That’s some Minority Report shit right there.
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Unsurprising that Iraqis, still struggling to recover from the latest American invasion and ongoing occupation of their own country, are unenthusiastic about becoming the battleground for yet another American proxy war against Iran.
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The U.S. currently has around 5,000 troops stationed in Iraq.
And how many contractors?
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Unfortunately, that’s the default with him.
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ISWYDT
(Them being mercenaries, profiteers and the like.)
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Yes, how many of them are running around, a private law unto themselves?
Iraq is theoretically an allied nation, but client state is closer to the US attitude. (Ooh, how about “protectorate”?)
What American profiteers and their private armies do in the shadows probably accounts for a lot of the bad feelings from the Iraqi militia.
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Or lobbing a few missiles at Saudi Arabia. It has the advantage for Iran’s leadership of being perceived as doing something against the hated enemy (and US ally) but also makes it difficult to be a pretext to an outright shooting war with the US.
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Jeremy Scahill: Yeah, tell me about it.
(It seems to be his primary area of expertise.)
On August 3, 2016 — just three months before Donald Trump would win the Electoral College vote and ascend to power — Blackwater founder Erik Prince arranged a meeting at Trump Tower. For decades, Prince had been agitating for a war with Iran and, as early as 2010, had developed a fantastical proposal for using mercenaries to wage it.
At this meeting was George Nader, an American citizen who had a long history of being a quiet emissary for the United States in the Middle East. Nader, who had also worked for Blackwater and Prince, was a convicted pedophile in the Czech Republic and is facing similar allegations in the United States. Nader worked as an adviser for the Emirati royals and has close ties to Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince. . . .
According to the New York Times, the purpose of the meeting was was “primarily to offer help to the Trump team, and it forged relationships between the men and Trump insiders that would develop over the coming months, past the election and well into President Trump’s first year in office.”
One major common goal ran through the agendas of all the participants in this Trump Tower meeting: regime change in Iran.
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BTW, on the theme of Van Riper’s “swarm the carriers with small/fast/cheap/expendable attack craft” tactic, the Iranian Navy has a bunch of these:
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Thread:
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Let’s see, from top to bottom we have a chemical weapons production facility, an arms depot, and a “baby milk factory”. Seems legit.
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In another context this whole piece reads like a shitty excuse for beating up your girlfriend. It’s not his fault, she made him do it, she should have been nicer, she knows what he’s like when he’s had a few…
Ffs, don’t be surprised when deliberate provocation provokes a reaction.
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True.
OTOH, if your response to the invasion of Poland begins with a critique of Pilsudski’s Colonels, you are not helping.
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Meanwhile, I wonder what’s going on in the shadows in Iraq? When the US-installed central government collapsed and ISIS seized some of the oil production, I had the impression that behind them were a lot of ex-Ba’athist political/military types running their own private game.
Is there a private war of oligarchs and gangsters that isn’t being reported?
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