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Author: TriSec    Date: 05/19/2015 10:14:40

Good Morning.

Today is our 334th day back in Iraq.

There have be no recent US military casualties, although an American civilian was recently killed in Afghanistan.

We find this morning's Cost of War passing through:

$ 1, 627, 452, 750, 000 .00



We'll dive right in, but we'll start in Washington today. June 19th marks one year since we've been fighting our undeclared war against ISIS in Iraq. For a Congress that opposes the President breathing, they've been surprisingly quiet about this unauthorized excursion of executive authority. By now it's become a moot point, but every now and again somebody thinks about talking about it, and it just as quickly dies a quiet death.




WASHINGTON (AP) — A move to write new war powers to authorize the Obama administration's 9-month-old battle against Islamic State militants has stalled in Congress. It might even be dead.

President Barack Obama doesn't seem to mind. And while lawmakers say they don't want to give up their check on a commander-in-chief's authority to use military might, they have little interest in having what would be the first war vote in Congress in 13 years.

Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was recently asked whether Congress was still going to craft a new AUMF.

"What does that stand for?" Corker joked, knowing that it stands for Authorization for the Use of Military Force. But his five words said a lot.

After Obama ordered airstrikes in August over Iraq and in September over Syria against IS militants, lawmakers complained that he was justifying the action with dusty war powers written to authorize conflicts after 9/11. Today, there is hardly a word about it on Capitol Hill.

"I'm not optimistic. I wish I were," Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told The Associated Press. "The snag is there is no real political will or interest in doing it."

He said Congress has a lot to lose if it doesn't.

"As an institution, we're the ones who are going to suffer because future presidents are going to look back at this and say, 'We don't need Congress to make war.' It's a terrible precedent," Schiff said.

He believes that if a new military force authorization is not passed, the current Congress will have done more to weaken its own power as a check on the executive branch than any other Congress in memory.

In the U.S. battle against the Islamic State group, Obama has been relying on congressional authorizations given to President George W. Bush for the war on al-Qaida and the Iraq invasion. The White House said they gave Obama authority to act without new approval by Congress under the 1973 War Powers Act.

The act, passed during the Vietnam War, serves as a constitutional check on presidential power to declare war without congressional consent. It requires presidents to notify Congress within 48 hours of military action and limits the use of military forces to no more than 60 days unless Congress authorizes force or declares war.

Critics say the White House's use of post-9/11 congressional authorizations is a legal stretch at best.

Obama has insisted that he is on firm legal footing in sending more than 4,000 U.S. troops to train and assist Iraqi security forces and launching thousands of airstrikes against targets in Iraq and Syria. But he also has said that he would welcome a new authorization to cover the current military operations.


Staying on the Political Front, the ongoing troubles in Iraq are going to have a major impact on the next election cycle, I would think. Jeb is having some problems articulating his feelings on what his brother started. The other candidates have been generally beating around the bush (so to speak), but at some point there's going to have to be some recognition of the elephant in the room.


WASHINGTON — More than a decade after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the wisdom of that war still casts a shadow over the Republican candidates for president as they try to stake out a more muscular foreign policy than President Barack Obama.

Most of the GOP White House hopefuls argue that Obama overcorrected after ending the long and expensive war by pulling out American forces so completely, yet are mindful that many Americans remain skeptical of large-scale U.S. combat efforts abroad.

With the U.S. back in Iraq in a more limited way to help fight Islamic State militants, Obama's successor is all but sure to confront lingering fallout from the original invasion and its aftermath.

Tackling America's difficult history in Iraq is most challenging for Jeb Bush, whose brother, former President George W. Bush, pursued the Iraq war in 2003. Bush has sought to distance himself from his brother's foreign policy, even as he relies on many of the same advisers and cites his brother someone he relies on for advice.

Bush appeared to get tripped up by his tightrope walk this week. Asked if he would have approved of the invasion given what is now known about the faulty intelligence that influenced his brother's decision, he said he would have made the same decision under the same circumstances.

"Just for the news flash to the world, if they're trying to find places where there's big space between me and my brother, this might not be one of those." Bush said in a Fox News interview that aired Monday.

A Bush spokeswoman would not say Tuesday how Bush would answer the original question. He was expected to address the matter on Fox anchor Sean Hannity's radio show Tuesday evening.

A September 2014 AP-GfK poll found that 71 percent of Americans said they think history will judge the war as a failure. Among Republicans, that assessment was even more prevalent, with 76 percent saying the war would be seen a failure.


