Mexican elections, Iranian rise and more from Counterpunch

First, though their election is some time away, it looks like "AMLO," Andrea Merida Lopez Obrador, will be succeeded by someone in the same political vein, former Mexico City governor Claudia Sheinbaum. Read the whole piece for the big picture on the elections, including the issue of dealing with the narcotraficantes in several Mexican states.

Next, as it did nearly 20 years ago thanks to Shrub Bush's stupidity, could Iran be "winning" the Middle East? Juan Cole ponders. He notes Iran's outreach to both Saudi Arabia and Turkey in the wake of Israel's genocide, and their positive responses.

Meanwhile, Nicky Reid, in what's controversial even for CP, asks if Israel still even has a right to exist.

Moving beyond the Middle East, Gregory Elich notes how, 25 years ago, Madeleine Albright sabotaged peace talks vis-a-vis the Kosovans in Yugoslavia, eventually leading to war — one that the U.S. wanted. It's a semi-bright line from there to Ukraine, of course.

And, in the always interesting Roaming Charges, Jeff St. Clair notes that "uncommitted" got even stronger Democratic primary support in Hawaii than in Minnesota. And, that Biden hates Cubans like he hates Palestinians, and more.

And, as I told St. Clair on Twitter, per one of his links? Morphine Mitch McConnell's sister-in-law, Angela Chao, was found drowned in a pond near Austin, in Blanco County, IN A TESLA? Did Elmo Musk whack her? INVESTIGATE ELMO!

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And a sidebar from ProPublica. A Washington state human rights group got a peek at ICE deportation flights.

The Iraq War at 20

After that start-off by Two-Party Opera, let's add a few more thoughts. March 20 is the official start, but, I'm jumping the gun a day with Brian's prodding, and it may still have been March 19 in DC when "go was the word" anyway.

First, like World War I and II are really part of a thread, so are the original Gulf War and the Iraq War. Connection? House of Bush.

Actually, there's three parts to that thread, arguably. The first being the Carter-era Iran hostage crisis. 

According to former Texas House speaker Barnes, Poppy Bush was not part of that, it seems. Rather, in a big twist? John Connally was.

The Gulf War? Before my blogging time. Before there really was a civilian internet. But, I remember the controversy over depleted uranium tank shells. I remember Poppy Bush later being attacked from his right for stopping the war early. 

And, of course, connecting it to the Iraq War? I remember the sanctions and their punishment on Iraq. I remember Madeleine Albright, as Clinton's Secretary of State, writing off the many thousands of deaths they caused.

The Iraq War itself? We know the only "Mission Accomplished" by Shrub Bush was Turd Blossom Rove's politicizing the war run-up in the 2002 midterms, then again in the 2004 general, as the cowardly Dems warhawked with John Kerry. This was when and why I became a Green.

We know how Obama flip-flopped on the "surge."

And, we know that Lying Glenn Greenwald supported the war, in the preface to the book that made him famous. And lied about it to the point of attacking others who pointed out his lies. Then doubled down on his lying.

Part of why I became a Green? A decade after the invasion, and 8 years after Glennwald supported the invasion in his first big book, a BlueAnon wanker at Daily Kos was STILL regurgitating his lies.

And, 20 years later? Iraq is still a hellhole; Sadrites not under Iran's thumb battle other Shi'ites who are. Sunnis are semi-marginalized. Kurds want still more autonomy and may still push for an independent nation. ISIS lurks at their edges, still.

And, BlueAnon never learned. Dear Leader, with Shillary as his Secretary of State, pushed to bomb Libya, figuring that it too would succumb to shock and awe, then easily be rebuilt. Actual result? North Africa's strongest economy wrecked, and replaced by open slave markets. And, people smart enough in other fields to know better, like Massimo Pigliucci, or Juan Cole, or Bernie Sanders, signed off. (Bernie also voted for the first, and all subsequent, "support the troops" resolutions in Iraq.)

And, BlueAnon still hasn't learned. Even Pope Francis talked about NATO "barking" at Russia, but Warmonger Joe won't listen to him or the Goldilocks Three Bears and start peace talks. And, even within BlueAnon, showing Dem tribalism on war, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, including the Fraud, er the Squad, supports the warmongering.

Don't forget that all these wars were started by, or abetted by, lies.

Gulf War? We're still not sure what Ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam Hussein; I believe it was indeed the claim that the Bush Administration had no big problems with him taking Kuwait. I also wrote an op-ed column about that. We know, during the run-up to war, about the incubator babies who weren't real, and the Emir of Kuwait hiring Western PR flak.

Iraq War? The lies about the aluminum artillery tubes by Powell et al. Tenet going Hearst reporter to Shrub Bush's William Randolph Hearst in 1898 Cuba. Condi Rice's "smoking gun - mushroom cloud."

