Secretary of State John Kerry made a surprise visit to Iraq today, visiting Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and pressing him to stop allowing Iranian flights to Syria from crossing over Iraqi territory, insisting they were carrying “arms and fighters” to the Syrian government.
This has been a long-standing complaint of the US, but officials have never presented any actual evidence to the public that this is the case, and today only insisted that the sheer volume of the overflights proved it must be weaponry. Maliki insisted that barring evidence they will not do anything.
Iran maintains that it is only shipping humanitarian aid to Syria, and Iraq has searched planes at random in the past, but insists that everything they found on those planes was exactly what Iran said, humanitarian aid. They have stopped the searches saying that there is no evidence to justify continuing them.
As the US picks up aid to the Syrian rebels, it is inevitable that they would hope to see Iraq clamp off the Assad government’s own sources. Yet with the Syrian rebels linked so closely to the Iraqi insurgency, the Iraqi government’s interests are decidedly different, and lacking evidence of any unlawful arms shipments in their airspace, there is little motivation for Iraq to do anything of the sort.
Well what is good for the enemy of the Syrian people must be bad for those who let others support and arm the enemy of the Syrian people.., this ketchup man needs to know the basics in international relation.., I mean this guy is a business man with over a 200 million dollars in wealth.., not knowing the basics.., no wonder they lose and lose again blaming it on others.
Iraq needs to get all American, NATO, and especially the cloaked Israeli presence, in their country booted out of there ASAP. Those war criminals destroyed the country of Iraq and are working overtime to keep Iraq a wreck.
Evidence? Who needs evidence? The American Gods of the world have spoken, just listen and obey.
Given the US embargo on aircraft parts, how are the Iranians managing to keep their Boeings and Airbuses in the air? Let alone running a military airlift into Syria.
Whom do you think you are? Your dumb and savage policy have produced billions of enemies. Down with gubblible people.
It is so clear, we need a stronger bully for Sec State – I understand John Bolton is still available.
At least it would be more "comical" than at present with the oh-so-stern "glare" from Kerry as he monotonously intones the empires edicts.
Yes, just get him to trim his fluffy mustache and he would be perfect.
What a joke. Did Kerry think that Iraq likes the USA after being a victim of the brutal attach based on lies. Iraq is not going to help the USA when it is in their interest to take a different path. The leaders of Iraq view how Israel treat the people of Gaza and they do not want to do anything to help Israel to gain land and get closer to Iraq. I suspect Israel will rush in when Syria is about to fall and they will put troops in large number in places that they desire to make part of Israel. I doubt that Kerry will be much of a factor in events in the Middle East. I suspect Israel will eventually take over so much land that they will be unable to control the population. Unlike Gaza the other people have been armed for yeara. Gaza was british and they had zero arms so they cannot fight the well armed IDF.
I'm actually surprised that there are still US government officials who believe that they still have sway in Iraq. Yes, the US taxpayer dollars that flood in to the Iraqi coffers demand some semblance of respect…and might constrain some of Maliki's plans somewhat if it were curtailed but…it doesn't buy a say in what actually happens there and hasn't for some time. All that really remains is to remove the last of the "trainers" and turn over the Green Palace – formally known as the under-utilized US Embassy – to the Iraqis and close the books on this disaster permanently.
The US opposes Iran flying weapons into Syria, but the US is flying weapons into Syria. What hypocricy!
It's because Americans are exceptional, exceptionally hypocritical and evil.
The irony is that Saddam would have complied with Kerry's demand.
It seems that we in the "Ketchup Brigade" are going to have a lot of fun at Kerry's expense. 🙂 And it's well-deserved ridicule, given the ridiculously arrogant tone and look to Kerry as he intoned the "Emperor's Edict" (as referred to in another comment here). It seems that after all these years in the Senate his brain has been sufficiently fried, and the promise of more Reagan-like & McCain-like utterances will be forthcoming.
All too funny, but also all too sad for the rest of us in the world. Here's but one representative of the 1% strutting his stuff in the furtherance of impoverishment, death and climate suicide.
Kerry and Obama would be dumb if they think they can lie to people about Syria to wage another SAVAGE WAR, like Libya, which is Crime against humanity. Obama is a war criminal, so John Kerry. While Barack Obama and the Western media lied in concert to the world regarding America's role in supporting terrorists operating in Syria, it is now revealed that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been shipping weapons to Syria via NATO-member Turkey and Jordan since at least early 2012. The New York Times in their article titled, "Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With C.I.A. Aid," admits that:
With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.
Chutzpah!
Chutzpah!