‘Bye-’Bye, Nouri al-Maliki, We’re (NOT!) Going To Miss You

Former Iraqi dictator Nouri al-Maliki, the U.S.-installed successor to Saddam Hussein (who was himself helped by the U.S. for many years, which aided his extermination of leftists and Kurds, his war on Iran, his gas attacks, and more), practically had to be dragged out the door, but has finally left under his own power, more or less.

Let’s review some history. The U.S. supported Saddam Hussein, one of the numerous horrendously brutal dictators, complete with baroque House of Horrors torture chambers, that the U.S. has supported through the 20th (and now 21st) century. The CIA gave him names of people to exterminate when he was consolidating his power. The U.S. allowed companies to sell the precursor chemicals for poison gases. During Hussein’s war of aggression against Iran (U.S. media routinely blacks out the fact that Iraq invaded Iran, with an eye to stealing territory and oil) the U.S. provided targeting information, including for gas attacks on Iranian soldiers. When Hussein gassed Kurdish villages, not only didn’t the U.S. condemn it, but the “Defense Intelligence Agency,” a Pentagon version of the CIA created by war criminal Robert McNamara, issued an “intelligence report” pretending to “prove” that IRAN had gassed those villages! (So you see how cynical it was when later on the Bush II regime fabricated excuses to invade Iraq, some reasons given were the gassing of Kurds, the aggression against neighbors, the tortures, etc.)

After the invasion of 2003, the Bush regime plan was to hand the country over to the embezzler/con artist/disinformation purveyor Ahmed Chalabi. That proved nonviable, so Bush asked the invariably incompetent Zalmay Khalilzad for a name, someone to be “prime minister.” An exiled conniver named Nouri al-Maliki was Khalilzad’s answer. (The fact that Bush installed Maliki in power is also taboo to mention in the U.S. media, for some reason. Too “partisan,” I guess! Funny, the Democrats don’t mention it either! Maybe they enjoy being political punching bags.)

Now Maliki is being blamed (mostly correctly) for the present crisis in Iraq, due to his extreme sectarianism, political war on non-Shiites, and dictatorial rule.

His last few acts were using his air force to bomb Sunni cities, which of course led directly to the rise of those Islamonazis who now call themselves the “Islamic State.” [1] When it came to actual fighting, his army proved unwilling to risk their lives for him, fleeing from a few thousand ISIS gunmen and providing them the gifts of U.S.-supplied armored vehicles and artillery with GPS targeting capability. (That’s what happens when you put incompetent cronies in charge of the military and steal the soldiers’ salaries.) Then he threatened to sue the new president for failing to name a prime minister (Maliki himself) fast enough. When the president named someone else, Maliki called it “unconstitutional” and had his gunmen deploy in a menacing fashion. But with everyone deserting him- his own party, the U.S., Iran too- he finally was able to read the gigantic neon sign on the wall that said “STEP DOWN NOW MALIKI!”

He had been demanding a large contingent of bodyguards and cash to leave. We’ll see how that shakes out.

Maybe he can go into exile in Iran. Or in Crawford, Texas. George Bush has a ranch there. Bush can put him up.

So long, Nouri. Don’t let the door hit you on your way out. On second thought, let it hit you!

The very charismatic Nouri "Sourpuss" al-Maliki

Now after the Humpty-Dumpty nation of Iraq had a great fall, can all the Emperor Obama’s jets and drones, and all his Special Forces, put Humpty back together again? 

I wouldn’t bet on it.

1] I’m calling them Islamonazis since they are genocidal, as they have demonstrated now in Iraq against the Yazidis, Christians, and others, who they have made clear they will physically exterminate if they don’t “convert to Islam.” They’ve taken things down a rung, lower into hell, than their predecessors, al-Qaeda in Iraq, which itself was a step down from al-Qaeda. Recall that Osama bin Laden criticized them for their wanton murders of Shiites and other Sunnis, but they ignored his instructions to stop, which led to their demise. Ultimately these “IS” scum will meet the same fate, because people will be forced to fight them just to survive. Like the Nazis, there is no co-existence possible with such mad dogs.

Their boss has just crowned himself Master of All Muslims, with the aim of expanding the borders of his “Caliphate” to all corners of the earth. These murderous goons have gone through a number of name changes (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ISIL, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS) before arriving at “Islamic State,” IS. Notice they no longer limit themselves to a particular geographic area.