How Russia Will Eventually Kick the US out of Iraq

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How Russia Will Eventually Kick the US out of Iraq

Earlier this week I wrote about a strange occurrence in Iraq, involving a Russian machine gun loaded with Iranian ammunition, that was found mounted on an American tank. The Iraqi military had apparently lent this vehicle to a Shia militia (against the orders of the US Government), who wasted no time equipping it with the weapons they had acquired from their Iranian and Russian allies. All signs suggest that this event is a harbinger of things to come.

The Iraqi government happens to be an awkward transitory phase with their foreign policy. They are currently being supported by both the United States and the Russian-Iranian alliance. As we speak, there are two Russian generals stationed in an intelligence center in Baghdad, and Iranian advisers are helping the Iraqi military direct their war against ISIS. Iraqi officials have even said that they would welcome Russian airstrikes in their country, and they want a “full blown military alliance” with Russia, Iran, and Syria.

As you might expect, the United States isn’t taking this news very well. In fact, they’ve recently given the Iraqi government an ultimatum: It’s us or them.

The U.S. has told Iraq’s leaders they must choose between ongoing American support in the battle against militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and asking the Russians to intervene instead.

Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday that the Iraqis had promised they would not request any Russian airstrikes or support for the fight against ISIS.

Shortly after leaving Baghdad, Dunford told reporters traveling with him that he had laid out a choice when he met with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi earlier Tuesday.

“I said it would make it very difficult for us to be able to provide the kind of support you need if the Russians were here conducting operations as well,” Dunford said. “We can’t conduct operations if the Russians were operating in Iraq right now.”

Of course, this has less to do with our ability to work alongside the Russians, and more to do with our willingness. It’s also very telling. We didn’t tell the Iraqi’s that they can’t under any circumstances, work with the Russians. Like a scorned lover in an unfaithful relationship, we delivered a final, impotent demand to our former puppet regime. “You have to choose between him or me.”

Five years ago there wouldn’t have been a choice. We could just tell the Iraqi government what to do, and they had to fall in line because their country was such a mess. Our military was the only thing keeping the crazies from burning their nation to the ground.

But after we left, their country burned anyway. It was clear that they needed real help, and they’ve found it with Russia. We can longer tell them what to do because they’re in a desperate situation, and we no longer have the military prowess to boss them around, or to save them. That’s why our demands are so revealing. We’re no longer in a position to give orders. Russia’s campaign in the Middle East has revealed that our military is a paper tiger in the region.

So far the Iraqi government hasn’t made a decisive choice. They probably want to ditch the Americans, but they can’t quite bring themselves to do it. Here’s what Iraq’s Prime Minister had to say on the matter.

Reuters reports that the U.S. ultimatum to Iraq puts Abadi in a difficult position, as his own country’s ruling political alliance and some powerful Shiite groups have been pushing him to request Russian air support.

The news agency said a proposal to request Russian strikes had been put to Abadi last week, but that he was yet to respond.

“Abadi told the meeting parties that it wasn’t the right time to include the Russians in the fight because that would only complicate the situation with the Americans and could have undesired consequences even on long-term future relations with America,” Reuters quoted a senior Shiite politician close to Abadi as saying.
He says he wants to maintain a long-term relationship with the US, but his willingness to work with our government’s enemies would suggest otherwise. However, they can’t afford to lose America’s support, at least not yet.

I suspect that they’re trying to decide on which superpower to side with, but the Russian-Iranian alliance isn’t quite ready to give them their full support. Their military forces are still tied down in Syria. So for now, Prime Minister Abadi is stuck with the Americans and their limited help, while he quietly allows Iraq’s militias to work with our Cold War enemy. Some help is better than no help, I suppose.


However, if the Russian’s successfully defeat all of the rebel factions in Syria, including ISIS, then all bets are off. They’ll be able provide full military support for Iraq, in which case their government will be able to kick our personnel out of the country, and welcome their new friends. The Russian-Iranian alliance will be able to finish what they started in Syria, and mop up what’s left of our proxy forces. At that point, everything our government has worked for in the Middle East will completely unravel, as well it should.

Guess Who is Behind the Islamic State: Israeli IDF Colonel Leading ISIS Terrorists Arrested in Iraq

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Guess Who is Behind the Islamic State: Israeli IDF Colonel Leading ISIS Terrorists Arrested in Iraq

“The security and popular forces have held captive an Israeli colonel,” a commander of Iraq’s popular mobilization forces said on Thursday.

“The Zionist officer is ranked colonel and had participated in the Takfiri ISIL group’s terrorist operations,” he added.

