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U.S. Strike in Iraq Kills Qassim Suleimani, Commander of Iranian Forces https://nyti.ms/36iPzyp

U.S. Strike in Iraq Kills Qassim Suleimani, Commander of Iranian Forces

Suleimani was planning attacks on Americans across the region, leading to an airstrike in Baghdad, the Pentagon statement said. Iran’s supreme leader called for vengeance.

By Michael Crowley, Falih Hassan and Eric Schmitt | Published Jan. 2, 2020 Updated Jan. 3, 2020, 8:34 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted Jan 3, 2020 |

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Iran’s top security and intelligence commander was killed early Friday in a drone strike at Baghdad International Airport that was authorized by President Trump, American officials said.

The commander, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, who led the powerful Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, was killed along with several officials from Iraqi militias backed by Tehran when an American MQ-9 Reaper drone fired missiles into a convoy that was leaving the airport.

General Suleimani was the architect of nearly every significant operation by Iranian intelligence and military forces over the past two decades, and his death was a staggering blow for Iran at a time of sweeping geopolitical conflict.

The strike was also a serious escalation of Mr. Trump’s growing confrontation with Tehran, one that began with the death of an American contractor in Iraq in late December.

In Iran, the leadership convened an emergency security meeting. And the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a statement calling for three days of public mourning and then retaliation.

“His departure to God does not end his path or his mission,” the statement said, “but a forceful revenge awaits the criminals who have his blood and the blood of the other martyrs last night on their hands.”

United States officials were braced for potential Iranian retaliatory attacks, possibly including cyberattacks and terrorism, on American interests and allies.

Israel, too, was preparing for Iranian strikes. Some of the country’s most popular tourist sites, including the ski resort at Hermon, were closed, and the armed forces went on alert, officials said.

From the start of the Syrian civil war, General Suleimani was one of the chief leaders of an effort to protect President Bashar al-Assad of Syria — an important Iranian ally — that brought together disparate militias, national security forces and regional powers, including Russia in recent years.

But that was far from the only front he operated on. American officials accuse General Suleimani of causing the deaths of hundreds of soldiers during the Iraq war, when he provided Iraqi insurgents with advanced bomb-making equipment and training. They also say he has masterminded destabilizing Iranian activities that continue throughout the Middle East and are aimed at the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

“General Suleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region,” the Pentagon said in a statement. “General Suleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more.”

It did not elaborate on the specific intelligence that led them to carry out General Suleimani’s killing. The highly classified mission was set in motion after the American contractor’s death on Dec. 27 during a rocket attack by an Iranian-backed militia, a senior American official said.

In killing General Suleimani, Mr. Trump took an action that Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama had rejected, fearing it would lead to war between the United States and Iran.

While many Republicans said that the president had been justified in the attack, Mr. Trump’s most significant use of military force to date, critics of his Iran policy called the strike a reckless unilateral escalation that could have drastic and unforeseen consequences that could ripple violently throughout the Middle East.

“Soleimani was an enemy of the United States. That’s not a question,” Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, wrote on Twitter, using an alternate spelling of the Iranian’s name. “The question is this — as reports suggest, did America just assassinate, without any congressional authorization, the second most powerful person in Iran, knowingly setting off a potential massive regional war?”

Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, called the killing of General Suleimani an act of “international terrorism” and warned it was “extremely dangerous & a foolish escalation.”

“The US bears responsibility for all consequences of its rogue adventurism,” Mr. Zarif tweeted.

Speaking to reporters while on vacation at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., on Tuesday night, hours after an assault on the American Embassy in Baghdad that United States officials said was orchestrated by Iran, Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly vowed to end American entanglements in the Middle East, insisted that he did not want war.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea for Iran. It wouldn’t last very long,” Mr. Trump said. “Do I want to? No. I want to have peace. I like peace.”

After initial reports of the strike emerged on Thursday, Mr. Trump was unusually cryptic, but he appeared to revel in the news when he posted a tweet that consisted only of the image of an American flag.

Within minutes, Twitter accounts associated with Iranian figures were responding in kind, sending images of Iran’s flag — often accompanied by dire threats of revenge.

The strikes followed a warning on Thursday afternoon from Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, who said the United States military would pre-emptively strike Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria if there were signs the paramilitary groups were planning more attacks against American bases and personnel in the region.

“If we get word of attacks, we will take pre-emptive action as well to protect American forces, protect American lives,” Mr. Esper said. “The game has changed.”

“This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans,” the Pentagon statement said late Thursday. “The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world.”

In Iran, state television interrupted its programing to announce General Suleimani’s death, with the news anchor reciting the Islamic prayer for the dead — “From God we came and to God we return” — beside a picture of the general.

Hawkish Iran experts said the strike would be deeply painful for Iran’s leadership. “This is devastating for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the regime and Khamenei’s regional ambitions,” said Mark Dubowitz, the chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, referring to Ayatollah Khamenei.

“For 23 years, he has been the equivalent of the J.S.O.C. commander, the C.I.A. director and Iran’s real foreign minister,” Mr. Dubowitz said, using an acronym for the United States’ Joint Special Operations Command. “He is irreplaceable and indispensable” to Iran’s military establishment.

For those same reasons, other regional analysts warned, Iran is likely to respond with an intensity of dangerous proportions.

“From Iran’s perspective, it is hard to imagine a more deliberately provocative act,” said Robert Malley, the president and chief executive of the International Crisis Group. “And it is hard to imagine that Iran will not retaliate in a highly aggressive manner.”

“Whether President Trump intended it or not, it is, for all practical purposes, a declaration of war,” added Mr. Malley, who served as White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and the gulf region in the Obama administration.

Some United States officials and Trump administration advisers offered a less dire scenario, arguing that the show of force might convince Iran that its acts of aggression against American interests and allies have grown too dangerous, and that a president the Iranians may have come to see as risk-averse is in fact willing to escalate.

One senior administration official said the president’s senior advisers had come to worry that Mr. Trump had sent too many signals — including when he called off a planned missile strike in late June — that he did not want a war with Iran.

Tracking Mr. Suleimani’s location at any given time had long been a priority for the American and Israeli spy services and militaries. Current and former American commanders and intelligence officials said that Thursday night’s attack, specifically, drew upon a combination of highly classified information from informants, electronic intercepts, reconnaissance aircraft and other surveillance.

The strike killed five people, including the pro-Iranian chief of an umbrella group for Iraqi militias, Iraqi television reported and militia officials confirmed. The militia chief, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, was a strongly pro-Iranian figure.

The public relations chief for the umbrella group, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, Mohammed Ridha Jabri, was also killed.

American officials said that multiple missiles hit the convoy in a strike carried out by the Joint Special Operations Command.

American military officials said they were aware of a potentially violent response from Iran and its proxies, and were taking steps they declined to specify to protect American personnel in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world.

Two other people were killed in the strike, according to a general at the Baghdad joint command, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.

The Iraqi general said that General Suleimani and Mr. Ridha, the militia public relations official, arrived by plane at Baghdad International Airport from Syria.

A senior security official who was familiar with the operation’s details, and who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence, said that General Suleimani had been particularly troubled by the wave of anti-Iran demonstration in Iraq and had flown in to urge local militia forces to more forcibly curb the protests.

Two cars stopped at the bottom of the airplane steps and picked them up. Mr. al-Muhandis was in one of the cars. As the cars left the airport, they were struck, the general said.

The strike was the second attack at the airport within hours.

An earlier attack, late Thursday, involved three rockets that did not appear to have caused any injuries.

The strikes come days after American forces bombed three outposts of Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-supported militia in Iraq and Syria, in retaliation for the death of an American contractor in a rocket attack last week near the Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

The United States said that Kataib Hezbollah fired 31 rockets into a base in Kirkuk Province last week, killing an American contractor and wounding several American and Iraqi servicemen.

The Americans responded by bombing three of the militia’s sites near Qaim in western Iraq, and two sites in Syria. Kataib Hezbollah denied involvement in the attack in Kirkuk.

Pro-Iranian militia members then marched on the American Embassy on Tuesday, effectively imprisoning its diplomats inside for more than 24 hours while thousands of militia members thronged outside. They burned the embassy’s reception area, planted militia flags on its roof and scrawled graffiti on its walls.

No injuries or deaths were reported, and the militia members did not enter the embassy building.

They withdrew late Wednesday afternoon.

The Pentagon statement Thursday night said that General Suleimani “had orchestrated attacks on coalition bases in Iraq over the last several months,” including the one that killed the American contractor last week.

General Suleimani also “approved the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad,” the statement said.

Mr. Trump said on Tuesday that Iran would “be held fully responsible” for the attack on the embassy, in which protesters set fire to a reception building on the embassy compound, which covers more than 100 acres. He also blamed Tehran for directing the unrest.

In the past several months, Iranian-supported militias have increased rocket attacks on bases housing American troops. The Pentagon has dispatched more than 14,000 troops to the region since May.

Caught in the middle is the Iraqi government, which is too weak to establish any military authority over some of the more established Iranian-supported Shiite militias.

On Thursday, Mr. Esper said the Iraqi government was not doing enough to contain them. The Iraqis need to “stop these attacks from happening and get the Iranian influence out of the government,” Mr. Esper said.

Representative Andy Kim, Democrat of New Jersey, who served as the National Security Council’s director for Iraq under Mr. Obama, said the strike would most likely elicit “a very serious backlash” from a number of Iraqi leaders for taking the action on Iraqi soil, as well as from Shiite communities “that already were protesting and upset in recent days.”

“This is something that is going to make it very difficult for our diplomatic presence there, our military presence there,” Mr. Kim said in an interview.

General Suleimani, who led the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force, a special forces unit responsible for Iranian operations outside Iran’s borders, was long a figure of intense interest.

He was not only in charge of Iranian intelligence gathering and covert military operations, he was regarded as one of Iran’s most cunning and autonomous military figures. He was also believed to be very close to Ayatollah Khamenei, and was seen as a potential future leader of Iran.

The United States and Iran have long been involved in a shadow war in battlegrounds across the Middle East — including in Iraq, Yemen and Syria. The tactics have generally involved using proxies to carry out the fighting, providing a buffer from a direct confrontation between Washington and Tehran that could draw America into yet other ground conflict with no discernible endgame.

The potential for a regional conflagration was a basis of the Obama administration’s push for a 2015 agreement that froze Iran’s nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.

Mr. Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018, saying that Mr. Obama’s agreement had emboldened Iran, giving it economic breathing room to plow hundreds of millions of dollars into a campaign of violence around the region. Mr. Trump responded with a campaign of “maximum pressure” that began with punishing new economic sanctions, which began a new era of brinkmanship and uncertainly, with neither side knowing just how far the other was willing to escalate violence and risk a wider war. In recent days, it has spilled into the military arena.

General Suleimani once described himself to a senior Iraqi intelligence official as the “sole authority for Iranian actions in Iraq,” the official later told American officials in Baghdad.

In a speech denouncing Mr. Trump, General Suleimani was even less discreet — and openly mocking.

“We are near you, where you can’t even imagine,” he said. “We are ready. We are the man of this arena.”

______

Michael Crowley reported from West Palm Beach, Fla.; Falih Hassan from Baghdad; and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Reporting was contributed by Ronen Bergman from Tel Aviv, Israel; Alissa J. Rubin from Paris; Farnaz Fassihi from New York; Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Helene Cooper, Mark Mazzetti, Catie Edmondson and Edward Wong from Washington; and Tim Arango from Los Angeles.

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Iran Promises Retaliation After U.S. Kills General: Live Updates

Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, who led the powerful Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, was killed in an American drone strike in Baghdad on Friday.

Here’s what you need to know:

Iran’s supreme leader is vowing ‘a forceful revenge.’

Americans are evacuating from Iraq, and oil prices are rising.

Pompeo says the U.S. is committed to de-escalation.

General Suleimani led 20 years of spying and proxy warfare.

Mass protests were held in Iran, as Iraq denounced ‘a blatant violation.’

Iran’s supreme leader is vowing ‘a forceful revenge.’

Iranian leaders issued strident calls on Friday for revenge against the United States after the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani in an overnight airstrike at the Baghdad airport. The strike spurred mass displays of public mourning by Iran and its network of allies across the Middle East.

General Suleimani, a powerful strategist who represented Iran’s influence across the region, was killed by an American drone at Baghdad airport, in an attack that had been authorized by President Trump and that ratcheted up tensions between Washington and Tehran. The death threatened to tip hostilities with the United States and its partners across the region into a new war.

On Friday, Mr. Trump posted on Twitter:

Donald J. Trump✔@realDonaldTrump

Iran never won a war, but never lost a negotiation!

7:44 AM - Jan 3, 2020

General Suleimani was the head of the powerful Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the architect of nearly every significant operation by Iranian intelligence and military forces over the past two decades.

His death is a considerable blow to Tehran, and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called for retaliation on Friday and for three days of national mourning.

“His departure to God does not end his path or his mission, but a forceful revenge awaits the criminals who have his blood and the blood of the other martyrs last night on their hands,” the supreme leader said in a statement.

The general’s prominent role meant that his death could have a ripple effect in any number of countries across the Middle East where Iran and the United States compete for influence.

The strike was carried out by an MQ-9 Reaper drone that fired missiles on a convoy of vehicles leaving the airport. Several other officials from Iraqi militias backed by Tehran were also killed.

“This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans,” the Pentagon said in a statement. The United States has long been at odds with Iran over its nuclear program and influence in Iraq and other countries in the region. Those tensions have surged under Mr. Trump since he abruptly pulled the United States out of a landmark 2015 nuclear deal and reintroduced punishing sanctions against Tehran.

The strike on Friday was the latest escalation between the two nations after a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base, believed to have been carried out by an Iran-backed militia, killed an American contractor in December.

The United States hit back with airstrikes on an Iranian-backed militia that killed 24 and prompted outrage among some who saw that attack as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty. Iraqis lashed out at the United States, breaking into its embassy compound on Tuesday and setting fires inside the area. The breach prompted Mr. Trump to order roughly 750 additional American troops to be deployed to the region.

The strike was carried out by an MQ-9 Reaper drone that fired missiles on a convoy of vehicles leaving the airport. Several other officials from Iraqi militias backed by Tehran were also killed.

Americans are evacuating from Iraq, and oil prices are rising.

The State Department urged American citizens to leave Iraq immediately following the strike that killed General Suleimani in Baghdad, citing “heightened tensions.”

Oil prices jumped on Friday after the news of the general’s death: The price of Brent oil, the international benchmark, surged in the early hours of Hong Kong trading to nearly $70 a barrel — an increase of $3.

The immediate increase in the price of oil was among the largest since an attack on a critical Saudi oil installation in September that temporarily knocked out 5 percent of the world’s oil supply.

By 11 a.m. in London, the price of Brent crude oil was at a three-month high of $69.20 a barrel. International oil companies based in the southeastern Iraqi city of Basra have begun evacuating American employees, according to Al Arabiya news outlet.

Pompeo says the U.S. is committed to de-escalation.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he had spoken to top diplomats in Britain, China and Germany on Friday about what the State Department described as President Trump’s recent decision “to take defensive action to eliminate Qassim Suleimani in response to imminent threats to American lives.”

Mr. Pompeo also told his foreign counterparts that the United States was committed to de-escalation, according to the State Department. Mr. Pompeo posted several statements and a video on Twitter that he said showed Iraqi’s “dancing in the street” at the news of General Suleimani’s killing.

Secretary Pompeo ✔@SecPompeo

Iraqis — Iraqis — dancing in the street for freedom; thankful that General Soleimani is no more.

11:34 PM - Jan 2, 2020

Mr. Pompeo said the American strike on General Suleimani was a proactive measure to stave off what American intelligence officials saw as an “imminent attack” in the region.

“This was a man who has put American lives at risk for an awfully long time,” Mr. Pompeo said on Friday on CNN. “Last night was the time that we needed to strike to make sure that this imminent attack that he was working actively was disrupted.”

He declined to provide more details about the looming attack.

One American official familiar with the internal discussions about the drone strike said the administration was still trying to figure out what would come next and how to be prepared for it.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the backlash over General Suleimani’s death could be even more fraught than the tensions after an American raid in 2011 that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, who was part of a stateless group and had no international support.

“What was sitting before us was his travels throughout the region, his efforts to make a significant strike against Americans,” Mr. Pompeo told Fox News on Friday morning. “It was a strike that was aimed at both disrupting that plot, deterring further aggression.”

General Suleimani led 20 years of spying and proxy warfare.

As the leader of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which leads Iran’s operations abroad, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, who was 62, was the country’s top security and intelligence commander.

A senior military figure with considerable powers, General Suleimani, was behind nearly all military and intelligence operations orchestrated by Iran in the past two decades. He directed Iran-backed militias in the fight against the Islamic State.

American officials had also accused him of causing the deaths of hundreds of soldiers during the Iraq war and he was believed to have played a central role in orchestrating Iran’s support for the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

In Iran, General Suleimani was a respected political figure among hard-liners and was close to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He was described by some officials as the country’s de facto second foreign minister.

To many Iranians, he was also a war hero, after becoming a commander while he was only in his 20s during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

In a speech in 2018, he warned Mr. Trump not to take any military action against Iran.

“We are near you, where you can’t even imagine,” the general said at the time, according to Iranian news agencies. “Come. We are ready. If you begin the war, we will end the war.��

The general’s deputy succeeded him within hours, according to Iranian news agencies. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appointed Brig. Gen. Ismail Qaani as the new leader for the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on Friday.

General Qaani, 62, was promoted from deputy commander of the Quds Force, a role he had held since in 1997, according to Reuters.

The United States Treasury Department put General Qaani on a blacklist in 2012 for what it called “financial disbursements” to various terrorist groups, including Hezbollah.

In 2017, General Qaani was reported as warning that Iran had “buried many” like President Trump. “We are not a warmongering country,” he said at the time, according to the semiofficial news agency Tasnim. “But any military action against Iran will be regretted.”

Mass protests were held in Iran, as Iraq denounced ‘a blatant violation.’

Large crowds gathered for Friday Prayer in Iran and filled public squares with mass protests, while officials met privately to plot strategy and leaders vowed to avenge General Suleimani’s death.

Images broadcast on Iranian state television showed hundreds of supporters of General Suleimani gathered in mourning outside his house in the southeastern town of Kerman, and later footage shows thousands gathered on the streets.

“The great nation of Iran will take revenge for this heinous crime,” President Hassan Rouhani wrote on Twitter.

Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif called the strike an “act of international terrorism.”

Javad Zarif✔@JZarif

The US' act of international terrorism, targeting & assassinating General Soleimani—THE most effective force fighting Daesh (ISIS), Al Nusrah, Al Qaeda et al—is extremely dangerous & a foolish escalation.

The US bears responsibility for all consequences of its rogue adventurism.

10:58 PM - Jan 2, 2020

Iran was working with Iraqi officials to repatriate the general’s body for a funeral service, perhaps as soon as Saturday, a number of Iranian journalists reported.

Adel Abdul Mahdi of Iraq praised Mr. al-Muhandis and General Suleimani as heroes in the fight against the Islamic State and condemned their killing as “a brazen violation of Iraq’s sovereignty and a blatant attack on the nation’s dignity.”

Iraq’s Parliament plans to convene an emergency session on Saturday to address the strike, which could accelerate calls to push United States forces from the country.

Iranian allies across the Arab world condemned the United States, reflecting the strength of the regional network General Suleimani spent much of his life building, including links to the government of Syria and militant groups in Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen and elsewhere.

The leader of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group and political party that General Suleimani helped build over three decades into the country’s top military forces and a grave threat to Israel, vowed in a statement that his group would continue on the path the general set and “work night and day to achieve his goals.”

It was the responsibility of all resistance fighters to seek “just retribution” against “the most evil criminals in the world,” the leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said, meaning the United States.

In Yemen, the administration run by the Houthi rebels, who have received support from Iran in their war against Saudi Arabia, condemned the United States strike as a “cowardly attack” that “makes clear the increasing American spite against all who are in favor of justice for the Islamic world.”

International Leaders Warned of ‘A More Dangerous World.’

The killing of General Suleimani “most likely” violated international law, Agnes Callamard, the United Nations expert on extrajudicial executions, said in a post on Twitter.

“Use of lethal force is only justified to protect against an imminent threat to life, Ms. Callamard wrote. An individual’s past involvement in “terrorist” acts “is not sufficient to take his targeting for killing legal,” she said. Use of drones for targeted killings outside active hostilities was “almost never likely to be legal,” she added.

