Author: Jason Ditz

A flurry of reports are coming out hyping former US soldier Ryan O’Leary, who participated in the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and, hearing about the ISIS war, just unilaterally went over there to help the Kurds fight ISIS.

Instead, O’Leary got a little confused, and has decided that Iran is the real problem, even though they are, you know, on the same side in the war as the Kurds. Now, he says he’s training the Kurds to fight against Iran.

O’Leary insists there is “no difference” between Iran and ISIS, and that he is patrolling the Iran-Iraq border on the lookout for “Iranian aggression” at all times.

Except, again, Iran isn’t fighting against the Kurds, and indeed this time last year Iran became one of the first countries to directly arm the Kurds for fighting against ISIS.

O’Leary’s argument is that because he believes the nuclear deal with Iran is so super bad, and because he’s not clear on the difference between Iran and ISIS, he figures Iran will just up and invade Iraqi Kurdistan as soon as the US Congress fails to block the deal. Not that it makes any strategic sense for Iran, but everyone in the US, even the ones unclear on which one is ISIS, know Iran’s the bad guys, right?

Adding to his severe criticism of the Associated Press document purported to be from the IAEA’s side deal with Iran, former IAEA official Tariq Rauf appeared on the Scott Horton Show this afternoon to offer further details on the many, many problems with the document, which he believed to be a forgery.

Among the new topics discussed is the question of why AP reporter George Jahn, when presented with a secret document he wasn’t allowed to take with him, hand-transcribed the text instead of taking an actual photograph with his phone. Rauf compares the document to the “Niger Letter” ahead of the US invasion of Iraq, and goes into detail on why the allegations surrounding the Parchin site in Iran probably aren’t credible in the first place.

The AP alleged on Wednesday that the Iran deal would allow Iran to “inspect itself,” though the initial article was later heavily edited, and ended up almost entirely reaction from US hawks. After the IAEA confirmed this story was untrue, they released the transcript on Thursday, apparently in an effort to vindicate themselves. The revelation that the transcript itself is a forgery just adds to the scandal surrounding the AP’s haphazard reporting on the Iran deal.

When it comes to Iraq, Jeb Bush was for it before he was against it, and is now for it again.

Speaking at a National Security Forum in Iowa, Bush sought to distance himself from his previous attempts to distance himself from his brother’s invasion of Iraq, saying he believed the multi-trillion dollar war with the massive death toll was a “pretty good deal” since it ousted Saddam Hussein.

Bush had previously faced a pretty major backlash for saying he’d have invaded Iraq like his brother did, and faced with that insisted he “misunderstood” the question and was actually against it.

Jeb Bush went on to talk torture, saying he believes “in general” torture isn’t appropriate, but refusing to rule out a return to torture if he was elected, saying he “didn’t want to make any blanket statements” about who he is or isn’t going to brutally torture in detention in the future.

At the same time, Bush conceded that he understands torture is “not effective” and said he believes President Obama’s ban on torture was “the proper thing to do.” He then claimed that torture was effective when his brother’s administration did it, and that torture “made the country safe.”

Most candidates haven’t taken official stances on torture, though Sen. Marco Rubio (R – FL) has gone on the record as opposed to the torture ban, believing it is important to keep the torture card “in the deck,” though he was not actually present for the vote on the torture question in the Senate.

Railroaded into a military prison for 35 years, whistleblower Chelsea Manning is now facing “indefinitely solitary confinement” for a handful of trivial charges, which stem entirely from allegations by one of the guards (termed “specialists”) that she swept food on the floor in the dining area. This led to a charge of “disorderly conduct.”

That “violation” on the books, Manning was placed in “administrative segregation” and her room searched. They found a handful of magazines, including the issue of Cosmo she had an interview published in, and political books, unsurprising since she’s working on a degree in political science. They dubbed this “Prohibited Property.”

They also found a tube of “anti-cavity toothpaste may-keep-in-cell,” which upon further inspection was a couple of months outdated. This led to the charge of “medicine misuse.”

Taken together, the toothpaste tube, the alleged food on the floor, and the magazines are enough to send Manning even further up the river, apparently, and officials are spurning calls to make the hearing open to the public.

Manning was already in solitary confinement for months pending the initial trial, and saw deteriorating health during that time. As someone who leaked evidence of government abuse and has publicly been calling for reforms during her time in prison, there seems to be a concerted effort to cut Manning even further off from the public, and given her health problems in the past solitary confinement period, it’s no guarantee she’ll even survive the 35-year sentence to keep calling for reforms throughout.

Early last week, the US publicly announced that it was not going to publicly blame China for the OPM hack.

The evidence of China’s responsibility for the hack has not been made public, and doesn’t seem particularly strong. The FBI initially suggested several possible candidates, including “state actors.” Media outlets took this to mean China, and started reporting China was being blamed. Congressmen took the media reports as proof China did it, and other media outlets took the Congressmen’s comments as proof China did it.

The idiocy through which we got here is neither here nor there though, as the US, which still hasn’t “publicly” blamed China, despite publicly saying they weren’t going to do so, is now publicly saying they’re going to carry out some sort of revenge act against China.

Officials are said to be split on how big of a revenge attack to conduct, and some are afraid that it will spark a revenge attack from China, which would be followed by a revenge-revenge attack, and so on.

Those calling for more aggressive attacks are said to believe it will be a “deterrent” in the future, despite it also being obviously more likely to result in retaliation. The question of whether China even did the OPM hack in the first place seems long since forgotten.

US military officials are loudly bragging about their latest initiative to reassure Europe, a program that was called, unlikely enough, the European Reeassurance Initiative (ERI), and which to this point has involved moving a lot of sand around, and building some roads in rural parts of several Baltic states.

ERI is nominally the latest in a long line of programs the Obama Administration has announced to “combat Russian aggression,” and which are meant to build up nations along the Russian frontier to support massive US military deployments to spite Russia.

The plans are often ill-conceived, as the US idea to deploy huge amounts of tanks into several of these countries ran into problems because the tanks are stored in swampy areas where the mud makes it virtually impossible to drive a tank, and NATO has taken to having to “ship” those tanks back and forth to their various anti-Russia photo ops.

In this regard, ERI is trying to be the solution for the military-created problem, hauling thousands of tonnes of sand into those swampy areas to build “tank trails” that they can drive the tanks through, along with roads to support the infrastructure for the NATO operations in the area.

The army sees it as a win-win, as the pricey construction involves the use of contractors, and is subsequently popular with the host countries, and also lets the army deploy people to not-war-zones, which is “good for morale.”

That the whole program is make-work to “reassure” European nations about the US commitment to take part in some unlikely, disastrous future war with Russia is just gravy for them, as the Pentagon sees talk of a new Cold War as a great excuse to push for bigger budgets, and if they can’t physically position forces in the Baltic swamps for this scheme, they’ll build up the swamps so they can.