Whether or not the politics of war are ever resolved, there's still people on the ground that are affected on a daily basis by our actions. We almost never talk about this here at AAV, but today we'll take a brief visit with some Iraqi civilians. Everything that's ever been said or written about US soldiers dealing with the trauma of war could apply to non-combatants...and remember, they generally don't have any kind of support mechanisms, either.


CHAMISHKO CAMP, Iraq (AP) -- The group of women, members of Iraq's Yazidi religious minority, first did deep breathing as a relaxation technique. Then, as their children played in the center of the room, they talked about the traumas they had lived through when Islamic State extremists rampaged through their town.

Muna Murad spoke of the sorrow that overwhelms her when she's reminded of her brother-in-law, who was killed by the militants before her eyes. "Whenever I see his two kids playing with mine, I have trouble breathing," she said.

With such group counselling sessions, international aid groups are trying to help at least some of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who fled from their homes to escape the Islamic State and now live crammed into multiple camps like Chamishko around the north. But the efforts are a drop in the ocean in a county where an overwhelming number of people are dealing with mental trauma and where there are almost no facilities to help them.

The IS rampage across northern and western Iraq the past 18 months only adds a new generation of traumatized Iraqis after decades of war and conflict. From the long Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s, to the 1991 Gulf War, through the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and the sectarian slaughter that followed, Iraqis have witnessed untold horrors and suffered the agonies of displacement.

Dr. Emad Abdul-Razzaq, the adviser on mental health issues to the Health Ministry, estimates that 40 to 50 percent of Iraq's 33 million people have been affected by the trauma of the last few decades, in some cases causing serious personality changes like increased anger, anxiety and aggressiveness.

This in a country where there are only 130 licensed psychiatrists. There are just 2,000 beds in mental hospitals nationwide - 80 in the northern Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, the rest in the capital Baghdad. A mental health hospital planned in the southern city of Diwaniya will be the country's first new facility in 60 years.

Helped by organizations like Doctors Without Borders, Iraq has struggled to provide more mental health services, setting up centers in hospitals and training regular doctors to provide some counseling. But the effort is hamstrung by lack of funding. "We have accumulated problems, and the policymakers in the past have not made mental health support a priority," said Abdul-Razzaq.

At Baghdad's Ibn Rushd hospital mental health center, which sees about 150 patients a day, Dr. Mohammed Koreishi said the staff has tried to increase awareness in the public about the benefits of professional mental health care and overcome the strong social stigma against it. But he said there's a profound lack of trained professionals, including clinical psychologists and counselors.

"We have a problem in Iraq that doctors don't like to specialize in psychiatry because it has the poorest economic status - not like a surgeon," he said. At his center, patients are mainly treated with medication such as mood stabilizers, anti-psychotics and antidepressants, with limited recourse to counseling.


President Bush's legacy is looking more atrocious then ever...for most of the 20th century, the United States was doing more good than harm, and we were generally perceived around the world as a benign entity usually willing to help out those in need. It took just 8 years to destroy all that. It's still difficult to say if we'll ever get that old reputation back.
 

35 comments (Latest Comment: 05/19/2015 19:40:21 by wickedpam)
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Comment by trojanrabbit on 05/19/2015 12:31:03
Intercourse the developers of Flash with rusty farm implements.

I do NOT want Chrome as my default browser.
I do NOT want Google Toolbar.

And probably since I don't want these things, the Flush updater crashed and wouldn't do the update.

I just hope no one decides to update this PC during my staycation (which starts in about 7 1/2 hours)

Comment by wickedpam on 05/19/2015 12:54:31
Morning

Comment by Raine on 05/19/2015 13:32:48
So, Bill O' Reilly.

Dirtbaggier than ever.

Comment by wickedpam on 05/19/2015 13:40:19
Quote by Raine:
So, Bill O' Reilly.

Dirtbaggier than ever.


and I doubt it will stick to him - he's one of those people who turns it around and blames everyone else for his crappiness

Comment by Raine on 05/19/2015 13:55:16
Comment by Raine on 05/19/2015 13:55:38
Quote by wickedpam:
Quote by Raine:
So, Bill O' Reilly.

Dirtbaggier than ever.


and I doubt it will stick to him - he's one of those people who turns it around and blames everyone else for his crappiness
calling his kid a liar is pretty damn low.


Comment by wickedpam on 05/19/2015 13:59:13
Quote by Raine:
Quote by wickedpam:
Quote by Raine:
So, Bill O' Reilly.

Dirtbaggier than ever.


and I doubt it will stick to him - he's one of those people who turns it around and blames everyone else for his crappiness
calling his kid a liar is pretty damn low.



