The ridiculous Michele Flournoy tried to suck it up and write "Iraq is a testament to Obama leadership" (POLITICO). Flournoy recently left the Defense Dept. and now holds a ceremonial post in Barack's re-election campaign. She left the Defense Dept. because she was not promoted to Secretary of Defense. A truth teller would be addressing that publicly and noting how she felt there was a glass ceiling at play. Instead, Flournoy plays the good foot soldier for the man who betrayed her and thinks that gives her 'one of the boys' cred.
It doesn't. It just makes her a joke.
The same way her ridiculous column does.
Iraq is a testament to Barack's incompentence. Violence has increased. Iraqis live in fear. The religious minorities are fleeing at a faster rate than they were in all of 2010. Human Rights Watch notes that Iraq "is slipping back into authoritarianism." Most telling is the targeting of Iraqi youth.
Iraqi Emo youths are being targeted by the government. They're being killed with cement blocks and with the approval and endorsement of Nouri al-Maliki. Nouri al-Maliki never nominated anyone to head the Ministry of the Interior deciding he'd head it 'briefly' (which has now lasted 15 months). Last month, a statement attacking and demonizing the Emo youth went up on the Ministry of the Interior website. It was only taken down last week. That's on Nouri.
As are his efforts to demonize his political opponents, demanding Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi be arrested for terrorism, demanding Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq be stripped of his post. As former Ambassador Feisal Istrabadi explained in December ["Does Maliki Want to Become Unchallenged Ruler of Iraq?" (PBS NewsHour; text, audio and video)]:
What has been happening in Iraq in the last 24 hours cannot be seen in isolation. For the past 12 months, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has refused to appoint a permanent minister of defense. That was supposed to be one of the portfolios that went to the Iraqiya coalition. They have nominated six people for that position. Each one of them has been rejected. He has appointed a member of his own coalition, the prime minister's own coalition, as acting minister of defense. He is acting as minister of the interior. And one of his cronies is acting minister of state for national security. He has cashiered career officers and appointed cronies to senior officer positions in the armed and security forces in Iraq. In other words, the prime minister has under his control as we speak all the instrumentalities of state security in Iraq. I'll remind your viewers that, in the early 1970s, this is precisely how Saddam Hussein came to power at the time. What we -- I think Iraqis, with our history, we have to be overly cautious when we see similar actions occur as have occurred in our relatively recent past. Strength in the new Iraq must be through constitutional democracy, and not through harassment and intimidation.
And Nouri? That's on Barack Obama.
In March 2010, Iraqis turned out to vote. This followed weeks of Nouri insisting that this Iraqiya candidate was a terrorist or that one was and having them pulled from the list of candidates, Iraqiya candidates were even killed -- killings that never resulted any arrests by Nouri's government (you do the math), they were demonized and Nouri was supposedly going to overwhelming beat all opponents with his State of Law political slate. Quil Lawrence (NPR) was so convinced of that he went on air and declared Nouri the winner of the election. But you gotta wait for the votes to be counted, Quil.
First place went to Iraqiya. That was the people's choice. Iraqis used the ballot box to ask for a change. They made their feelings known.
And yet they're still stuck with Nouri.
That's Barack Obama's fault.
War Whores like Michele and Samantha Power made the decision that the US could get the oil draft passed and other things they wanted via Nouri and that it would be too much work to start over with someone new.
So piss on Iraqis, so f**k democracy, none of it mattered. All that mattered was what Barack Obama wanted.
Again to Iraq's former Ambassador Istrabadi, discussing Iraq with host Warren Oleny on KCRW's To the Point in December.
The critical mistake the Obama administration made occurred last year when it threw its entire diplomatic weight behind supporting Nouri al-Maliki notwithstanding these very worrisome signs which were already in place in 2009 and 2010. The administration lobbied hard both internally in Iraq and throughout the region to have Nouri al-Maliki get a second term -- which he has done. Right now, the betting there's some question among Iraq experts whether we'll ever have a set of elections in Iraq worthy of the name. I mean, you can almost get odds, a la Las Vegas, on that among Iraq experts. It's a very worrisome thing. What can they do in the future? Well I suppose it would be helpful, it would be useful, if we stopped hearing this sort of Happy Talk coming from the administration -- whether its Jim Jeffreys in Baghdad, the US Ambassador or whether it's the president himself or other cabinet officers. We're getting a lot of Happy Talk, we're getting a lot of Happy Talk from the Pentagon about how professional the Iraqi Army is when, in fact, the Iraqi Army Chief of Staff himself has said it's going to take another ten years before the Iraqi Army can secure the borders. So it would help, at least, if we would stop hearing this sort of Pollyanna-ish -- if that's a word -- exclamations from the administration about how swimmingly things are going in Iraq and had a little more truth told in public, that would be a very big help to begin with.
Iraq is a testament to Barack Obama's craven lies and desperation. It's not a shiny example but deceit and only a War Whore would claim otherwise.
"Why? I want to know why?" Michele cried months ago to Robert Gates when she learned she wouldn't be his replacement. While we don't celebrate the sexism of the Obama administration we take great joy in knowing that the War Whore whose actions have destroyed so many was reduced to tears by someone and that War Whores don't always get what they want.