In Baghdad, Kerry threatens US military action

Speaking at the end of a day-long series of meetings in Baghdad, US Secretary of State John Kerry warned Monday that President Obama could order military strikes against Sunni militants without waiting for the political restructuring of the Iraqi government that Washington has been demanding. Kerry underscored the debacle facing the regime of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which has lost control of a third of the country’s territory to a Sunni uprising headed by the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Shams (ISIS), an Islamic fundamentalist group with roots in Al Qaeda. Indicating that US military action could come quickly, Kerry said that any decision by Obama to order an attack should not be considered an act of “support for the existing prime minister or for one sect or another.” Pentagon officials also announced Monday that the Iraqi government had agreed to provide immunity from prosecution for all US military personnel deployed to Iraq in the course of the present crisis. This was the principal issue that blocked the conclusion of a Status of Forces Agreement between the US and Iraq in 2011, leading to the complete removal of all US troops from the country.

xymphora ■ The destruction of Iraq: Cui bono?

Mike Whitney ■ Splitting up Iraq: It’s All for Israel ■ [The] Obama people [...] want to partition the country consistent with an Israeli plan that was concocted more than three decades ago. The plan was the brainstorm of Oded Yinon who saw Iraq as a serious threat to Israel’s hegemonic aspirations, so he cooked up a plan to remedy the problem. Here’s a blurb from Yinon’s primary work titled, “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties”, which is the roadmap that will be used to divide Iraq.

SCGNews ■ Israel Helps ISIS with Airstrikes Against the Syrian Government || Yesterday Israel launched airstrikes against Syria yet again, hitting at least military targets and killing several Syrian soldiers. These strikes were supposedly in response to a cross border rocket attack that left an Israeli teenager dead at the Golan Heights border. The reality of the matter however, is that there is no evidence that the Syrian government had any involvement in the initial rocket attack, and it is far more likely to be the work of the Syrian rebels. The irony here, is that by launching airstrikes against the Syrian government in response to an attack that was most likely carried out by the Syrian rebels, Israel is actually encouraging future attacks like this. It's easy for the rebels to launch missiles across into Israel, and Israel's response is essentially free air support. So clearly it is in the rebel's interest to shoot over into the Israeli side as often as possible.