It is.

Comment by Mondobubba on 05/19/2015 14:24:28



No, it is typical white trash behavior.

Comment by Mondobubba on 05/19/2015 14:26:21
Oh did I just call the Palins white trash? Too strong, no.

Comment by Scoopster on 05/19/2015 14:40:17
Comment by Mondobubba on 05/19/2015 15:11:33
Comment by trojanrabbit on 05/19/2015 15:38:07
Quote by Scoopster:
Mornin' all!

Boston radio just got a little bit friendlier.


I think you can partially thank the Red Sox sucking royally for that. Entercom is notoriously cheap and with fees to the Sox taking up much of what WEEI-FM pulls in, it leaves little for big fat fucking pig$ like Limbaugh on the AM side.

Comment by trojanrabbit on 05/19/2015 15:39:53
Quote by Mondobubba:



No, it is typical white trash behavior.

But there's still gonna be a Bar-B-Q. YEEHAW

Comment by TriSec on 05/19/2015 15:58:57


Would be nice if every single one of them got a wee little knock on the door from their friendly, neighborhood, FBI agent...


Comment by Raine on 05/19/2015 16:00:05
Quote by TriSec:


Would be nice if every single one of them got a wee little knock on the door from their friendly, neighborhood, FBI agent...
Every single one of these boneheads are forever a part of the Presidential RecordAct. Stupid people.

Comment by Mondobubba on 05/19/2015 16:04:31
Quote by Raine:
Quote by TriSec:


Would be nice if every single one of them got a wee little knock on the door from their friendly, neighborhood, FBI agent...
Every single one of these boneheads are forever a part of the Presidential RecordAct. Stupid people.



Allow me to use this in response:



Comment by Raine on 05/19/2015 16:05:02
24 seconds in, We learn that Carly Fiorinia is talking about Hormones on the campaign trail…


It gets interesting at the 4 minute mark when they talk about the Democrats.

Comment by Raine on 05/19/2015 16:16:37
ALL. OF. THIS. I am posting the entire thing, but I strongly suggest you give it a click!

BY TAYLOR BATTEN
Editorial Page Editor

I wrote a light blogpost last month about Mayor Dan Clodfelter proclaiming April 30 “Honesty Day” in Charlotte. Honesty Day, it turned out, is observed on that date nationwide.

I noted a Wikipedia explanation of what it’s all about: “On this day, anyone participating may ask any question they choose and the opposing person should give a truthful and straightforward answer.”

I invited readers to say what they would ask, and of whom.

David Fry of Charlotte was among those who responded.

“To: observer editors

“Question? Why do you support such a liberal agenda?

“Remember you’re supposed to answer honestly.”

Well, rules are rules, so I suppose you deserve an honest answer for Honesty Day. Here goes:

We believe that everyone is created equal.

We believe that children should not bear responsibility for the sins of their parents.

We believe that prevention is a heck of a lot cheaper than a cure.

We believe people should not be treated as lesser citizens, with fewer rights, because of whom they love.

We believe a thriving city, state and nation rests to a great degree in the quality of its public schools, and that every child deserves a dedicated, dynamic teacher, regardless of what ZIP code that child lives in.

We believe discrimination is wrong in every instance.

We believe in consistency, so if you are going to drug-test recipients of public assistance, drug-test them all, including the corporate chieftains who are the biggest beneficiaries.

We believe that police officers should act professionally, under incredibly difficult circumstances, regardless of a suspect’s race.

We believe taxes should be kept as low as possible while still providing a sound safety net for the neediest, a robust education for all, decent health care for the elderly and the destitute, and other basics.

We believe politicians of any party should keep their promises, avoid the appearance of personal gain from the public trust, and look out for the general welfare, not that of any one special interest.

We believe there are people of worth beyond our tight circle and there are neighborhoods beyond our own, with different histories, perspectives and needs.

We believe offenders have paid their price when their sentence is up and should be helped to assimilate back into society. And that that’s better for the community than neglecting them and watching them commit another crime.

We believe there are peace-loving Muslims.

We do not believe President Obama was born in Kenya.

We believe in the separation of church and state.

We believe Moore Place, built with public and private money, and its housing-first approach is a model for how to help the chronically homeless.

We believe Charlotte will need effective mass transit to handle its continually swelling population.

We believe if you’re a fan of a politician solely because he has a ‘D’ or an ‘R’ after his name, then you’re not paying attention.

We believe we have only one planet, and we should protect it for our grandchildren.

