Newsweek Editors' Iraq Knowledge

The Iraq war, at least insofar as numbers are concerned (i.e. money spent, lives lost etc...) is the most important conflict in which the United States has engaged since the second world war. Yet a Newsweek article that ran on February 24, 2008, entitled, Kurdish Battles, Grynville Byford, writes with authority that Iraqi President's name is Jalal Barzani and that the other Kurdish leader in Iraq is Mustafa Talabani!

What Mr. Byford meant was Jalal Talabani, the head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Regional government who happens to also be the son of the late Musrafa Barzani. Let's do this one more time Newsweek:

Massoud Barzani: President of the Kurdistan Regional Government and head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party
Jalal Talabani: Iraqi President and Secretary-General of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
Mustafa Barzani: deceased since 1979, father of Mr. Massoud Barzani and once the head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party

Alright let's assume that Byford messed up, why were his facts not checked by the editors of Newsweek? Why are these clowns considered "experts" when they make these big mistakes?

It's not a type, it is arrogance. Newsweek subscribers do not care about these things, all these leaders are the same to them. They are classified into "good guys" and "bad guys," or even more simplified than that, "the guys that like us" and "those who hate us."

Wake up America, these people may be just Ayrabs to you, but without them, you cannot win the war on terrorism.

Oh Samantha

When I was in college I came across a book called, "A Problem from Hell, America and the Age of Genocide, the author was Samantha Power. If I remember correctly, the book documented the acts of genocide from the Armenian one and up to the conflict in the Balkans, but what bothered me about the book was Power's insistence that America could have done something in preventing all these genocidal campaigns. In a way these Cambridge liberals criticize America by believing, wrongly so, that America can do whatever it wants.

I saw Power once at Harvard, she was giving a public lecture... not too long after that, I saw her name pop up in Time Magazine as one of the top 100 most important people. Then Barack Obama hired her as a foreign policy adviser for his campaign, certainly Power must have dreamt of being the next Condi Rice where, instead of teaching about Darfur to Harvard undergrads, she would be pointing the finger at Omar Bashir's face on behalf of the world's only superpower.

But that dream came to an abrupt end after Ms. Power was reported calling Senator Clinton a "monster," as a result, Samantha Power had to quit her post... I got something to tell Samantha Power whom I admire, it doesn't matter, Obama is not gonna become President anyway and while Hillary is sightly better than Obama, you were not entirely wrong on calling her that.

Oh Bama Please

Whoever said politics isn't fun is just crazy because how much better does it get when you open your email and see a message like this:

Vahal,

You should be ashamed of yourself, George Bush has killed hundreds of thousands of your people and here you are rooting for some neocon scumbag who is the same as Bush.

On the other hand, Obama is a true revolutionary who will restore America's credibility around the world, he is the "Black Lincoln."

Dave

First of all the only person who has killed hundreds of thousands of my people was Saddam and he is now worm food, thanks to George Bush, secondly the fact that McCain is like Bush is exactly why I support him. And while you may define necons to be latter-day fascists, I see them as visionaries who GET IT.

Oh Dave, when I read, "Black Lincoln," I thought of the car, you know the couches that airport services, not because I am naive but because I was so desperately hoping you did not mean Abe Lincoln.

Since I am a devout admirer of Lincoln, I thought I'd put this following together for you and of course, for my and my readers' entertainment:

Obama: We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued and they must be defeated.

By appeasing the terrorists and withdrawing from Iraq?

Lincoln: In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war

Obama: We're not going to baby sit a civil war.

Obama: The issues are never simple. One thing I’m proud of is that very rarely will you hear me simplify the issues.

When your whole campaign is a senseless four word sentence, "Change We Can Believe," that's pretty damn simplifying...

Obama: Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek

I gotta say, what?

Obama: What Washington needs is adult supervision.

Well you look like a frat boy, so you can hardly market yourself by talking about adult supervision.

Obama: A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, "Huh. It works. It makes sense."

Huh? Yes, I guess I should just nod.

Obama: With the changing economy, no one has lifetime employment. But community colleges provide lifetime employability.

That's why you went to Columbia Community College for your undergraduate studies and Harvard Community College for law school?

Obama: If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress.

Deep.

Obama: I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.

Sure you are...

Obama: Faith is not just something you have, it's something you do.

Naughty boy...

Lincoln: I have not permitted myself, gentlemen, to conclude that I am the best man in the country; but I am reminded, in this connection, of a story of an old Dutch farmer who remarked to a companion once that 'it was not best to swap horses while crossing streams'

Lincoln: Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.

Yes, your opposition to the "dumb war" of 2003 was nothing short of denying the Iraqis freedom.

Lincoln: I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me

Now that is humility, that is leadership

Lincoln: Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

Think about it...

