The Pentagon and the compliant western media maintain the fiction of Iraqi PM al-Abadi "inviting" western troops into Iraq.
US Has Secret, "Non-Negotiable" Plan To Send 100,000 US, Saudi Troops To Iraq, Lawmaker Claims
10 December, 2015
“For every seven Shiites killed, we want seven Sunnis [killed] in their place.”
That
rather alarming declaration comes from outspoken Iraqi lawmaker Hanan
Al-Fatlawi. Not known for holding her tongue, the Shia MP inflamed
sectarian tensions with her eye for an eye tirade in the summer of
2014, prompting Diana Moukalled, the Web Editor at the Lebanon-based
Future Television to pen
the following sharp rebuke:
No one will be safe from the worsening situation in Iraq; and many parties are guilty. But for the prime minister [ZH: al-Maliki at the time] and MPs from his coalition to turn the bloody discourse of sectarian violence into an official language is a major moment in history, 10 years into the experiment that is the new Iraq.
In
another infamous TV appearance turned ugly, the firebrand lawmaker
was once
accused of
being an Iranian puppet by a Sunni tribal leader from Anbar (where
Iraq is now fighting
to wrest control of
Ramadi from ISIS). “You should be ashamed of yourselves, a quarter
of you came from a broad and you sold Iraq. We
don't know you; who are you? we
don’t know your origins. We are not leaders of parties or militias,
we are tribal leader and we speak for the people.” he said.
In
January, Fatlawi withdrew from Maliki's State of Law coalition to
form her own political movement called Irada (Arabic for
"will"). She’s
also suggested - as has Iran - that the US is secretly supporting
Islamic State. Here’s
an interesting excerpt from an
article Huffington Post ran back
in March:
“A lot of events happened in multiple places supporting the opinion that the U.S. in one way or another supports ISIS -- giving them food or arms,” Hanan al-Fatlawi, an outspoken Shia member of parliament, said by phone. She has publicly stated that the United States may be secretly throwing its weight behind the extremist Sunni militants who have violently seized control of large swaths of Iraq and Syria. She points to a blast in the restive Anbar province, where Sunni tribesmen are battling ISIS, that killed dozens of Iraqi troops, saying that it was the Americans who killed them. She's not alone in her views.
“Many people in Iraq believe me,” she explained. “They believe that ISIS is probably a baby of the USA or a baby of Israel.”
Al-Fatlawi says she’s suspicious of U.S. involvement in the battle to retake Tikrit that stalled 10 days ago. While Iraqi officials cited the need for more well-trained reinforcements to help clear the heavily booby-trapped city, she has a different story: The United States made Iraqi forces halt the offensive to help ISIS, or so that the Americans could swoop in and save the day, claiming victory as their own.
Most of all, Al-Fatlawi says, she just can’t believe that the United States, with all of its weaponry, military intelligence and international sway, would have this much trouble taking out ISIS. It just doesn’t add up, she says.
Indeed.
Well
now, Fatlawi contends that according to "information [she]
has from inside the meeting," John McCain last month told
PM Haider Al-Abadi that the US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE
are set to send in a total of 100,000 troops to Iraq. Here's a
screenshot of Fatlawi's Facebook
post:
During a meeting in Baghdad on November 27, McCain told Prime Minister Haider Abadi and a number of senior Iraqi cabinet and military officials that the decision was ‘non-negotiable’, claimed Hanan Fatlawi, the head of the opposition Irada Movement.
“A hundred thousand foreign troops, including 90,000 from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Jordan, and 10,000 troops from America will be deployed in western regions of Iraq,” she wrote on her Facebook page.
She added that the Iraqi prime minister protested the plan, but was told that “the decision has already been taken.”
As
RT goes on to note, that may sound far-fetched but it's not at all
inconsistent with what Lindsey Graham (who joined McCain on the trip)
said in Iraq and what McCain himself said yesterday in the Senate
Armed Services Committee hearing with Ash Carter.
From
Graham last month: “Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey – they have
regional armies and they would go into the fight if we put [the
removal of] Assad on the table. Most of the fight will be done by the
region. They will pay for this war."
From
McCain on Wednesday: “A small component of American forces
with international forces, which could be gathered and then go in and
take out this caliphate. If
we went in with a large Arab force, with Turks and Egyptians even …
there’s 20,000 to 30,000 of them [ISIS fighters], they are not
giants.”
