Biden too Cognitively Impaired to Fulfill White House Duties
By Stephen Lendman | February 28, 2021
Impaired by dementia, Biden is cognitively unfit and unable to fulfill duties of the office he holds.
His condition will likely worsen to Alzheimer’s Disease, entirely incapacitating him cognitively.
Psychology explained dementia as follows:
It’s “a progressive loss of cognitive function, marked by memory problems, trouble communicating, impaired judgment, and confused thinking.”
“Dementia most often occurs around age 65 and older but is a more severe form of decline than normal aging.”
“People who develop dementia may lose the ability to regulate their emotions, especially anger, and their personalities may change.”
Up to 80% of cognitively impaired individuals with dementia develop Alzheimer’s Disease, about five million Americans affected.
Biden has been declining cognitively for some time. The condition steadily worsens over time.
He can’t perform his duties. Yet establishment media conceal his deteriorated state.
Rare exceptions like the Boston Herald prove the rule.
In mid-February, it headlined “Biden’s babbles continue,” saying:
He “seldom makes much sense when he speaks.”
On Valentine’s Day, he made a “semi-coherent remark,” saying:
“Valentine’s Day is a big. Jill’s favorite day. For real.”
Biden’s White House is “little more than an assisted-living facility (for the nation’s) doddering First Senior Citizen.”
Some of his recent mumbling and bumbling was as follows — read from a teleprompter or notes:
“From 400 million ordered to 600 million this is enough vaccine to fully vaccinate 300 Americans by end of summer, the beginning of fall.”
“But we wanna make look that’s I wanna me-peat it’ll be enough to fully vaccinate 300 Americans.”
He called climate change a “sexessential threat to the planet.”
He identified war secretary Lloyd Austin as “senator Austin.”
He referred to sorties as “sortays.”
He said “Saudi Arabia has released a prominent human rights activist, Loujain al-Hathlou — loul — excuse me, l-o-u-l, uh, from prison.”
He vowed to “never, ever dishonest you.”
He said “(i)magine the incredible love it must have taken for the proud Tuskee-kee, Tus-kay-gee airmen.”
He claimed that he “work(s) with Congress to make far-reaching investments in research and development of transformendale and transformidible technologies.”
He said “(l)ike the previous (regime), we’ll start to properly manage unlike it we’ll start to properly manage lands and waterways.”
He mumbled and bumbled that “(o)ne uh congressman pointed out I I could uh I I ah uh I he used a very anyway colorful term to say wearing a mask I tell him to kiss my ear I’m not gonna wear a mask well guess what not very American.”
He said “(i)t’s hard, the hard-hit areas, like cancer alleys in Louisiana, cancer alleys in Louisiana.”
He doesn’t know or understand what’s in dozens of executive orders he signed.
He said “(u)h uh the second uh order I’m gonna be signing also changes what the president has done – pres, the president – what the former president uh has done and it’s uh a memorandum to reverse the my predecessor’s attacks on women’s health.”
After coughing, he added: “Excuse me, health access.”
He’s especially focused on when the next meal will arrive.
They’re all that nursing home and assisted living facility residents look forward to — except for visits when occurring by family and/or friends if still able to recognize them.
During last year’s campaign, Biden said “China is going to eat our lunch?”
“Come on man! They can’t even figure out how to deal with the the the fact the that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the east I mean in the west.”
Separately, he said “(b)ut you know, we don’t get goin’, they’re gonna eat our lunch!”
In remarks about seasonal flu-renamed covid, he said:
“You’ve all hold. You can hold a second.”
“You all you’ve all heard about the strain the the the British strain, the Brazilian strain, the South African strain and they are they seem to be more transmittable more easily.”
Does any of the above sound like a coherent, effectively functioning head of state?
How long will the charade continue before Biden is replaced by president-in-waiting Harris?
Isn’t this what was planned all along, most of the public none the wiser.
A Final Comment
Because Biden is too cognitively impaired to speak more that a few lines at most in public, a look-alike double represents him when delivering public remarks of any length, including addresses.
Biden Bombs Syria: A New World Record?
By Daniel McAdams | Ron Paul Institute | February 25, 2021
According to breaking news reports, including by Reuters, [proclaimed] President Biden has ordered and the Pentagon has carried out military airstrikes on Syria, attacking a structure inside the country that the US government claims houses “Iranian-backed” militia.