Fast Forward to the Winter of 2017

President John McCain, after having served two terms is about to give his farewell address. The eighty year old President wakes up on this January morning and wants to forget all that comes with being President, he wants to forget the daily breakfast meetings with the CIA director, he forgets all the phone calls he had to make to world leaders on a daily basis, he forgets about the hundreds of hours he spent on board Air Force One and remembers with a smile a comment he made at a town hall meeting in Derry, New Hampshire some nine years ago.

The comment in question has to do with US involvement in Iraq for "100 years..."

The past eight years were certainly more about global terrorism than they were about abortion, school vouchers, Mexican immigration or conservative judges. Iraq has been a powerful partner in battling this global threat. In the past eight years, the US has found in Iraq an ally that is more useful than Israel, more resourceful than Turkey, far more democratic than the now-fragile Arab dictatorships.

The war is far from over, much of the Muslim world is in a clash between fundamentalism and democracy, but one thing is certain, America's partnership with Iraq will outlive all those who mocked the then Senator from Arizona and now outgoing US President John McCain.

On another note, Google has just bought the New York Times to, well destroy it, claiming that paper (especially useless NYTimes editorials) are now obsolete.

Obama Does Not Get It

I recently had a conversation with an Iraqi friend of mine based in Baghdad who asked me a question that is not uncommon on the Arab street these days, "Is America ready for a black president?"

I did not know how to answer him in a manner where I would not sound like a brainwashed Americanized Iraqi, so I gave him a brief lecture on the history of Afro-Caucasian relations in the United States, from the days of slavery and up to the Civil Rights movement, through the civil war, and through Jim Crow. I told him that more Americans died during the civil war than any other war in which America has been engaged. It was only then when I told him that by and large Americans now see people as individuals and not as members of racial groups, that Americans have, with few unimportant exceptions, grown out of the black and white debate.

So yes, the America I have known and loved is more than ready for a black president, it just isn't ready for Obama.

There is a common Arabic saying that goes, "لكل زمان دوله ورجال" roughly meaning, "for each age, there is a different state and set of men." This age is that of terrorism, a global war waged by militant Islamists against, not just Americans and Europeans, but rather against everyone who does not share their bloody ideology. It is an age of one superpower, that superpower must, for the duration of this conflict be led by men and women who fathom the gravity of global Jihad.

A man like Obama who, in the heart of his heart thinks that modern Jihadists are products of the American occupation of Iraq are not fit for leadership. For the Jihadists, Iraq is just one stop in a series of destinations in pursuit of their ultimate goal of establishing or as they say resurrecting a caliphate where eight year old girls would be married off to sheikhs, where pagans and polytheists would be slaughtered, where music and poetry would be banned, where access to the outside world would be cut off, where liberals would be publicly hanged. I am not exaggerating, an Islamic caliphate would make Stalin's Soviet Union like modern day Norway.

The 44th President of this great union must be a man or a woman who would continue to keep the terrorists on the run, continue to support democratic forces in the Muslim world.

Forget about November as the clear choice then would be, John McCain, for now, I wholeheartedly endorse Senator Clinton against Obama.

Meet the New Republican Party

To date, Republican voters in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Washington state and DC, Oklahoma, Maryland and Virgina have given the senator from Arizona, John McCain the thumps up for presidency of the United States.

Sorry Mr. Limbaugh but this is the new Republican Party, I am not saying this, Republicans across this land are saying this, from New York and California to the "heartland," Republicans are saying one thing, "we want McCain." They say that because they get it, we live in a world where terrorists want to kill everyone of us, those who put white sheets over their heads and burn crosses and those who read the New York Times at San Fransisco's coffee shops.

Limbaugh, Malkin and a few other ultra conservative observers have voiced concerns over McCain not being "conservative enough," well fortunately for America and unfortunately for these xenophobic freaks, the Republican Party is the Party of Republicans and not some fat racist sitting behind a mic or some self-hating Asian with an identity crisis.

This is the new Republican Party, the party that wants to defeat political Islam, the party that wants to support new democracies in the Muslim world, the party that sees in the new Iraq a partner for the war on terrorism. Again I am not saying this, the majority of the Republicans across America are saying this, they say it through the ballot boxes.

So Mr. Limbaugh please stop saying "our party" because the Republican party ain't your party, you keep barking about abortion, taxes and school vouchers and let the real Republicans such as McCain defeat global terrorism.

But we've gotta move on, congratulations Senator McCain for the Potomac victory.

Shady Obama May Have Had a Connection with Saddam

On October 22, 2002, some five months before the start of the most just war, most moral war, most ethical war since WWII, the war against Saddam Hussein, Barrack Obama, then state senator of Illinois delivered a far from moving speech at an anti-war rally in Chicago where the then 41 year old politician who surely knew that he was destined for the national stage made it very clear that he was not a pacifist, repeatedly stating, "I am not opposed to all wars."

