COMMENT: Brexit vote 'changed everything'
- Details
- Written by Henry Adams
COMMENTARY: Little-noted Muslim responses to Orlando mass shooting
- Details
- Written by Hank Berger
COMMENTARY: On the US failure to reform the 'Iraqi' army
- Details
- Written by Henry Adams
It is a convention of U.S. mainstream media to report what has happened as what might happen, when what has happened is unpalatable to the powers that be. -- This time-honored convention was on display again this week in a piece co-authored by Jonathan Landay of Reuters. -- Landay reported that the weakness of the so-called Iraqi army "could" impede the struggle against ISIS, and also that the Sunni-Shiite divide "threatens" to split the country.[1] -- Yet it was almost ten years ago that we pointed out the obvious -- that this split had already occurred. -- Recognizing the obvious is not permitted in mainstream media when state interests dictate otherwise, however. -- COMMENT: Donald Trump's willingness to express the inexpressible is one of the many reasons he is anathema to the American political establishment. -- In July 2015, for example, Trump said on CNN: "There is no Iraq. There are no Iraqis -- they’re broken up into so many different factions." -- Hillary Clinton, in a major speech yesterday, tried to convince her listeners that Trump is a deranged lunatic living in a fantasy world, but it Clinton's assertion on Thursday that "We need to . . . close Iraq's sectarian divide" that strikes us as a dangerous fantasy.[2] -- "It’s clear [Donald Trump] doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about," she said mockingly, but it's even clearer that Hillary Clinton knows more than she's saying. -- It is also clear that the presumptive Democratic nominee is more of a hawk than the presumptive Republican nominee, and Susan Sarandon, for one, was quick to say so: -- "I believe in a way [Hillary Clinton] is more dangerous. -- She did not learn from Iraq, and she is an interventionist, and she has done horrible things, and very callously, I don’t know if she is overcompensating or what her trip is."[3] ...