US missiles struck tonight near the Syrian town of Al-Bukamal, on the Iraqi border. The strike is said to be in retaliation for recent rocket attacks against US facilities in Iraq. After another rocket attack earlier this month, the US State Department pointed the finger at Iran and threatened a US military response.
The Iraqi parliament voted in January, 2020, to expel US troops from the country after then-President Trump ordered the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. The US government ignored the vote of the democratically-elected Iraqi parliament, however Trump later announced his decision to pull US troops out of Iraq.
President Biden wasted no time in reversing Trump’s disengagement strategy for the Middle East. After just over a month in office, President Biden is re-igniting the failed US intervention launched in 2014 against Syria under the Obama Administration.
Within 24 hours of Biden being inaugurated commander-in-chief, US military convoys began pouring into northern Syria. His Administration, from Secretary of State Tony Blinken on down, enthusiastically supported the US “regime change” policy for Syria under President Obama – a policy that only benefitted al-Qaeda and its affiliates in the region.
Earlier this month it was reported that the US was building a new military base in Syria, near the Iraq and Turkey borders. New military bases carry with them new missions, so there is plenty of reason to believe that Biden plans to return the US to the “Assad must go” policy of his former boss.
Biden coming out of the gate with bombs blazing should be of little surprise to those who have watched his early foreign policy appointments. For example, he tapped noted neocon and aggressive interventionist Dana Stroul to head his Middle East Desk at the Pentagon and no doubt this airstrike at least indirectly reflects her influence and that of many others like her who have taken up positions in the Biden Administration.
Stroul hails from the AIPAC-founded “think tank,” the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), where, as former CIA official Phil Giradi writes, “she has been the Shelly and Michael Kassen Fellow in the Institute’s Beth and David Geduld Program on Arab Politics.” She is an extreme Iran hawk and has advocated and worked for regime change in Syria and US retention of large areas of Syrian territory.
So within a month of assuming office, President Biden looks to be on the cusp of launching a new Middle East war.
Biden’s Interventionism Meets Russia-China Multilateralism
By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – 18.02.2021
In his first major foreign policy speech, the newly elected US president made it clear that the era of US’ traditional interventionist and confrontationist policy is going to take over Donald Trump’s “America First”, a controversial policy that emphasized economic nationalism and a reduced US involvement in conflicts. In his last speech as president, Trump took a lot of pride in the fact that he is the first president in last many decades who completed his tenure without starting a new war. Biden’s approach, however, shows that US interventionism and the bid to re-establish US supremacy are going to be the new cornerstones of US global politics. Anti-China and anti-Russia elements within the US establishment see Trump’s “America First” as one primary reason that allowed US rivals to take advantage of US political retreat and project themselves in many crucial regions including the Middle East and Europe, which were under US exclusive influence until a few years ago. Therefore, the foremost goal of the Joe Biden administration is going to be reclaiming the lost US supremacy. As it stands, the new administration is already projecting this policy without mincing any words, calling it a ‘great reset.’
Biden’s speech was unambiguous when he addressed Russia, saying,
“I made it clear to President Putin, in a manner very different from my predecessor, that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions — interfering with our elections, cyberattacks, poisoning its citizens — are over. We will not hesitate to raise the cost on Russia and defend our vital interests and our people. And we will be more effective in dealing with Russia when we work in coalition and coordination with other like-minded partners.”
Outlining his confrontation with China, Biden said,
“And we’ll also take on directly the challenges posed by our prosperity, security, and democratic values by our most serious competitor, China. We’ll confront China’s economic abuses; counter its aggressive, coercive action; to push back on China’s attack on human rights, intellectual property, and global governance.”
Of course, these “warnings” are a part of Biden’s policy to re-build American supremacy. As he said,
“It’s going to take time to rebuild what has been so badly damaged. But that’s precisely what we’re going to do.”