Many experts also said on Friday that the strike probably ended any prospect of negotiations to save the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the landmark nuclear agreement Iran signed in 2015 with the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany. The recent escalation in tensions between the United States and Iran began with the 2018 decision by President Trump to withdraw from the deal.

The Russian Foreign Ministry called the killing of General Suleimani “an adventurist step that will increase tensions throughout the region,” according to local news agencies.

“Suleimani served the cause of protecting Iran’s national interests with devotion,” the ministry added.

A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry called for restraint on all sides, “especially the United States.”

“China has always opposed the use of force in international relations,” the spokesman, Geng Shuang, said at a daily news briefing, according to news agencies.

Britain’s foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, called on Friday for a de-escalation in tensions and said that further conflict in the region was not in his country’s interest.

“We have always recognized the aggressive threat posed by the Iranian Quds force led by Qassim Suleimani,” Mr. Raab said in a statement. “Following his death, we urge all parties to de-escalate.”

Charles Michel, president of the European Council, said in a statement, “The cycle of violence, provocations and retaliations which we have witnessed In Iraq over the past few weeks has to stop. Further escalation must be avoided at all cost.”

Federica Mogherini, the European high representative for foreign and security policy, said on Twitter that the general’s killing was “an extremely dangerous escalation.”

Federica Mogherini✔@FedericaMog

An extremely dangerous escalation in the #MiddleEast. Hope that those who still believe in wisdom and rationality will prevail, that some of the diplomatic achievements of the past will be preserved, and that a major scale confrontation will be avoided

5:19 AM - Jan 3, 2020

In France, President Emmanuel Macron had yet to react, but the country’s junior minister for European affairs, Amélie de Montchalin, said that she would soon consult with countries in the region.

“We have woken up to a more dangerous world,” Ms. de Montchalin told French radio, calling for “stability and de-escalation.”

Netanyahu praised Trump for the strikes.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel cut short an official visit to Greece and was returning to Israel on Friday, while his ministers mostly kept silent in an apparent effort to avoid undue Iranian attention.

Before boarding the plane, Mr. Netanyahu praised President Trump for “acting swiftly, forcefully and decisively.”

“Israel stands with the United States in its just struggle for peace, security and self-defense,” he said.

Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls the Palestinian coastal territory of Gaza, offered its condolences to Iran on the death of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, saying in a statement that he had “played a major and critical role in supporting Palestinian resistance at all levels.” Hamas condemned what it called “U.S. bullying” that it said served the interests of Israel.

Bassem Naim, a spokesman for the group, said on Twitter that the assassination “opens the doors of the region to all possibilities, except calm & stability.”

Israel’s rookie defense minister, Naftali Bennett, held consultations at military headquarters in Tel Aviv and released a photograph of the meeting attended by the military chief of staff, the Mossad chief and other security officials.

Some Israeli opposition politicians issued congratulatory messages. Moshe Yaalon, a former military chief and defense minister — and now a leader of the centrist Blue and White party — thanked the Americans for what he called a “determined and precise” operation.

“The world and the Middle East have been freed today from an arch murderer,” he said, adding, “Good riddance!”

General Suleimani, a longtime adversary of Israel, was credited with overseeing many attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets and he was linked with an attack on the Israeli embassy in Argentina in the 1990s. More recently he was behind military actions from Syria, across Israel’s northern frontier.

Israel has long been locked in hostilities with Iran, attempting to thwart its entrenchment in Syria and halt its transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah, an Israeli foe, in Lebanon. Early Friday, the Israeli military announced the closure of a ski run in the northern Golan Heights that borders Syria. Israeli embassies abroad were reportedly placed on high alert.

______

Reporting was contributed by Ben Hubbard, Farnaz Fassihi, Elian Peltier, Megan Specia, Isabel Kershner, Ronen Bergman, Lara Jakes, Eileen Sullivan, Catie Edmondson, Benjamin Mueller and Nick Cumming-Bruce.

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SENATOR BALDWIN JOINS SENATORS BOOKER AND HARRIS, CONGRESSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS IN INTRODUCING THE JUSTICE IN POLICING ACT OF 2020

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) joined Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Kamala Harris (D-CA), as well as Congressional Black Caucus Chair Karen Bass (D-CA) and House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), in introducing the Justice in Policing Act of 2020, the first-ever bold, comprehensive approach to hold police accountable, change the culture of law enforcement and build trust between law enforcement and our communities.

“The pain people are expressing through peaceful protests is real. I see it, I hear the calls for change and I know we have to work to heal the wounds of racism in our country. We can say liberty and justice for all, but we need to make sure everyone can live this value,” said Senator Baldwin. “We need federal reforms to improve police training and practices, and to ensure transparency and accountability. That’s why I’m joining Senators Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and the Congressional Black Caucus to introduce this comprehensive reform to change the culture of policing in our communities. This is long overdue and we must meet this critical moment now to address systemic racism and fix policing policies in our country.”

“America has a serious and deadly problem when it comes to the discriminatory and excessive policing of communities of color - and that policing exists within a system that time and again refuses to hold police accountable for their brutality. For too long, this has been accepted as a cruel reality of being black in this country. We are forced to figure out how to keep ourselves safe from law enforcement and we are viewed as a threat to be protected against instead of people worth protecting. And for too long, Congress has failed to act. That ends today with the landmark Justice in Policing Act which, for the first time in history, will take a comprehensive approach to ending police brutality. On the back-end, the bill fixes our federal laws so law enforcement officers are held accountable for egregious misconduct and police abuses are better tracked and reported. And on the front-end, the bill improves police practices and training to prevent these injustices from happening in the first place,” said Senator Booker.

“America’s sidewalks are stained with Black blood. In the wake of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s murders, we must ask ourselves: how many more times must our families and our communities be put through the trauma of an unarmed Black man or woman’s killing at the hands of the very police who are sworn to protect and serve them? As a career prosecutor and former Attorney General of California, I know that real public safety requires community trust and police accountability. I am proud to join my colleagues in introducing this historic legislation that will get our country on a path forward,” said Senator Harris.

“What we are witnessing is the birth of a new movement in our country with thousands coming together in every state marching to demand a change that ends police brutality, holds police officers accountable, and calls for transparency. For over 100 years, Black communities in America have sadly been marching against police abuse and calling for the police to protect and serve them as they do others. Today we unveil the Justice in Policing Act, which will establish a bold transformative vision of policing in America. Never again should the world be subjected to witnessing what we saw on the streets in Minnesota with George Floyd,” said Congressional Black Caucus Chair Bass.

“We have heard the terrifying words ‘I can’t breathe’ from George Floyd, Eric Garner, and the millions of Americans in the streets calling out for change. For every incident of excessive force that makes headlines, the ugly truth is that there are countless others that we never hear about. This is a systemic problem that requires a comprehensive solution. I am proud to work in lockstep with the Congressional Black Caucus to craft the Justice in Policing Act. This bold, transformative legislation will finally ban chokeholds at the federal level and incentivize states to do the same, it will help end racial profiling, get weapons of war off our streets, hold police accountable, increase transparency and require and encourage greater use of body cameras. It does all of this while ensuring that our law enforcement agencies adhere to the very highest standards in training, hiring and de-escalation strategies to address systemic racism and bias to change the culture of law enforcement in America and ultimately save lives. I hope to take up this legislation in the House Judiciary Committee in the coming weeks,” said House Judiciary Committee Chair Nadler.

The Justice in Policing Act of 2020:

Prohibits federal, state, and local law enforcement from racial, religious and discriminatory profiling, and mandates training on racial, religious, and discriminatory profiling for all law enforcement.

Bans chokeholds, carotid holds and no-knock warrants at the federal level and limits the transfer of military-grade equipment to state and local law enforcement.

Mandates the use of dashboard cameras and body cameras for federal offices and requires state and local law enforcement to use existing federal funds to ensure the use of police body cameras.

Establishes a National Police Misconduct Registry to prevent problematic officers who are fired or leave on agency from moving to another jurisdiction without any accountability.

Amends federal criminal statute from “willfulness” to a “recklessness” standard to successfully identify and prosecute police misconduct.

Reforms qualified immunity so that individuals are not barred from recovering damages when police violate their constitutional rights.

Establishes public safety innovation grants for community-based organizations to create local commissions and task forces to help communities to re-imagine and develop concrete, just and equitable public safety approaches.

Creates law enforcement development and training programs to develop best practices and requires the creation of law enforcement accreditation standard recommendations based on President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing.

Requires state and local law enforcement agencies to report use of force data, disaggregated by race, sex, disability, religion, and age.

Improves the use of pattern and practice investigations at the federal level by granting the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division subpoena power and creates a grant program for state attorneys general to develop authority to conduct independent investigations into problematic police departments.

Establishes a Department of Justice task force to coordinate the investigation, prosecution and enforcement efforts of federal, state and local governments in cases related to law enforcement misconduct.

In addition to Baldwin, Booker and Harris, co-sponsors of the Justice in Policing Act of 2020 in the Senate are Democratic Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-NY), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Tom Carper (D-DE), Bob Casey (D-PA), Chris Coons (D-DE), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Edward J. Markey (D-MA), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Patty Murray (D-WA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Brian Schatz (D-HI), Tina Smith (D-MN), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Tom Udall (D-NM), Mark Warner (D-VA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Ron Wyden (D-OR). The bill is supported by 166 members in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Justice in Policing Act of 2020 has the support of a broad coalition of civil rights organizations including: Demand Progress, Lawyers' Committee For Civil Rights Under Law, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, National Action Network, National African American Clergy Network, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), The National Coalition on Black Civic Participation (NCBCP), Black Millennial Convention, and the National Urban League.

“The National African American Clergy Network supports the Justice in Policing Bill. It affirms sacred scripture that everyone is created in the image of God and deserves to be protected by police sworn to value and safeguard all lives. Failure by police to uphold this sacred trust with Black Americans lives, requires systemic changes in policing nationwide,” said Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner, Dr. Otis Moss, Jr., and Dr. T. DeWitt Smith, Jr., Co-Conveners of the National African American Clergy Network (NAACN).

“It's time to close the chapter on a dark era of unchecked police violence in our country that has wreaked havoc on African American families across the country. The Justice in Policing Act is historic and long overdue legislation that will put our country on a path to reform. This Act is responsive to many of the urgent demands being pressed for by our communities and by the people protesting for racial justice and equity across our nation. The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law commends the Congressional Black Caucus for their leadership on policing reform and this critical legislation, including Chair Karen Bass, Senator Cory Booker and Senator Kamala Harris,” said Kristen Clarke, President and Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

“Sometimes difficult circumstances present a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring about historic change,” said Marc H. Morial, President and CEO of the National Urban League. “The brutal actions of police in George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, along with botched execution of a no-knock warrant that killed Breonna Taylor in Louisville, and the brazen vigilante execution of Ahmaud Arbery in Glynn County, Georgia, have pushed the nation to the tipping point.”

“For the past four-plus centuries, Black people have continuously been made to endure unfair, unjust, and inhumane treatment in this country. We have been made to believe in that if we worked hard, never complained, and accepted what the world offered that would be enough. What the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and countless others have taught us is that obedience will never be enough; liberty and justice for all applies to everyone but us; and by us, we mean Black Americans, African Americans, Afro-Americans, or plainly put, Black people,” said Waikinya J.S. Clanton, MBA, Black Millennial Convention.

Full text of the legislation is available here:

https://www.baldwin.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/justice_in_policing_act_of_2020_section_by_section.pdf

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bobbystompy · 6 years

Text

My Top 120 Songs Of 2017

Previously: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011

The one saving grace is we do have 12 fewer than last year.

As always, criteria and info:

This is a list of what I personally like, not ones I’m saying are the “best” from the year; more subjective than objective

No artist is featured more than once

If it comes down to choosing between two songs for an artist, I try to give more weight to a single or featured track; not the ultimate factor, but it typically makes sharing the music easier

Speaking of… each song on the list is linked in the title if you wanna check any or every out for yourself

Oh, also, off the suggestion of Mike Gilkes -- and a few others -- I made this whole thing into a Spotify playlist, which you can peep here (includes 114 of the 120):

Let’s go?

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120) Big Sean & Metro Boomin f/ 21 Savage - “Pull Up N Wreck”

Some mediocre, listenable rap made by dudes who know a bit better (well, at least 2/3rds of them).

119) Maroon 5 f/ Future - “Cold”

This song makes me feel mostly nothing... but the first minute of the video does have some solid Adam Levine alone-in-the-car acting.

/oh my god it has 119 million views

This was a lot easier to enjoy when I assumed it went unnoticed. Bonus points for the Wu-Tang shirt at the end.

118) Bleachers - “Hate That You Know Me”

Closed out 2017 undecided as ever on one Jack Antonoff. Should we hate him for dating Lena Dunham? Somehow respect him more? Give him mega credit for his big time pop songwriting collabs? Or is that a ding? Is he a nerd or the coolest guy in the cocktail bar? I do not know the answers to any of these questions, and this song is merely OK.

UPDATE: THEY GAWN

117) B.o.B f/ T.I. & Ty Dolla $ign - “4 Lit”

Real bad song with a mindless/terrible/misogynistic chorus. Yet... something about professional musicians sitting in a room and coming up with “4 Lit” as some sort of escalated to catchphrase to “lit” is just hilarious.

116) Prophets of Rage - “Unfuck The World”

Sure, this hits a lot of the same beats as Rage Against The Machine’s “Sleep Now In The Fire” from 18 years ago, but in these increasingly polarized, political times, I welcome their voice.

115) Kacy Hill - “Like A Woman”

This song is so chill and ethereal that it seems almost unfeasible for my punk/hip-hop/XX chromosome havin’ ass to completely sync with its wave.

114) The Decemberists - “Ben Franklin’s Song”

What happens when pop indie teams up with the lyrical stylings of Lin-Manuel Miranda? Well, this. I’m not sure if The Decemberists drop f-bombs in any of their other songs, but it pleases me to think it only happened here.

113) Offset & Metro Boomin - “Ric Flair Drip”

Mostly here for the beat.

112) Hurray For The Riff Raff - “Hungry Ghost”

A cool song that’s hard to put into a box. Indie? Pop? Rock? Forget labels, just enjoy.

(Minus a few points for the low hanging “girl/world” rhyme)

111) Wavves - “Dreams Of Grandeur”

I was pretty let down by the new Wavves LP, but this song sounds enough like the old stuff to be a net positive (despite being, like, 70 seconds too long)

110) Culture Abuse - “So Busted”

Culture Abuse got on my radar with last year’s all-timer, “Dream On”. It was an unrelenting, robotic pulverization. “So Busted” is more of a drug comedown; a ballad, even. While “Dream On” wanted to seek you out and kill you like a terminator; “So Busted” just wants a cuddle.

109) Trey Songz - “#1Fan”

This song is so dumb and funny and pseudo competent. Really not sure how the R&B guys get away with this shit.

108) The Killers - “The Man”

Is this in a movie? It should be in a movie. It’s kind of, like, a better version of what Arcade Fire has been trying to be.

107) New Lenox - “Protest Sweater”

A good song for the ending 2017 -- or any year, really -- and its run time (1:30) would make Joyce Manor proud.

106) Logic - “Everybody”

This is really good, but it reminds me so much of Kendrick that it becomes distracting.

105) Gorillaz f/ DRAM - “Andromeda”

Didn’t spend enough time listening to the new Gorillaz record, but I actually put the blame on them: it was long, man. So while I woulda loved to pick one of the songs with a cool cameo (hi, Vince Staples!), this is the one I actually had around the most. It’s all we’ve come to expect from this cartoon band -- kinda British, kinda futuristic, very undisturbed. Also, if it gets you back to the album before me, I heard that Damon Albarn told all collaborating artists to record their parts like the world was ending tomorrow.

104) Dropkick Murphys - “Blood”

If you know me at all, you know I historically have not been a fan of this band. But for whatever reason, this one connected -- bagpipes and all.

103) Captain, We’re Sinking - “Books”

CWS was never, ever going to top the falling-apart-desperation of 2013′s “The Future Is Cancelled”, but this song comes pleasantly close.

102) IRONTOM - “Be Bold Like Elijah”

My buddy Crooks rec’d this band, and the guitars give me Queens Of The Stone Age vibes in the best possible way. A bio on lastFM compared them to Arctic Monkeys, and you know what? I agree with that, too.

101) Jidenna - “A Bull’s Tale”

This song feels primed to explode and makes you wanna rip the shirt off your chest; only we don’t know if the bomb’s gonna blow in the middle or at the end.

100) Jeff Tweedy - “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart”

Yeah yeah, the original version of this dropped in 2002, and yes, it’s just a cover by the dude who originally sang it. I... do not care. It made me appreciate the confessional regret all over again.

99) Talib Kweli f/ Yummy Bingham & Jay Electronica - “All Of Us”

It was all bad just a week ago

Kweli and Jay Elect are a collab made in conscious rap heaven, so this song was more than a pleasant surprise.

98) Rise Against - “House On Fire”

This song could have been on “Revolutions Per Minute”. Or maybe I’m just saying that because of the hand grenade lyric in the chorus.

97) HAIM - “Want You Back”

Can’t imagine there being a lamer song on this list. HAIM and Bleachers should get in a wuss rock beef that ends with pistols.

96) The Bigger Empty - “By Its Own (So What)”

My producer plays bass in this band. This song is super solid, and, maybe most importantly in these completely divisive times, unoffensive and approachable. Kinda Hush Sound-y.

95) Little Big Town - “Lost In California” (note: link is to live version)

From the bros and broettes who brought us “Day Drinking” comes this much more subdued track. If you squint, it doesn’t really even seem like country. Granted, if they sang “Alabama” instead of “California”, you could probably call that claim out immediately.

94) Lana Del Rey - “Heroin”

Another beautiful/dreamy song from an artist who’s near-perfected that niche.

93) Wavves & Culture Abuse - “Up And Down”

Wavves and Culture Abuse have already made appearances on this list, and we haven’t even cracked the Top 80. Fortunately, their collaboration scored a little higher than their individual outputs. Shout out to their uplifting outro “I’ll just get high and I’ll die alone”.

92) The Chainsmokers & Coldplay - “Something Just Like This”

This song played at my gym all the time, and I was positive it was Coldplay. Then someone told me it was The Chainsmokers. Then I looked it up on YouTube, and it says “The Chainsmokers & Coldplay”... so what’s the deal, assholes?

91) Lil Peep f/ Lil Tracy - “Awful Things”

I hadn’t heard of Lil Peep when I found out of his passing in 2017. After looking up some pictures, I was nearly 100% positive his music was not for me. This was incorrect. I haven’t really listened to songs that sound like his; it’s kind of like rap that treads this line of being bad while also kinda sounding like alternative rock; destructive love song that doesn’t flinch.

90) AFI - “Dark Snow”

Nothing new, but Davey Havok can still sing circles around almost anybody.

89) Dashboard Confessional - “Love Yourself” (link is to live, partial version)

Well, Dashboard covered Biebs, and we all lived to tell the tale.

88) Garrett Dale - “2016 Was...”

This song would be a blast as a singalong in a late night hotel room. There’s something calming about celebrating -- or at least acknowledging -- everything sucking.

87) Katy Perry f/ Skip Marley - “Chained To The Rhythm”

Got more than a few issues with this song, but it’s catchy, so they’re mostly forgiven. Even though it’s Katy Perry, I was pretty surprised to see it racked up 444 million views.

And seriously who the hell is Skip Marley?!

86) The Ramblin’ Boys Of Pleasure - “Glug, Glug, Glug”

Now is probably a good time to plug the lead track from my band’s b-sides record that came out this year (ten years in the making, baby!). Mandatory listening if you’ve ever bonged brandy, partied in Champaign, or counted down in a country voice.

85) Charly Bliss - “Glitter”

It’s been nearly a year, but it’s still somewhat difficult to calibrate this singer’s voice. Is it a little too saccharine, too childlike, or just perfect? You be the judge.

84) Emperor X - “Wasted On The Senate Floor”

This singer is real god damn frenetic.

83) Father John Misty - “Total Entertainment Forever”

/obligatory “yes, this is the one with the Taylor Swift lyric” reference

FJM has such a pro’s pro voice and makes super sound music... but it’s also kinda hard to have an overall opinion. The more 50-50 I get, the more I think it’s not all that great. The video is a microcosm. Like... why is Macaulay Culkin paying Cobain? Is this a commentary on capitalism? Oooh, nah nah nahs are nice! As divided as I still am, I’m pretty positive this song is good-if-not-great.

82) St. Vincent - “New York”

This song is further proof that soft, radio friendly music can still benefit from a well placed “motherfucker”.