Libya? The lies about how easy this would be. The lies about our real intent. The lies, post-Iraq, about how regime change could be done without boots on the ground.

Russia-Ukraine? The lies that we never promised "not one inch further eastward" on NATO expansion, when we did; even Gorby lied about that later in life, just because he hated Putin that much. The lies behind the Minsk Agreements. And more. That's even as Warmonger Joe still opposes real peace talks.

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Sidebar, and not noted immediately? Our media's responsibility. Via Jeff St. Clair, the New York Slimes' 20th anniversary piece "somehow" never mentions the name of Judith Miller.

And, directly related to that, at Counterpunch, Jeff has a good piece about the selling of the war.

Sidebar: Here's my story about meeting a guy in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico, with a VERY interesting conspiracy theory on how the Gulf War started.

Bye Bye Madame Secretary Albright

Just because you make "firsts" doesn't make you good.

Madeleine Albright, the first female US Secretary of State, died earlier today. 

And, yes, this is a takedown type obit. And, it's HUGELY deserved.

Albright, as CNN notes at the link, as Slick Willie Clinton's SoS, pushed for the expansion of NATO that pissed off then Russian president Boris Yeltsin just like it pisses off today's Russian president Vladimir Putin.

And, she probably knew it would do just that.

Meanwhile, per her Wiki page, she once called Putin a snake. Many right-knowing people on Twitter have espoused variants of "it takes one to know one."

And, as Huff Post notes, she also claimed that if half a million Iraqi kids were killed by sanctions, it was worth it.

Full quote, with exchange with Lesley Stahl, via Fair:

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it? 

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it. —60 Minutes (5/12/96)

Fair notes that the mainstream media largely buried under the rug when she uttered it. 

Albright then showed exactly the type of bullshit the establishment can engage in. She claimed that Lesley Stahl had asked her a loaded question, and that Stahl was promoting Iraqi propaganda. At about the same time, when someone asked why are we arming Israel to bomb Palestinians, she accused them of supporting Hussein. There's video at that Twitter link, and yeah, really, she's pretty loathsome.

More on Albright, Palestinians and speeches? She spoke at Berkeley's commencement in 2000, at the same event where a Palestinian was recognized as a University Medalist. A Mondoweiss writer, who worked on student newspaper The Daily Californian, reminisces.

As for whether the death toll was real, Saddam Hussein propaganda, or somewhere in between? A. Doesn't matter. Even if totally untrue, she accepted as true for the sake of argument. B. At the time, on the show, she didn't claim it was untrue.

She also, per The Nation, was a loathsome promoter of American exceptionalism, specifically what Andrew Bacevich calls "Indispensible Nation Syndrome," with her as originator.

“If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.”

No wonder Dear Leader gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Dear Leader who bombed the shit out of Libya, with the best economy in Mediterranean Africa, and left it with slave markets a decade later. (And even Bernie Sanders' protest about that one was weak."

Don't forget, as Colin Powell didn't, that even pre-SoS, as Clinton's UN ambassador, she was a warhawk:

“My constant, unwelcome message at all the meetings on Bosnia was simply that we could not commit military forces until we had a clear political objective,” Powell wrote in his memoir, “My American Journey.” Albright, he wrote, “asked me, ‘What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?’ I thought I would have an aneurysm.”

Yep.

And, for Kosovans talking about how she freed their country? It was at a price — literally. Wiki also notes that her investment company originally planned to bid on the privatization of Kosovo's telecom and postal company. (That's beyond the issue, that Wiki doesn't note, of the same Harvard types who advised Boris Yeltsin about privatization surely talking the same talk to Kosovans.)

Wiki's page also gives us a friendly reminder of other things, like her serving at the National Security Agency under Henry Kissinger's Democratic doppelgänger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, under whom she took graduate courses. She also led the effort to deny UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali a second term. That said, HIS Wiki page notes that his initial election was due to many countries withdrawing support from another African candidate under fears the US was trying to torpedo both.

To do her some fairness, she wasn't all wrong on Serbia, at least vis-a-vis Bosnia. But? Croatia had its own initially thuggish post-Yugoslav breakup leadership. And, Franjo Tudjman was "our" thug, with Croatia being eyed for NATO membership well in advance. And Milosevic was Russia's thug when Yeltsin raised some mild objections to the bombing and beyond. And, the bombing didn't work, any more than Russia's does today. Boutros-Ghali? Maybe he was sluggish on Rwanda, but I think it was posterior covering on her part, in part.

Albright gets Georgia wrong too

What is it with the growing parade of Democrats stupid enough to want to make Georgia a NATO member?

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright combines that with illogic. She chides Condoleezza Rice for not traveling to Moscow, and from there goes on to say she would have done that to give Moscow some security assurances, while still pushing for Georgia as a NATO member.

Reason 1,007 to vote Green instead of Democrat: The duopoly’s foreign policy ideas.