The Joe Biden administration, as it stands, is being facilitated by the presence of hawks in the broader US-led defense establishment including NATO. A recent paper written by an anonymous author for the NATO-funded think-tank, The Atlantic Council, said that “The single most important challenge facing the United States and the democratic world in the twenty-first century is the rise of an increasingly authoritarian and aggressive China under Xi Jinping.” What the US needs to do is, the author argues, compel China’s “ruling elites to conclude that it is in China’s best interests to continue operating within the US-led liberal international order rather than building a rival order, and that it is in the Chinese Communist Party’s best interests to not attempt to expand China’s borders or export its political model beyond China’s shores.”
This policy stands in complete contrast to what China’s Xi had only recently said in his World Economic Forum speech. To quote him, “To build small circles or start a new Cold War, to reject, threaten or intimidate others, to willfully impose decoupling, supply disruptions or sanctions, and to create isolation or estrangement will only push the world into division and even confrontation,” Xi stressed, adding that, “We cannot tackle common challenges in a divided world, and confrontation will lead us to a dead end.”
Russia’s Putin in his address to the same forum outlined an identical approach, signifying how a de-facto Russia-China alliance exists with a primary aim to counter US unilateralism and supremacy.
Putin clearly foresaw Biden’s approach when he said, “We can expect the nature of practical actions to also become more aggressive, including pressure on the countries that do not agree with a role of obedient controlled satellites, use of trade barriers, illegitimate sanctions and restrictions in the financial, technological and cyber spheres. Such a game with no rules critically increases the risk of unilateral use of military force.”
Pre-empting Biden’s aggressive drive towards US unilateralism, Putin pointed out, “… the era linked with attempts to build a centralised and unipolar world order has ended. To be honest, this era did not even begin. A mere attempt was made in this direction, but this, too, is now history. The essence of this monopoly ran counter to our civilisation’s cultural and historical diversity.”
While the win-win and multipolar vision given by Russia-China shows their resolve to resist US unilateralism and build a more inclusive global political system, it also underscores the fact that the centre of global political and economic gravity has significantly shifted to Asia. An increasing number of countries are subscribing to the logic of win-win, rejecting the zero-sum competition that hawks in the US espouse, cherish and aim to impose on the whole world.
A “war of narratives”, with win-win and zero-sum competition as its two faces, has therefore begun with full force.
And, in this war, the US is not just resisting China and Russia; it is primarily resisting its own inevitable downfall both internally and externally. The events leading to the virtual occupation of the US Congress by Trump’s supporters signifies how the US democracy, internally divided and deeply polarized between the so-called liberals and white supremacists, is no longer a “role model” for the rest of the world. On the external front, China and Russia signify how a US led global economic system is not the only path to global salvation.
Salman Rafi Sheikh is a research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs.
While State Governments are Ending Their Mask Mandates, President Biden Is Going Full Mask Tyrant
By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | February 13, 2021
This week, statewide mask mandates terminated in two states — Iowa and Montana.
While state governments were giving the OK for ditching masks, President Joe Biden was telling reporters Thursday at the National Institutes of Health that people should keep wearing masks until at least next year, claiming that doing so “can save lives, a significant number of lives.”
This declaration came in muffled words and heavy breathing through at least two masks while Biden, standing behind a podium, acknowledged he was more than ten feet from anyone.
Biden made this claim of masks’ life-saving ability despite the facts that regular mask wearing does have negative health consequences and that it has not been established that mask wearing provides any net protection against coronavirus infection.
Biden is not just recommending that people wear masks. The Biden administration has already rolled out in its first three weeks sweeping countrywide mask mandates. Mask wearing is now mandated across the country — via executive branch fiat — for people in many circumstances related to public transportation and even when just in a taxi or ride share vehicle and for people who are in a US government building or on US government land.
And the plan is for these US government mask mandates to be enforced harshly. As James Bovard wrote in a recent article, for example, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) policy calls for monitoring both if people are wearing masks and if people are wearing the right kinds of masks in the right way, with fines of up to 1,500 dollars imposed on individuals who TSA determines have not adequately complied.
It looks like Americans are set to suffer tag team mask tyranny. As state governments remove authoritarian mask mandates, the US government is stepping in to ensure freedom remains suppressed.
Arranging The Middle East Narrative To Push The Agenda Forward
South Front | February 11, 2021
The United States is returning to a level of activity in the Middle East unseen in nearly 4 years. This development has become obvious over the weeks since Joe Biden became US President, firstly with a large deployment into Syria, and subsequently with smaller ones.