81) Andrew McMahon In The Wilderness - “Dead Man’s Dollar”

As long as Andrew McMahon’s project is called “Andrew McMahon In the Wilderness”, I will make fun of him like clockwork.

This song is nice. I sometimes sing “I want Thon Maker” when he says “I want to make a” in the chorus.

80) Kele Okereke - “Streets Been Talkin’”

Kele’s most impressive feat was sneaking “bae” right into the chorus without me noticing until literally right now.

79) Rick Ross - “Summer Seventeen”

How the hell did this dumbass song get so high up on the list? I have no explanation. Classic Roazy though -- aim high, fake it till you make it. When I started my new job in August, IT reset my password to “summer2017″, and I had this song’s hook in my head nearly every time I typed it in. All told, a pretty hilarious way to start a work day.

78) Michelle Branch - “Best You Ever”

This song sounds so dark and sultry, but I’m not totally sure why. Branch rules.

77) Calvin Harris f/ Pharrell Williams, Katy Perry & Big Sean - “Feels”

The best way to ruin this song for anyone is to point out how much the hook sounds like Katy Perry singing “Don’t be afraid to catch fish”.

76) Morrissey - “Spent The Day In Bed”

This is a very low maintenance lyric video. So you can either make fun of that or the “I spent the day in bed / I’m not the type, but I love my bed” line.

75) Red City Radio - “If You Want Blood (Be My Guest)”

The “We don’t need a god damn thing from you” chorus is a little punk cliche to win me over, but the Oklahoma City reference (”where our dreams come true and die”) is the line I’ve been waiting for since I found out RCR was from there.

74) Sam Coffey & The Iron Lungs - “Talk 2 Her”

The closest we’ll get to a new Clash song in 2017.

73) Bad Cop/Bad Cop - “Womanarchist”

Factoring in the 2017′s themes (#MeToo, Harvey dead, etc.), this has to be the song title of the year. I smiled ear-to-ear watching this music video.

72) The Movielife - “Mercy Is Asleep At The Wheel”

Hey, The Movielife reunited!

71) The Rocket Summer - “Gone Too Long”

Unlike that lazy ass Morrissey, The Rocket Summer gave us a lyric video that basically passes as a legit music video.

70) Miguel f/ Travis Scott - “Sky Walker”

Me, every time I listen to this song:

“Ooh, beat is pretty solid.”

“Ah yeah, the hook’s good. I thought I really liked this song though...”

/falsetto part

“AW YEAH.”

69) Queens Of The Stone Age - “The Way You Used To Do”

Had never known about the Josh Homme/Elvis comparisons, but after hearing this, I totally get it now. Also: god damn it, man.

68) Macklemore f/ Skylar Grey - “Glorious”

What can we do to make Skylar Grey more famous? She Ginger Rogers’d for Em on “SNL” -- seriously, she played piano and sung Dido, Beyoncé, and Rihanna hooks (that’s a solid ass trinity!) -- has unarguably awesome songs, and never takes anything off the table. I honestly don’t care if she has another hit... let’s just, like, all Venmo her five bucks or something.

One of my fav music videos on the list so far. Be as skeptical of Macklemore as you want, but when his grandma offers him a drink (haha) then says she wants to “do it all” with their day together, it warms the hearts.

67) Direct Hit! - “Blood On Your Tongue”

Direct Hit! continues to be the best modern version of Green Day, The Ramones*, and themselves.

(* - without being Ramones-core)

66) Boyd & The Stahfools - “Party Penguin”

I’ve been in the game for a long while, but, for the first time in my career, I finally was part of a music video. If you told me it was a 2Pac parody that advertised craft beer, I’d, well, I’d believe you. We got Dave Hernandez on the hook, Mike Healy as Dr. Dre, and yours truly as Makaveli.

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And all jokes aside, “On vacation like Bev D’Angelo” is one of my favorite penned lines.

65) Rancid - “Telegraph Avenue”

I like when Tim sings about grabbing his left-handed guitar.

64) Big Sean f/ Jeremih - “Light”

Sean Don made a forgettable 2017 album with many throwaway tracks -- but “Light” ain’t one of ‘em. I liked this song even before the touching video cemented its power.

63) blink 182 - “Parking Lot”

This is that weird mix of what makes all new blink really good and really eh at the same time -- Skiba involved (for better or worse), inspired Mark (for better or worse), and Travis’ overplaying (for better or worse). It’s for sure easier if you just turn your brain off and go with it.

Why does he reference Chicago in the verse then California in the pre-chorus?

I SAID “OFF”.

62) New Found Glory - “Your Jokes Aren’t Funny”

This song doesn’t break a ton of new ground, but it’s got this circular, easy chorus that keeps me coming back.

61) Teenage Bottlerocket - “Goin’ Back To Wyo”

Similar to Red City Radio writing about OKC, I can’t get enough of TB writing about their home. Did I blast this song while driving across the entire state alone this summer? Do you know me an ounce?

60) Frank Turner - “The Sand In The Gears”

A little dissatisfied with the current administration? Frank may be from across the pond, but he’s with you on this one, man. One of my favorite parts of this song is when he breaks the rhyme scheme just to angrily say “I thought that we were winning the war against the homophobes and the racists”.

59) Billy Bragg - “Not Everything That Counts Can Be Counted”

Billy Bragg is here for all of us, with perspective, wisdom, and insightful guidance in tow.

58) Dave Hause - “The Flinch”

Send this one to an old flame if you’re hoping, you know, to maybe rekindle.

57) Selena Gomez f/ Gucci Mane - “Fetish”

That’s right -- “Bad Liar” got beat out by this significantly less popular single featuring one of my least favorite rappers.

/looks up play totals

”Fetish”... 130 million

“Bad Liar”... 214 million

Comparably popular, I say! For me, this one is all about the chorus -- and that beat’ll get you swayin’.

56) Jay Electronica - “Letter To Falon”

‘Cause who gon’ save them babies? / And finally put a definite to all those maybes

Death, taxes, maybe death again, and Jay Electronica never releasing a full length album. Our man has been on Roc Nation for nearly ten years. I hate him so much. /anxiously awaits his next move

Jay Electricity in his zone on this one; so comfortable, in full operation within the confines.

55) Laura Jane Grace - “Adore”

I don’t know who Amy Shark is, but LJG covered her song and punted my heart into Lake Michigan.

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54) Russian Girlfriends - “Antidote”

Upbeat, direct song that starts kinda Metric-y with the riff but then gets more pop punk as it progresses.

53) Brian Fallon - “If Your Prayers Don’t Get To Heaven”

My fiancee laughed when I looked up how to play this song on the guitar and the guy who tabbed it out wrote “Typical Brian Fallon open chords” in the intro.

52) Cloud Nothings - “Enter Entirely”

If “Womanarchist” is the ‘best’ song title of the year, “Enter Entirely” is certainly the coolest. And please don’t let the very boring music video fool you -- this song gets after it, man. If you are a fan of rock music, it would blow me away if you found this song remotely objectionable.

(After seeing CN open for Japandroids on back-to-back nights this November, it feels criminal to have such a slow song represent the band, as their drummer is the Russell Westbrook of the indie scene. That dude does not tire and comes off as more machine than man.)

51) Conor Oberst - “Napalm”

Oberst released a 10-song album in 2016 that was super brooding and piano-y... then he released another album in 2017 (17 songs) that had every track from his previous record and seven new ones. Kind of a weird move, no? This is one of those seven; suffice to say it’s a little more upbeat.

50) Sorority Noise - “No Halo”

You could tell me this song came out in 2002, 2007, or both -- but not 2017. How is this not a time capsuled rival of Taking Back Sunday or My Chemical Romance? I don’t know, but if you like a lot of death, this one’s for you.

49) N.E.R.D f/ Rihanna - “Lemon”

Let’s lighten the mood back up with some RiRi rap. My buddy Crooks’ take: “That's how every 2017 hip-hop beat should sound.”

48) Kesha - “Praying”

It’s damn near impossible to talk about this song without talking about The Note. It occurs at 4:21, and it will make you a little faint.

Kesha dusts herself off and gets beyond empowered in this one. This song could legitimately soundtrack the entire #MeToo movement. When the drums kick in halfway through, you’ll be ready to fight back too.

When I’m finished, they won’t even know your name

47) The Smith Street Band - “Laughing (Or Pretending To Laugh)”

This soft, hopeful love song is almost *too* respectful when it comes to interactions with the opposite sex. I’m not sure there’s a more endearing 2017 lyric than “And I don't wanna marry you just yet / But at least let me get you a cider / And I don’t even think I’d have to pay for it / Hopefully there’s a couple left on the rider”.

46) Run The Jewels - “Legend Has It”

Whenever I think of this song, I will always have that image of El-P holding up that gun to the bunny’s head. This song is braggadocious, each line one-upping the previous in perpetuity. Man, they probably rule live.

45) Vic Mensa - “Say I Didn’t”

Vic Mensa's Roc Nation debut (CAN YOU HEAR ME AT ALL, JAY ELECTRONICA?!?!?!?!?!?) was real strong, and this one gives you a good taste of what he’s about. He’s intense but controlled and even gets a little soulful. And depending what sphere you come from, you’ll either be extremely more or extremely less interested after he drops a Weezer reference. If that gives you trepidation, maybe the Nate Dogg namedrop will reel you back in?

44) Kendrick Lamar - “HUMBLE.”

I like Kendrick Lamar and will always recognize his talent, platform, and body of work (there’s a real case to be made that his “Control” verse killed hip-hop, and it’s just been an animated zombie ever since). Having said that...

He doesn’t always make it easy. The all caps song titles, the weird high pitched flow, the massive reliance of “bitch” in his choruses... yet, he’s the same dude who begs for stretch marked butts and body positivity. I don’t know, man. By the time he hits the “I make a play fucking up your whole life” line, I’m nearly all the way back in.

Last complaint: that organ-y keyboard thing could be so much louder. The beat almost feels diet because of that decision.

43) PKEW PKEW PKEW - “Cold Dead Hands”

This song is about how you can’t freeze this band to death, because they’ll party their way out of the situation.

42) Weezer - “Any Friend Of Diane’s”

This song puts me in a trance; they sing the same chorus lyric a million times, and I still almost want more.

41) Taylor Swift - “I Did Something Bad”

If this song isn’t a hit in 2018, then I do not know anything. For as uneven and questionable as her new singles were, this song has none of that. By the time she’s rolling on the tremendously magnetic “over and over and over again” part, you’ll feel like it’s 2009.

Maybe the old Taylor is still alive after all.

40) Best Ex - “Someday”

What’s that, you want your pop with a lot less baggage? This song is currently at 1,042 views, which is further proof of no justice in this world. I remember grocery shopping with this in the headphones, and you woulda thought it was the happiest moment of my life by the expression on my smiling, dumb face.

39) White Reaper - “Judy French”

“There are no good new rock bands wahhhhh”

Nah -- you just suck at finding music when it’s never been easier in human history, I guess?

38) Anti-Flag - “The Criminals”

This band has always lived in this dramatic life-and-death world, and it’s been going on for so long, that it’s like their vision of what they were always rebelling against was willed into existence.

37) French Montana f/ The Weeknd & Max B - “A Lie”

My dislike of French Montana is so high that I sometimes think about having to answer for saying something heinous about him. Kinda like when Kevin Garnett was accused of calling Charlie Villanueva (who has alopecia) a “cancer patient.”

KG’s all-time response:

“I am aware there was a major miscommunication regarding something I said on the court last night. My comment to Charlie Villanueva was in fact ‘You are cancerous to your team and our league,’" Garnett said in a statement to the media on Wednesday.

Hahahaha.

French, you are a cancer to hip-hop and our league. His verse even references stupid Karl Malone, because why wouldn’t it? The good news is we have The Weeknd on the hook *and* in the first verse, so you can basically just pretend it’s his solo song with a few regrettable cameos.

36) The Penske File - “Oh Brother”

The Penske File make it look effortless sometimes. After hearing this song and doing a Malört shot with their singer, I have higher hopes than ever for their 2018 full length.

35) The Front Bottoms - “Don’t Fill Up On Chips”

TFB’s new album didn’t give me everything I wanted in terms of uptempo bangers, but the lyrics, sentiment, and craftsmanship are all still very much present.

34) Vince Staples - “Big Fish”

The Juicy J chorus might not win a Pulitzer (”I was up late night ballin’ / Countin’ up hundreds by the thousand”), but Vince is rapping invincible, and by the time the lyrics call back his monster single (“Norf Norf”), you won’t be questioning anything anymore.

33) Julien Baker - “Shadowboxing” (link is to live version)

I know that you don't understand 'Cause you don't believe what you don't see When you watch me throwing punches at the devil It just looks like I'm fighting with me

I swear, Julien Baker might be one of the only people on this planet with the power to shut us all up and listen.

32) Paramore - “Fake Happy”

Paramore is a band that does dumb shit all the time. Infighting, legal drama, horrible makeover after horrible makeover. Seriously, this is real:

But through it all, there’s that unbreakable Hayley voice, and it’s like everything is gonna be OK again. I mean, no, it’s not -- but let’s still enjoy these fleeting moments, full blown pop transition or not.

31) Nothington - “Cobblestones”

This song briefly sounds like Lucero before turning into no nonsense despair punk.

30) Lorde - “Perfect Places”

Such a phenomenal album closer; great to have her back in the pop music fold. Car, headphones, party, whatever -- this song goes all around you.

29) Remember Sports - “I Liked You Best”

If Kesha’s high note in “Praying” was pop music’s peak vocal moment in 2017, I’d like to nominate the “You made this me-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-hess” (2:37) part as punk’s.

28) Phoenix - “J-Boy”

This band makes such gorgeous music.

27) Drake - “Free Smoke” (no link)

Drake’s full album output, in minutes, for the last four years:

2013: 59 minutes 2014: N/A 2015: 108 minutes 2016: 81 minutes

And this doesn’t include stray singles, diss tracks, or cameos (2014 had “0 To 100″, for example). What I’m saying is, despite high quality material, Aubrey has saturated us with music for nearly half a decade. So even though I dig him lots, it was like “Really?!” when I heard he was releasing 2017′s “More Life” and “WHAT” when I found out it was another 81 minutes (the same length as 2016′s “Views”). Though the record is stylistically very different -- I keep hearing people use the word “grime”, though I have no idea what it means -- it’s still got bars. My favorite stray lines (they add up):

- “More life, more everything” - “I dunk text J-Lo / Old number, so it bounce back” - “Hilton rooms, gotta double up / Writin’ our name on a double cup” - “I fall asleep in sororities / I had some different priorities” - “Women I like was ignorin’ me / Now they like ‘Aren’t you adorable?’ / I know the question rhetorical” - “I make too much these days to ever say ‘Poor me’” - “I wanna move to Dubai / So I don’t never have to kick it with none of you guys”

But, it wouldn’t be Drake without making fun of him some. The song beings with, well, him sampling himself at an award show. The sample:

And more chune for your headtop So watch how you speak on my name, you know?

Which begs the question: did he do the weird Jamaican accent knowing he was gonna sample it? It treads this weird genius/calculated doofus line. All I know is it makes me laugh.

26) Tigers Jaw - “Favorite”

This song could make me pensive and unhappy on the sunniest of days.

25) Tee Grizzley - “First Day Out”

Like many, I first heard of Tee Grizzley from a LeBron James Instagram workout video. It was an easy sell: Detroit, ferocious beat, and the dude goes *hard*. I got a little too excited and emailed my hip-hop friends: “What the fuck is this? This is GOOD.”

This was before I realized he kinda sounds the same in every song. It’s no matter -- we’ll always have “First Day Out”, a brief time in June 2017 where I thought Tee Grizzley could be the next to run the game.

I can’t even be in public with my hoodie on

24) The War On Drugs - “Strangest Thing”

It’s very difficult to write about The War On Drugs without mentioning how transcendent it is to listen to them in the car. Everyone is right about that, but, for me, I also have to mention how much this dude sounds like Dylan. People say Springsteen, but I hear so much Bob. You don’t necessarily have to get “past” it, but you do kinda have to get used to it. Once you do, the lead guitar will carry you into the clouds. This music will make you contemplate and reflect.

23) Foxing - “Night Channels”

Let’s keep the mood contemplative; you almost feel sleepless if not completely locked in to this one.

UPDATE: This dropped in 2015, /sigh

22) Craig Finn - “God In Chicago”

This is more of a movie than a song -- and the visuals agree. Focus in on the lyrics, take in the story, and then do it again soon because you’ll catch new wrinkles each time. One of the year’s best videos, for sure. Punk News phrases it well: “Here he’s made a solo album of losers who have no idea they’ve already lost.”

21) DJ Khaled f/ Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance The Rapper, Lil Wayne - “I’m The One”

No one wanted you to know he had sex in 2017 more than DJ Khaled. He made his infant son Asahd the “Executive Producer” for this video. Why? Because he’s an idiot. Khaled’s still existing fame continues to confound. He’s more faux-platitudes than man at his point. So why do the best artists in the world collaborate with someone so seemingly unintelligent? I don’t know, but this song bangs and was probably my Song of the Summer. We got JB on the hook, a dumb-but-amusing Quavo*, Wayne trying to gain footing, and Chance running across the finish line backward with Best Verse title belt. But Khaled won’t let you forget about him, blaring DJ tag and all. This song suffers for that, and it’s all his fault.

(* - his ad lib of just repeating everything becomes charming once you start to get Stockholm Syndrome with the song)

20) Ed Sheeran - “The Shape Of You”

What a 2017 for the man behind the year’s best (super successful) pop song. At the turn of the calendar, I barely knew who he was, but before we all knew it, there was a legitimate public outcry because he was on “Game of Thrones” for, like, two minutes. What a time. Oh, also, the “Come on, be my baby...” bridge gave me some “Real World: New Orleans” acid flashbacks.

Great meme, take us out.

19) Minus The Bear - “Last Kiss”

If the shattered neon heart didn’t give it away, this is a “the relationship is definitively over” breakup song. Seeing them play it at Riot Fest made me miss my late friend Luke; I wish he could have heard this.

18) Hot Water Music - “Never Going Back”

I’ve always maintained Chuck Ragan plays guitar and sings songs like a running back. Well, this song carpe diem’s me enough to play actual running back*.

(* - jk, would never do this unless it was against very small children)

17) Lucky Boys Confusion - “Good Luck”

My hometown heroes released their comeback album in 2017, and I’m not sure any track sums up the effort better. By the time Adam sings “Burned out, they call us / Screw ‘em, we got endless memories / Punk rock and the polish / I hope it gave you something to believe”, there are no dry eyes left.

(And yes, this could totally be an AM Taxi song, but with Ryan Fergus’ killer-fills-only drumming, I’m glad it wasn’t.)

16) Hodera - “Baltimore”

This song would likely have a Top 5 objective approval rating of any on the list.

...“The Wire” forever.

15) Iron Chic - “A Headache With Pictures”

It ain’t heavy, it ain’t heaven

If Hot Water Music is carpe diem, what is Iron Chic -- seize the life?! My favorite description of the band came from Sam Sutherland, who tweeted: “Whose day has already been derailed by the unavoidably weighty introspection of listening to the new Iron Chic record.”

They are a certified run-through-brick-walls outfit. One of my final 2017 memories of this song was subtweeting “Now I know” the night I got engaged and having my buddy Ricky think she might’ve declined the proposal. May have to include a ring emoji next time.

14) The Flatliners - “Indoors”

Had to listen to this, like, five or six times before its brilliant greatness overtook me like falling into a river. The chorus is so, so heartfelt.

Don’t sleep on the video, either (especially the end).

13) Sylvan Esso - “Die Young”

Though I have tickets to see them for the first time in 2018, I am not mega-versed in the catalogue of Sylvan Esso. But this feels like their best song. Imagine if Romeo and Juliet turned out OK.

12) Oso Oso - “Shoes (The Sneaker Song)”

Jade from Oso Oso would likely want all of the above stylized in lowercase -- but this ain’t Jade’s list. This was my favorite new band of 2017, and I do believe they made the year’s best album. It’s early-2000s emo at times, pop punk at others, and all ear candy.

11) Sincere Engineer - “Corn Dog Sonnet No. 7″

Staying in the new artist lane, I proudly introduce Sincere Engineer. This band sounds like if Modern Baseball had a little sister. By the time singer Deanna Belos sings “I’m still learning how to be”, you want to pat her on the back and give her all your best advice.

Fantastic music video -- and she confirmed to me this past weekend that it’s real mustard, not puffy paint (“I have a towel that is all yellow from cleaning it up”).