Noting that he was arrested along with a number of ISIL terrorists, the commander said, “The Israeli colonel’s name is Yusi Oulen Shahak and is ranked colonel in Golani Brigade of the Zionist regime’s army with the security and military code of Re34356578765az231434.”

He said that the relevant bodies are now interrogating the Israeli colonel to understand the reasons behind his fighting alongside the ISIL forces and the presence of other Zionist officers among ISIL terrorists.

The Iraqi security forces said the captured colonel has already made shocking confessions.

Several ISIL militants arrested in the last one year had already confessed that Israeli agents from Mossad and other Israeli espionage and intelligence bodies were present in the first wave of ISIL attacks on Iraq and capture of Mosul in Summer 2014, but no ranking Israeli agent had been arrested.

Political and military experts told FNA that the capture of the Israeli colonel will leave a grave impact on Iraq’s war strategy, including partnership with Israeli allies.

In a relevant development in July, Iraqi volunteer forces announced that they had shot down a drone that was spying on the Arab country’s security forces in the city of Fallujah, Western Iraq.

Iraq’s popular forces reported that they had brought down a hostile surveillance aircraft over the Southeastern Fallujah in Anbar Province.

They said that the wreckage of the ISIL’s spy drone carried ‘Israel-Made’ labels.

This was not the first Israeli-made drone downed in Iraq.


In August an Israeli Hermes drone was shot down in the vicinity of Baghdad Airport.

Blair promised UK support to US in Iraq 1 year before invasion – report

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Blair promised UK support to US in Iraq 1 year before invasion – report

Former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, committed the UK to joining the US invasion of Iraq a year before it began, a newly disclosed White House memo reveals.
The US documents obtained by the Daily Mail and published on Sunday are part of the batch of emails from the private server of former US State Secretary, Hillary Clinton, which US courts have made her disclose.

Among the leaked papers is one written in March 2002 by former US Secretary of State Colin Powell to then-President George W. Bush, where he said: "On Iraq, Blair will be with us should military operations be necessary…He is convinced on two points: the threat is real; and success against Saddam will yield more regional success."

Meanwhile, at the time Blair was quoted by the British media as saying that “this is a matter for considering all the options,” and “we’re not proposing military action at this point in time.”

The document was written a week before the famous meeting between Bush and Blair at the Crawford ranch in Texas, where the latter for the first time signaled his readiness to support military action in Iraq.

In the note titled “Secret …Memorandum for the President,” Powell also said that “the UK will follow our lead in the Middle East.”

According to the document, Blair also was going to provide Bush with “strategic, tactical and public affairs lines that he believes will strengthen global support for our common cause.” It added that Blair has the presentational skills to “make a credible public case on current Iraqi threats to international peace.”

Five months after the meeting at the Crawford ranch, the British government published a dossier on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD), claiming that Saddam Hussein possessed chemical and biological weapons and even had a nuclear weapons program. This dossier was one of the reasons for US invasion to Iraq and later all its claims were proved to be false.

The newly disclosed documents also reveal that Blair agreed to act as de facto PR person for Bush and convince skeptical lawmakers and public that Iraq posed a real and imminent threat. He also reportedly suggested “how to… handle calls for UN Security Council blessing.”

In response, Blair wanted the US to treat the UK as an equal partner in a “special relationship” aiming to boost his public support, the new media report said. In one of the documents, Powel wrote Bush that Blair wanted to minimize “the political price” of joining the US in its Iraqi campaign, adding that the PM’s voters “will look for signs that Britain and America are truly equity partners.”

The new revelations sparked a wave of criticism of Tony Blair’s actions among the British politicians.

“The memos prove in explicit terms what many of us have believed all along: Tony Blair effectively agreed to act as a frontman for American foreign policy in advance of any decision by the House of Commons or the British Cabinet,” said former Conservative Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, as quoted by The Daily Mail.

“He was happy to launder Bush’s policy on Iraq and sub-contract British foreign policy to another country without having the remotest ability to have any real influence over it … for George Bush pretending Blair was a player on the world stage to impress voters in the UK,” he added.

Scottish National Party foreign affairs spokesman and the former Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond, said on Sunday that “the evidence against Blair is piling up” and the “net was now closing” around him, eported the Guardian.

“The memo contradicts claims from Mr Blair that all that time he had been seeking diplomatic ways to avoid an invasion. It also adds weight to the evidence given by Sir Christopher Meyer, the former UK ambassador to the United States – to the Chilcot inquiry – that the military timetable and preparation for invasion took precedence over any diplomacy and specifically over the timetable for the weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix,” Salmond said.

"The illegal invasion of Iraq has been unequivocally proven as a fraud and a massive deception by Tony Blair and the then UK Labour government," he said as quoted by the Mail.

