WeAreChange: US Invited to Leave Iraq & Stays

We’re Staying, US Tells Iraq After Being Asked to Leave

We’re Staying, US Tells Iraq After Being Asked to LeavePosted: 10 Jan 2020 08:44 AM PSTThe State Department on Friday made clear that the American military will not abide by the requests of the Iraqi government to leave the country and instead will stay indefinitely.“America is a force for good in the Middle East,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus claimed in a statement reaffirming that the U.S. will remain in Iraq.#US to #Iraq: We’re staying. pic.twitter.com/bnliyZY9O1— Matt Lee (@APDiploWriter) January 10, 2020The statement comes after Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi said in a statement Friday that the U.S. needs to figure out how to abide by a decision by Iraq to remove its military from the country.As Common Dreams reported, the Iraqi Parliament voted on January 5 to ask U.S. forces to leave the country.U.S.-Iraqi relations have been strained since President Donald Trump ordered the drone strike assassination of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani outside of Baghdad International Airport on January 3, nearly setting off a hot war before both sides backed down. Iraqi lawmakers, incensed by the attack and the lack of any notification by the U.S., voted unanimously two days later to demand American troops leave.Abdul-Mahdi Thursday on a phone call with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asked that the U.S. military begin the process of disengaging.“Iraq is keen to keep the best relations with its neighbors and friends within the international community, and to protect foreign representations and interests and all those present on Iraqi soil,” Abdul-Mahdi said Friday.The State Department replied by flatly refusing to entertain the possibility of leaving.“At this time, any delegation sent to Iraq would be dedicated to discussing how to best recommit to our strategic partnership—not to discuss troop withdrawal, but our right, appropriate force posture in the Middle East,” said spokeswoman Ortagus.“There does, however, need to be a conversation between the U.S. and Iraqi governments not just regarding security, but about our financial, economic, and diplomatic partnership,” Ortagus added.That language struck New York University journalism professor Mohamad Bazzi as an indication that the U.S. is going to demand payment for its continued presence in Iraq.“The State Department is ignoring Iraq’s request to withdraw U.S. troops—and it expects Iraq and other countries to pay for U.S. forces,” said Bazzi.According to the Associated Press, Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani was on Friday calling for a united Iraqi front against foreign intervention.“The serious attacks and repeated violations of Iraqi sovereignty that occurred in recent days with the apparent weakness of the concerned authorities in protecting the country and its people … are part of the repercussions of the current crisis,” said al-Sistani.Republished from CommonDreams.org under Creative CommonsThe post We’re Staying, US Tells Iraq After Being Asked to Leave appeared first on We Are Change.
Iran Invites US, Ukraine, France, Canada and Boeing to Examine Crash DataPosted: 10 Jan 2020 08:08 AM PSTAfter vehemently denying that a misfiring of its missile defense system essentially shot UIA Flight 752 out of the sky, Tehran has decided that it will allow international investigators access to data from the plane’s ‘black box’ which could help shed some light on what caused the crash, WSJ reports.Iran’s top transportation ministers initially said that they wouldn’t share the data, citing the escalating tensions with the US and the West as justification. However, an outpouring of criticism from alleged US intelligence sources, along with trained aerospace analysts, have suggested that “a shootdown scenario” most likely caused the deadly crash, has apparently changed their mind. Even President Trump has said that he doubts the Iranians’ explanation.So Tehran has invited representatives from Boeing, the US, Ukraine (where the plane’s operator, Ukraine International Airlines, is based), France and Canada to join in the probe.Officials from Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization said Friday during a televised news conference that they would try and analyze the black box data, including the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, in Iran, though experts in Russia, Ukraine, France and Canada are standing by to lend assistance.Iran will start the process of trying to examine the black boxes at Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran Friday to see if the data is recoverable“If we can do it ourselves, we will,” Ali Abedzadeh, head of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization, said during a press conference in Tehran. “If not, we will definitely ask for assistance from other countries.”CBS News reported that when its crew visited the crash site west of Tehran on Friday, virtually all pieces of the plane had been removed…CBS crew just visited the #Ukrainian airlines crash site west of Tehran. Nine am local time. Virtually all pieces of the plane were removed yesterday – say locals. Scavengers now picking site clean. No security. Not cordoned off. No sign of any investigators. pic.twitter.com/hhNJyokhjq— Elizabeth Palmer (@elizapalmer) January 10, 2020…though they later clarified, after speaking with Iranian officials, that the site had been cleared and the pieces moved to a different location.To clarify – Iran clearing wreckage of #Ukrainian Airlines flight #PS752 from crash site within 48 hours is not against any international rules or protocols. Investigators prefer to see where and how wreckage landed before moving, but it is not essential.