10) new.wav - “Girls”

Alright, so stick with me on this: new.wav is the band, covering The 1975′s song “Girls” in the style of “Enema of the State”-era blink-182. Confused? Yeah, I was too, but check it out. Maybe more impressive than the arrangements/performance is how they were able to match blink’s production style -- no easy task.

9) Jay-Z - “Family Feud” (starts around 5:30; partial version)

Shawn Corey Carter wants to get right with everyone -- America, his peers, and, of course, within his own home. And though I may never understand the “New n****s is the reason I stopped drinkin’ Dos Equis” lyric, I’m on board with about all else. Similar to the Oso Oso record, “4:44″ is such an album that it feels unfair to single out a song to represent all of its parts. Stripped from the LP, the song does not hit as hard, but in the groove of the record, it’s the apex. And despite Hov seemingly desiring peace, the song does have more than a few call outs:

- “My stash can’t fit into Steve Harvey’s suit” - “And old n****s, y’all stop actin’ brand new / Like 2Pac ain’t have a nose ring too” - “Al Sharpton in the mirror takin’ selfies / How is him or Pill Cosby s’posed to help me?”

In the latter stages of his career, it’s hard to call everything Jay does��‘necessary’, but “4:44″ definitely checked that box.

8) Rozwell Kid - “Wendy’s Trash Can”

Vacillated all year between this one and “Michael Keaton” and literally flipped a penny my cousin Maggie loaned me to decide. “Wendy’s Trash Can” was heads.

7) The Weeknd - “Reminder”

This one got backdoored in as a latter single from The Weeknd’s 2016 album. One of my favorite parts about Abel is how little he has had to change to succeed. Sure, it’s silky smooth, but he hasn’t sacrificed the drugs, darkness, or ego that should offend (but doesn’t because it he pulls it off so well). After bragging early in the song about he won a kids award for singing about cocaine, he calls out peers for biting his sound, blings out his entire crew, and, well:

When I travel 'round the globe, make a couple mil' a show And I come back to my city, I fuck every girl I know

/clutches pearls

6) The Bombpops - “Be Sweet”

The guitar riff in this song is why I fell in love with punk music. Also, super cool story behind the lyrics:

“'Be Sweet' is an homage to our dear friend, the late Brandon Carlisle of the band Teenage Bottlerocket," vocalist Jen Razavi told AP. "Back in 2010, we were partying in a hotel room with Brandon and Ray Carlisle. There was a guitar in the room and Brandon was showing us an idea he had for a song. He had written it for his wife, but he told us we should play it and change the lyrics to 'getting rad with my boyfriend.' He wrote down all the lyrics on four sheets of hotel notepad paper. Since then, the melody and the chord progression were forgotten, but I still had the lyrics. So we wrote our own version of the song in the studio and used every single lyric that Brandon had written down.

Did I mention the video has an “In Bloom” feel? Stop reading, go listen.

5) Action Bronson - “Let Me Breathe”

Action Bronson ain’t givin’ nothin’ up. This is my pick for rap song of the year. It’s got TV brags (”I got two shows, I’m about to pitch another”), a tight chorus (”Let me breathe for a minute / White Range Rover blowin’ trees all in it”), and whimsy shit too (“Honey bouncin’ up and down, she nearly broke my dick”). Ghostface’s disciple is having more fun than just about anyone.

4) Japandroids - “North East South West”

Only a Canadian band could get me to care this much about my own country. The Vancouver duo penned an Americana ode to the road -- but there’s a twist... they talk about their cities too. For every New Orleans, there’s a Toronto. For every California, a Vancouver.

Maybe they’ll be the ones to end all the border wars.

3) Alex Lahey - “Every Day’s The Weekend”

This is the only submission on the list I’d feel comfortable calling a perfect song. Relatable themes, a chorus that’ll tangle you up, f-bombs in all the right places, and every part maximized. She has this way of weaving between cool confidence and youthful insecurity, all in the matter of one verse.

2) Carly Rae Jepsen - “Cut To The Feeling”

When it comes to “Call Me Maybe” and its legacy, I do not fuck around. This song gets really, really, really close. Just watch this dude.

Queen Carly blessed us with another one. The chorus soars, arms go up, and clouds are your closest companions.

1) The Menzingers - “After The Party”

It's the little things my mind commits / To etch behind my eyelids

When this song dropped, my buddy Dave Rokos called it his favorite Menzos song ever. That felt like high praise, but man, he might be dead on. “After The Party” rips me in half with its lyrics of palpable desperation:

Like a kaleidoscope in vibrant hues I navigate around your tattoos Said you got that one on a whim when you were breaking up with him And that Matryoshka Russian doll That lines your shelf from big to small What a way to start anew To shed your skin and find the old you

If Carly’s chorus flies, this one holds us down like gravity. You feel everything, you feel nothing, you feel full yet voided, but after all of this -- the life, the party, the friends, the bars, the experiences, the nights, the lights, the fights, the city you live in -- it’s still her and you. Or him and you. Or whatever it is you come home to at the end, when it’s finally quiet.

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paulbenedictblog · 4 years

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%news%

New Post has been published on %http://paulbenedictsgeneralstore.com%

Cnn news Leader of Iran's elite Quds Force killed in airstrike: Reports

Cnn news

Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran's elite Quds Power, became killed uninteresting Thursday in a U.S. airstrike that centered a convoy near the main airport in Baghdad.

Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis furthermore died in the airstrike, Ahmed al-Assadi, a spokesman for Iraq's Well-liked Mobilization Forces umbrella grouping of Iran-backed militias, confirmed to ABC Files.

Officers with the U.S. Division of Defense confirmed in an announcement to ABC Files that U.S. forces had been accountable for the assault.

"On the route of the President, the U.S. military has taken decisive defensive action to guard U.S. personnel in a foreign nation by killing Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Power, a U.S.-designated International Terrorist Group," the observation be taught. "Total Soleimani became actively creating plans to assault American diplomats and restore members in Iraq and for the length of the issue."

Following the strike, the U.S. Tell Division issued an alert early Friday morning urging U.S. voters to leave Iraq and to steer clear of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

"Attributable to heightened tensions in Iraq and the issue, we urge U.S. voters to leave Iraq straight," the alert stated. "Attributable to Iranian-backed militia assaults on the U.S. Embassy compound, all consular operations are suspended. U.S. voters must still now not technique the Embassy."

Soleimani and the Quds Power "had been accountable for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition provider members and the wounding of thousands more," stated the Division of Defense observation explaining the strike. "He had orchestrated assaults on coalition bases in Iraq over the final several months -- along side the assault on December 27th -- culminating in the death and wounding of additional American and Iraqi personnel."

One U.S. civilian contractor became killed and several other provider members had been wounded in the Dec. 27 rocket assault on the K1 military spoiled outdated college by U.S. and coalition forces in northern Iraq. The assault ended in retaliatory U.S. military strikes in Iraq and Syria Sunday in opposition to the Iranian-backed militia the U.S. blamed for the Dec. 27 assault, which in flip led hundreds of pro-Iranian protesters to strive to storm the U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Fresh twelve months's Eve.

Thursday's strike in opposition to Soleimani "became aimed at deterring future Iranian assault plans," the U.S. observation continued. "The US will continue to take all well-known action to guard our other folks and our pursuits wherever they are across the enviornment."

In Iran, Supreme Chief Ayatollah Khamenei promised retribution for the strike.

"Years of genuine, brave efforts combating in opposition to the devils & villainous in the enviornment & yrs of wishing for martyrdom on the path of God eventually took the dear Commander of Islam, Soleimani, to this lofty spot," Khamenei tweeted. "His efforts & path would perhaps well well now not be stopped by his martyrdom, by God's Vitality, somewhat a #SevereRevenge awaits the criminals who have stained their hands with his & the assorted martyrs' blood final evening. Martyr Soleimani is an Intl resolve of Resistance & all such other folks will search revenge."

"Concentrated on & assassinating Total Soleimani -- THE finest force combating Daesh (ISIS), Al Nusrah, Al Qaeda et al -- is extremely harmful & a silly escalation," Iranian International Minister Javad Zarif stated on Twitter. "The US bears responsibility for all consequences of its rogue adventurism."

Officers in the greatest U.S. cities stated they had been marshaling resources following Thursday's military action.

"Own spoken with Commissioner Shea + Dep Commissioner Miller about immediate steps NYPD will take to guard key NYC areas from any strive by Iran or its terrorist allies to retaliate in opposition to The US," Fresh York Metropolis Mayor Bill de Blasio stated on Twitter, relating to Fresh York Police Division Commissioner Dermot Shea and Deputy Intelligence Commissioner John Miller. "We can must be vigilant in distinction threat for a in point of fact very prolonged time to approach."

"Whereas there is no credible threat to Los Angeles, the LAPD is monitoring the events creating in Iran," Los Angeles Police Division officials tweeted. "We can continue to keep in touch with issue, native, federal and global regulations enforcement partners concerning any well-known intel that would perhaps well honest fabricate."

U.S. reaction to the strike became largely split down occasion lines.

"Qassem Suleimani became accountable for the deaths of hundreds of Americans and his death gifts a possibility for Iraq to resolve its hang future free from Iranian preserve a watch on," Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), chairman of the Senate International Household Committee, stated in an announcement. "As I if truth be told have previously warned the Iranian authorities, they have to still now not mistake our cheap restraint in accordance with their outdated assaults as weak spot. The U.S. will in any respect times vigorously defend our pursuits and allies in the face of terrorist conduct and provocations."

"The defensive actions the U.S. has taken in opposition to #Iran & its proxies are per drag warnings they've bought," Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), but one more International Household Committee member, posted to Twitter. "They chose to brush apart these warnings on epic of they believed @POTUS became constrained from appearing by our home political divisions. They badly miscalculated."

"Soleimani became an enemy of the United States. That is now not a ask," Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), who's furthermore on the International Household Committee, tweeted. "The ask is this - as reports recommend, did The US appropriate raze, with none congressional authorization, the 2d most highly effective individual in Iran, knowingly environment off a seemingly big regional battle?"

"Trump Admin owes a fleshy clarification of airstrike reports -- the overall facts -- to Congress & the American other folks," Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), who's on the Senate Armed Services and products Committee, stated on Twitter. "The present authorizations for philosophize of military force in no formulation duvet initiating a that it's seemingly you'll well well seemingly also factor in fresh battle. This step would perhaps well well bring the most consequential military confrontation in a protracted time. My immediate field is for our brave Americans serving in effort's formulation."

ABC Files' Elizabeth McLaughlin, Matt McGarry and Megan Hughes contributed to this story.

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tedcatchpole-blog · 7 years

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Narcos season 3 review

Narcos. Season 3 episodes 1-3

I went into watching this, knowing that there have been parts of the previous seasons I have not enjoyed but that the overall entertainment I received certainly made it worth my while sticking with it. It is quite often the case with recent TV series, I think of Hannibal and Boardwalk Empire , particularly the latter with killing off, to my mind, the strongest character at the end of season 2 (Michael Pitt as Jimmy Darmody), that you get episodes that do not live up to previous standards. Sometimes this can be more than just one or two episodes, sometimes half a series. This is particularly risky when (as in the aforementioned Hannibal, it is the first episodes in a new season. That is how you lose a viewer. Hannibal nearly lost me in the first tedious half of season 2 but I was very glad I stuck with it as I found the latter portion of said series to be impeccable entertainment.

So in series 3 of Narcos, I have found both aspects. They have killed off a major character, pretty much the main character, especially considering the blandness of the narrator and hero of the first two series, Steve. He is rather an empty vessel, and more so up against the colourful and grandiose Pablo Escobar, who was (more or less) in sync with history, killed at the end of the last series.

So we have gone into the new series with the charismatic villain dead and some businessmen and a playboy taking over.

When the new series starts we are left to deduce for ourselves that the main protagonist from seasons 1 and 2, Boyd Holdbrooks DEA agent Stephen Murphy, is not in in with us for season 3. Our new narrator is the womanising previously decamped agent Pena. A man with a Derek Zoolander approach to facial expressions, except he has two looks, apologetic and sorry.

He is back in the fray due to his knowledge of the current antagonists, the Cali Cartel. The rivals to Escobar who have taken over in his absence and increased cocaine production and distribution to the USA, particularly New York as we find out. I did like Javier Pena. I wish they had eased up on the reluctant womaniser cliche, it's very tired, but if the first episode is anything to go by. They are not.

He is back on the case. After a really arbitrary group of scenes at his home town, one of many really clumpy and lazy season 3 exposition scenes, where he meets an old flame who he apparently treated badly but has forgiven him because after he left her she found true love, then with his sage-like father warning him, just as he did years before, to not be naive in the big bad world, we see him back in Colombia. He has been asked back but told it has to be by the book. He has a well meaning but geeky team under him, and he is told that it is not a gunfight. It will not be like Pablo. It will be intelligence led. A welcome return is made by the convincing Bill Stechner as the contentious CIA station chief who previously ousted Havi Pena only to be the one who called him back. They get off to a predictably unfriendly start as they meet in a bar (halfway through agent Pena picking up on a woman in a bar when he is feeling down about things ...yawn…) but I think he is a better foil for Pena than the beige-misted Steve Murphy.

As far as the baddies go, as the end of season 2 showed us, its the Cali Cartel. They are very different to Pablo and his Medellin outfit, they are known as the “Gentlemen of Cali”, where Pablo welcomed publicity,fame, and public adoration, they eschew it. In the last series, they were shown to be very tough but not as ruthless as Pablo. In the last series we were shown that they were like bankers. They were cutthroat but only in a business sense, at least at the top.

However, at the beginning of series 3 we have been shown, rather clumsily I think, that they can be as violent and brutal as El Padrone was. For example, the non-related member of the Cali bosses, Pacho Herrera, was shown to be as sadisticly violent as anyone else when he had a rival narco with whom he had an undisclosed beef, ripped limb from limb by motorcycles. Unfortunately this incident was so clearly nothing more than a force-fed way to show the audience that the Cali guys were also tough and nasty that it felt obtuse and clunky. Remember in the Godfather II when they have the prostitute murdered by Al Neri just to blackmail the Senator? Apparently that was included to remind the audience how vile the Mafia was, after the seemingly quite forgivable actions in the first made them come across as sort of rough diamond bad guys killing worse guys. So imagine if that subtle and excellent subtext had been done at the end of the first movie in a post credits scene, if Al Neri after he had expertly gunned down Don Barzini went to his hideout apartment and after a hallway encounter over nothing more than a loudly slammed door had been shown gutting an innocent mother in front of her children and giving a wink as the camera closes in on his eye, then that is what we have here. Anyway, they are all reintroduced, the leader, Gilberto Rodriguez, is cold blooded, yet maybe a bit distanced from the day to day cocaine business and therefore not maybe as aggressively ruthless as the more involved bosses of past and present, but it seems in no way unclear, he is numero uno. Then his brother Miguel, a rather enigmatic type, who seems to have a motive in playing saviour to a rival's wife (the aforementioned chap ripped apart by suzukis) but it appears sex is not the reason. It leaves a question open but I am not sure if it is interesting enough to take up much screen time.

The main issue, revealed at the close of the first episode is that the Cali cartel is disbanding, withdrawing from Cocaine and will hand themselves in. This is to happen in six months. The plan is for deals made through bribery and legal manipulation, the top guys will serve no time and will have plenty to retire on, and for the mid levels who will serve some time, they have six months during which they are to go all out to make as much money as possible, to go totally balls-out so they can serve a few months and have plenty saved to make it a worthwhile sacrifice to be able to live free of legal scrutiny. This decision was made purely by the top bosses. Obviously there were voices of dissent. The way they are discovered is classy television. Great editing and gripping action. The goal will now be for the authorities to get them before the six months expires.

We have the snidey accountant. The immensely well played (by Javier Camara) Guillermo Pallomari. A man who seems to be what the Nazi propaganda tried to make Jewish people look like to German children in the mid 1930s. Slimy, unethical, selfish, and happy to see others suffer. He is certainly likely to be a pivotal role in this seasons shenanigans. Also there is the equally enjoyable yet far more likeable Jorge Salcedo. He is the Cali’s head of security. A tortured man, he was planning on leaving to start his own security firm but after being told of the six-month plot he is asked (“asked”) to stay on. Alongside a burgeoning resentment from the obviously spoiled and incapable David Rodriguez, son of the Cartel's boss,Gilberto We see soon how he is not a man of cartel ethics. At the party where the Rodriguez brothers announce their grand plan he discovers a waiter who is wearing a wire. We also see what a fully competent security operative he is. HE shows the waiter he knows who has sent him and why and gives him a final and clear chance to leave Cali, he then disorientates the DEA agents who set the trap with consummate ease. Also we see him expertly foil a DEA raid to the aforementioned icky accountants office. The accountants arrogance nearly cost the Cali boys everything but Jorge using his strength, guile, and wit prevents it. I really do look forward to seeing how he arcs through the series

Agent Pena is for some reason being cited as a hero at the agency. He has gone from a regular agent to some sort of supercop, which given the sacrifices made by the Colombian forces and the other domestic and foreign agencies coupled with the fact he was not present at Escobar's death seems a little unlikely. Anyway, with this status he is in some sort of role (referred to as a “promotion” but at no point yet given a title or description) that leaves a vacancy for the roles filled by him and the strangely unmentioned Stephen Murphy. So step forward agents Feistl and Van Ness. Introduced as such a blatantly low grade version of Pena and Murphy I thought I had tuned into a franchised remake on a public access channel. They even look the same, but come across as….remember the movie The Beach, the two air head surfer stoners Sammy and Zeph that end up ruining it all with their stupidity? They reminded me of exactly those guys (not the book characters, for those who remember the book will know why).

They are made out to be bumbling and incompetent. One (Feistl) is played to be over zealous and naive and the other one (the other one) is played as phoning his job in and completely disinterested.

However, they appear by episode three to actually be very able, determined and, were it not for the sharp response of the Jack Bauer-esque Cali security chief, the guys who could have bought the Cartel down.

So If you want to know is it any good? Yes it is. If you had asked me that after episode 2 I might have replied differently, but episode three just like in Hannibal and Boardwalk, has made me glad I persisted and reminded me why I liked this series so much.

There are many careless scenes. Some really clunky exposition, and there are gaps left where there needs to be a bridge of some sort.

If I am asked can this series survive without Escobar, I would have said after two hours, no. Yet I am starting to think that the threads cast by the accountant, security chief, new agents, and the political tension wickedly stirred up by CIA spook Stechner are all going to weave into a really gripping re-telling of real life events

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morganbelarus · 7 years

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Spy, Diplomat, Podiatrist and Quack: The Strange Tale of Lincolns Toenail Trimmer

Americans have had little choice but to accept that President Donald Trumps son-in-law and daughter serve as his chief advisors and that his longstanding business partners head up federal departments. But would we rebel finally if he dispatched the man who trimmed his toenails to spy on ISIS or the one who tends to his corns and bunions to negotiate an end to a major war? During the Civil War, thats just what President Abraham Lincoln did.

Exceptionally tall, thin and long-limbed, Lincoln often found his feet were a tough fit for the periods hard-sole boots. According to Johnston & Murphy, the shoe company which has shod Presidents since 1850, Lincoln had a size 14 shoe, the biggest in Presidential history. (Trump reportedly wears size 12 shoes.) Lincolns big, boney feet ached. So did his back. He knew just the man to call upon. Eventually, he turned to the same hands that soothed his aching dogs to calm the dogs of war.

Issachar Zacharie was Civil War Washingtons foot doctor to the stars, despite the fact that he was something of a quack. Born a Jew in Chatham, England, in 1826, he came to the United States in the mid-1840s. Grocery businesses he opened in various cities failed, but he found better success promoting his skills as a surgeon and chiropodist, the 19th centurys title for a podiatrist. He settled in wartime Washington, D.C., in 1862, where he turned solely to treating foot and other bone and joint ailments. To establish his medical credentials, he fabricated a wall of diplomas for nonexistent college and medical degrees and persisted in calling himself doctor and inscribing M.D. after his name. He also plagiarized a textbook on surgery and diseases of the foot, just slapping his name on it.

The 1860 book went along with numerous ginned-up testimonials on his behalf from leading English chiropodists and many prominent Americans he claimed as happy past clients, including Senators John C. Calhoun and Henry Clay (both dead by then), and 160 citizens of Sacramento, Cal., though theres no evidence he ever set foot in the city. He claimed that he could cure foot trouble in five minutes, without pain or blood, so that the boot can be worn immediately after the operation without the least inconvenience to the patient. His posters also boasted fees that were trifling, indeed, compared with the relief and satisfaction he affords the sufferer.

