Rising death toll after US retaliatory strikes on Syria and Iraq

The reported death toll after US airstrikes on Syria and Iraq has risen to at least 45. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the strikes on dozens of targets killed at least 29 people in Syria. Authorities in Iraq claim at least 16 were killed there. Iraq and Syria warn of dire consequences for the region.

Baghdad on Fire: On the front line of Iraq’s Tishreen protest

 

Tiba joins Iraq’s youth protests where she braves bullets and tear gas with the hope of reclaiming her nation.

After a lifetime of conflict in Iraq, 20-year-old Tiba joins the October 2019 protests. She is amazed to see so many young men and women gathering from across the nation.

Iraq’s Muqtada al-Sadr: The messaging and the mayhem

 

How much is Muqtada al-Sadr’s influence and messaging power threatening the Iraqi state? Plus, the Russia-Ukraine conflict – as seen from space.

It has been a year of mounting crises in Iraq and influential Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr has taken advantage of the most recent one with a clever communications strategy spanning from sermons to social media.

Cracking down on the human trafficking of women in Iraq

 

A special police unit in Baghdad is dedicated to bringing the perpetrators of human trafficking to justice.

The trafficking of young women for prostitution is a problem across the world.

But in Iraq, it has reached such proportions that a special police unit in Baghdad is now dedicated to bringing the perpetrators to justice.

The Deminer: Kurdish Iraq’s legendary bomb disposal expert

 

Fakhir Berwari was a bomb disposal expert who disarmed thousands of landmines across Iraq.

A father of eight and a Kurdish officer who served in Iraq’s armed forces is on a mission to disarm thousands of mines with just a pocket knife and a pair of wire clippers.

Between the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and the chaos and destruction wreaked by ISIL more than a decade later, Fakhir Berwari’s unwavering bravery saved thousands of lives in Iraq.

The Deminer tells Fakhir’s story through raw and visceral amateur footage captured on a camcorder by his soldiers.

Iraq - Destruction of a nation (1/4) | DW Documentary

 

In the early 1980s, Saddam Hussein launches a full-scale invasion of Iran. The move kicks off decades of war in the Gulf region, a period marked by lies, manipulation and countless deaths.

Turkey stops flying citizens of Iraq, Syria, Yemen to Belarus

 

Iraq’s Joker

 

A story of hope, friendship and sacrifice in pursuit of a new Iraq.

October 2019 marked the beginning of the largest grassroots protests in Iraq’s modern history.

The so-called October Revolution was driven by young people who came of age in the post-Saddam Hussein era, but whose dreams for a better future did not materialise because of a ruling class they saw as corrupt and beholden to foreign interests.

Trump Pardons 20, Including Contractors Who Killed Civilians

 Trump issued a series of 20 pardons and sentence commutations this week — among the most shocking were 4 men behind a 2007 massacre in Iraq that left 14 innocent people dead.

30 years after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait the reverberations continue

It’s 30 years since Iraq’s army under Saddam Hussein invaded neighbouring Kuwait and changed the course of history. The crisis marked the start of the first Gulf War, as the United States under George Bush senior intervened to drive Iraq’s forces back across their own border.

Blackwater's Erik Prince: Iraq, privatising wars and Trump

Mehdi Hasan challenges the Blackwater founder on his firm's role in Iraq and his new plan to privatise the Afghan war.

Trump complains war hero dog ‘got more publicity’ than him during feverish rally speech

How insecure is Donald Trump?  During his most recent Nurnberg style rally he actually complained that a dog awarded a metal for bravery in Iraq received more recognition than he did.  Only a true malevolent narcissist would publicly whine about the adulation given to a dog who saved lives in a war zone.  Yet, that's exactly who Donald Trump is. A man so lacking in confidence,  maturity and empathy that he would bash on and on about a dog and the media coverage it received.   

Trump whips up base at Arizona rally, laying into rivals and expressing hero dog envy

Donald Trump derided his Democratic 2020 rivals at his latest wild campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona, on Wednesday night, pushing an election rigging conspiracy theory, calling the FBI “dishonest scum” and complaining that Conan, the US military’s war hero dog, “got more publicity” than him.

Mosul after ISIS | DW Documentary

Mosul, Iraq, was finally liberated from ISIS in July 2017 after nine months of devastating battle. The city is the second largest in Iraq, and it was here that the Caliphate was proclaimed in 2014. A look at the situation in Mosul today. The rule of so-called Islamic State has left deep scars in Mosul. Thousands of buildings were reduced to rubble during the fight to regain the city from the armed group. Some say the battle in Mosul on 10 July, 2017 was the most serious combat operation since World War II.

The Soleimani Assassination | Start Here

The assassination of Iranian Major General Soleimani by the US military has relations between Washington and Tehran hitting a new low.