Well
guess what? The Turks are already there. They arrived with two dozen
tanks near Mosul last Friday.
"I've
personally reached out to 40 countries," Carter told the
committee, which is ironic because that's the exact same number of
countries Putin says are supporting ISIS. Here's WaPo:
He specifically named the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, and Turkey as needing to put more skin in the game.Turkey, Carter said, “must do more” to control its long border with Syria that many ISIS fighters cross undetected, andcriticized Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, which had joined “only the air part” of the anti-ISIS campaign in its early days, for becoming “preoccupied” by the conflict in Yemen since.
Yes,
"preoccupied" with the conflict in Yemen, which is of
course just a proxy war between Riyadh and Tehran, as is the war in
Syria. Interestingly, were the Saudis, the UAE, and Qatar to get
overtly (as opposed to the covert support they already provide to
various Sunni extremists) involved in Iraq, it would be yet another
attempt to rollback Iranian influence.
As
we've said all along, all of these conflicts are part and parcel of a
Mid-East power struggle between Russia and Iran on one side, and the
US, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states on the other (see here, here,
and here).
Recall this map which shows Moscow and Tehran encircling the Saudis:
ISIS
is simply everyone's excuse for participating in what amounts to a
world war. All that's needed to take the "proxy" out of
this regional proxy war is for Iran to get overtly involved in Yemen
(as opposed to fighting through their Houthi proxies), for Russia to
get the airstrike invite from Baghdad, and for the Gulf states to
bring planes and troops to Iraq.
You
can see why a Shiite lawmaker in Baghdad would be hypersensitive to a
plan that allegedly involves an invasion by 100,000 US and Gulf
troops.
100,000 foreign troops incl. Americans to be deployed in Iraq, MP claims
The US is to send some 10,000 troops to Iraq to provide support for a 90,000-strong force from the Gulf states, a leading Iraqi opposition MP has warned. The politician said the plan was announced to the Iraqi government during a visit by US Senator John McCain.
During
a meeting in Baghdad on November 27, McCain told Prime Minister
Haider Abadi and a number of senior Iraqi cabinet and military
officials that the decision was ‘non-negotiable’, claimed Hanan
Fatlawi, the head of the opposition Irada Movement.
“A
hundred thousand foreign troops, including 90,000 from Saudi Arabia,
the UAE, Qatar and Jordan, and 10,000 troops from America will be
deployed in western regions of Iraq,” she
wrote on her Facebook
page.
She
added that the Iraqi prime minister protested the plan, but was told
that “the
decision has already been taken.”
McCain
and fellow hawk Senator Lindsey Graham have both been calling for
a tripling in
the current number of US troops deployed in Iraq to 10,000, and also
advocate sending an equal number of troops to Syria to fight against
the terrorist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and the
government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. The Americans would prop
up a 90,000-strong international ground force provided by Sunni Arab
countries like Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
“The
region is ready to fight. The region hates ISIL – they are coming
for Sunni Arab nations. Turkey hates ISIL. The entire region wants
Assad gone. So there is an opportunity here with some American
leadership to do two things: to hit ISIL before we get hit at home
and to push Assad out,” Graham
argued during the joint visit to Baghdad in November.
“Saudi
Arabia, Egypt, Turkey – they have regional armies and they would go
into the fight if we put [the removal of] Assad on the table. Most of
the fight will be done by the region. They will pay for this war,” he added.
The US currently has about 3,600 troops in Iraq, including 100 special operations troops deployed last month to take part in combat missions involving hostage rescue and the assassination of IS leaders. The White House is reluctant to commit a large ground force, citing the cost in human lives and money and the possible political ramifications of what will be portrayed by America’s opponents as yet another Western invasion of the Arab world.
The
McCain-Graham plan also poses the risk of direct confrontation
between the proposed coalition force and Russia and Iraq, which are
both militarily assisting the Assad government and may not stay out
of the fight – something which the hawkish duo have not factored
into their plan.
This
is especially true after Turkey’s downing of a Russian bomber plane
on the Turkish-Syrian border, which Moscow considered a stab in the
back and which sent relations with Ankara to a low not seen for
decades.
Baghdad
has its own concerns about a Turkish presence on its territory after
Ankara sent troops into western Iraq and refused to withdraw them,
despite Iraqi protests. Ankara claimed the incursion was made under a
2014 invitation from Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.