He carried the part of the wise doctor with a stage actors aplomb. According to the New York Herald newspaper, he had a splendid Roman nose, fashionable whiskers, an eloquent tongue, a dazzling diamond breastpinan ingratiating addressand a plentiful supply of social moral courage. The faked M.D. and social graces inspired confidence in his patients who found him genuinely gifted at his chiropodist trade. He worked sufficient magic on the corns, bunions, ingrown toenails and sore feet of the Capital Citys elite to build up a large clientele.

A 1953 article on Zacharie by Charles M. Segal finds, he curried favor among the powerful because he was vain, ambitiousa political opportunist, who constantly sought to be on the winning side. Zacharie sent a newspaper article pointing out the military advantages of proper care for troops feet to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. True enough: foot pain forced many Union soldiers to drop out of ranks during long marches. Soon he applied to serve as Chiropodist-General to the Union Army. But it took the achy bones of the most powerful person in the land to win him a measure of fame, fortune, and eventually notoriety for his greatest incarnation, serving as the Presidents spy and personal peace emissary.

In September 1862, the achy Lincoln invited him to the White House, originally to treat a wrist sprain. Logs of Lincolns daily activities show that Zacharie returned to give the President relief from wrist, feet and back pain just four times in all, yet somehow, as Jonathan Sarna and Benjamin Shappel recount in Lincoln and the Jews, he managed to parley his intimacy with Lincolns sore feet and achy joints into a close relationshipeven friendshipwith a man known for his uncanny ability to size up others.

So much did Lincoln appreciate his chiropodists work on his feet that in the midst of a vast sectional war spiraling out of control into cataclysmic violence, not long after Zacharies first visit to the White House the President took time to write a public note for him: Dr. Zacharie has operated on my feet with great success, and considerable addition to my comfort. Shortly after that, Lincoln and Seward went further and jointly proclaimed the great skill of Dr. I. Zacharie in operating on corns, bunions, and other troubles of the feet and expressed their desire that the soldiers of our brave army may have the benefit of the doctors surprising skill.

Zacharie knew the value of such an endorsement: A poster he signed proclaims: Soldiers, Attention! All soldiers having corns, bunions or bad nails upon their feet can have them CURED without painunder the authority of the Secretary of War. He treated thousands of soldiers passing through Washington on the long march to war.

In return for these invaluable endorsements, Zacharie sent Lincoln frequent lettersaddressed to Dear friend, rather than more respectful greetings normally due the President of the United Statesand gifts like fresh pineapples, bananas, and hominy grits. His presents, podiatric relief, and ability to ingratiate himself to a weary Lincoln did the trick. Perhaps because Zacharie did not seek political office or a sinecure, the President grew to trust him and enjoy his company. They developed what some reports claimed were among the Presidents closer friendships during his White House years.

Zacharie became a White House regular, independent of the Presidents medical needs. The New York World newspaper concluded that the English foot doctor "enjoyed Mr. Lincoln's confidence more than any other private individual ... [and was] perhaps the most favored family visitor at the White House."

Lincoln was so fond of this curious man that when approached in March 1863 by Henry Wentworth Monk, a Canadian-American seeking support for his vision for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, Lincoln reputedly told him, My chiropodist is a Jew, and he has so many times put me on my feet that I would have no objection to giving his countrymen a leg up.

By 1863, Lincoln determined upon dispatching his foot doctor on other healing missions. New Orleans had fallen to Union forces, but the population was in open rebellion against the harsh leader of the occupation forces, General Benjamin F. Butler. Beast Butler was also openly anti-Semitic and regularly jailed and insulted Jews. When the President learned that Zacharie had connections to the 2,000-member Jewish community in New Orleans, he sent his chiropodist as his personal envoy to the city to assess the situation and calm the waters if he could. He also asked him to look into conditions outside the city, basically to spy on rebel forces.

By the time he arrived in New Orleans, General Nathaniel Banks had replaced Butler. Following up on Lincolns instructions, the new commander of the occupied city told the Presidents operative to mingle freely with its people of all classes, especially your countrymen; to ascertain and report as far as possible the nature of its opinions.

Banks also put Zacharies life on the line by instructing him, in a January 1, 1863, letter, to spare no Expense, while traveling out into the rebel-held Mississippi countryside to gather intelligence on enemy troop numbers and organization, supplies and ammunition. If caught as a spy, he would face immediate execution. One can only imagine the bewilderment troops must have felt upon meeting this eccentric English dandy and chiropodist as he poked around their encampments.

While in New Orleans, Zacharie seems also to have taken advantage of his position as confidential agent of the President to set up deals to trade with the enemy. After word reached Washington that he was involved in illicit exchanges of cotton and other commodities, he wrote Lincoln protesting his innocence, insisting he had never been interested in any speculation to the value of one cent. However, documents later surfaced in the war proving he had indeed made illegal dealsthough he may have used trade in contraband as a way to infiltrate Southern circles.

He was never prosecuted. He became personally close to Banks who defended him. Back in Washington, the deeply humane Lincoln seemed to accept his foot doctors foibles. That spring Zacharie returned again to New Orleans, making reports to Banks on improving sentiment toward the occupiers.

None of this would be anything but a quirky footnotepun intendedto Lincolns White House years were it not for Zacharies final and most outrageous mission for the President. While in New Orleans, Zacharie also charmed his many Confederate contacts. Despite the occupation, several remained in regular communication with secessionist leaders in Richmond. Zacharie wrote to Secretary Seward in late June of 1863 that his New Orleans contacts had urged him to go to the Confederate capital where they told him, he claimed, he may be instrumental too [sic] inaugurate some plan which may terminate the war. Zacharies charismatic magic convinced Banks to endorse his farfetched peace mission.

Lincolns Cabinet officers, led by Secretary of War Seward, recognized the folly of sending a freelancer to negotiate a peace treaty with the rebel chieftains. Eager to find a way to bring the bloody war to a just close, Lincoln ignored their objections. He personally arranged for safe passage for Zacharie through the battle lines, to the capital of the would-be Southern nation. By September 23, 1863, Issachar Zacharie, quack, charlatan, charmer, friend of the President, and spy, reached the Capitol of the Confederacy where he met with several Confederate leaders to discuss ways to end the rebellion.

In one of the more ironic circumstances of the Civil War, the English Jew met with the Jewish Confederate leader Judah P. Benjamin, Secretary of State for the Confederacy, to discuss Zacharies proposals for a peaceful settlement of the vast national war. The Confederates reaction isnt clear, but afterwards Zacharie returned to the White House and spent two hours briefing Lincoln on what he had learned, declaring that their meeting was of the most friendly nature.

Whatever the Presidents view, his Cabinet adamantly opposed Zacharies peace plan. Even then, press leaks were potent political tools. The New York Herald reported enthusiastically that the White House was considering proposals for a Peaceful termination of our troubles. The Herald then reported the seemingly insane plan under consideration, apparently put forth by Zacharie during his Richmond meetings, for the Confederate leadership to leave the country willingly, at the head of a 150,000-man army bound south to conquer Mexico. There they would establish a new Confederate nation while the warring states of the North and South would reunite.

Although many Americans, particularly in the South, had long eyed expansionand the spread of slaverydeeper into Mexico, the idea that peace might be made with the rebels after so much blood had already been spilled was politically inconceivable. The idea of a peace based on Zacharies imperialistic proposals died. Zacharie blamed political jealousy and infighting for the refusal to follow his lead. He wrote to General Banks, I am afraid they wish to steal my thunder from me, and you know twas I that concocted the plan.

By late 1863, Lincoln suggested Zacharie return to New York and cease speaking about his peace plan. Miffed that he would not go down in history as the man who singlehandedly ended the Civil War, Zacharie remarked that his friend lacks stability. He has it in his powers to stop all fighting in twenty-four hours if he would follow out my program. A few weeks later, he would say of Lincoln and Seward that he had no confidence in them.

Despite his resentments, Zacharie acted as a liaison to Jewish voters in Lincolns 1864 campaign for re-election. However, in September 1864, a former Philadelphia business partner, angered over a financial dispute with Zacharie, shot him through the nose. Zacharie survived the bullet and returned to the hustings little worse for it. A week before Election Day 1864, Zacharie bragged that he had accomplished one of the Largest things that has been done in the campaign. Given that the tiny northern Jewish electorate amounted to a few tens of thousands of voters, that was quite the claim.

Eventually, Zacharie abandoned his political activities and went back to work as a chiropodist. After Savannah fell to the Union Army in December 1864, Zacharie wrote to Stanton seeking a pass through the lines to that city. Stanton refused. Zacharie asked Lincoln, who rebuked the Secretary of War in a January 25, 1865, memo under the heading About Jews. His foot doctor got his pass from Stanton that same day. As prepared to sail, Zacharie wrote his Dear friend to let him know he was departing for Savannah and offered, if you have any matters that you would have properly attended tolet me attend to it for you.

This seems to have been the last written communication between Zacharie and Lincoln. A little more than two months later an assassins bullet struck the President down.

Although no longer the power elites favored foot doctor, Zacharie still sought to capitalize on his Civil War podiatry work. In 1872, he petitioned Congress for the immense sum of $45,000 for having treated the feet of 15,000 Union soldiers. The press lambasted Zacharie as President Lincolns toenail trimmer, charging him with seeking to enrich himself by creating a corps of corn doctors, or foot soldiers to put the army in marching order. A congressional claims committee rejected his petition.

After a brief effort to promote his friend General Bankss political ambitions, Issachar Zacharie mostly dropped from view. He returned to England sometime in 1874, where he resided until his death in 1897. However, the quirky quack and charming friend of President Abraham Lincoln parlayed that relationship into a bit of fame even in the afterlife. The real Zacharie is buried today near the graves of Karl Marx, novelist George Eliot, Malcolm McLaren, manager of the Sex Pistols, and other notables in North Londons famous Highgate Cemetery. Thanks to the success of Steven Spielbergs movie Lincoln, his chiropodists previously ignored grave became something of an off-the-beaten-track tourist destination, at least for those whose feet were not too sore already.

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Inside the U.S. military’s raid against its own security guards that left dozens of Afghan children dead

AZIZABAD, Afghanistan – Once the Americans left, the survivors started digging.

There were too many dead and not enough shovels, so a local politician brought in heavy machinery from a nearby construction site. He dug graves deep enough to fit mothers with children, or children with children. Some were still in their pajamas, their hands inked with henna tattoos from the party preparations the night before.

Villagers picked through the rubble of what had been an entire neighborhood, looking for remains to wrap in white linens for burial. A boy clutching a torn rug walked in a daze on top of the ruins. A young man collapsed in grief by a pile of mud bricks where his home once stood – where his wife and four children had been sleeping inside.

The local doctor recorded a cellphone video to document the dead faces, freckled with shrapnel and blood, coated with dust and debris. Some were Afghan men of fighting age, but most – dozens of them – were women and children. Taza was 3 years old. Maida was 2. Zia, 1.

The hot summer wind kicked up dust, smoke and the smell of gunpowder as villagers tried to make sense of why their remote village was demolished by an American airstrike in the middle of the night.

A clue was found near several of the dead Afghan fighters: ID badges from the private security company at the American-controlled airfield up the road.

Why had a team of U.S. soldiers and Marines battled its own paid security detail?

After more than a decade, those who buried their families still don’t know.

U.S. military officials publicly touted the August 22, 2008, Azizabad raid – Operation Commando Riot – as a victory. A high-value Taliban target had been killed; the collateral damage was minimal; the village was grateful.

None of it was true.

The Taliban commander escaped. Dozens of civilians were dead in the rubble, including as many as 60 children. The local population rioted.

It remains one of the deadliest civilian casualty events of the Afghan campaign. But the story of how the operation turned tragic has been largely hidden from the public.

USA TODAY spent more than a year investigating the Azizabad raid and sued the Department of Defense to obtain almost 1,000 pages of investigative files previously kept secret because it had been deemed “classified national security information.” The records included photographs of the destruction in Azizabad and sworn testimony from the U.S. forces who planned and executed the operation.

SHOW OF FORCE

This is an ongoing series of reports about G4S, the world’s largest private security force, which provides guards for thousands of private businesses and government agencies across the nation. Reporters at USA TODAY and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel spent more than a year gathering records and interviewing current and former employees, as well as those impacted by violence associated with G4S guards.

Contact the reporters

Brett Murphy

Gina Barton

Nick Penzenstadler

USA TODAY also obtained Afghan government records, evidence collected by humanitarian groups, including the Red Cross, and a confidential United Nations investigation into the incident.

In addition, a reporter traveled to western Afghanistan to interview government officials, investigators, first responders, witnesses and the villagers who survived.

MORE: How we reported the deadly airstrike: A reporter’s notebook from Afghanistan

Together, the records and interviews tell the story of a disaster that was months in the making as military and company officials ignored warnings about the men they had hired to provide intelligence and security. The records also reveal that the Defense Department has for years downplayed or denied the fatal mistakes surrounding the tragedy.

The problems began in 2007 when ArmorGroup, a private security company working on a Pentagon subcontract, hired two local warlords on the U.S. intelligence payroll to provide armed guards at an airfield on the western edge of Afghanistan.

Those warlords fought each other for control of the weapons and money ArmorGroup was giving out. The tangle of espionage and tribal infighting eventually drew in the very same military units that had helped empower the warlords in the first place.

The breakdowns in the U.S. military intelligence machine culminated with the raid itself. Some troops were never warned of Azizabad’s civilian population, and the special operations commanders who did know unleashed devastating force from the air anyway. Ground troops directed an American gunship to demolish house after house where at least one insurgent took cover, without knowing who else was inside.

“If they fled into the building, we were asking him to basically drop the building,” a Marine who was coordinating with the gunship testified. Most of the names were redacted from the military investigation.

Much about the mission in Azizabad remains in dispute, but this much is clear: The architects behind this corner of the war – and those profiting from the security contract – did not understand the difference between who they were supposed to be fighting, employing and protecting.

There still is no definitive death toll. After initially insisting that only five to seven civilians died, Pentagon officials were forced to adjust that figure to 33 after photos and videos of the carnage proved the official account wrong. Separate reviews by the Afghan government, Red Cross, United Nations and Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission put the civilian deaths over 70.

After two Pentagon investigations, the U.S. military denied any wrongdoing. Defense Department officials declined to comment for this story.

A 2010 Senate Armed Services Committee inquiry laid blame with both ArmorGroup and the Defense Department for doing business with the warlords. In response to the Senate report, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates issued a letter recognizing problems with contract oversight, which he pledged to fix.

Show caption Hide caption

An excerpt of sworn testimony taken from the fire control officer aboard the AC-130 gunship. The officer was in charge of selecting the munitions and… An excerpt of sworn testimony taken from the fire control officer aboard the AC-130 gunship. The officer was in charge of selecting the munitions and coordinating with the ground team to shoot at targets in Azizabad.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, VIA CENTRAL COMMAND

Yet in the aftermath of the Azizabad raid, records show, military leaders sought to present an image of success and mask evidence of a civilian casualty disaster. The false version of events was amplified by Oliver North – a former Marine commander and a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal of the late 1980s – who was embedded as a Fox News contributor with the forces conducting the raid. North’s segment, which presents the mission as a success and the Taliban commander “confirmed dead,” is still available on the Fox News website.

North did not respond to multiple interview requests. In an email, Fox News spokeswoman Caley Cronin did not address North’s segment and directed questions to North, “who is no longer a contributor with the network,” she wrote.

Lt. Colonel Rachel E. VanLandingham, a retired officer with the Judge Advocate General’s Corps and the chief of international law at Central Command’s headquarters during the Azizabad raid, said the commanders responsible for investigating the incident seemed to ignore the failures instead of learning from them. She did not know the details of the operation or the military’s response until contacted by USA TODAY.

“The CENTCOM investigation seemed more worried about looking good than being good,” VanLandingham, now a law professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, said in an interview. “Everyone who deploys in Afghanistan should know this incident.”

Show caption Hide caption

Villagers picked through the rubble for days after the airstrike. The U.S. military officials originally said only five to seven civilians were killed. But they… Villagers picked through the rubble for days after the airstrike. The U.S. military officials originally said only five to seven civilians were killed. But they did not look beneath the rubble. They adjusted that figure to more than 30 later.

Fraidoon Pooyaa

G4S, the largest private security company in the world, purchased ArmorGroup in 2008 – after the company had signed its contract with the Pentagon to provide security at the airfield but before the Azizabad raid. The company’s role has remained virtually unknown other than a literal footnote in the Senate inquiry.

Executives at ArmorGroup, which G4S dissolved into another subsidiary it later sold in 2014, considered their decisions at the time to be the best option to keep those inside the base safe under difficult circumstances, according to emails collected by Senate investigators.

“Without the leadership and management” of company staff, the “worst could have caused the project to fail long before the August tragedy,” one said.

David McDonnell, a former ArmorGroup director who oversaw mine clearing projects in Afghanistan

“It was wholesale slaughter. And it didn’t need to be.”

G4S declined to comment for this story, except to state that ArmorGroup is a former G4S subsidiary that wasn’t under the direct control of the parent company.

But some of the employees who were operating the air base contracts near Azizabad agreed to speak out publicly for the first time.

“It was wholesale slaughter,” David McDonnell, a former ArmorGroup director who oversaw mine clearing projects in Afghanistan, said in a recent interview. “And it didn’t need to be.”

His colleague, Tony Thompson, worked with some of the villagers killed in the raid. Thompson told USA TODAY he has spent much of the past decade wrestling with the truth kept secret all this time.

“Their families died, and they still don’t know why,” he said. “You’ll never bring them back. But you need to know how and why it happened.”

The Shindand District air base, on the southern border of Afghanistan’s Herat Province, was first built by the Soviets in the 1960s. A graveyard of abandoned Russian aircraft and land mines spread across open fields on both sides of the perimeter fence. The base is a 9-square-mile campus in a remote but strategic location between Iran’s eastern border and the Ring Road, which circles all of Afghanistan.

In a district that has long been controlled or contested by the Taliban, the airbase sits amid a major drug and arms trafficking route. The Taliban funds much of its national operation with the opium-poppy fields in the district’s Zerkoh Valley.

In April 2007, ArmorGroup – a private security company based in London – won a $5.1 million Air Force subcontract to guard construction workers building an expansion of the airfield for the Afghan National Army. (The company’s American subsidiary, ArmorGroup North America, based in Virginia, technically managed the contract). ArmorGroup had worked in more than 160 countries around the world and was known mostly for protecting oil and gas sites.

ArmorGroup agreed to a Pentagon requirement that it fill the guard positions by hiring nearby villagers. It was part of the Pentagon’s economic stimulus plan for Afghanistan, but it also was less expensive than bringing in guards from outside the country.

“We are a commercial company, of course, we are looking to do the business as cheap as possible,” a company official later told U.S. military investigators.

Shindand’s 450 villages are some of the most impoverished in the Herat Province. Many rural areas do not have running water or paved roads. Day laborers find work wherever they can, including across the border in Iran. A low-ranking Afghan National Police officer could earn roughly $70 a month.

At $275 a month, the guard jobs at the air base represented the best opportunity some would see in a lifetime.

ArmorGroup officials had no say in whom they would hire to pick the villagers. According to interviews and testimony, U.S. military personnel instructed ArmorGroup managers to let two local men – Timor Shah and Nadir Khan – select who could become guards.

The company assigned them code names: Mr. White for Shah and Mr. Pink for Khan. The names were an homage to Reservoir Dogs, the Quentin Tarantino classic film in which thieves betray and murder one another after an armed robbery.

Mr. White and Mr. Pink, two local patriarchs and sons of Shindand, would staff the guard positions from their extended families. The men were cousins, lifelong friends and business partners in the district. Their legitimate operations included car rentals and electronic stores in the northern city of Herat.

But U.S. intelligence and company officials believed that both men were burgeoning warlords with possible criminal and Taliban affiliations, according to interviews with local officials, testimony in the Pentagon investigation and memos from the Senate inquiry.

In rural Afghanistan, the line between village elder, warlord and legitimate Taliban is often blurred, which can confound outsiders trying to track allegiances on the ground.

Allegations of Pink and White’s illicit backgrounds weren’t necessarily a problem anyway. Military intelligence officers inside the airfield had been building a vast network of paid informants across the region, enticing them with money in exchange for information about Taliban meetings and the location of high-value targets.

White and Pink were both intelligence assets.

Lal Mohammad Umarzai, the Shindand governor at the time of the Azizabad raid, said he was never consulted about the possible implications of empowering White and Pink at the airfield.