READ MORE:Chilcot to apportion Iraq blame far beyond Tony Blair’s inner circle

At the same time, Blair’s spokesperson claimed that the content of the newly revealed documents corresponds with both the former prime minister’s public statements at that time and to what he told the Chilcot inquiry investigating the circumstances of the 2003 Iraq invasion. However, Blair previously repeatedly denied that he was planning military action in Iraq before the invasion.

In 2010, Blair told the inquiry that, before the invasion, he said that the UK would only join the US “in confronting and dealing with this threat” referring to Iraq.

"I think what he took from that was exactly what he should have taken, which was if it came to military action because there was no way of dealing with this diplomatically, we would be with him," Blair told the investigation.

The newly disclosed documents could potentially lead to calls for reopening the inquiry into the circumstances of the Iraq invasion, although the chair of the investigation, Sir John Chilcot has recently announced that he was ready to publish a final report. At the same time, he continues to avoid announcing an exact publication date.

READ MORE: 2003-2011: Half million Iraqis died in war, occupation

Last month, Chilcot said he would consult with Prime Minister David Cameron in order to set a timetable for publication.

In the meantime, relatives of British soldiers that lost their lives in Iraq threaten to file a legal complaint if the report is not published by December, BBC reports.

The UK participated in the US-led coalition that invaded Iraq in 2003 without a UN mandate on the premise that they would find WMD, although such weapons were never discovered there. The invasion and subsequent occupation claimed the lives of more than half million Iraqis only between 2003 and 2011 and cost the UK lives of 179 British soldiers.

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Iraqi Birth Defects Worse than Hiroshima

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Iraqi Birth Defects Worse than Hiroshima

(warning: graphic images) 


The United States may be finished dropping bombs on Iraq, but Iraqi bodies will be dealing with the consequences for generations to come in the form of birth defects, mysterious illnesses and skyrocketing cancer rates.

Al Jazeera’s Dahr Jamail reports that contamination from U.S. weapons, particularly Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions, has led to an Iraqi health crisis of epic proportions. “[C]hildren being born with two heads, children born with only one eye, multiple tumours, disfiguring facial and body deformities, and complex nervous system problems,” are just some of the congenital birth defects being linked to military-related pollution.

In certain Iraqi cities, the health consequences are significantly worse than those seen in the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Japan at the end of WWII.

The highest rates are in the city of Fallujah, which underwent two massive US bombing campaigns in 2004. Though the U.S. initially denied it, officials later admitted using white phosphorous. In addition, U.S. and British forces unleashed an estimated 2,000 tons of depleted uranium ammunitions in populated Iraqi cities in 2003.

DU, a chemically toxic heavy metal produced in nuclear waste, is used in weapons due to its ability to pierce through armor. That’s why the US and UK were among a handful of nations (France and Israel) who in December refused to sign an international agreement to limit its use, insisting DU is not harmful, science be damned. Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s refusal to release details about where DU munitions were fired has made it difficult to clean up.


Today, 14.7 percent of Fallujah’s babies are born with a birth defect, 14 times the documented rate in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Fallujah’s babies have also experienced heart defects 13 times the European rate and nervous system defects 33 times that of Europe. That comes on top of a 12-fold rise in childhood cancer rates since 2004. Furthermore, the male-to-female birth ratio is now 86 boys for every 100 girls, indicating genetic damage that affects males more than females.

(On a side note, these pictures are rather sanitized compared to other even more difficult to look at images. See here if you can bear it.)


If Fallujah is the Iraqi Hiroshima, then Basra is its Nagasaki.

As Grist’s Susie Cagle points out, “That’s potentially a more than 4,000 percent increase in the cancer rate, making it more than 500 percent higher than the cancer rate in the U.S.“

Dr. Mozghan Savabieasfahani, an environmental toxicologist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, told Jamail that “These observations collectively suggest an extraordinary public health emergency in Iraq. Such a crisis requires urgent multifaceted international action to prevent further damage to public health.”

Instead, the international community, including the nation most responsible for the health crisis (hint: it starts with a “U” and ends with an “S”), is mostly ignoring the problem.

To make matters worse, Iraq’s healthcare system, which was once the envy of the region, is virtually nonexistent due to the mass exodus of Iraq’s medical doctors since 2003. According to recent estimates, there are currently fewer than 100 psychiatrists and 20,0000 physicians serving a population of 31 million Iraqis.


Dahr Jamail was on Democracy Now this morning discussing the horrific effects of military-related pollution in Iraq:

Yanar Mohammad, President of the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq was also on Democracy Now and addressed the toxic legacy of birth defects in Iraq.