War

Cease fire and peace talks in Ukraine.

Obama's legal justification for assassinating Americans.

"The Obama administration justified using drones to kill Americans suspected of terrorism overseas by citing the war against al-Qaida and by saying a surprise attack against an American in a foreign land would not violate the laws of war, according to a previously secret government memorandum released Monday.

The memo provided legal justification for the September 2011 killing in Yemen of Anwar Al-Awlaki, an al-Qaida leader who had been born in the United States, and another U.S. citizen, Samir Khan. An October 2011 strike also killed Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, al-Awlaki's teenage son and also a U.S. citizen.

The memo, written by a Justice Department official, said the killing of al-Awlaki was justified under a law passed by Congress soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The law empowered the president to use force against organizations that planned, authorized and committed the attacks."

The Constitution is never mentioned in this article. Nor this one.

"The Justice Department memo "confirms that the government’s drone killing program is built on gross distortions of law", said Pardiss Kebriaei, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights who challenged the Awlaki killing, who added that the "forced transparency comes years late"."

The highest law of the land doesn't matter to these guys.

2005 article called Iraq War Bush's folly.

Articles refute neocon's blame of Obama for losing Iraq. One thing missing in all this blame of Obama is Obama negotiated hard to keep US troops in Iraq past 2011, but the Iraqis rejected that plan.

"Defense Secretary Leon Panetta expressed hope Monday that the United States and Iraq can soon reach agreement on a possible U.S. military training role in Iraq beyond Dec. 31, when all American troops are scheduled to depart.
Panetta's remarks contrasted with indications from a senior Obama administration official and a senior U.S. military official on Saturday that the U.S. is abandoning plans to keep any troops in Iraq past the year-end withdrawal deadline — other than about 160 troops who would be attached to the U.S. Embassy.
Panetta and other top U.S. officials have pressed the Iraqis for months to decide whether they want a substantial U.S. military training mission in 2012. During his first visit to Baghdad as Pentagon chief in July, Panetta appeared exasperated by the Iraqis, at one point saying, "Damn it, make a decision.""

So much for his baloney that Obama abandoned Iraq. He didn't want the war to end. He tried to extend the war the same as he extended the war in Afghanistan two years from 2014 to 2016.

Claim that sectarian rifts in Iraq were almost nonexistent until Saddam, then the US stoked them.

"The most serious sectarian and ethnic tensions in Iraq’s modern history followed the 2003 US-led occupation, which faced massive popular opposition and resistance. The US had its own divide-and-rule policy, promoting Iraqi organisations founded on religion, ethnicity, nationality or sect rather than politics."

Another failure of central planning. Criticism of the US dividing Iraq along sectarian lines, first by firing all the Sunnis, is legion.

Another idea why government fails so spectacularly.

"In a recent discussion I had with Scott Horton on his radio show, we speculated as to why the White House, which surely includes very many smart, hard-working, and responsible people, just cannot seem to recognize the cognitive dissonance inherent in supporting contradictory policies in places like Syria. Supporting the “rebels” in an effort that will likely fail to bring down the government in Damascus only prolongs the suffering of the Syrian people, while, if by some chance the insurgents actually did win, it would mean the death of the once-vibrant Syrian Christian community and the likely installation of a fundamentalist terrorism-supporting regime in the heart of the Arab world that would make its counterparts in Saudi Arabia and Iran look positively libertarian. And that support comes at the immediate price of the bloody disintegration of neighboring Iraq.
We eventually came to the conclusion that the staffs in large bureaucracies are not necessarily selected for their independence of mind. Quite the contrary, they rise to the top because they learned in grade school to get along well with others, which in practice means that groupthink will always prevail even if it is highly illogical and in the long run damaging to genuine interests. Combine that with an essentially reactive foreign policy, and you have a formula for coming to the wrong conclusion nearly every time."

That's being generous. It fails to mention competing self-serving interest.

"I can assert without any fear of contradiction that clandestine source reporting can be as bad as what one reads on just about any site on the Internet, and is often considerably worse than what appears in the newspapers. This bias in favor of reporting produced by the “community” induces a tunnel vision on the part of intelligence analysts that has belatedly led to a debate about the value of open sources versus the tightly controlled version of reality that prevails in security clearance land."

I like open source intelligence.

"Unfortunately, government bureaucrats don’t really see the quality of finished intelligence as an information issue. They tend to take steps to shut out unwelcome reports rather than including them and weighing their validity. This is because their prime objective is to control the story being fed to the public and the media."

Now he's getting into competing self-interest.

US sponsors terrorism in Middle East by supplying and arming ISIS.

"What is unfolding is a process of “constructive chaos”, engineered by the West.  The destabilization of Iraq and its fragmentation has been planned long ago and is part of the ”Anglo-American-Israeli ‘military road map’ in the Middle East”, as explained in 2006 in the following article"

Just like I wrote.

"Attempts at intentionally creating animosity between the different ethno-cultural and religious groups of the Middle East have been systematic. In fact, they are part of a carefully designed covert intelligence agenda.
Even more ominous, many Middle Eastern governments, such as that of Saudi Arabia, are assisting Washington in fomenting divisions between Middle Eastern populations. The ultimate objective is to weaken the resistance movement against foreign occupation through a “divide and conquer strategy” which serves Anglo-American and Israeli interests in the broader region.”"

Israel wants to reduce the Middle East to stone age factions fighting among themselves, and the US is helping because it also protects the petro-dollar.

ISIS funding shows a state being born.

"“The view of Charles Lister at the Brookings Doha Center is that ISIS is largely able to fund itself. ‘ISIS has made an effort to establish networks in society that generate a continuing flow of money.’ As an example, Lister points to the systematic extortion conducted by ISIS in the recently conquered city of Mosul.
“‘The exortion affects small businesses and big companies, construction firms, and if the rumors are true, even local government representatives,’ Lister told DW. ‘In addition, it’s suspected that the organization levies taxes in the areas that it completely controls – for example Raqqa in northeastern Syria.’”
Is there really any difference between taxes and extortion? The case of ISIS suggests that there isn’t. A proto-state behaves like a state by extracting revenues from those in its territory of control. ISIS also behaves like a state in grabbing resources, such as the oil in northern Syria, and in looting. The methods being used are age-old."

Give me your money, or else.

"“‘It’s assumed that ISIS pays the foreign fighters in its ranks, but perhaps it pays all its troops,’ according to Charles Lister. ‘In the areas under ISIS control, the organization subsidizes bread, water, and fuel, and also finances the maintenance and operation of basic public services. All that costs money.’”"

A nice socialist-fascist proto-state.

ISIS threatens to nuke Israel.