US President Donald Trump says the assassination was necessary to prevent an imminent threat but Iran's leaders and allies say the killing represents an act of war.

Was the attack legal? And how will Iran respond? Start Here tackles the big questions.

Soleimani assassination: US airbase in Iraq hit by rockets in retaliation

An airbase housing US troops in Iraq has been hit by rockets, according to the US Department of Defence.

Iranian state TV says the attack is a retaliation after the country's top commander Qasem Soleimani was killed in a drone strike in Baghdad on Friday, on the orders of US President Donald Trump.

The Al-Asad base has been hit by multiple rockets.

The White House is monitoring the attack.

It is unclear if there have been any casualties.

"We are aware of the reports of attacks on US facilities in Iraq. The president has been briefed and is monitoring the situation closely and consulting with his national security team," White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.

When he authorized the attack that killed Gen. Qasem Soleiman Donald Trump was thinking that it would show the world that he was, indeed a tough guy.  He truly believed that Iran would cower in a corner to frightened to launch a retaliatory strike against American military assets.  He was wrong.  Donald Trump no student of history is, by ratcheting tensions with Iran is confirming to its citizens at large that America will never respect its sovereign rights.  America created the Iran of today by allowing the CIA to overthrow the only democratically elected government the country has ever know and replaced it with an repressive authoritarian government led by the Shah of Iran.     

Is war with Iran a price Trump is willing to pay to buy the silence of John Bolton and Mike Pompeo?

Mark Sumner

Daily Kos Staff

We have a chicken-and-egg problem. Only in this case, the chicken is Trump’s desire to wag the dog to distract attention from his impeachment by ramping up hostilities in the Middle East. The egg is … interesting. The egg is the long-standing desire of two of those most entangled in the Ukraine scandal to launch a war with Iran. This time, we know the egg came first.

Both former national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are deeply involved in Trump’s efforts to extort political favors from Ukraine—so much so that Bolton is one of the four men sought by Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as a witness for the Senate trial.

As the scandal unfolded, it was Bolton who was the boss of both Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and Dr. Fiona Hill. He was there for the meetings in which Ambassador Gordon Sondland made clear the connections between Trump’s demands and assistance to Ukraine. It was Bolton who both sent Vindman to see the National Security Council lead attorney and described events in Ukraine as a “drug deal.”

Meanwhile, it was Mike Pompeo who was the actual boss of not just Sondland but also Ambassador Kurt Volker—two out of “three amigos.” It was Pompeo who stood aside when Rudy Giuliani smeared Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. It was Pompeo who turned a deaf ear to warnings from Ambassador William Taylor. It was Pompeo who repeatedly undermined his own department to support the extortion scheme.

Truthful testimony from either man is the one thing that could easily turn Trump’s Senate hearing from a test of how quickly Mitch McConnell can fling down a gavel to a genuine threat of removal from office. In fact, either Bolton or Pompeo could call a press conference at any time and utterly sink Trump by simply filling in the very narrow blanks in what the public already knows about Trump’s Ukraine scheme. That means that they, along with acting chief of staff and OMB Director Mick Mulvaney, have tremendous power over Trump.

Bolton and Pompeo have long agreed on one thing: They want a war with Iran. In giving them that war, was Trump reaching for the only distraction he knew would be big enough to keep anyone from looking too closely at the ever-strengthening case for his removal, or was everything that’s happened in Iraq over the last week the payoff for the silence of men who have Trump under their thumb? Was it both?

As The Washington Post pointed out on Monday, Pompeo has been beating the war drum on Iran for years, and he was still beating that drum even as Trump prepared to let the missiles fly. Pompeo had already pushed for Trump to launch attacks against Iran and Shiite militia groups in the summer of 2019, following the downing of a U.S. drone. That time it didn’t work.

But this time Trump was willing to launch a war because a single contractor had been killed. That’s despite the fact that there are an unknown number of contractors in Iraq and at least 1,569 had been killed prior to the death on Dec. 27. Despite the fact that there are thousands of contractors still in Iraq, a fact that’s often used to disguise the real scale of ongoing U.S. involvement when officials talk about “only 5,000” military personnel. 

What made this contractor the last straw? What could possibly have happened in the last six months of 2019 that made Trump so much more willing to go into a conflict with Iran? Well … impeachment happened. The testimony of multiple witnesses describing Trump’s scheme and his use of Rudy Giuliani to drive a campaign of corruption. That happened. 

More recently, what happened is that a number of emails appeared showing that Trump was continuously involved in withholding assistance to Ukraine. In fact, sources have made some of this information available in an unredacted form that makes it clear that Trump acted directly and repeatedly, over objections that what he was doing violated laws concerning the distribution of congressionally approved funding.

There’s no doubt that Trump needed a distraction. Based on Trump’s willingness to engage in similar distractions in the past, and the fact that his Twitter account is littered with many, many pieces of evidence that Trump believed starting a war with Iran would be a boost for a politician seeking re-election, there may not be a need for any other reason—if it can be called reason—for his actions.

Except … Bolton and Pompeo. It’s quite a damned coincidence that the people in a position to squeeze Trump got just what they wanted, just at the moment that best serves Trump.

Trump’s stated reasons for launching a series of attacks against Shiite militia bases in Iraq and Syria was that an American contractor had been killed and four American soldiers injured. Injured “badly,” according to Trump. However, two days after the event, all four of the soldiers were back on duty, and two weeks later the public knows absolutely nothing about the contractor. It might be understandable that a name wasn’t released … but who was this person? Were they a doctor providing flu shots to Iraqi kids? Were they a planner helping with the local water supply? Or were they a Blackwater mercenary on site as “security”? It seems more than just odd that we don’t have that answer. That we, in fact, know almost nothing about the attack which supposedly formed the raison d'être for everything that has happened over the last two weeks.

Trump’s stated reason for killing Iranian general Soleimani was an “imminent threat” generated by a plan in progress. Except, said Trump, “we caught him.” But that idea seemed little short of ludicrous from the beginning, and as Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi made clear over the last two days, the “imminent threat” idea didn’t fit with either what Trump was telling him or what was actually happening on the ground in Iraq, where Soleimani seemed to be part of negotiations to actively de-escalate the cycle Trump fueled with the air strikes on Dec. 29. Faced with Abdul-Mahdi’s statements, even Pompeo seems to have dropped the idea that the strike against Soleimani thwarted some immediate threat, falling back on multiple variations of the idea that the general was simply a bad guy who had done bad things in the past and deserved to be killed.

The excuses Trump has made for his actions don’t begin to hold water. But there are more genuine reasons for bringing the world to the brink of war than just a distraction.

So which came first? Was it wagging the dog, or silencing the witnesses?

Donald Trump The Petulant Know Nothing

As per usual with the immature, insecure, unschooled occupant of the White House everything revolves around his own personal feelings and inadequacies.   On Saturday in series of bellicose tweets the mango moron threatened to destroy 52 cultural sites of importance to Iranians.  The 52 is in reference  to the 52 Americans taken hostage when the U.S. embassy was stormed following the Islamic Revolution.   While most thought that the orange menace was projecting his supposed tough guy bullying persona in making those threats; well they were wrong.  It seems that he is prepared to commit war crimes as prescribed under international law and treaties if he followed through with his threats.  Speaking to pool reporters on Air Force One he continued with his insistence that his statements from the previous day were en fact U.S. policy.

   Trump’s comments suggest he was making no idle threat when, on Saturday night, he tweeted that the US has “targeted 52 Iranian sites ... some at a very high level & important to Iran & Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD.”Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One a day later, he sought to offer a justification. “They’re allowed to kill our people,” Trump said, according to a pool report. “They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn’t work that way.”

Then turned his ire on Iraq for passing a resolution requesting the withdrawal of all American forces from that country.

He also turned his ire on Iraq after that country’s parliament passed a resolution calling on the Iraqi government to expel US troops. “We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that’s there,” he said. “It cost billions of dollars to build. Long before my time. We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it.
“If they do ask us to leave, if we don’t do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever. It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame.”

Qassem Soleimani killing: Could Iran and US go to war?

Assassination of Iran's top army commander by US sparks fears of a major military confrontation.

The killing of General Qassem Soleimani, who led the elite Quds Force in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was ordered by US President Donald Trump.

A US air raid hit his convoy near Baghdad International Airport on Friday.

The assassination marks a dangerous escalation in US-Iran tensions.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned there would be "harsh revenge".

A senior Iraqi official also died in the attack, and all Americans have now been advised to leave Iraq because of the threat of reprisal attacks.

Iran's Qassem Soleimani killed in US airstrike in Baghdad airport

Nighttime incident occurred amid tensions with the US after Iraqi protesters attacked the US Embassy in Baghdad.

General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds force, has been reported killed alongside six others following a US airstrike at Baghdad's international airport.

Iraqi officials and the state television reported that aside from Soleimani, Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was killed in the attack.

Ahmed al-Assadi, a spokesman for Iraq's Popular Mobilisation Forces umbrella grouping of Iran-backed militias, also confirmed the attack.

Is Iraq becoming a battleground between Washington and Tehran?

Angry protesters stormed the US embassy in Baghdad after the US attacked an Iranian-backed paramilitary group.

There were dramatic scenes at the United States embassy in Iraq as supporters and members of the Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) surrounded the compound in Iraq's capital, Baghdad.

Their demand: an end to American intervention in the country. 

They threw rocks and set fires outside and security personnel responded with tear gas.

The US then deployed marines to secure the compound, before the protesters' leaders told them to withdraw.

President Donald Trump has blamed Iran for the demonstrations - Tehran denies being involved.