Obama did acknowledge that Saddam was bad, but went on to say that he (Saddam) posed no immediate threat to the US national security, adding this, "I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars."

Dumb war?

I am sorry Senator, perhaps in your twisted world it is considered "dumb" to free a chained people, it is considered "dumb" to rid the world of bad guys, it is considered "dumb" to go after a man without whom the world is a much better place. But in my world such actions are actually pretty damn bright!

But the moment of truth came when Senator Obama, towards the end of his speech addressed Bush with this message:

You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians , stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells.

What? I am no fan of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but surely the rulers of the two countries treat their people and their economies far better than Saddam ever did. This part of the speech is very telling because Obama was certainly not against the war because of moral reasons, he was against it because Bush was for it.

But that was not the only reason...

We now know that Antoin "Tony" Rezko, the Syrian-born Chicago real estate developer was one of the financial sources of Mr. Obama and likely an important reason why Obama has seen so much success in the past few years.

Rezko, the man from whom Obama enjoyed kickbacks and likely much more was, we now know very close to another wealthy Arab, a man named Nadhmi Auchi, Iraqi British billionaire who was once very close to Saddam Hussein. Last week, Iraqi expert, Nibras Kazimi had this to say about Auchi's Saddam connection:

Back in the opposition days, the name “Nadhmi Auchi” was just another front for Saddam’s intelligence service, or so we thought. Auchi (…a Chaldean Christian; there’s a Muslim family by that name too) knew Saddam intimately enough in his youth to the point of conspiring together to pull off an assassination attempt on Soviet-leaning Iraqi strongman Col. Abdul-Karim Qasim in 1959. Auchi was considered one of Saddam’s guys, who mysteriously left his job in the Ministry of Oil to start a business in Luxembourg with school-pal Nasseer ‘Abid (…Shia from Nassiriya). Auchi’s brothers stayed behind in Iraq and fixed deals with their brother to bring oil industry spare parts, but one of them got too greedy and went too far—from the regime’s perspective—in hoarding kickbacks and was executed over corruption charges in the mid-1980s on Saddam’s personal orders. Yet, even after this, Auchi maintained a connection to Saddam, according to what we in the opposition believed at the time.

A very reliable source of mine who knows Auchi very well disputes any intelligence or money laundering roles that Auchi may have performed on behalf of Saddam, but then again, had that been true, enough people would have formed a different impression about Auchi and this stigma of him being one of Saddam’s ‘secret men’ would have faded away—but it never did. What is certain is that Auchi never turned against Saddam even after his brother was murdered, and may have stuck to the Ba’athist talking points when talking politics.

It is unclear whether Nadhmi Auchi maintained a connection with Saddam, but here is what's clear, he never spoke against Saddam, even at a time when the Saddam regime was dying, even now, when it is dead.

And here is another bit of interesting information, during the oil-for food days, the only bank that took care of the $64 billion OFF transactions was BNP (Banque Nationale de Paris-Paribas), as of 2001, one of the largest shareholders of BNP was Nadhmi Auchi.

Obama knows Razko, Rezko knows Auchi, Auchi knows Saddam.

Obama's anti-war (but "not all wars") stance may have well stemmed from Auchi, or at least it is worth pondering, not to mention asking the now Democratic front runner directly.

Mr. Rezko was recently arrested in his Illinois home for charges of "receipt and disbursement of $3.5 million wire transfer." That wire came from a Lebanese bank account from Mr. Auchi.

It gets better...

Late last month, James Bone of the Times (UK) wrote that in May of 2005, a Panamanian company called Fintrade Services lent Barrack Hussein Obama's fundraiser a loan, that company's executive director is surprise, surprise, Ibtisam Auchi, Mr. Nadhmi's wife.

For a 47 year old, Obama is too shady a character.

John McCain, the New Leader of the Free World

On a chilly day in Washington DC in mid December of 2006, I had just voted in the out-of-country voting for a permanent Iraqi legislature (council of representatives). It was that same day, December 15, 2006 that I, and a handful of other Iraqis had gone to meet with President Bush at the White House. After the meeting I spotted Senator McCain in the lobby of the White House sitting on a chair outside of the entrance of the Oval Office. He was there with Senator Warner waiting to meet with the President to discuss, I later read in the news, the US position on prisoner interrogation. Perhaps it was the purple stain in my index finger that led the senator from Arizona to get up from his chair and walk to me, he shook my hand and congratulated Iraq and Iraqis on this milestone achievement. He told me that such an event (Iraqi elections) makes America proud.

Please don't take me for anyone special, I am just an average Iraqi American who realizes the significance of America's continued commitment to battling Jihadists.

I will use this blog to record my thoughts on John McCain's campaign trail, especially vis-a-vis his admirable position on the the efforts in Iraq.

Stay tuned...