On February 9th, the Pentagon said that it was no longer in Syria to protect and exploit oil fields.
It is now back to hunting ISIS. Back to the square one of 2014 and the Obama era. ISIS somehow obliged by ramping up their activities throughout Syria.
It is a mystery that they were able to make such a sharp and sudden resurgence. It should also be noted that the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces allegedly have about 10,000 ISIS terrorists imprisoned.
This statement of intent denotes a massive shift in posture for the US. When defending the oil fields the US troops were mostly static, when hunting ISIS they can, once again, roam around and carry out various operations.
It appears likely that Idlib is now also in focus – US combat drones were observed surveying Greater Idlib. Idlib is a mixed bag – it has Turkish troops, Russians, the Syrian Arab Army along with terrorists and the moderate opposition, although confusing these two groups can be forgiven. The newest, future, US ally is there – the soon-to-be-rebranded Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham.
An indication of expected escalations and attacks are the Russian and Syrian military drills being carried out near Aleppo during effective wartime. Russia, separately, carried out a naval drill near Tartus.
And, as if by design, long-range missiles attempted to strike Russia’s forces at the Hmeimim Air Base. Drones occasionally attempt to infiltrate its airspace, but missiles are a rare sight.
Meanwhile in Western Daraa, the rebel leaders submitted to Damascus, likely fearing the upcoming chaos and wanting to choose a side.
Finally, the Biden administration is also working to secure Israeli support. The State Department said it doesn’t endorse Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, but doesn’t oppose it. It also provided a $9bn weapon sale as consolation. Tel Aviv is likely to use these weapons to counter its nemesis – Iran. It does so by targeting alleged Iranian interests in Syria.
Syria remains the lynchpin of US Middle East policy but the US posture in Iraq and Afghanistan has also changed. Withdrawing from the region is now out of the question – ISIS is making a resurgence, and there are other groups targeting American forces and convoys.
In Afghanistan, specifically, if the withdrawal does not move forward, the Taliban are also likely to begin targeting the US again.
The democrats are back in control and back to spreading democracy in the Middle East.
Meet Mr. New World Order, Joe Biden
By Timothy Alexander Guzman | Silent Crow News | January 31, 2021
Some call it the New World Order, others call it ‘the liberal international order’ or Globalism. Whatever they call it, the idea is real and it is not a conspiracy theory, it is a plan that has been pushed by the establishment to rule the world for quite some time. Several politicians including former US President George H.W. Bush, Henry Kissinger to banking moguls such as David Rockefeller to the mainstream-media all have said at one time or another that the New World Order is inevitable. Last November, The New York Times published an opinion piece ‘The New World Order That President Biden Will Inherit’ concluded that the idea of a new world order will return to the White House with Biden at the helm, “President-elect Biden has signaled that he intends to lead America back into the international arena, and whatever their qualms or doubts, America’s friends and allies should not wait to join forces in tackling the business of the day — a global pandemic and the future of the planet, to name just two items on the agenda.”
In 2017, as vice-president under then-President Obama, Biden gave his last speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on the accomplishments of the New World Order led by the US and its European allies, “For the past seven decades, the choices we have made—particularly the United States and our Allies in Europe—have steered our world down a clear path” he said. Biden claimed that the world actually “enjoyed” what he termed the “liberal international order”, “Our careful attention to building and sustaining a liberal international order—with the United States and Europe at its core—was the bedrock of the success the world enjoyed in the second half of the 20th Century.” He said that it was the US together with Europe who has pushed the world into a “just direction”, “After World War II, we drew a line under centuries of conflict and took steps to bend the arc of history in a more just direction.” However, since 1945, the US has bombed numerous countries including Korea (1950-53),Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (1955-75), Yugoslavia–Serbia (1999), Iraq (1997-present), Afghanistan (2001-present), Libya (2011) and Syria (2014-present) and many other nations since the end of World War II including US-backed coups, imposing harsh economic sanctions and assassinating political leaders. Yet, Biden said the world is much safer than ever before with the US and its European allies in charge of the order, “If you look at the long sweep of history, or even just the trend lines in wars and other incidents of large-scale violence over the past 50, 60, 70 years—as a practical matter, we are probably safer than ever, But it doesn’t feel that way” he says. Yes, it does not feel that way because the US and its allies have created chaos and destruction with their regime change policies and interventions around the world since the end of WWII. “Daily images of violence and unrest from all over the world are shared directly on our televisions and smart phones—images we rarely would have seen in a pre-digital age.” Here is where his hypocrisy shines “It’s fostered a feeling of perpetual chaos—of being overrun by outside forces.” The “outside forces” he claimed that were responsible for creating “perpetual chaos” were mostly conducted by his own CIA and the Military-Industrial Complex.