Brett Murphy, USA TODAY

Lal Mohammad Umarzai, the Shindand governor at the time, told USA TODAY in an interview that he was never consulted about the wisdom of giving two warlords hundreds of thousands of dollars, access to an armory of automatic weapons and virtual control over Shindand. The district is one of the most diverse in Afghanistan, with complex tribal dynamics and a history of power struggles.

Had somebody reached out to him for advice, Umarzai said, he would have warned U.S. officials that White and Pink would bring trouble.

“They were the two most corrupt families in Afghanistan,” Umarzai said.

White and Pink initially split the work down the middle. They showed up in June 2007 outside the fence of the airfield with about 20 men each.

According to the Senate inquiry, ArmorGroup could not demonstrate that it had sent armed guard rosters or training records to the U.S. government, a violation of Department of Defense regulations.

“Normally in a country, if we were going to employ local people, they would be interviewed, qualification checks, names go to the government for security backgrounds,” McDonnell said in an interview. “None of that happened in Shindand. All of the normal procedures we would carry out didn’t happen because we were directed who to work with by the American forces.”

USA TODAY filed a public records request with the Air Force for documents about the armed employees – records the agency was required to collect and maintain, according to the contract. An Air Force official said those documents could not be located because they “might not have been processed or archived … due to the sensitive nature.”

Within weeks of starting the contract, Pink and White made the same calculation: Controlling half of the money and jobs was good. But having everything would make one of them untouchable.

They grew paranoid of each other. The resentment turned violent, and there were a series of shootings and bombings around Shindand that officials would blame on the feud between the two men.

Pink made at least one attempt on White’s life as he was leaving the air base. ArmorGroup officials grew increasingly worried that its guards would try to kill one another or leave their posts, according to internal memos and emails compiled in the Senate inquiry.

In December 2007, tribal elders brokered a cease-fire and called for White and Pink to settle their differences. A meeting was arranged for Dec. 12 in the Azizabad bazaar, a short strip of open-air shops on either side of the Ring Road.

White and Pink approached each other in the market, where villagers sold bread, fruit and home appliances.

Just before they reached each other, Pink pulled out a gun and shot White three times. A gunfight broke out in the market between ArmorGroup guards loyal to each man. Several civilians were wounded.

When the chaos ended, White was dead.

The Air Force project manager in Kabul reported the assassination to U.S. military officials, according to the Senate inquiry. But little changed.

“The incident did not give rise to a broader discussion at (the Air Force) about the wisdom of relying on two warlords to provide security,” the investigators wrote.

Pink, however, lost his job as an informant. ArmorGroup also fired him from the air base.

Fearing retribution from White’s family, Pink went into hiding in a nearby village with local Taliban militia. He was later involved in a series of kidnappings and other violent crimes, according to intelligence reports cited in the military investigation and internal company memos collected by the Senate investigators.

Military officials at the base went as far as nominating Pink as a high-priority target because “he was a force protection problem for the area,” one Marine testified during the Pentagon investigation. But U.S. commanders denied the request and decided instead to closely monitor him.

The airfield construction project continued, and ArmorGroup needed someone else to handle staffing guards at the air base.

So the company hired Reza Khan, White’s brother. They called him Mr. White II.

White II was another intelligence asset for the military personnel inside the air base. In one conversation with his handler, he disclosed that his nephew was Mullah Sadeq, a notorious Taliban commander operating in the Farah Province, just south of Shindand. Sadeq built and supplied improvised explosive devices around the region.

The Italian military had placed Sadeq on the high-priority-target list. U.S. special operations forces inside the air base had been tracking Sadeq for months in hopes of pinning down his exact location.

“It was really no surprise to us that (White II) had bigger connections with the Taliban than previously suspected,” White II’s Marine intelligence handler testified during the Pentagon investigation. “He had been playing both sides and ultimately we were actually looking to cut his ties that he had with us.”

Instead, military intelligence officers saw him as the key to taking down Sadeq.

In May 2008, London-based private security giant G4S bought ArmorGroup for $85.4 million. The acquisition came as the company expanded to more than 100 countries and took on dangerous business some of its competitors avoided, including mine clearing and base security in the Middle East.

The Shindand contract was already underway when G4S became the corporate parent. The company left ArmorGroup operationally independent with the same Afghanistan managers in place.

In July, Thompson, who worked for the company’s mine clearing division on a U.N. contract at the base, reported to executives in Afghanistan the threat White II posed. Thompson wrote that local police and the Afghan National Army had confiscated at White II’s Azizabad home stockpiles of unlicensed weapons and land mines. Guards had left the base with company weapons to moonlight as White II’s personal escorts.

Company officials expressed in interviews with investigators “permanent concern” about a full-scale war between militias loyal to Pink and White II.

“I would hate to see our people as the meat in the sandwich,” McDonnell, the company director, wrote in an email responding to the report.

Records show that ArmorGroup officials dealt with their concerns about White II by asking him to give a verbal assurance every week that the conflict wouldn’t escalate.

Around the same time, an Army Sergeant told White II’s intelligence handler that the warlord was funneling money from the air base contract – wages meant for the guards – straight to Taliban commanders. He was rebuffed.

“They know about it,” the sergeant told Senate investigators. “But they didn’t want to talk about it, for whatever reason.”

Through the spring and summer of 2008, special operations forces lost at least three of their own in the area.

On May 29, Sergeant First Class David Nunez, 27, of Los Angeles was on his third deployment with the Army Special Forces when his unit came under fire in the Farah Province desert plains. He was posthumously awarded the Silver Star for saving others from their vehicle as it became engulfed in flames. He had two sons.

A month later, five Marine special operators with the Second Battalion were gravely wounded while looking for a Taliban commander. Marine Staff Sgt. Edgar Heredia died. Heredia, 28, was a native of Houston and the son of two Mexican immigrants.

On a separate mission in the Zerkoh Valley, Marine Captain Garrett “Tubes” Lawton, 31, died when an IED detonated by his vehicle.

The leaders commanding these units were facing intense scrutiny. Night raids and air campaigns were often followed by reports of civilian casualties, an almost inevitable outcome when insurgents live and fight among their civilian neighbors.

Frank Rosenblatt, a retired Lt. Colonel and JAG who has written several books and studies about the military justice system, called 2008 “a time of strategic rudderlessness” for the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan.

He said military leaders rushed into operations that could be touted to the American public, often at the cost of the local population they were supposed to be protecting.

“Commanders wanted to be seen getting after it,” Rosenblatt said.

Mir Abdul Kalik, the former deputy governor in Shindand, was part of the Afghan government delegation investigating civilian casualties in Azizabad.

Brett Murphy, USA TODAY

The Taliban used the civilian deaths to recruit new militia members, and Afghan citizens grew increasingly wary of the tactics of American forces.

“The Taliban are always telling people, ‘Look at the Americans, they came to kill you and your kids,’” said Mir Abdul Kalik, the former deputy governor in Shindand. “A huge gap has been created between the Afghans and the Americans.”

The sentiment had reached Kabul, where then-Afghan President Hamid Karzai repeatedly condemned the use of American gunships in urban areas.

“We can no longer accept the civilian casualties the way they are occurring,” Karzai said.

But the airstrikes continued. On July 6, an airstrike in Nangarhar province inadvertently killed 47 Afghan civilians, misidentified as insurgents, during a wedding. Two weeks later, another airstrike accidentally killed nine Afghan National Police officers in Farah province.

In August, two assets – code-named Romeo and Juliet – told their intelligence handler at the air base news he had been waiting on for months: Mullah Sadeq was coming to meet his uncle, White II, at his home compound in Azizabad.

For the first time since the Americans had been tracking him, Sadeq would be within 20 miles of the base.

The information was met with skepticism. Romeo and Juliet were known associates of Mr. Pink, so intelligence officers considered the possibility that Pink could have orchestrated the leak as a way to have U.S. forces attack White II. Was this a setup?

“I’ve thought about that before,” one of the intelligence officials later testified in the military investigation. “But these guys, they give me pretty reliable information on who, what, when, and where.”

Romeo and Juliet had provided good intelligence for missions into the Zerkoh Valley that summer. Plus, the intelligence office reckoned, White II himself had corroborated his relationship to Sadeq.

It was too good of an opportunity to pass up. As a bonus, Oliver North and a Fox cameraman would tag along for the mission for their ongoing “War Stories” dispatches.

The regional commanders green-lighted an operation to capture or kill Sadeq and approved an AC-130 gunship, often dubbed “hell in the sky,” for close air support. Operation Commando Riot was a go.

In the days before Sadeq was scheduled to arrive, the U.S. forces at the base worked with Afghan commandos to draw up a minute-by-minute plan.

Romeo and Juliet said Sadeq would show up with more than two dozen militia sometime before midnight for a meeting inside White II’s compound. The house was surrounded by other homes on three sides and a large courtyard to the southeast. Each structure was built with mud bricks as dense as concrete. A wide alley led directly to the compound.

Romeo and Juliet had a contact attending the meeting who would call as soon as Sadeq arrived.

To maintain the element of surprise, the mission would need to be a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.

Driving pickup trucks, a team of 12 from the Second Marine Special Operations Battalion would lead the strike. Army Special Forces and Afghan commandos would follow 10 minutes behind. The total attack force would be roughly 80 men.

Captain Elliot Ackerman would be the assault force commander with the Marines going in first.

She survived the airstrike that killed her family

Gul Rukh survived the air strike that killed her family, but wishes she hadn’t.

Video by Brett Murphy, Shahpoor Sabir, Aleem Agha and Jasper Colt, USA TODAY

Ackerman, 28 at the time, was commissioned as an officer right after college. He had earned numerous medals, including the Silver Star for saving fellow Marines four years earlier during the second battle of Fallujah, the bloodiest engagement of the Iraq War.

Because most of the names were redacted from the testimony in the military investigation, it’s not clear whether Ackerman was the commander who ultimately led the entire Azizabad operation. He declined multiple interview requests for this story.

The laws of war require that all feasible precautions are taken to avoid harming civilians. To reduce collateral damage, experts and activists urge a “pattern of life analysis” – hours of reconnaissance in the target area ahead of a mission so everyone going in, including air support, understands how many civilians are present and where they are located.

But in Shindand, the troops were relying largely on third-hand information and a general understanding of villages in the area, the intelligence officers later told investigators. Even the intelligence assets, Romeo and Juliet, had not recently visited Azizabad themselves for fear of being identified.

A lead intelligence officer and a Marine commander were aware that a funeral ceremony for families was planned for the day after Sadeq was set to arrive, according to their testimony with military investigators. However, almost everybody else involved with the planning and execution of operation Commando Riot testified that they were not told about a civilian gathering.

“Everybody that was going to be at that meeting were Taliban commanders with their security guys,” a communications sergeant testified later. “There wasn’t supposed to be any women and children.”

It is unclear why that information was not widely known or whether it had been reported up the chain of command before the mission and the gunship were approved.

The morning of August 21, Gul Rukh piled her four kids into her cousin’s car and headed north on the Ring Road to her parents’ house in Azizabad. Hundreds of villagers around the Zerkoh Valley and Farah Province had received invitations to commemorate the death of a prominent village elder eight months earlier.

His name was Timor Shah – also known as the original Mr. White.

Rukh, 39, stopped in the city of Shindand to go shopping for the ceremony. She bought new clothes for her kids and a wooden chest to keep tchotchkes. It was the type of splurging Rukh reserved only for special occasions.

When they arrived in Azizabad that evening, families gathered in the courtyard around outdoor fire pits and got to cooking. They slaughtered 16 sheep and cooked rice in steel drums.

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Hundreds of villagers around the Zerkoh Valley and Farah Province had received invitations to commemorate the death of Timor Shah (also known as Mr. White.)… Hundreds of villagers around the Zerkoh Valley and Farah Province had received invitations to commemorate the death of Timor Shah (also known as Mr. White.) After the raid, those who survived showed the local reporters and government investigators the invitations.

Fraidoon Pooyaa

Rukh’s sons, Dawa, 10, Ghani, 6, and Nabi, 5, and her daughter, Rahima, 9, spent most of the daylight hours kicking a soccer ball with their cousins. When the sun went down, the kids darted between houses playing hide and seek. They painted henna tattoos on one another’s hands.

Once most of the food was prepared, families peeled off for bed. The houses were too full, so many camped in the courtyard. It was cool enough to sleep outside comfortably, and the lucky ones had mosquito nets.

Rukh stayed up past midnight talking with her parents, mostly listening, while they tried persuading her to stay a couple of extra days after the ceremony. They finally drifted off to sleep.

The call from the contact inside the compound came just before 1:30 a.m.: Sadeq is here.

While the troops mounted into their trucks, a soldier knocked on the trailers around the garrison to roust North and the Fox cameraman. North emerged in military fatigues and night vision goggles and headed toward the convoy.

“What the hell was Oliver North doing there?” McDonnell, one of the ArmorGroup directors, said in a recent interview. “He wasn’t passing through for a cup of tea. This was set up to put on a show.”

The intelligence officers who helped plan the mission climbed to the top of the garrison barracks and faced Azizabad, 18 miles to the south. They watched the AC-130 pass overhead.

The Marines in the two lead pickup trucks turned off the Ring Road and toward the compound around 2 a.m. They heard a single pop from a rifle. That was the warning shot alerting the compound that enemies were incoming.

They saw a light on in White II’s compound. The trucks rumbled over the dirt, through a narrow passage with walls on each side at least 8 feet high.

A water truck parked at the near end of the alley blocked the route into the compound. The Marines hopped out to proceed on foot.

Gunshots poured in from the west and north. The fire felt as if it was coming from directly above.

Bullets peppered the walls next to the crouching Marines. They returned fire to the rooftops, where they could see flashes from rifle bursts through their night vision goggles. It was the most constant, accurate fire some of them had ever experienced since coming to Afghanistan, they testified later.

Marine Gunnery Sgt. Joseph “Willy” Parent took a round through his foot.

They were pinned down. The commander shot two red flares into the air so the other units trailing behind could find them. He would later testify that he did not consider retreat a viable option.

“For the reputation and just the credibility of coalition,” the commander said, adding that withdrawing from a fight with the Taliban when you are so far committed is “completely inconceivable and unacceptable.”

The 12 Marines who had exited the trucks moved into a building, where a woman and child were huddled in the corner. There, the Marines set up a base of operations.

The commander told the radio controller next to him to call the gunship in the air, circling at 10,000 feet. The enemy was “danger close.”

The controller yelled into the radio for immediate fire on the insurgents approaching them in the alley.

The gunship crew heard panic on the other line and got to work. They used high-powered cameras to scan around the courtyard and the surrounding buildings.

Then, they unleashed 40-millimeter and howitzer rounds into the alley and onto rooftops. Some exploded above the ground and flung 14,000 shrapnel fragments per round into a rainbow pattern.

Some targets appeared to be running, and others were taking up positions. But identifying people from the air alone was impossible, the pilot would later tell investigators.

It was like going “out into a field in the middle of the night on about a quarter moon light, and you see a dark shape moving through the field,” the pilot said.

For two hours, the air crew coordinated with the commander on the ground to blast apart buildings where the enemy fighters took up positions. Troops lay prone on the far side of a domed roof to peek across the courtyard and relay information to the gunship.

“If they fled into the building, we were asking him to basically drop the building,” the controller on the ground later testified.

The gunship blasted room by room, house by house, until there was nobody left shooting.

In total, the gunship fired 82 howitzer rounds and 242 of the 40-millimeter rounds. The barrage ended with a 500-pound bomb dropped onto White II’s compound.

Daylight broke through the clouds of dust and smoke.

Rukh couldn’t feel her legs. Shrapnel had shredded her spine.

Her hearing was muffled behind a low hum, but she was conscious and saw everything. Through the debris, she could make out her oldest son’s pistachio pajamas. He was dead. And so was her mother, who was just a few feet away.

The rest of her family was beneath the rubble of a clay roof, 18 inches thick, that had collapsed to the ground. They were crushed to death. Rukh desperately cried out for a glass of water.

The American forces found her and two children – not her own – still breathing. They pulled them from the rubble, which was chest deep in areas where the roofs had collapsed. One child died almost immediately. The other, a 5-year-old girl named Kobra, was shaking as they carried her to a medic. Her face was vacant and coated in dust.

An Afghan boy carried a torn rug next to his destroyed home in Azizabad the day after the raid.

Fraidoon Pooyaa, AP

The troops photographed what was left of other insurgents’ bodies – but only those visible above the rubble. Altogether, they found seven dead men with guns around them and six dead civilians.

Among the dead was White II.

The source who called Romeo and Juliet to confirm Sadeq had arrived was also dead. “He took one for the team,” a military official testified.

The troops cordoned off the neighborhood for three hours while a team of Army Special Forces operators went door to door with the Afghan commandos to clear the buildings and collect weapons, explosives and documents. They blew up a cache of land mines in one of the buildings.

There was no sign of Sadeq.

Just after 9 a.m., the convoy left for the air base with what they had seized: 14 automatic rifles, 15 mines, 4,000 bullets, 32 magazines, stacks of U.S. and Afghan currency, 19 cellphones, boxes of documents – and ArmorGroup ID badges found near some of the dead men.

They also left with five prisoners in blindfolds. Two of them were ArmorGroup guards at the air base.

The convoy returned to a barbeque at the airfield.

“It was just something I’ve never experienced before: singing and dancing and everybody seemed to be happy,” said Thompson, who had just learned several of his employees were likely killed. “The whole thing was a bit surreal.”

Thompson’s colleague sent a desperate report to the Air Force over concerns the surviving employees might turn their guns on one another or the men inside the base in revenge.

“We are currently on full alert and are expecting once the dead are buried an attack of some sort,” ArmorGroup Senior Team Leader Nigel McCreery wrote.

All 43 local guards abandoned the base to go look for their family members.

“At this time I’m unsure as to how many (ArmorGroup) local guards who were off duty have been killed or wounded,” McCreery wrote.

“The next 24hrs will tell the tale.”

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Oliver North was embedded with the Marines and soldiers on Operation Commando Riot as a contributor for Fox News. The Fox segment, accompanying online story… Oliver North was embedded with the Marines and soldiers on Operation Commando Riot as a contributor for Fox News. The Fox segment, accompanying online story and chapter in North’s book presented a false depiction of a successful mission.

Andrew Sullivan, AP

After a week-long inquiry, Central Command said in a press release that the raid disrupted a planned attack on the air base and more than 30 Taliban fighters were killed. “The evidence suggested” Sadeq was among them, the statement said. The release claimed that five to seven civilians also died.

Fox News ran a segment hosted by North “confirming that Mullah Sadeq is dead.” The report included footage of Rukh and Kobra being stabilized at the air base before surgery. He did not report the fact that Rukh was paralyzed or that Kobra died in the hospital soon after.

North also wrote a chapter about the raid in his book, “American Heroes in Special Operations.”

It appeared the U.S. “had achieved a stunning success,” he said in his book and an online story accompanying the Fox video.

After the raid, the Azizabad villagers picked through the rubble and compiled a list of the dead: 91 total, including 60 children.

Then they rioted. Confused and furious, about 200 villagers marched on the Ring Road hurling rocks at reporters and police officers. They set fire to an Afghan National Army vehicle and shot at soldiers.

In front of local television cameras, the villagers held up their ArmorGroup badges, evidence of their loyalty to the U.S. forces. They showed the invitations to the funeral commemoration, evidence of a civilian gathering, not a Taliban meeting.

During a riot after the raid, security guards from the airbase who survived were confused and furious. They flashed their ArmorGroup badges in front of reporters’ cameras to show their alliance with coalition forces.

Fraidoon Pooyaa

This version of events was diametrically opposite to what the Pentagon and North’s Fox News segment had presented. Among skeptical Afghan and even some ArmorGroup officials, it seemed plausible that Mr. Pink had duped U.S. forces into taking down his bitter rival.

“You got to hand it to Pink,” an ArmorGroup manager wrote in an email collected by the Senate investigators, “pretty shrewd.”

President Karzai was just finishing a lunch meeting in the presidential palace hall in Kabul when government officials from Shindand walked in carrying a white linen, bundled up like a bag.

They waited for everyone to finish eating and unwrapped the contents on the floor: Severed fingers from Azizabad. Too small to be from adult men.

“Everybody was weeping looking at that,” Mohammad Omar Daudzai, Karzai’s former chief of staff, said in an interview.

During the riot after the raid, villagers threw rocks at Afghan police, set fire to a police vehicle and chased away government officials.