— Elizabeth Palmer (@elizapalmer) January 10, 2020#Iran cleared the wreckage of flight PS752 away from the site within 48 hours – but it has been collected at another location and is being examined by Ukrainian investigators.— Elizabeth Palmer (@elizapalmer) January 10, 2020If suspicions are accurate, and Flight 752 was really brought down by a short-range missile-defense system, officials would then need to determine whether the firing was an accident or deliberate – though most have suggested that an accident is the most likely scenario.Iranian officials again denied that Flight 752 was brought down by a missile on Friday after Ukrainian officials told the press that they believed a missile strike or terrorist bombing were two of the four likely scenarios behind the crash that they were exploring.Republished from ZeroHedge.com with permissionThe post Iran Invites US, Ukraine, France, Canada and Boeing to Examine Crash Data appeared first on We Are Change.
Video of Jeffrey Epstein’s Suicide Attempt ‘Accidentally’ Destroyed by US GovernmentPosted: 10 Jan 2020 06:22 AM PSTA new Rasmussen poll shows that just 21 per cent of Americans believe Jeffrey Epstein killed himself while 52 per cent believe he was murdered.It should come as no surprise that so few people believe the official narrative as Zachary Stieber reports that video footage from outside Jeffrey Epstein’s cell actually “no longer exists,” the government said in a new letter, less than a month after prosecutors initially said the footage wasn’t available, before quickly saying in an update that the footage had been found.Writing to U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas, prosecutors Maurene Comey and Jason Swergold said there was a mix-up when they asked the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) to preserve the footage from outside the cell.Epstein was found unconscious with marks around his neck early July 23, 2019. Epstein’s cellmate at the time was accused murderer Nicholas Tartaglione. The defendant’s lawyer requested video footage from outside Epstein’s cell from July 22 and July 23, 2019.Prosecutors told the defense on Dec. 19, 2019, that it confirmed with staff at the center that the footage was preserved. On Jan. 3, the center provided the government with a copy of the video it preserved.Here is today’s letter in full explaining how surveillance video from the night of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged first suicide attempt in July no longer exists because MCC jail inadvertently preserved video from wrong cell. pic.twitter.com/s1eO6KRozj— Bryan Llenas (@BryanLlenas) January 9, 2020“After reviewing the video, it appeared to the government that the footage contained on the preserved video was for the correct date and time, but captured a different tier” than the one where Epstein and Tartaglione’s cell was, prosecutors wrote in the letter.Legal counsel at MCC told prosecutors that the computer system at the center listed a different cell for Tartaglione, leading to staff preserving the wrong video.While the center has a backup system in place to house all video footage for its Special Housing Unit, where Epstein and Tartaglione were being held, the FBI reviewed the system as part of a separate investigation “and determined that the requested video no longer exists on the backup system and has not since at least August 2019 as a result of technical errors.”The update is the third change in the government’s position on the video footage.On Dec. 18, 2019, Swergold, the assistant U.S. attorney, told Karas in court that nobody could find the video. A day later, he and Comey wrote to Karas to tell him that the government confirmed with staff at the MCC that the video was preserved.Epstein, 66, died about two weeks after the July 23, 2019, incident. He was awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges.The government letter also came a day after a judge in Florida denied an effort to release records from the 2006 grand jury that indicted Epstein on a felony prostitution count.“It sounds like a fishing expedition to me,” Chief Circuit Judge Krista Marx told Assistant State Attorney Marshall Levering Evans, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported. She added, “I’m not understanding how it will be helpful and to what end.”Republished from ZeroHedge.com with permissionThe post Video of Jeffrey Epstein’s Suicide Attempt ‘Accidentally’ Destroyed by US Government appeared first on We Are Change.
Did Fox News Host Tucker Carlson Save Us From War?! With This Important Info?Posted: 09 Jan 2020 12:46 PM PSTWill Trump do the right thing?The post Did Fox News Host Tucker Carlson Save Us From War?! With This Important Info? appeared first on We Are Change.

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