In 1992, The Wall Street Journal tapped then Senator Joseph Biden to write an article ‘How I Learned to Love the New World Order’ where he said that “Imagine my surprise when a Wall Street Journal editorial appointed me dean of the Pat Buchanan school of neo-isolationism.” Biden was referring to Patrick Buchanan, a long-time anti-globalist who worked as a senior advisor to three presidents and was a two-time presidential nominee for the Republican Party and a presidential nominee for the reform party in 2000. He is a journalist and has authored numerous books including ‘A Republic, Not an Empire: Reclaiming America’s Destiny‘ An interesting article from 2013 on Buchanan’s website http://www.buchanan.org ‘ titled ‘Why Neo-Isolationism Is Soaring’ quotes what Buchanan thought about globalism or the New World Order, “Neo-isolationism is the direct product of foolish globalism. … Compared to people who thought they could run the universe, or at least the globe, I am neo-isolationist and proud of it.” Buchanan is clearly adamant about ending the US empire:
The roots of the new isolationism are not difficult to discern. There is, first, the end of the Cold War, the liberation of the captive nations of Europe, the dissolution of our great adversary, the Soviet Empire, and the breakup of the Soviet Union. The Cold War, our war, was over. Time to come home. The Bushes and Bill Clinton said no. So we let the New World Order crowd have its run in the yard. We invaded Panama, intervened in Haiti and Mogadishu, launched Desert Storm to liberate Kuwait, bombed Serbia for 78 days to force it to surrender its cradle province of Kosovo.
Came then the blowback of 9/11, following which we had the Afghan war to overthrow the Taliban and create a new democracy in the Hindu Kush, the invasion and occupation of Iraq to strip Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction he did not have, and the air war on Libya. Others may celebrate the fruits of these wars but consider the costs:
A decade of bleeding with 8,000 U.S. dead, 40,000 wounded, $2 trillion sunk, Iraq and Libya disintegrating in tribal, civil and sectarian war, Afghanistan on the precipice, and al-Qaida no longer confined to Tora Bora but active in Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, Yemen and Syria
Biden basically mocked Buchanan’s ideas of being an isolationist at the time. Many people in Washington, D.C. did not agree with Buchanan’s assessment of ending the US empire around the world. Biden is the complete opposite, he wrote “Believing that the Pentagon’s new strategy-America as globo-cop-could render the United States a hollow superpower.” He continued “all agree we need the military to defend our vital interests-by ourselves when need be, The question is grand strategy. With the journal’s endorsement, the pentagon has called for a Pax-Americana: The U.S. should cast so large a military shadow that no rival dare emerge.” As Biden continued his argument for a US-led world order, he rejected Buchanan’s “America First” isolationist policy:
Pat Buchanan’s “America First” preaches martyrdom: We’ve been suckered into fighting “other” people’s battles and defending “other” people’s interests. With our dismal economy, this siren song holds some appeal.
But most Americans, myself included, reject 1930s-style isolationism. They expect to see the strong hand of American leadership in world affairs, and they know that economic retreat would yield nothing other than a lower standard of living. They understand further that many security threats — the spread of high-tech weapons, environmental degradation, overpopulation, narcotics trafficking, migration — require global solutions
Biden said that being a “globocop” comes with the ability to use its economic influence as a diplomatic tool and by using NATO’s containment policy as a strategy. Biden asked the question, “What about America as globocop?” he continued ” First, our 21st-century strategy has to be a shade more clever than Mao’s axiom that power comes from the barrel of a gun. Power also emanates from a solid bank balance, the ability to dominate and penetrate markets, and the economic leverage to wield diplomatic clout.” Biden also called for an aggressive foreign policy against those who are considered rogue states or simply put, those who don’t follow the rules:
Second, the plan is passive where it needs to be aggressive. The Journal endorses a global security system in which we destroy rogue-state threats as they arise. Fine, but let’s prevent such problems early rather than curing them late. Having contained Soviet communism until it dissolved, we need a new strategy of “containment” — based, like NATO, on collective action, but directed against weapons proliferation.