Fraidoon Pooyaa, AP

After a phone call with then-President George W. Bush, Karzai flew to the Shindand airfield, where he met with reporters and a crowd of locals. He condemned the “irresponsible and imprecise” military operation.

“I have been working day and night in the past five years to prevent such incidents, but I haven’t been successful,” Karzai said. “If I had succeeded, the people of Azizabad wouldn’t be bathed in blood.”

Karzai paid $2,000 for each of the 91 victims. It was the standard solatia, “blood money,” payment for mourners. He also promised to rebuild the destroyed homes in Azizabad.

Karzai fired the Afghan National Army General who was in charge of the Afghan commandos on the mission. He ordered his intelligence agency to arrest Mr. Pink for providing false information to the Special Operations forces.

An Afghan woman mourns during a ceremony in Azizabad. She is holding a poster with photos of her family member killed in the August 22 raid.

Fraidoon Pooyaa, AP

In the days and weeks that followed, investigators from the U.N., Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and Red Cross flew into Shindand to investigate the death toll discrepancy.

International media outlets published more accounts from witnesses and the geopolitical firestorm it had created between Washington and Kabul. New York Times journalist Carlotta Gall reported new evidence from the ground – including another child’s body she discovered – which raised more questions about the American narrative.

But the Pentagon continued to publicly claim Sadeq had been killed, and officials denied to the media that there had been mass civilian casualties. At the same time, military officials worked behind the scenes to steer the narrative back in a more favorable light.

Abdul Salam Qazizad, a local politician who was part of the Afghan government’s delegation to Azizabad, was called to the Shindand air base two weeks after the raid, he said in an interview.

He said two military officers presented the U.S. forces’ point of view and asked him to walk back statements he had made on television about mass civilian casualties.

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Abdul Salam Qazizad was part of the Afghan government’s delegation to Azizabad. In the aftermath, he was vocal about the civilian casualties. He said the… Abdul Salam Qazizad was part of the Afghan government’s delegation to Azizabad. In the aftermath, he was vocal about the civilian casualties. He said the U.S. military called him to the airbase and asked him to walk back his public statements.

Brett Murphy, USA TODAY

“But I told them, ‘I am not doing that,’” Qazizad recalled. “‘Humans make mistakes. You made a mistake. Come and tell the people that you made it.’”

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission received a similar message from the U.S. government. Ahmad Nader Nadery was head of the group at the time and now leads the Afghan government’s administrative reform and civil service commission.

He summarized the group’s findings for Pentagon officials, including the large number of civilian deaths.

“They said, ‘This is all bulls—t,’” Nadery recalled in an interview. “I ended the meeting and said, ‘Well, thank you.’”

Brigadier Gen. Michael Callan’s phone rang at 1 a.m. one night in early September. Callan, a decorated pilot, was enjoying the sunset of a three-decade military career at the U.S. Ramstein Air Base in Germany. A call like this was unusual.

On the other end of the phone was someone claiming to be Maj. Gen. Jay Hood, chief of staff at Central Command in Tampa, Fla. He said he had a secret assignment for Callan in Afghanistan.

Callan thought it was a prank phone call and went back to bed.

A few days later, after more phone calls and official emails confirmed the situation, Callan said goodbye to his wife and kids and boarded a flight to Kabul.

A grainy cellphone video had emerged, taken from the local doctor from inside the Azizabad mosque. It showed a chaotic scene of dozens of bodies lined up and wrapped in linens while survivors wailed.

The Pentagon could no longer maintain its public position and was forced to open a new, full-scale investigation. Callan was picked to lead it.

He had never handled such an inquiry before, but he reckoned his experience as a special operations pilot qualified him for the job. His team included two military lawyers, two Marines, two Army majors and a translator.

“Our mission was to get the facts on what happened that night,” Callan wrote in a statement to USA TODAY. “Given the heightened media attention, we needed to focus on this event, leave our ‘real jobs’ behind and complete the investigation.”

After meeting with General David McKiernan, then-commander of the International Security Assistance Force, Callan’s team fanned out to gather evidence from the other organizations that had already investigated the Azizabad raid.

The United Nations, Red Cross, Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and Afghan government investigations had differing views of how many Taliban were in the village, if there were any at all.

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The U.S. special operations forces seized weapons, land mines and bullets after the raid. They also found ArmorGroup ID badges carried by some of the… The U.S. special operations forces seized weapons, land mines and bullets after the raid. They also found ArmorGroup ID badges carried by some of the dead men. This photo was one of many pieces of evidence collected by military investigators during the 15-6 investigation.

U.S. Department of Defense, via Central Command

But what was clear to each group was the count of the dead was far greater than what the Pentagon had claimed.

The confidential U.N. report concerning the Azizabad raid, which has never been made public before, is the most exhaustive and methodical. The organization’s accounting of the casualties included the name of each victim, age, home village and father’s name. The report includes several pictures of babies wrapped in the white linens. The investigators, who made four trips to the village, noted the number could never be considered final or certain without exhuming the bodies.

“It is evident that the low number of injured is due to the fact that most, if not all, persons present in the houses that were destroyed in fact died,” they wrote.

The U.N. investigation concluded that 10 of the fighting age men who were killed in the raid were ArmorGroup employees and that some of the guns confiscated by the U.S. Forces belonged to the company.

U.N. investigators also tried to determine whether U.S. officials had visited the village after the raid to gather facts in the immediate aftermath.

“The answer from numerous witnesses is no,” the U.N. report states. “No forces have returned to the village since the incident.”

Callan met with U.N. officials in Kabul on Sept. 18. He asked them to show him their investigation and the evidence they had collected in Azizabad, according to internal U.N. communications and memos.

Emails show the U.N. officials were wary of trusting the Bush administration “to admit culpability for wrong-doing.” But they decided it was best to provide their inquiry and some supporting evidence with the understanding that Callan’s team would coordinate the final U.S. report with them before anything went public.

Two weeks later, U.S. Central Command, led at the time by Lt. General Martin Dempsey, published a summary of Callan’s findings. CENTCOM exonerated the military of any war crimes, violations of the rules of engagement and most other allegations raised by the villagers. Callan’s team never briefed the U.N.

CENTCOM’s full 15-6 investigation, which includes more than 1,500 pages of sworn testimony, photographs, videos and other evidence, was never released. The Pentagon denied journalists and activists who requested it, citing national security considerations.

USA TODAY received most of the records, but not the videos, after suing the Defense Department in 2018.

Afghan men look at a destroyed house in Azizabad the day after the raid. The mud roofs that collapsed on top of insurgents and civilians were dense as concrete and 18 inches thick.

Fraidoon Pooyaa, AP

Callan’s executive summary said that 55 people died in Azizabad after a proportional response from U.S. forces acting in self-defense: 33 civilians, including 12 children, and 22 anti-coalition insurgents, some of whom were likely employees of ArmorGroup.

It concluded that the Taliban violated the laws of war by choosing to fight alongside women and children. CENTCOM dismissed villagers’ testimony about a higher count of dead civilians.

“This would be akin to dismissing all eyewitness testimony during a criminal trial conducted in the U.S.,” a U.N. official wrote in an internal memo after the Pentagon made the summary public.

CENTCOM did not acknowledge the intelligence breakdowns that left most of the force unaware of the funeral ceremony. It also did not explain why regional commanders approved the use of close air support for multiple hours despite information that women and children were in the village.

Lt. Colonel VanLandingham, the law professor and former chief of international law at CENTCOM, said those leaders seemed to fail to take all precautions to avoid civilian harm and then skirted accountability during the investigation.

“Heads should have rolled for that,” she said. “There should have been consequences for that failure.”

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An Afghan man who lost his relatives during the airstrike in Azizabad. He was waiting for a gathering in which then-Afghan President Hamid Karzai spoke… An Afghan man who lost his relatives during the airstrike in Azizabad. He was waiting for a gathering in which then-Afghan President Hamid Karzai spoke to villagers and reporters about the incident on Sept. 4, 2008.

Fraidoon Pooyaa, AP

The public summary also did not include an array of testimony from U.S. forces that cast a negative light on what had happened. For example, Callan concluded that “Operation Commando Riot was not triggered by clan-on-clan rivalry.” However, intelligence officers testified that the information about the Taliban meeting was sound but driven by the feud between Pink and White.

Perhaps most notably, the summary did not admit that Sadeq had survived the raid. Intelligence officials told the military investigators he had most likely escaped through an underground cavern just north of the compound.

Sadeq “according to our (human intelligence) sources, is alive and well in his traditional operating area,” one of the officials testified. It’s unclear from the records whether Sadeq is still alive.

Callan did not respond to specific critiques of the investigation and the omissions from the public summary. In an email to USA TODAY, he said his team “unequivocally conducted the most comprehensive review of this mission of any investigation accomplished to date.” They “left no stone unturned,” Callan said.

In the public summary, CENTCOM discounted evidence collected by outside inquiries, including those from the U.N., as tainted by political or financial agendas.

Former U.N. officials defended their work and the veracity of the investigation.

“We really did want the Americans to stop killing people. We really did want the Talibs to stop killing people,” Norah Niland, the Human Rights Director at the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan at the time, said in a recent interview. “That was the agenda.”

But U.N. officials decided against publicly criticizing the Pentagon’s shortfalls to avoid “generating a lot of hostility,” according to an internal U.N. memo.

“It is not advisable to reopen the issue again,” they wrote.

Gul Rukh, whose parents and four children died, now spends most of her days alone. She can peel potatoes or string together bracelets but is unable to move anything below her waist. She doesn’t have a wheelchair, so her brothers carry her around in their arms.

Five pieces of shrapnel are still embedded in her spine. Doctors say they can’t get them out without risking further paralysis in her hands and tongue.

Gul Rukh, a survivor of the raid in Azizabad, is still paralyzed from the waist down from the shrapnel that embedded in her spine. She cannot afford a wheelchair so her brother must carry her.

Brett Murphy, USA TODAY

Rukh feels the same way now as she did when she first woke up in the hospital.

“I wish I was dead too,” she said in a recent interview. She called herself a burden on her family – more like an object or piece of furniture in the house, rather than a person living in it.

“I got accustomed to it,” Rukh said, “and I lost hope.”

Today, the Taliban controls the Shindand District. Azizabad is in quiet ruins. Fewer than two dozen families live there.

The houses leveled in the raid were never repaired. The neighborhood is a pile of mud bricks and walls scarred with bullet holes.

Daudzai, Karzai’s former chief of staff, said he didn’t know the government had failed to deliver on its promises to rebuild Azizabad.

“We should have done it,” he said in an interview. “We are also equally guilty.”

A row of flat, marble tombstones stands upright in the cemetery near the mosque. The epitaph over the grave of Reza Khan, known to some as White II, reads: “Innocently martyred in the coalition airstrike.”

Construction projects on the air base finished in 2013, and it’s still in control of the Afghan National Army.

Days after the raid, ArmorGroup hired someone else to take over the staffing: White II’s brother, Gul Ahmed. They called him Mr. White III.

In an interview, he conceded that Sadeq was his nephew but denied that his brother hosted him that night. He said there were no Taliban in the village that night.

“I lost my son and my relatives, close friends, and everyone,” Ahmed said. “It is mind-blowing.”

He added of the U.S. forces involved in the Azizabad raid: “They will never accept that they had killed civilians.”

In 2010, the Senate Armed Services Committee launched an inquiry into the Air Force’s failures to provide oversight on the contract. Investigators found a litany of lapses and linked ArmorGroup, Pink and White II to the doomed mission.

But there were no congressional hearings or public reckoning. G4S, ArmorGroup’s parent company, was only mentioned in a footnote in the Senate report. The company has collected more than $6 billion from taxpayers through federal contracts since 2005, according to government data.

The Afghan federal government sentenced Mr. Pink to death in 2009 after he was convicted of espionage and for giving false information to U.S. forces. He appealed and is now in Bagram prison.

Pink’s son, Mirwais Khan, who was also once a guard at the airfield, denied that his father was a spy or responsible for the civilian casualties.

“We had our enemies, and our enemies accused us,” he said in an interview. “My father was not the president, he was not a military commander, not a corps commander to order the airstrike. The airstrike was conducted and commissioned by Americans.”

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Gul Ahmed, a village elder in Azizabad, was hired to replace his brother, White II, at the airfield. The company called him Mr. White III…. Gul Ahmed, a village elder in Azizabad, was hired to replace his brother, White II, at the airfield. The company called him Mr. White III. In an interview, he conceded that Sadeq was his nephew but denied that his brother hosted him that night. He said there were no Taliban in the village that night.

Brett Murphy, USA TODAY

Ackerman, the Marine assault force commander on the mission, is now an accomplished author and columnist. He has been vocal about his service and often writes about the human cost of the wars he fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he has never spoken publicly or written about what happened in Azizabad.

Most of the troops who testified in the CENTCOM investigation were not identifiable from the interview transcripts. They largely denied that anything had gone wrong or that there had been large numbers of civilian casualties.

Callan’s interviews ended with the same question for some of those who planned the Azizabad raid: If you could do it again, would you change anything?

“No sir,” one intelligence officer responded. “I wouldn’t do anything different.”

The team behind this investigation

REPORTING AND ANALYSIS: Brett Murphy, Gina Barton, Nick Penzenstadler

EDITING: Chris Davis, Matt Doig, Sam Roe, Brett Blackledge

GRAPHICS AND ILLUSTRATIONS: Ramon Padilla, Kyle Slagle, Mitchell Thorson, Shawn Sullivan, Javier Zarracina, Ray Soto, Will Austin, Alex Daley-Montgomery, Alan Davies

PHOTOGRAPHY: Jasper Colt, Chris Powers, Brett Murphy, Shahpoor Sabir

DIGITAL PRODUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT: Spencer Holladay, Annette Meade, Ryan Hildebrandt, Dan Alegria

SOCIAL MEDIA, ENGAGEMENT AND PROMOTION: Cara Richardson, Elizabeth Shell

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Republicans Laud Trump for Strike on ‘Pre-Eminent Sponsor of Terrorism’

Republican lawmakers praised President Donald Trump for authorizing the airstrike that killed Iran’s top general Qasim Soleimani.

While Democratic lawmakers expressed concern that the strike could lead to armed conflict with Iran, Republicans praised Trump for authorizing the strike that killed “the wold’s pre-eminent sponsor of terrorism.”

“Tonight’s a good night,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) wrote in a tweet on Thursday night. “Soleimani, the world’s pre-eminent sponsor of terrorism, is now dead. He spent decades spreading death and destruction across the region.”

Tonight's a good night. Soleimani, the world’s pre-eminent sponsor of terrorism, is now dead. He spent decades spreading death and destruction across the region, including engineering and providing IEDs to Shia militias in Iraq that were used to kill hundreds of Americans. 1/5

— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) January 3, 2020

Soleimani was the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force— a shadowy organization that was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. in 2007.

While Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) questioned whether Trump had fully considered the ramifications of the strike, Crenshaw defended it as “a response to aggression [and] a deterrent to future attacks.”

Someone let the Senator know that these men just got done directing attacks against our embassy & K1 facility. This was clearly a response to aggression & a deterrent to future attacks, well within current authorization. It’s a great day for the fight against evil in this world. https://t.co/omyNrabzpM

— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) January 3, 2020

Several other Republican lawmakers praised the move:

Wow – the price of killing and injuring Americans has just gone up drastically. Major blow to Iranian regime that has American blood on its hands. Soleimani was one of the most ruthless and vicious members of the Ayatollah's regime. He had American blood on his hands.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) January 3, 2020

The end of Qasem Soleimani is welcome and long-overdue justice for the thousands of Americans killed or wounded by his Iranian-controlled forces across the Middle East, and for the hundreds of thousands of Syrians and Iraqi Sunnis ethnically cleansed by his militias.

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) January 3, 2020

If you come after the United States, we will come after you with overwhelming strength. Soleimani was one of the world's most brutal terrorists. Thanks to @realDonaldTrump's decisive action, Soleimani won't be able to kill anyone else. This is a major victory. pic.twitter.com/xHH5AVhzGZ

— Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) January 3, 2020

Soleimani was a terrorist. President Trump and our brave servicemembers just reminded Iran—and the world—that we will not let attacks against Americans go unpunished. 🇺🇸

— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) January 3, 2020

The defensive actions the U.S. has taken against #Iran & its proxies are consistent with clear warnings they have received They chose to ignore these warnings because they believed @POTUS was constrained from acting by our domestic political divisions They badly miscalculated

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) January 3, 2020

We remember and honor the sacrifice of those servicemen & women, and we commend our brave troops & intel officers who carried out this successful mission. At this time of increased tension in the region, the US must take necessary steps to protect our personnel there and beyond.

— Senator Mitt Romney (@SenatorRomney) January 3, 2020

Tonight’s attack on Qasem Soleimani—who is responsible for killing countless Americans—sends a strong message: Don’t mess with America. 🇺🇸

— Rep. Doug Collins (@RepDougCollins) January 3, 2020

Shortly after news of the strike broke, Trump tweeted out a picture of an American flag with no comment.

Meanwhile, Iran vowed to seek “severe revenge” against the U.S. for the strike.

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citizentruth-blog · 5 years

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The Problem With Bipartisanship

