Sir Story

It would be remiss of me not to note how much of the president's account of the adventure was fictional:

Q    Did you have to make any decisions in the moment, while troops were on the ground?

THE PRESIDENT:  No, they had it just incredible.  We were getting full reports on literally a minute-by-minute basis.  “Sir, we just broke in.”  “Sir, the wall is down.” “Sir,” you know, “we’ve captured.” “Sir, two people are coming out right now.  Hands up.”  Fighters. Then, the 11 children out.  Numerous people were dead within the building that they killed.

Then, it turned out, they gave us a report: “Sir, there’s only one person in the building. We are sure he’s in the tunnel trying to escape.” But it’s a dead-end tunnel.  And it was brutal. But it was over.

It's apparently not the case, as Obama White House photographer Pete Souza was suggesting, that Trump wasn't even in the situation room as the drama unfolded; he left the Sterling golf course around 3:30 in the afternoon, and the raid began around 5:00. So while it's not certain that he watched the whole "movie" {"I don’t want to say how, but we had absolutely perfect — as though you were watching a movie") in real time, there's no reason to believe he missed it (see Snopes for details).
Though Souza was clearly right to point to the difference between the awful picture (by Shealah Craighead, not that it's her fault) of the men in neckties looking Very Serious over a very odd tangle of colorful but unconnected Ethernet cables

and Souza's own justifiably famous photo of the situation room during the killing of Osama Bin Laden

On the other hand, he was certainly there for the "movie"; they didn't let him in until they were safe from him trying to make a decision, as he says. Also, it wasn't the movie he described:

NEW: The Baghdadi might have been like a movie, but Trump watched overhead drone video, not body cam footage--so he didn't see anyone whimper or cry. @helenecooper @Tmgneff https://t.co/N5shguLW6s

— Julian E. Barnes (@julianbarnes) October 27, 2019

And Trump's main contribution over the long preparation period was getting in the way with his whimsical deal-making:

“Mr. al-Baghdadi’s death in the raid on Saturday, they said, occurred largely in spite of, and not because of, Mr. Trump’s actions.”https://t.co/KURgIs9qyP

— Jon Perr (@Perrspectives) October 28, 2019

Literary Corner: Today Donald Trump Didn't Become President

Image by Adam/Know Your Meme.

I'm seeing a lot of skepticism on today's big story of the operation to kill the former Caliph of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,  that it was a wag-the-dog operation to distract the public from the horrible testimony of the last couple of weeks demonstrating that Trump really did attempt to extort cooperation with his personal political agenda from the Ukrainian government. Or even that it killed not Baghdadi but some innocent set extra, or was entirely staged.

But I still like the view I held immediately after hearing the news this morning, that not only did it really happen, but Trump himself was the one getting bamboozled: by the Kurdish-led Syria Democratic Forces and the US military, who kept him more or less in the dark until he got back from the golf course, when they informed him that he had just won the formerly endless war. They were in the right:

Armed with that initial tip, the C.I.A. worked closely with Iraqi and Kurdish intelligence officials in Iraq and Syria to identify more precisely Mr. al-Baghdadi’s whereabouts and to put spies in place to monitor his periodic movements. American officials said the Kurds continued to provide information to the C.I.A. on Mr. al-Baghdadi’s location even after Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw the American troops left the Syrian Kurds to confront a Turkish offensive alone.

The Syrian and Iraqi Kurds, one official said, provided more intelligence for the raid than any single country.

That is, I think the Kurds and US may have been working together to defeat Trump's ill-timed move to remove American troops from Syria and allow Turkish troops to begin seizing a huge strip of Syrian land along their border. Using Trump's well-known desire to "take the oil" wherever there's a war in the Middle East, they've talked him into reversing the decision (rather late, as Turkish forces are already there) and maintaining an American force in the region, starting with the move of Senator Lindsey Graham and General Jack Keane, on 14 October, to accomplish something he believes Bush and Obama failed to accomplish:

He sure as hell misjudged Lindsey-Woolsey

Funeral Monday for five Syrian Democratic Forces fighters killed in battles against Turkish-led forces. Photo by Delil Souleiman/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images, via The New York Times.

When I was trolling the trolls yesterday with my apocalyptic prediction

It's too late. It's going to take a lot more than that to stop a raging war and house 130,000 refugees (so far). What will happen presumably is Kurds make an accommodation with Assad regime-Iran-Russia now they know US cannot be trusted, Turkey will ally with Qaeda-ISIS.

— YASTAROTH DUKE OF HELL (@Yastreblyansky) October 13, 2019

I wasn't expected it to be fulfilled before nightfall (I mean nightfall in New York, not Syria), but that's what happened, more or less.

So we don't have to fight them here

Palace of Justice, Damascus, March 15, photo by an anonymous stringer for AFP/Getty images, via Chicago Tribune.

Nobody should ever have to undergo the kind of horror Britain has been undergoing with the Westminster Bridge attack of March 22 (killing four and injuring 50), the Manchester bombing of the Ariana Grande concert May 22 (killing 22, many children, and injuring 116), and last night's London Bridge incident (killing seven and injuring some dozens, 21 critically).