The reality is that we can slow proliferation to a snail’s pace if we stop irresponsible technology transfers. Fortunately, nearly all suppliers are finally showing restraint. The maverick is China, which persists in hawking sensitive weapons and technology to the likes of Syria, Iran, Libya, Algeria and Pakistan — even while pledging otherwise
Biden’s conclusion on how the U.S. and its allies can succeed in establishing a world order through a revised United Nations charter:
Rather than denigrating collective security, we should regularize the kind of multilateral response we assembled for the Gulf War. Why not breathe life into the U.N. Charter? It envisages a permanent commitment of forces, for use by the Security Council. That means a presumption of collective action — but with a U.S. veto.
Rather than defending military extravagance, the Bush administration should be reallocating Pentagon funds to meet more urgent security needs: sustaining democracy in the former Soviet empire; supporting U.N. peacekeepers in Yugoslavia, Cambodia and El Salvador; and rebuilding a weakened and debt-burdened America.
If Pentagon strategists and their kneejerk supporters could broaden their horizons, they would see how our superpower status is best assured. We must get lean militarily, revitalize American economic strength, and exercise a diplomatic leadership that puts new muscle into institutions of collective security
During the George W. Bush administration, then Senator Joe Biden was the chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations supported the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 that granted President Bush the authority to invade Iraq. The war in Iraq has killed more than a million Iraqis with millions more injured including those who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from the horrors of war. There are over 4,800 US military deaths and 10s of thousands more seriously injured. Many US soldiers also suffer from PTSD who eventually end up committing suicide. Biden also supported the wars against Serbia in 1999 followed by his support for the wars in Libya and then Syria.
In his Wall Street Journal piece, President Biden said that the liberal international order establishment faces many obstacles including security threats such as the proliferation of high-tech weaponry, the environment, overpopulation, immigration issues on south of the US border and drug trafficking, all “require global solutions.” One of his main issues he spoke about was overpopulation. CNN recently reported with enthusiasm ‘Biden signs memorandum reversing Trump abortion access restrictions’ said that “President Joe Biden signed a presidential memorandum on Thursday to reverse restrictions on abortion access domestically and abroad imposed and expanded by the Trump administration.”
According to the report:
“The memorandum will “reverse my predecessor’s attack on women’s health access” and that it “relates to protecting women’s health at home and abroad, and it reinstates the changes that were made to Title X and other things making it harder for women to have access to affordable health care as it relates to their reproductive rights.” The memorandum reverses the Mexico City Policy which is “a ban on US government funding for foreign nonprofits that perform or promote abortions.”
Obviously, abortions reduce population growth and that’s a goal of the establishment because with less people on the planet, it is much easier to control the remaining population. A dream come true for the establishment.
Who knows how long Biden has in office since his mental capabilities are in decline, but it is certain that he will introduce many aspects of his liberal international order while he’s still in office. Rest assured, Biden, Kamala Harris or whoever takes his position will continue to implement policies that will complement the establishment who seeks to rule the world by coercion or even by force, if needed.
References:
*Joe Biden Calls For A New World Order At The 2014 U S Air Force Academy Graduation May 29, 2014
US military refusal to pull out troops to be met with Iraqi nation’s resistance, MP warns
Press TV – January 29, 2021
An Iraqi lawmaker has stressed the need for the implementation of a resolution adopted by Iraq’s parliament concerning the expulsion of US-led foreign forces from the Arab country, saying that the Iraqi nation will resort to resistance in case the Pentagon refuses to abide by the decision.
“The decision to remove foreign troops from Iraq is an Iraqi matter. If the Iraqi government’s political solutions for the withdrawal of foreign forces do not succeed, we will then resort to resistance to attain the objective,” Mohammed al-Baldawi, a member of the Iraqi Parliament’s Security and Defense Committee, told the Arabic-language Baghdad Today news agency on Thursday.
