I BEG YOU TO WATCH THIS CLIP ON IRAQ--RATHER THAN CORPORATE PROPAGANDA

I love that Amy Goodman mistakenly calls Obama President O-bombing in this clip, as she interviews Phyllis Bennis on the folly of further attacks on a country we destroyed for no reason. Well, there is a reason, but it isn't rescuing Americans trapped there or ISIS cutting children's heads off. As Juan Mercedes Gonzalez
 points out, we've been involved with Iraq militarily for 1/4 of a century under 4 presidents. We need a strategic military base there to continue to stir up trouble all over the world and secure oil. We aren't going in to help anyone. Bombs seldom help people. Juan: "If there’s a definition of a quagmire, this is it."

NOT A LIMITED STRIKE: "The question of U.S. airstrikes is almost certainly going to make things worse and not better. This should have been the lesson we learned from what President Obama called the "dumb war." He admitted this time around there is no American military solution, and yet he’s authorizing American military actions. It doesn’t make any sense. There’s no logic to it."

AMERICANS ARE SICK OF WAR, ESPECIALLY WHAT OBAMA HIMSELF CALLED "THE DUMB WAR.": "I think the last polls indicated it was somewhere between 78 and 82 percent of people in the United States who are absolutely opposed to going back to Iraq militarily."

OBAMA ISN'T TELLING THE TRUTH AND WE HAVE A ROTTEN TRACK RECORD OF DROPPING BOMBS ALONG WITH AID: "The notion, when he said that this is—that we are uniquely capable, we are not uniquely capable. The United Nations, even before this move by President Obama, had offered the Iraqi government technical help to carry out real humanitarian airlifts to the people stuck on the mountain in Sinjar Mountain. You know, the U.S. history of linking airdrops of food and water with bombing raids is not a good one. If we look back to the last time this happened, it was in November of 2001 in Afghanistan, when you had the United States simultaneously dropping food packs—at that time, they were using MREs, Meals Ready to Eat, that were wrapped in strong, bright yellow plastic to make them easy to spot. They were being dropped to Afghan refugees who were fleeing the U.S. bombing of the cities, but at the same time the U.S. was dropping cluster bombs that also happened to be made with bright yellow plastic of exactly the same color. And no one knows how many children, in particular, were killed running to what they thought were food packages that turned out to be cluster bombs. This is not a safe way to carry out a humanitarian operation."

IN IRAQ WE HELP THE UNDERDOGS, IN PALESTINE, WE PAY FOR ISRAEL'S WEAPONS TO KILL THEM: "And in the region more broadly, it’s going to be pointed out what hypocrisy it is, where the United States is arming Israel to kill Palestinians in Gaza. The language that President Obama used, that there are innocent people facing violations on a massive scale, that describes the situation of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. And yet, rather than providing humanitarian aid, demanding that Israel open the gates of Gaza, that it open the border crossings, the United States instead is sending more weapons and more money to buy more weapons and more ammunition for those Israeli attacks. So, the question of how the U.S. is going to be blamed for this is even wider because of the simultaneous crisis underway in Gaza."

RATHER THAN BOMB IRAQ TO RESCUE AMERICANS, WE COULD JUST AS EASILY FLY THEM OUT OF THERE. BUT AS USUAL, WE CHOOSE BOMBS OVER COMMON SENSE. AND OBAMA NEEDS THE "URGENCY" OF THEIR RESCUE TO BYPASS CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL TO ATTACK: "If there was so much concern about these 40 or so diplomats and a couple of hundred military advisers—I’m not quite sure that they’re as threatened as some reports have indicated, but if there was that concern, that’s a completely doable thing to simply get them onto helicopters and planes and move them out. That’s a false, you know, rationale. It’s being used because both at the public level and, I think, for the Obama administration, their understanding of how they can use the limitations on acting unilaterally without consulting with Congress is shaped by the notion that American lives are at stake. If American lives are at stake on an emergency basis, it’s possible, under some circumstances, for the president to move. In this situation, there hasn’t been a move yet. There isn’t that level of urgency. But if this was really so dangerous for those couple of hundred people, put them on a plane and get them out."

Why are no there countries stepping forward to aid this situation if it's so horrible? The US has no foreign policy credibility in the Middle East. Prepare to be on the wrong side of history again, USA.