Ahmed Chalabi is DEAD

Sometimes a person dies and the news of it makes me breathe a sigh of relief that a devil incarnate has exited the building.

I bring you news of the death of Ahmed Chalabi!

Ahmed Chalabi, Chief Peddler of False Iraq WMD Intelligence, Dies at 71

Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi, who played a key role in pushing for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, has died at the age of 71. Chalabi was the former head of the Iraqi National Congress, a CIA-funded Iraqi exile group that helped drum up pre-war claims that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction and had links to al-Qaeda. Chalabi provided bogus intelligence to the Bush administration, U.S. lawmakers and journalists.

Democracy Now! closely covered the rise and fall of Chalabi over the past 15 years.

Highlights from past coverage:

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2015/11/3/ahmed_chalabi_chief_peddler_of_false

This one dude is fer sure in the Bernie column

Remember, when the Empire speaks, the truth is the opposite of what is said

The Empire says, "Bernie is unelectable".

In Appalling Statement, Chicago Mayor Blames City's Soaring Murder Toll on Police Not Being Aggressi

Incredible @HillaryClinton statement forgets Palestinians even exist

Why is U.S. Refusing an Independent Investigation if it's So Clear its Hospital Airstrike was an "Ac

...Liu emphasized that the need for an “independent, impartial“ investigation is now particularly compelling given what she called “the inconsistency in the U.S. and Afghan accounts of what happened over the recent days.” On Monday, we documented the multiple conflicting accounts offered in the first three days by the U.S. military and its media allies, but the story continued to change even further after that. As The Guardian’s headline yesterday noted, the U.S. admission that its own personnel called in the airstrike – not Afghan forces as it claimed the day before – meant that “US alters story for fourth time in four days.” All of this led Liu to state the obvious today: “We cannot rely on internal military investigations by the U.S., NATO and Afghan forces.”...

Many Americans, and especially a large percentage of the nation’s journalists, need no investigation to know that this was nothing more than a terrible, tragic mistake. They believe that Americans, and especially their military, are so inherently good and noble and well-intentioned that none would ever knowingly damage a hospital. John McCain expressed this common American view and the primary excuse now accompanying it – stuff happens – on NPR this morning:

Harvard's prestigious debate team loses to New York prison inmates

Epic White House Twitter FAIL on TPP

White House tries to promote TPP on Twitter, fails in EPIC fashion. I have not found one positive reply to their tweet. This thing is HATED.

https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/651050606094749696

The Largest US Foreign Policy Blunder Since Vietnam Is Complete: Iran Readies Massive Syrian Ground

Tyler Durden - ZeroHedge

The Largest US Foreign Policy Blunder Since Vietnam Is Complete: Iran Readies Massive Syrian Ground Invasion

On Thursday, in “Mid-East Coup: As Russia Pounds Militant Targets, Iran Readies Ground Invasions While Saudis Panic”, we attempted to cut through all of the Western and Russian media propaganda on the way to describing what Moscow’s involvement in Syria actually portends for the global balance of power. Here are a few excerpts that summarize what’s taking shape in the Middle East:

Putin looks to have viewed this as the ultimate geopolitical win-win. That is, Russia gets to i) expand its influence in the Middle East in defiance of Washington and its allies, a move that also helps to protect Russian energy interests and preserves the Mediterranean port at Tartus, and ii) support its allies in Tehran and Damascus thus preserving the counterbalance to the US-Saudi-Qatar alliance.

Meanwhile, Iran gets to enjoy the support of the Russian military juggernaut on the way to protecting the delicate regional nexus that is the source of Tehran’s Mid-East influence. It is absolutely critical for Iran to keep Assad in power, as the loss of Syria to the West would effectively cut the supply line between Iran and Hezbollah.

It would be difficult to overstate the significance of what appears to be going on here. This is nothing short of a Middle Eastern coup, as Iran looks to displace Saudi Arabia as the regional power broker and as Russia looks to supplant the US as the superpower puppet master.

Clinton aide says he doesn’t know what 'wiped' server means

Hillary Clinton’s press secretary says he doesn’t know what the word “wiped” means in reference to his boss’s private email server.

“I don’t know what ‘wiped’ means,” Brian Fallon told CNN’s Brianna Keilar on Thursday in response to whether the server Clinton handed over to the FBI was “wiped.”

“There’s been no — I don’t know what ‘wiped’ means, literally the emails were deleted off of the server, that’s true,” he repeated later in the interview.

.....

“Like with a cloth or something?” Clinton replied at an August press conference when asked whether she “wiped her server.”