He made the remarks as the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that authorities in Washington are counting on reconsidering the decision of former US president Donald Trump’s administration to reduce the number of US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The newspaper quoted Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby as saying that the official decision to review the number of US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq has not yet been taken.
He asserted, however, that the current US [proclaimed] President Joe Biden’s administration “is counting on a better understanding of the current situation with regard to operations in both countries.”
Baldawi added, “The decision to expel foreign troops from Iraq has been finalized and it is irreversible. Foreign troops have no option but to withdraw. We are working with the government to implement the [parliamentary] resolution.”
“The presence of US-led foreign troops in Iraq poses a dangerous threat to the security and stability of the country as well as the region, because the United States wants to plunge Iraq into turmoil. This is completely rejected,” the Iraqi legislator concluded.
Anti-US sentiment has been running high in Iraq since the assassination of top Iranian anti-terror commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and his Iraqi trenchmate, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Units, along with their companions in a US terror drone strike authorized by Trump near Baghdad International Airport on January 3 last year.
Iraqi lawmakers approved a bill two days later, demanding the expulsion of all foreign military forces led by the United States from the Arab country.
6 Warning Signs from Biden’s First Week in Office
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | January 27, 2021
It’s been a busy first week for the 46th President [sic] of the United States, there are the 20,000 troops occupying the capitol city to organise, as well as the totally unprecedented show-trial of his immediate predecessor.
You know, usual democracy type stuff.
On top of that, Biden has now signed at least 37 executive orders in his first week. The record for any President, and more than the previous four presidents combined.
What do these orders, or any of his other moves, tell us about the future plans of the recently “elected” administration? Nothing good, unfortunately.
1. VACCINATION PASSPORTS
I still remember people claiming the introduction of vaccination passports (or immunity passes or the like) was just a “conspiracy theory”, the paranoid fantasy of fringe “covidiots”. All the way back in December, when they were getting fact-checked by tabloid journalists who can’t do basic maths.
These days they are rebranded as “freedom certificates” which are “divisive, politically tricky and probably inevitable”.
Many countries are already preparing to roll it out, including Iceland the UK and South Africa. Biden’s “Executive Order on Promoting COVID-19 Safety in Domestic and International Travel” adds the US to this list:
International Certificates of Vaccination or Prophylaxis. Consistent with applicable law, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of HHS, and the Secretary of Homeland Security (including through the Administrator of the TSA), in coordination with any relevant international organizations, shall assess the feasibility of linking COVID-19 vaccination to International Certificates of Vaccination or Prophylaxis (ICVP) and producing electronic versions of ICVPs.
2. CABINET APPOINTMENTS
Biden’s cabinet is praised as the “most diverse” in history, but will hiring a few non-white people really change the decades-old policies of US Imperialism? It certainly doesn’t look like it.
His pick for Under Secretary of State is Victoria Nuland, a neocon warmonger and one of the masterminds of the Maidan coup in Ukraine in 2014. She is married to Robert Kagan, another neocon warmonger, co-founder of the Project for a New American Century and senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and one of the masterminds behind the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The incoming Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, is also an inveterate US Imperialist, arguing for every US military intervention since the 1990s, and criticised Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria.
Biden’s pick for Defence Secretary is the first African-American ever appointed to this role, but former General Lloyd Austin is hardly going be some kind of “progressive” voice in his cabinet. He’s a career soldier who retired from the military in 2016 to join the board of Raytheon Technologies, an arms manufacturer and military contractor.
As “diverse” as this cabinet may be in skin colour or gender… there is most certainly no “diversity” of opinion or policy. There are very few new faces and no new thoughts.
So, it looks like we can expect more of the same in terms of foreign policy. A fact that’s already been displayed in…
3. IRAQ…
Despite heavy resistance from the military and Deep State, Donald Trump wanted to end the war in Iraq and pledged to pull American troops out of the country. This was one of Trump’s more popular policies, and during the campaign Biden made no mention of intending to reverse that decision.
Then, on the very day of Biden’s inauguration, ISIS conducted their deadliest suicide bombing for over three years, and suddenly the situation was too unstable for the US to leave, and Biden is being forced to “review” Trump’s planned withdrawal.
The Iraqi parliament has made it clear it wants the US to take its military off their soil, so any American forces on Iraqi land are technically there illegally in contravention of international law. But that never bothered them before.