Josh Gottheimer is co-chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus and one of the most bipartisan lawmakers in the House of Representatives. These aren't necessarily things to be touted, though, and his attempts to strong-arm Nancy Pelosi into making rule changes definitely shouldn't be commended. (Photo Credit: FCC/Wikipedia) Note: This post was first published before any meetings between Nancy Pelosi and the Problem Solvers Caucus. The two sides have reportedly cut a deal on proposed rule changes. I'm not the biggest fan of Nancy Pelosi personally. Even I, though, have to balk at the recent attempts to challenge her prospective leadership as Speaker of the House. In particular, a no-vote of confidence from members of the Problem Solvers Caucus seems to be, well, a problem, or at least a distraction. The Problem Solvers Caucus is a bipartisan group of representatives that seeks to create cooperation among members of both major parties on key policy issues. In practice, it is a centrist committee. For the purposes of this challenge's to Pelosi's authority, Jim Costa (CA), Vicente González (TX), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Daniel Lipinski (IL), Stephanie Murphy (FL), Tom O'Halleran (AZ), Kurt Schrader (OR), Darren Soto (FL), and Tom Suozzi (NY) are the Democrats who are making their support contingent on the eventual Speaker's acceptance of certain rule changes. As Gottheimer, caucus co-chair, identified, these #BreaktheGridlock changes involve 1) legislation going to the House floor for debate and a vote when co-sponsored by at least three-fifths of Congress, 2) an amendment to legislation getting a debate and vote with at least 20 Democratic and 20 Republican co-sponsors, and 3) each member of Congress being allowed to introduce a bill for debate and vote on a committee he or she serves on once a congressional term. In principle, these proposals designed to "break the gridlock" are worth considering in the name of procedural reform. The timing and very public nature of this threat to Pelosi's leadership, however, as well as the take-it-or-leave attitude accompanying it, are concerning. What's more, when considered alongside existing feelings that the Democratic Party needs to be taken in a "new direction," the overall picture is one of party discord at a time when gains in the House should perhaps have the Dems thinking more harmoniously. What's additionally striking about this turn of events is that it has come at the behest of members of a caucus that tout their bipartisan credentials, not long after Pelosi herself vowed the House would move toward greater bipartisanship. Of course, this in itself drew criticism elsewhere. That Nancy Pelosi—damned if she does and damned if she doesn't. Amid a spirit of partisan acrimony and congressional ineffectiveness, bipartisanship would seem to be exactly what we'd want or need. Everybody gets along, Congress actually gets meaningful things done—sounds good, right? The problem with bipartisanship as an ideal, however, is that it may be overrated, if not counterproductive. Lew Blank, editor-in-chief of The Outsider, an independent, student-led online publication devoted to telling stories from outside the mainstream media bubble and the two-party binary, wrote in a detailed post last year (with helpful charts and graphs!) about how bipartisanship is, well, a myth. Firstly, there's the matter of how the goal of bipartisanship tends to reduce matters to "debates" in the name of balance when there should be no room for debate. Blank starts his article thusly: What America considers a debate is pretty messed up. Apparently, the existence of climate change is a “debate.” Allowing 33,000 Americans to die every year because they can’t afford health care is a “debate.” Continuing to arm ISIS and Al Qaeda in Syria is a “debate.” And yet, there’s one singular issue that seems to read “case closed” in the minds of millions of Americans, both red and blue: bipartisanship. Somehow, we have wound up in a world where saying “we should stop literally arming terrorists” is an opinion, but lauding the glories of bipartisan politics is unbiased and impartial. On top of this, and more to the point, finding bipartisan legislative solutions tends to involve compromises that skew to the political right. As Blank characterizes this relationship, centrist Democrats often strive for policies that are "both (a) conservative enough to get Republican support, and (b) liberal enough to like." Viewing Obama-era policy directives through this lens, however, very few, if any, of them actually ticked both boxes. Either they were too conservative for liberals to like (e.g. extending the Bush tax cuts), too liberal for conservatives to pass or support after Obama was gone (e.g. the Paris Agreement), or neither very liberal nor supported by the GOP (e.g. military expansion that still saw Obama's critics calling him "soft on terrorism"). The wrench in compromising and finding a middle ground, as many on the left might expect, is the uncompromising position Republicans take on issue after issue. In Blank's words, their failure to "support anything with even a tinge of progressivism" means trying to bend over backward to appease them is a non-starter. The true solution for Democrats, then, is to run to the left. Only from this position can they negotiate and get something close to what they really want. Per Blank: This is compromise 101. If you get an offer of $50 for a painting and you ask for $60 instead, you may come away with a solid $55. If you go the “moderate” route and raise to $51 instead, you’re missing out on a potential four dollars. What's more, the statistics seem to bear out that running further to the left is the better strategy from an electoral perspective. How else to explain the enduring popularity of someone like Bernie Sanders and the lingering unpopularity of someone like Hillary Clinton? Of course, popularity and social media fervor don't necessarily equate to votes cast. Then again, capitulation is not a very sexy approach to attracting voters, especially in the context of a general election, so why not go for the gusto? Noting the refusal of Republicans to yield on policy matters in recent years, examples of bipartisan cooperation on the part of moderate Democrats might actually be more disconcerting than anything. As alluded to before, increased military spending has continued to be approved by Congress despite the cost of human life and despite the notion this focus on "defense" dwarfs the spending on domestic programs the GOP claims we can't afford. The Dodd-Frank rollback aided and abetted by "Blue Dog" Dems like Gottheimer also jumps to mind as one of those points of accord between parties that should inspire fear more than confidence. Coming together is all well and good when we're paving the road to another economic collapse. For any number of reasons, therefore, bipartisanship may not be all it's cracked up to be. Not the least of which is, if you ask this writer, that at 14 letters, the word bipartisanship is already too long. As with "civility," calls for bipartisanship are only as good as the individual or individuals making such an appeal. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell caught flak for an op-ed for FOX News in which he asked whether the Democrats will work with Republicans, or "simply put partisan politics ahead of the country?" The irony was not lost on, er, pretty much anyone who knows McConnell. The Republican senator from Kentucky has been the proverbial poster child for partisan obstructionism in recent years. Accordingly, the prevailing response seemed to be "Merrick Garland" and some sort of invective or gesture not printable in this space. How's that for bipartisanship, Mr. McConnell? Nancy Pelosi, in her stated preference to work in a bipartisan manner within Congress and with President Trump, may have been similarly full of shit—at least outwardly. That is, she may genuinely wish to work in a partnership with Trump and the GOP, but knowing his and his party's demands, this is functionally impossible. In this respect, Pelosi's conviviality appears to be a show of rationality and goodwill in the face of a White House that lacks it so as to make her and her party look more reasonable. Even in jest, however, the sentiment is one whose sharing has the power to boil progressives' blood. I'm a resident of New Jersey's ninth congressional district, but I'm a friend of a number of progressive-minded residents of the fifth where Josh Gottheimer calls home (by crossing from one town into the next, you're entering into a different district). And I can tell you this much: while they're plenty relieved to have someone like Gottheimer rather than someone like John McCann or his predecessor Scott Garrett in office, they're disappointed in this display of brazenness from the co-chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus. This isn't the first time he's disappointed them either, whether it's because he voted with the GOP or because he has avoided making his stance clear so as to not risk a backlash. On one hand, there's the political "reality" that he represents a district which has its clearly blue and red segments, so his bipartisan mentality may have its advantages. On the other hand, as a Democratic supporter, it makes you wonder what lines someone like Gottheimer won't cross. A number of these friends either voted to endorse him or campaigned for him in the midterms. Their reward? Little, if any, expressed gratitude and an overt attempt to undermine their party's leadership. It should be no surprise that there's already talk of wanting a primary challenge to Gottheimer's seat in the House. For my part, I think all incumbents should be challenged as a matter of procedure and because it makes for better party platforms, but I sympathize with this desire. Though it may go without saying at this point, there's a financial aspect to this effort to contest Pelosi's leadership heretofore unmentioned. As Ryan Grim of The Intercept reports, political/corporate consultant Mark Penn and No Labels, a bipartisan group funded by wealthy donors, are the driving force behind this revolt. Gottheimer and Penn, described by Grim as "one of the most toxic and notorious partisan warriors the Democratic Party has produced in the past three decades," have a history together dating back to the Bill Clinton White House. Members of no Labels, described by critics as "aggressively" centrist, have had an ax to grind against Pelosi for some time now. While they may have softened their position to make her Public Enemy #1—when in doubt, Bernie Sanders makes a convenient target—that ill will has evidently lingered. There's ample room for debate whether or not Nancy Pelosi, a seeming epitome of the "old guard" of Democratic Party leadership, is the right person for the role of Speaker of the House come January. Certainly, though, this attack on her from the Problem Solvers Caucus is one to be disparaged, as their insistence on "breaking the gridlock" purely as a function of their moderate ideology rings hollow. In all, the Democrats' commitment to bipartisanship without any show of good faith from the Republican Party is a questionable tack to take. It's bad negotiating on top of poor electoral strategy, and its effectiveness as a tool to rally the base is similarly suspect. With the Dems needing a big win in 2020 to continue their momentum, that's a problem. Read the full article

#bipartisanship #DemocraticParty #JoshGottheimer #MitchMcConnell #NancyPelosi #NoLabels #ProblemSolversCaucus #RepublicanParty

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minute20 · 6 years

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Saudi Critics In Congress Hope Khashoggi’s Disappearance Will Help Them End The US’s Role In Yemen

A vocal contingent in Congress that has lengthy pushed for the US to chop off navy support to Saudi Arabia, to little impact, is seizing on the extraordinary scrutiny surrounding the suspected homicide of a outstanding Saudi journalist to step up the strain.

Whereas it has been troublesome to impress public opposition to US help for the Saudi-led navy marketing campaign in Yemen, the world is listening to the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, a US resident and Washington Put up columnist who was vital of the Saudi authorities.

He was final seen strolling into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, the place Turkish safety officers declare he was killed by a particular hit crew of 15 Saudis flown into Turkey that very same day. Saudi officers have denied the allegations, insisting that Khashoggi left the constructing that day and disappeared.

“The Saudis proceed to assert that they aren’t focusing on civilians inside Yemen, however how can we consider them once they apparently simply hunted down and murdered an American resident whose solely offense was writing vital articles in regards to the Saudi royal household?” Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, mentioned Thursday. “That is the fitting time to droop our navy help for the disastrous bombing marketing campaign in Yemen.”

He known as Saudi Arabia’s alleged assassination “the actions of a rogue state, not an ally,” and mentioned the US “can’t be in a navy partnership with a rustic that has this little concern for human life.”

The US has offered the Saudi-led coalition combating Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen with navy help since 2015, together with weapons gross sales, aerial refueling, intelligence, and focusing on help. 1000’s of civilians have died within the battle, most of whom had been killed in bombing raids, in accordance with the United Nations.

Trump has strengthened ties with the Gulf nation since taking workplace, making it his first international go to as US president and signing a significant arms deal. On Thursday, he mentioned blocking arms gross sales to the nation would damage the US and “wouldn’t be acceptable to me,” a day after saying relations with Saudi Arabia had been “glorious.”

The White Home’s muted response infuriated many in Congress.

Sen. Rand Paul mentioned he can be introducing “one other measure to chop all funding, coaching, advising, and another coordination to and with the navy of Saudi Arabia till the journalist Jamal Khashoggi is returned alive.”

“These are the forms of headlines that make my blood boil — as a result of an American is lacking and sure lifeless by the hands of Saudi Arabia, and everyone seems to be feigning shock and bewilderment, as if we’ve by no means earlier than had trigger to doubt that the Saudis share America’s values,” he wrote in an op-ed within the Atlantic on Wednesday.

He identified that with out US navy help “the Saudi struggle effort would have fallen aside way back,” and mentioned the US has “no enterprise supporting it, both straight or not directly.”

Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, equally used Khashoggi’s disappearance to attract consideration to the US help for Saudi Arabia’s marketing campaign in Yemen.

“That is one thing, whether or not you’re a Republican or Democrat, you can’t tolerate,” Khanna mentioned in a radio interview with KQED. “The Saudis have engaged in a brutal civil struggle in Yemen…We have to cease arms gross sales to the Saudis. We have to take a look at potential sanctions.”

The US position within the battle in Yemen was already straining relations between Congress and the White Home after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo final month formally licensed that the Saudi-led coalition was taking “demonstrable actions” to cut back hurt to civilians caught up within the struggle. The certification was a situation for the US persevering with to refuel their plane. Human rights teams known as the declaration “farcical” and accused the Trump administration of “brazenly defying and mendacity to Congress.”

Tolerance for persevering with US help wore skinny this summer season, when the demise toll blamed on Saudi airstrikes rose, together with one in late August that killed no less than 22 youngsters and 4 ladies as they had been fleeing the combating, in accordance with the UN. On the similar time, an offensive on the Yemeni port metropolis of Hodeida threatened to dam meals and humanitarian support to tens of millions of civilians.

A bipartisan group of senators despatched a letter to Pompeo on Wednesday saying they “discover it troublesome to reconcile recognized information” together with his certification, which had additionally been backed by Protection Secretary James Mattis. Democratic Sens. Jeff Merkley, Chris Murphy, Chris Coons, and Jeanne Shaheen; and Republican Sens. Susan Collins, Jerry Moran, and Todd Younger — requested him to offer extra info by October to justify his choice.

A bunch of 22 Republican and Democrat senators on Wednesday despatched a letter to Trump that triggered a human rights probe by the World Magnitsky Act. It provides the president 120 days to answer the Senate International Relations Committee with a choice on whether or not officers accountable for human rights violations reminiscent of torture, extrajudicial killings or extended detention with out trial can be sanctioned.

Khashoggi’s disappearance “means that he could possibly be a sufferer of a gross violation of internationally acknowledged human rights,” the letter mentioned. “Our expectation is that in making your willpower you’ll take into account any related info, together with with respect to the very best rating officers within the authorities of Saudi Arabia.”

The post Saudi Critics In Congress Hope Khashoggi’s Disappearance Will Help Them End The US’s Role In Yemen appeared first on Breakig News.

source https://www.20minute.info/saudi-critics-in-congress-hope-khashoggis-disappearance-will-help-them-end-the-uss-role-in-yemen/

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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With a Democratic governor and two Democratic senators, Minnesota has a reputation as a blue state, but make no mistake: The Land of 10,000 Lakes has a purple hue. The state went for Hillary Clinton by 46.4 percent in 2016, but Donald Trump wasn’t too far behind at 44.9 percent.

These days, though, Trump isn’t faring so well here. His approval rating is hovering around 38 percent among registered voters, compared to the 51 percent of voters who say they disapprove of him, according to an NBC News/Marist poll released last month. The national political climate, and backlash against Trump, is going to be a challenge for Republicans if they hoe to make any gains in Minnesota in the 2018 midterm elections.

Still, the GOP is fielding credible candidates in a lot of races here, with a particular eye on taking back the governor’s mansion now that Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton is not seeking reelection.

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe talk to reporters in 2012. Dayton is retiring this year. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

With a handful of competitive congressional seats, the state could also be critical in the battle for control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections. Two longtime Democratic Congress members in more conservative districts are running for governor and lieutenant governor, giving Republicans a few of their only chances to win seats from Democrats. But Democrats also have openings to pick off a few House districts, in their quest for a majority.

Rep. Tim Walz (D-MN) walks through the Capitol on October 25, 2017. Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call

Who are the Democrats? US Rep. Tim Walz, state Rep. Erin Murphy, and state Attorney General Lori Swanson.

Who are the Republicans? Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty (you may remember him for his very short-lived race for president in 2012), and former state Rep. Jeff Johnson, who also ran for governor in 2014 and lost to Dayton.

What’s the story? The Democratic primary in Minnesota contains all of this year’s big political themes. Murphy — a former nurse — is running on a Medicare-for-all platform and picked up an endorsement from the state Democratic Party, though that doesn’t necessarily mean much in Minnesota.

Walz and Swanson actually look like the frontrunners: a July NBC News/Marist poll found 28 percent of Minnesota primary voters favored Swanson, 24 percent supported Walz, and 11 percent backed Murphy. Walz represents a more conservative part of the state in Congress, and is being forced to reckon with his past stance on guns — one that had earned him an A rating from the National Rifle Association.

There’s not a lot of new blood on the Republican side, which is shaping up to a race between a former governor and a former nominee for governor. Pawlenty certainly has a lot more name recognition and cash than Johnson, reflected in his 19-point lead in that NBC News/Marist poll.

But Pawlenty also has some vulnerabilities; notably, his moneyed establishment ties (he’s worked as a lobbyist after leaving the governor’s mansion in 2011) and his disavowal of President Trump, which could hurt him with Trump voters in the state.

As for the general election? The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates this a toss-up, but the NBC poll found Pawlenty trailing all three Democratic contenders.

Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) walks to a Democratic Caucus meeting at the US Capitol on January 19, 2018. Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images

Who are the Democrats? Sen. Tina Smith, the former lieutenant governor whom Dayton appointed to Senate in wake of Al Franken’s resignation after a sexual misconduct scandal, is running again. She’s facing a primary challenge from former Bush administration official Richard Painter, who has been active calling out the Trump administration’s ethics violations — but it doesn’t look like a very competitive race.

Who are the Republicans? State Sen. Karin Housley faces dental technician and first-time candidate Bob Anderson — who really loves Donald Trump.

What’s the story? Smith and Housley will probably emerge victorious in their respective primaries on Tuesday. As for the general election, this race looks to be pretty comfortably Democratic. Cook rates it Likely Democratic. Smith has pretty much kept her head down and voted with the Democratic caucus as a freshman senator; she was already popular in the state before being appointed, so it’s unlikely she’ll be voted out. She has a double-digit lead in a hypothetical matchup with Housley.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) waits for President Trump to deliver his address to a joint session of Congress on February 28, 2017. Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call

Who are the Democrats? US Rep. Keith Ellison (also the current vice chair of the Democratic National Convention), former Ramsey County Attorney Tom Foley, state Rep. Debra Hilstrom, attorney and former state Supreme Court clerk Matt Pelikan, and former state Commissioner of Commerce Mike Rothman.

Who are the Republicans? Former state Rep. Doug Wardlow and former state Sen. Robert Lessard.

What’s the story? Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress and a progressive firebrand, is easily the most recognizable name in the pack of Democrats running to replace Lori Swanson, who is now running for governor. Ellison has promised to stand up to the Trump administration through the courts.

On Sunday, the son of Ellison’s ex-girlfriend wrote a lengthy Facebook post alleging that Ellison had been abusive. The claims have not been independently verified, and Ellison has denied mistreating the woman. Hilstrom, the only woman running in the attorney general race, called on Ellison “to answer these allegations” just a few days before the primary.

This post was brought to my attention because I was tagged in this post. Domestic Violence is never ok. The incidents described are troubling. I call on Keith Ellison to answer these allegations.https://t.co/CQ1LSVfZqf

— Debra Hilstrom (@debrahilstrom) August 12, 2018

On the Republican side, Wardlow is promising to enforce the “rule of law” in Minnesota. There aren’t many available ratings for this race, but the state has only elected a single Republican attorney general since 1955 … so it seems safe to say the eventual Democratic candidate is favored to win.

Minnesota First District congressional candidate Dan Feehan works a parade in Waterville, Minnesota, on June 10, 2018. Jim Mone/AP

Who are the Democrats? Iraq War veteran and Obama administration official Dan Feehan. Tim Walz, the district’s current representative, is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor.

Who are the Republicans? Former US Treasury Department official Jim Hagedorn and state Sen. Carla Nelson.

What’s the story? Walz is well-liked in this relatively conservative region of the state; he was reelected to six terms by running as a moderate Democrat. But now that he’s departing, it’s not a given that Democrats can replicate his success.

Feehan has the imprimatur of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He’s running as moderate — in favor of protecting the Affordable Care Act, the state’s farmers, and the military. Hagedorn and Nelson are both running on conservative platforms and embracing the politics of President Trump. Walz’s exit is one of the few good opportunities for Republicans anywere in the country — Cooks rates the district R+5 (which means, all else being equal, it leans five points more Republican than the rest of the nation) and a toss-up.

Rep. Jason Lewis (R-MN) leaves the House Republican Conference meeting in the Capitol on March 20, 2018. Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call

Who is the Democrat? Former journalist and hospital executive Angie Craig. She ran for this seat in 2016 (and lost) and has the DCCC’s backing.

Who is the Republican? Rep. Jason Lewis, in office since 2017.

What’s the story? You may know Jason Lewis from the torrent of explosive comments he’s made on his former right-wing talk radio show. He once complained about how it was no longer politically correct to call women “sluts,” equated LGBTQ people to “rapists” and other criminals, and said that “young single women” who vote to protect their access to birth control didn’t have brains.

Craig, on the other hand, is an openly LGBTQ candidate and mother who is hoping to draw a contrast with Lewis on social issues and his controversial commentary. She competed against him in 2016 and lost, but Democrats are hoping this year will be a more favorable environment. The district is R+2, and Cook has put it into the Likely Republican category.

Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-MN) is reflected in a video monitor in the Longworth House Office building on November 8, 2017. Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call

Who is the Democrat? Distillery CEO and philanthropist Dean Phillips, who also has the backing of the DCCC.

Who is the Republican? Rep. Erik Paulsen, in office since 2009 and a member of the powerful Ways and Means Committee.

What’s the story? Paulsen was first elected 10 years ago and seems to be pretty popular in his district. He’s a moderate who didn’t support Trump in 2016; he wrote in Marco Rubio instead. But he sticks reliably with House Republicans, casting votes for both Obamacare repeal and GOP tax cuts.

Phillips is hoping he can draw a contrast, but he’s the kind of candidate the Democratic base is pushing back against. He comes from wealth and has made a fortune off his family’s liquor business and gelato company. He has been upfront about this, and vowed to run without self-funding his campaign or accepting PAC money, though he’s still getting plenty of money from various industries. The district should be competitive; Cook rates it R+1, but the Third District went for Hillary Clinton by 10 points in 2016.

From left, Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) former Vice President Walter Mondale, and Rep. Rick Nolan (D-Minn.) attend a fish fry and fundraiser for Nolan at the Northland Arboretum in Baxter, MN on October 27, 2016. Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

Who is the Democrat? Rep. Collin Peterson, in office since 1991 and ranking member on the Agriculture Committee.

Who are the Republicans? Air Force veteran David Hughes and National Guard veteran and businessman Matt Prosch.

What’s the story? This district is the strange amalgamation of both being rated R+12 and yet still in the Likely Democratic category by Cook. That’s because Collin Peterson has been in the House for a really, really long time.

He was first elected in 1990 and is the longest-serving House member in the Minnesota delegation. There’s a reason Democrats want Peterson to stay — he’s been consistently reelected in a conservative district. Peterson has a record to reflect that; he’s a friend to farmers in a rural district dominated by agriculture and tends to vote more conservative. Hughes ran against Peterson in 2016 and lost by 5 percentage points.

Who are the Democrats? North Branch Mayor Kirsten Kennedy, state Rep. Jason Metsa, former state Rep. Joe Radinovich, former TV news anchor Michelle Lee, and progressive activist Soren Sorensen.

Who are the Republicans? St. Louis County Commissioner Pete Stauber and Duluth school board member Harry Welty.

What’s the story? The Eighth Congressional District is another conservative-leaning one that Democrats have nevertheless managed to hang on to. Democratic Rep. Rick Nolan, first elected in 2012, is vacating his seat to join the ticket of gubernatorial candidate Lori Swanson. With Nolan out, Republicans see a prime opportunity to win back control of a district Cook rates R+4.

There’s a large field of Democrats running to be the nominee, and there isn’t a clear frontrunner so far. The state party hasn’t yet endorsed a candidate, although Metsa is leading the race in campaign cash. But Democrats are nervous about the prospect of challenging Stauber — a well-known local politician who has out-fundraised all his Democratic competitors so far.

Original Source -> The Minnesota primary elections, one of 2018’s fiercest battlegrounds, explained

via The Conservative Brief

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