Nor should it happen in Baghdad, where over the same period 23 were killed and 45 wounded by a car bomb in the suburb of Hayy al'A'amei on March 20, and a suicide truck bomber killed 17 and injured at least 60 at a police checkpoint in the southern part of the city March 29; seven people were killed and 12 injured in three bombings, one in a fish market in Yusufiya, one in a construction site, on April 5, and two more killed and 11 injured by bombings on April 6 and 7,  and a suicide car attack on a traffic police compound in the center of the city killed five and injured six on April 28; one killed and two wounded in separate incidents of May 3, two killed and three wounded in bombings in western Baghdad on May 6, one killed and three wounded by a bomb in southwestern Baghdad on May 9, and another killed on May 10, an employee of the education ministry, four killed and ten injured by a booby-trapped vehicle in Al-Sho'la on May 11, one killed and five wounded by a booby-trapped car near a bridge on Al-Rubaie Street on May 14, one killed and two wounded by an explosion in the north of the city on May 16, two killed and eight wounded in two shopping-district incidents including one at the market in al-Nasr wal Salam region in Abu Ghraib district of May 18, one killed and three injured in a blast near a market on May 19, 35 killed and 45 injured in four suicide attacks around the city on May 19, and three more injured on May 22, also near the market in al-Nasr wal Salam, and then on May 30, four days after the fasting month of Ramadan began, at least 30 killed and 40 wounded by a car that blew up outside the al-Faqma ice cream parlor.

Twenty-one Years

Updated 5/25

Photo by Manchester Evening News, June 1996.

Just 21 years ago, on June 15 1996, the city of Manchester (which has, like most big cities in the north of England, a very large Irish Catholic population) was rocked by the explosion of an enormous bomb, 1500 kg and the largest bomb ever detonated in Great Britain in peacetime, in a truck parked on Corporation Street. The perpetrators, the Provisional IRA, had sent a warning an hour and a half in advance, allowing the police to evacuate some 75,000 people from the area, and nobody was killed, but 212 people were injured, and you can imagine the chaos and distress in the city as friends and parents and lovers tried to assure themselves of each others' safety, and emergency medical workers sought out the victims—it's a whole story that they were confused by mannequins lying in the street after the blast blew them out of their shopwindows.

In the horrible business of deciding which terrorist attacks are worse than others, you'd have to say this bombing wasn't nearly as bad as last night's attack on the Ariana Grande concert audience at the Manchester Arena, which gave no warnings, aimed specifically at an event where most of the participants were children, and has killed at least 22 people, but it was horrible all the same.

Gunman told 911 operator he swore his allegiance to al-baghdadi, then went on shooting massacre -@PeteWilliamsNBC https://t.co/hQqxoxn6b5

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) June 12, 2016

So he joined the Isis in his mind.

Meanwhile another 64 civilians, including a number of babies, murdered in Syrian government bombardments, around the same time.

34 civils ont été tués à #Idleb et 30 à Maaret anNuaman dans les bombardements chrétieno-alaouites #CroisadesXXIe pic.twitter.com/2VPWLaoPyf

— Syrian Reporter (@ReporterSyrien) June 12, 2016

Not to take a position on anything, just to say there are places where people feel the pain we feel over and over again, on a daily basis.

Return of the Stupid Shit Caucus (like they went somewhere?)

Agnes Ayres and Rudolph Valentino in George Melford's The Sheik (1921).

Verbatim David Brooks, "When ISIS rapists win", August 28 2015:

President Obama has said that ISIS stands for nothing but savagery. That’s clearly incorrect.

Aw, Mom, do I have to?

OK, OK, incorrect in what sense? What are you, Politifact? By what metric would you determine the truth or falsity of that statement?

And by the way when did Obama say it? You put a link there as if to lead us to your source, but it just leads to the Times Obama Navigator page, and a search button whose closest result is your column today.

FBI director James Comey has called the Da'esh forces "savages", White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough has said that their killings show they "stand for nothing" tout court. Secretary of State John Kerry called the killing of Stephen Sotloff "an act of of medieval savagery by a coward hiding behind a mask."  At the United Nations last September, Obama must have been referencing the Da'esh indirectly as the contrast when he told young Muslims, "You come from a great tradition that stands for education, not ignorance; innovation, not destruction; the dignity of life, not murder." But that's as close as it comes.

He has used "barbaric" in association with a "nothing but" account:

Am I my brother's (score-) keeper?

Image by Eric Draper/AP from the 2000 campaign.

J.E.B. in Politico:

Bush said that Obama “abandoned” Iraq and lamented the fall of Ramadi to Islamic State terrorists, saying that “ISIS didn’t exist when my brother was president” and that Al Qaeda was decimated under his brother.

Sorry, Jebbie, but ISIS was founded, under conditions entirely created under your brother's orders, and because of your brother's stupid and probably illegal orders, in Camp Bucca in 2004. This is really a pretty well known fact.

West of Eden: No good guys?

Baghdad Jewish quarter, 19th century.

Over at the Frogpond, BooMan is lamenting that there are no good guys in Iraq and he doesn't know any answers:

I can't say that the Obama administration does, either. It's not their fault, or mine. There are no moderates in this fight. It's sectarian and it's among radicals.

I posted a comment: