We must remember that this is the same Iraqi government the US government and General David Petraeus favored over the Sunni's and Iran helped put into power.Cort ----------------------- Iraqi Government Rejects US Strike on Syria, Fears Civil War<http://www.juancole.com/2013/09/government-rejects-strike.html>
Posted on 09/02/2013 by Juan Cole In his speech on Saturday on the Syria crisis, President Obama instanced Iraq among the countries that might suffer if the Baath regime were allowed to get away with using chemical weapons. The elected government of Iraq, however, says thanks but no thanks. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki categorically rejects a Western strike on Syria. Sectarian struggles lie behind this reaction. The Iraqi government has announced that it wont permit the US<http://www.syria-news.com/readnews.php?sy_seq=162613> to fly over Iraqi territory in the course of any operation against Syria. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, of the Shiite Islamic Call party,<http://alhayat.com/Details/547184> has forcefully rejected any outside attack on Syria. His government is said to fear that a US strike on Syria will produce social chaos that stretches from the Sunni areas in Syria into Anbar province (with its Sunni majority).<http://alhayat.com/Details/547184> <http://alhayat.com/Details/547184> <http://alhayat.com/Details/547184>Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari<http://www.alhurra.com/content/war-syria-baghdad-consequences-/230985.html> admitted that Iraq was unable to stop the weapons flow from Iran to Syria. Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the hard line Sadr II bloc among Shiites, completely rejected any Western strike on Syria. <http://www.sotaliraq.com/mobile-news.php?id=113838>Unlike most Iraqi Shiites, al-Sadr supports the Syrian revolution and says Syria should have free and fair elections so as to create a truly representative government. But al-Sadr reminded Syrians of the disasters visited on Iraq by sectarian faction-fighting and by American military occupation, and urged them to avoid both. Al-Sadr called for the Iraqis peacefully to demonstrate against any prospect of a US strike on Syria. The radical Shiite group Asaib ahl al-Haqq<http://arabic.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=9205168195> threatened retaliation against any US strike. In contrast, the Iraqiya Party that represents most Iraqi Sunnis is in favor of US military intervention against Syria. <http://www.reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.juancole.com%2F2013%2F09%2Fgovernment-rejects-strike.html> 0Retweet<http://twitter.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.juancole.com%2F2013%2F09%2Fgovernment-rejects-strike.html&text=Iraqi+Government+Rejects+US+Strike+on+Syria%2C+Fears+Civil+War> 3Share <http://www.juancole.com/#> 3Google +1<http://www.juancole.com/2013/09/government-rejects-strike.html> 1StumbleUpon <http://www.juancole.com/#>0Printer Friendly<http://www.juancole.com/#>Send via email<?subject=%22Iraqi%20Government%20Rejects%20US%20Strike%20on%20Syria,%20Fears%20Civil%20War%22%20on%20Informed%20Comment&body=Link:%20http%3A%2F%2Fwww.juancole.com%2F2013%2F09%2Fgovernment-rejects-strike.html%20%0D%0A%0D%0A----%0D%0A%20In%20his%20speech%20on%20Saturday%20on%20the%20Syria%20crisis,%20President%20Obama%20instanced%20Iraq%20among%20the%20countries%20that%20might%20suffer%20if%20the%20Baath%20regime%20were%20allowed%20to%20get%20away%20with%20using%20chemical%20weapons.%20The%20elected%20government%20of%20Iraq,%20however,%20says%20thanks%20but%20no%20thanks.%20Prime%20Minister%20Nuri%20al-Maliki%20categorically%20rejects%20a%20Western%20strike%20on%20Syria.%20Sectarian%20[...]> Posted in Uncategorized <http://www.juancole.com/uncategorized> | Leave a Comment<http://www.juancole.com/2013/09/government-rejects-strike.html#respond> How Americas Espionage Empire is Paid for: The Black Budget (Queally)<http://www.juancole.com/2013/09/americas-espionage-queally.html> Posted on 09/02/2013 by Juan Cole *Jon Queally writes at Commondreams.org*: In the latest revelation made possible by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the *Washington Post* on Thursday published an investigative analysis<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/black-budget-summary-details-us-spy-networks-successes-failures-and-objectives/2013/08/29/7e57bb78-10ab-11e3-8cdd-bcdc09410972_story.html> andinteractive map<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/black-budget/> of America's so-called "Black Budget" which details the $52.6 billion allotment of taxpayer money that funds the government's "intelligence-gathering colossus" that has previously remained insulated from the eyes of the American public. Though a series of revelations have flowed from the Snowden leaks over recent months, this is the first detailed financial picture of how public monies are used to fund programs that Americans still know very little about. Critiqued as a "collect it all" strategy<http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/07/15-1> by those concerned about Constitutional and privacy violations, the vast surveillance network has been slammed at home and abroad. According to the *Post,* the "Black Budget," maps a bureaucratic and operational landscape that has never been subject to public scrutiny. Although the government has annually released its overall level of intelligence spending since 2007, it has not divulged how it uses those funds or how it performs against the goals set by the president and Congress. The 178-page budget summary for the National Intelligence Program details the successes, failures and objectives of the 16 spy agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, which has 107,035 employees. The summary describes cutting-edge technologies, agent recruiting and ongoing operations. The Washington Post is withholding some information after consultation with U.S. officials who expressed concerns about the risk to intelligence sources and methods. Sensitive details are so pervasive in the documents that The Post is publishing only summary tables and charts online. A view into what the newspaper terms the US "espionage empire," the blueprint and summary documents obtained by the Post "provides a detailed look at how the U.S. intelligence community has been reconfigured by the massive infusion of resources that followed the Sept. 11 attacks" in 2001. According to the reporting, the $52.6 billion far-exceeded estimates about the amount of money being spent on clandestine spying and surveillance operations and that figure does not even include an additional $23 billion specifically geared to CIA and NSA operations done in direct support of the U.S. military. In addition to providing what is repeatedly referred to as an "unprecedented" look inside the financial operations of the both the CIA and the NSA, the summary report leaked by Snowden also shows the enormous rate of operational growth at the CIA in the last decade, including a "surge in resources for the agency funded secret prisons, a controversial interrogation program, the deployment of lethal drones and a huge expansion of its counterterrorism center." In an additional and ironic twist, the documents trace the development of internal counterterrorism efforts at the NSA and how to prevent sensitive leaks from occurring "from within" the US intelligence system. As the *Post* reports: The document describes programs to mitigate insider threats by trusted insiders who seek to exploit their authorized access to sensitive information to harm U.S. interests. The agencies had budgeted for a major counterintelligence initiative in fiscal 2012, but most of those resources were diverted to an all-hands, emergency response to successive floods of classified data released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks. For this year, the budget promised a renewed focus . . . on safeguarding classified networks and a strict review of high-risk, high-gain applicants and contractors the young, nontraditional computer coders with the skills the NSA needed. Among them was Snowden, then a 29-year-old contract computer specialist who had been trained by the NSA to circumvent computer network security. He was copying thousands of highly classified documents at an NSA facility in Hawaii, and preparing to leak them, as the agency embarked on a security sweep. _____________________________________________ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License - Mirrored from Commondreams.org<http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/08/29-4> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[email protected]?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