4. … AFGHANISTAN…
Turns out the US can’t withdraw from Afghanistan either. Last February Trump signed a deal with the Taliban that all US personnel would leave Afghanistan by May 2021.
Joe Biden has already committed to “reviewing” this deal. Sec. Blinken was quoted as saying that Biden’s admin wanted:
“to end this so-called forever war [but also] retain some capacity to deal with any resurgence of terrorism, which is what brought us there in the first place”.
As a great man once said, nothing someone says before the word “but” really counts. The US will not be withdrawing from Afghanistan, and if there is any public pressure to do so, the government will simply claim the Taliban broke their side of the deal first, or stage a few terrorist attacks.
5. … AND SYRIA
Far from simply continuing the on-going wars, there are already signs Biden’s “diverse” team will look to escalate, or even start, other conflicts.
Syria was another theatre of war from which Donald Trump wanted to extricate the United States, unilaterally ordering all US troops from the country in late 2019.
We now know the Pentagon ignored those orders. They lied to the President, telling Trump they had followed his orders… but not withdrawing a single man. This organized mutiny against the Commander-in-Chief of the US Armed Forces was played for a joke in the media when it was finally revealed.
There will be no need for any such duplicity now that Biden is in the Oval Office, he was a vocal critic of the decision to withdraw, claiming it gave ISIS a “new lease of life”. Indeed, within two days of his being sworn in a column of American military vehicles was seen entering Syria from Iraq.
6. DOMESTIC TERRORISM
We called this before the inauguration. They made it just too obvious. Before the dirty footprints had been cleaned from Nancy Pelosi’s desk it was clear where it was all going.
Within 24 hours of being sworn in as president, Biden had ordered a “review of the threat posed by domestic terrorism”.
As usual, the press are laying down the covering fire for this. Talking heads have been busily comparing MAGA voters to al Qaida in television interviews. The Washington Post and New Yorker journal have cut-and-paste pieces about this supposed threat. Politico published an article titled “Biden vowed to defeat domestic terrorism. The how is the hard part”, which outlines what Biden could do:
Direct the Justice Department, FBI and National Security Council to execute a top-down approach prioritizing domestic terrorism; pass new domestic terrorism legislation; or do a bit of both as Democrats propose a crack down on social media giants like Facebook for algorithms that promote conspiracy laden posts.
That last part is key. The “crack down on social media” part, because the anti-Domestic Terrorism legislation will likely be very focused on communication and so-called “misinformation”.
Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez has publicly called for a congressional panel to “rein in” the media:
We’re going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so you can’t just spew disinformation and misinformation,”
And who will be the target of these crack downs and new legislations? Well, according John Brennan (ex-head of the CIA and accomplished war criminal), practically anybody:
They’re casting a wide net. Expect “extremist”, “bigot” and “racist” to be just a few of the words which have their meanings totally revised in the next few months. “Conspiracy theorist” will be used a lot, too.
Further, they are moving closer and closer toward the “anyone who disagrees with us is literally insane” model. With many articles actually talking about “de-programming” Trump voters. The Atlantic suggests “mental hygiene” would cure the MAGA problem.
Again AOC is on point here, clearly auditioning for the role of High Inquisitor, claiming that the new Biden government needs to fund programs that “de-radicalise” “conspiracy theorists” who are on the “spectrum of radicalisation”.
*
As I said at the beginning, it’s been a busy week for Joe Biden, but you can sum up his biggest policy plans in one short sentence: More violence overseas, less tolerance of dissent and strict clampdowns on “misinformation”.
How progressive.
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Book Review
Former Insiders Criticize Iran Policy as U.S. Hegemony
By GARETH PORTER | CounterPunch | February 27, 2013
“Going to Tehran” arguably represents the most important work on the subject of U.S.-Iran relations to be published thus far.
Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett tackle not only U.S. policy toward Iran but the broader context of Middle East policy with a systematic analytical perspective informed by personal experience, as well as very extensive documentation.
More importantly, however, their exposé required a degree of courage that may be unparalleled in the writing of former U.S. national security officials about issues on which they worked. They have chosen not just to criticise U.S. policy toward Iran but to analyse that policy as a problem of U.S. hegemony. … continue
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