If that earns us the label “liberal” in your eyes, Mr. Fry, so be it. We approach the issues of the day with an open mind and guided by those principles, not by blind devotion to any political party. And that’s the honest truth.


Comment by Mondobubba on 05/19/2015 16:42:27
Comment by Raine on 05/19/2015 17:26:15
https://www.creators.com/editorial_cartoons/1/32172_thumb.jpg


Comment by livingonli on 05/19/2015 17:31:17
Good day, folks. I did manage to lose a few pounds since my last doctor visit, so I got one good piece of news.

Comment by Raine on 05/19/2015 17:33:23
Quote by livingonli:
Good day, folks. I did manage to lose a few pounds since my last doctor visit, so I got one good piece of news.

Excellent! How are the eyes, Liv?

Comment by Raine on 05/19/2015 18:00:36
according to Helen Ratner — HRC gave a press conference and when asked about these stupid emails, she ended to Q&A and walked away.

That isn't really good. I am looking for a story of a video to back this up.

Comment by Raine on 05/19/2015 18:09:38
http://i1173.photobucket.com/albums/r589/duadmin/azx-2014-10/potustwitter_zpsvwriejwy.png

http://i1173.photobucket.com/albums/r589/duadmin/azx-2014-10/bctwitter_zps0oewy1o5.png

http://i1173.photobucket.com/albums/r589/duadmin/azx-2014-10/potusrespondbctwitter_zpsncgnbpej.png


Comment by livingonli on 05/19/2015 18:15:03
Quote by Raine:
Quote by livingonli:
Good day, folks. I did manage to lose a few pounds since my last doctor visit, so I got one good piece of news.

Excellent! How are the eyes, Liv?

More or less unchanged. I don't need bifocals yet.

Comment by wickedpam on 05/19/2015 18:16:44
Quote by Raine:
http://i1173.photobucket.com/albums/r589/duadmin/azx-2014-10/potustwitter_zpsvwriejwy.png

http://i1173.photobucket.com/albums/r589/duadmin/azx-2014-10/bctwitter_zps0oewy1o5.png

http://i1173.photobucket.com/albums/r589/duadmin/azx-2014-10/potusrespondbctwitter_zpsncgnbpej.png



Clinton hashtags like a champ XD

Comment by Raine on 05/19/2015 18:21:28


Comment by Raine on 05/19/2015 18:21:52
Quote by wickedpam:
Quote by Raine:
http://i1173.photobucket.com/albums/r589/duadmin/azx-2014-10/potustwitter_zpsvwriejwy.png

http://i1173.photobucket.com/albums/r589/duadmin/azx-2014-10/bctwitter_zps0oewy1o5.png

http://i1173.photobucket.com/albums/r589/duadmin/azx-2014-10/potusrespondbctwitter_zpsncgnbpej.png



Clinton hashtags like a champ XD
Right?


Comment by Raine on 05/19/2015 18:37:00
Quote by livingonli:
Quote by Raine:
Quote by livingonli:
Good day, folks. I did manage to lose a few pounds since my last doctor visit, so I got one good piece of news.

Excellent! How are the eyes, Liv?

More or less unchanged. I don't need bifocals yet.

Well that is good news as well!

Comment by Raine on 05/19/2015 18:39:11
Quote by Raine:
according to Helen Ratner — HRC gave a press conference and when asked about these stupid emails, she ended to Q&A and walked away.

That isn't really good. I am looking for a story of a video to back this up.

And now I will say this, The presentation that Helen Ratner gave on the Thom Hartmann show was far different that what I saw in this video.

She ended the news conference, and she answered the questions. Ratner made it sound like she didn't answer the question.


Comment by Raine on 05/19/2015 19:11:33
Quote by Raine:

Personally, I don't think she punted.



Comment by Raine on 05/19/2015 19:13:23
how come we don't see these types of Graphs from say, ANY GOP CANDIDATE?!?!

http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-IL475_clinto_G_20150516003205.jpg


Did the WSJ ever show a wealth graph of Mittens?

Comment by Raine on 05/19/2015 19:13:55
Am I talking to myself?

Why yes, I think I am.

I enjoy myself…

Comment by livingonli on 05/19/2015 19:18:01
Quote by Raine:
Am I talking to myself?

Why yes, I think I am.

I enjoy myself…

Nothing wrong with that.

Comment by wickedpam on 05/19/2015 19:40:21
Quote by Raine:
Am I talking to myself?

Why yes, I think I am.

I enjoy myself…



Happens to the best of us - then again as an only child I've held some pretty good conversations with myself