and beyond? Trump, if he lives long enough will be re-elected by actual voters, and as a lame duck he may prove difficult. The Democratic field is split between reliable lackeys and unreliable ones, and while wars may be ensured, there’s nothing the CIA hates more than unpredictability. What to do with the gift of four failed domestic operations against Trump?

The answer is, devise a health event (mental or physical or both) that results in a sitting President Pence just in time for a reasonably short campaign, in a time of war, against an uninspiring array of old white man from a divided opposition party.

Plan E. This is the last resort the CIA has available up its sleeve. The common person on the street sees Trump and Pence as one in the same. Nothing could be further from the truth. I really hope we do not see the day when Pence is president, like Hillary, their view is the more war around the world, the better.

So how does this play into the incredible events of the last week when the US executive branch can just go drone a military leader of another country that we are not even “legally” at war with? You have to know the back story that MSM fails in their journalism to provide the American public:

… career operational CIA Gina “Chemical” Haspel and her sidekick, former 30-year CIA man, evidence destroyer, fellow torturer, and current CIA contractor Jose Rodriguez are already spending more time briefing and conspiring with Mike Pence than Donald Trump ..

There you go. When your VP starts to be involved in things without you, you have to know that something is up. In my mind, Trump has his hands full and has enemies at every turn. The only things that holds him back is:

  1. self-preservation (he knows the story of JFK)
  2. brainwashing (with neo-cons 360, he readily comes under their influence in time)

We have seen this full on with the decision to drone murder an Iranian general on a peace mission in Iraq and the Iraqi general host:

His manipulation into the assassination of Kassem Soleimani, who after defeating the stated US enemy ISIS in the region, was a messenger and architect of a detente in his last visit to Baghdad, but also representing another step away from the petrodollar, was pure CIA textbook.  Tell him what you want (true or not), nurture a sense of urgency, and know your target in order to psychologically manipulate him.

So like a tragic play, here we are on 11JAN2020 where Trump’s week ahead involves impeachment proceedings. I am sure that there is plenty of stress .. so …

… if Trump takes a break or sees a doctor now, our public suspicions of mental and physical incompetence are 100% confirmed, and we “expect” his imminent decline from the stage. The “surprise” strike on Soleimani has given the Senate a new “Constitutional” reason to be angry with Trump, so it improves the chances of a serious trial, and even removal from office. It’s a win-win because even if not removed, the Senate trial, and Trump’s predictable reaction to it, will serve to explain away a stroke, embolism, heart attack, or mental breakdown, all leading to a welcome peacefulness and stability of an ascendant Mike Pence.

Just know that Karen’s last line was pure sarcasm. I guess all us veterans have this baked into our character as a result of our experiences.

I am not a fan of Pence as you probably can tell. A dangerous man because he fully buys into the zeal, passion and noble cause to usher in the “End Times” on an express lane.

Pence, an evangelical neoconservative who deserves to be President as it is surely God’s Will, will also need support from his deep state friends Gina Haspel and Mike Pompeo. He will have it in spades. The warfare-welfare empire is saved for another day.

The anticipated fallout of a Pence presidency:

Property values will continue to rise in the five counties surrounding D.C., Americans will continue to get poorer and angrier, and in their frustration and fear, many will even demand more state assistance, and probably a draft. A new kind of draft, whereby soldiers can “earn” student loan debt relief, and the like. Socialism, American-style, who can oppose that? What fun we can expect under a Pence presidency, and I give him a second and maybe even a third term.

This is not said to scare anyone, just a reality check on what kind of America to expect in the 2020s with someone like Pence (or Hillary) driving.

It is my grand-kids who I would weep for, another generation of cannon fodder for the war party elite to use and abuse.

When will this cycle ever stop?

-SF1

Almost 17 Years Ago, This SWAT Team Knocked Down My Door – They Are Still Here and Will Not Leave

So back in 2003, this SWAT team busted down my door because they claimed I had a very dangerous illegal weapon. In the process, the house was almost totaled, many of my family died, but as time went on they kept claiming they were making our family safe and free. Sure they bought an oven and then a fridge BUT they are the ones that use those appliances the most. The electrical is still flaky as we lose power for seconds or minutes a few times a week. There was a time when they claimed they left in 2007 or so but by 2014 they were back using the oven and fridge again. It seems they have a thing for our neighbor too, swearing at them at every opportunity and robbing them of their Amazon packages off the porch. They have also claimed that they were bad people so that others would not deal with them, and would not sell them things they need to them and their kids.

Just last week was the icing on the cake. They not only killed our uncle right in our house, but killed the next door neighbor’s uncle who happened to be in our home too! That was the last straw, we told them to leave but they said F*** Y**, we want to renegotiate our “partnership”.

Are you kidding me? Stay in this abusive relationship where no one knows who will get killed next and the house never gets fixed to the point it was in 2003? I don’t think so. Look at my house back in the day:

Look at my relatives in my home:

I hope you know by now this is not MY house, but the nation of Iraq.

The SWAT team that has stayed in control in this abusive one-sided relationship is the US Empire. They flat out refuse to leave!

From Moon of Alabama:

Iraq’s caretaker prime minister asked Washington to start working out a road map for an American troop withdrawal, but the U.S. State Department on Friday bluntly rejected the request, saying the two sides should instead talk about how to “recommit” to their partnership.

Main stream media (MSM – propaganda arm of the US Empire), specifically the Associated Press (AP) got it all wrong then they claimed:

… the move was “stoked by the American drone strike on Jan. 3 that killed top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani”. The move was stoked five days earlier when the U.S. killed 31 Iraqi security forces near the Syrian border despite the demands by the Iraqi prime minister and president not to do so. It was further stoked when the U.S. assassinated Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes, the deputy commander of the Popular Militia Forces and a national hero in Iraq.

No s**t .. confusing Iran and Iraq again .. just like their confusion between Shia and Sunni .. but I digress.

The [US] State Department issued a rather aggressive response to Abdul-Mahdi’s request:

America is a force for good in the Middle East. Our military presence in Iraq is to continue the fight against ISIS and as the Secretary has said, we are committed to protecting Americans, Iraqis, and our coalition partners.

Notice the order, just like the police protect themselves 1st, the US Empire also protects itself 1st .. and that is where the partnership is not nor will ever be equal. The US Empire is not “protecting” Iraq, they are projecting through Iraq in this region to continue to interfere in Iran and Syria.

Iraq continues to be used and abused in this relationship. Trump implies that when he thought that extending NATO to the Middle East .. oh yeah, what the Middle East “needs” is another dysfunctional “partner”.

Epic BS on the part of the war party in DC who all love the profits and lobbyists money from MIC and job security for the CIA while keeping the CIA black budget funded from Afghanistan poppy fields.

Peace out

-SF1