#Baath Party

[kirstythejetblackgoldfish]

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad meeting Syrian Ba'ath Party intellectuals and academics today, 22 February 2024

[probablyasocialecologist]

Only weeks after arriving in the Iraqi capital, Paul Bremer, a retired diplomat with absolutely no Middle East experience, exercised his extraordinary authority, akin to that of a colonial viceroy, as head of the new Coalition Provisional Authority and eradicated the previous Iraqi government with two strokes of his pen. With no clear plans for what might follow, he issued Order Number 1 on his fifth day in office, decreeing a sweeping purge of all senior Iraqi officials previously affiliated with the ruling Baath Party. “By nightfall,” warned the CIA chief of station, “you’ll have driven some 30,000 to 50,000 Baathists underground. And in six months you’ll really regret this.” Imperiously waving away what he called “a sea of bitching and moaning,” Bremer plunged ahead, forcing at least 85,000 Iraqi officials out of office. US commander Ricardo Sanchez would later call this policy decision “a catastrophic failure.” Ignoring both White House instructions and military advice, Bremer soon issued Order Number 2, aimed at “dissolving Saddam’s military and intelligence structures to emphasize that we mean business.” With that second stroke of his pen summarily dismissing 335,00 police and 385,000 soldiers without salary, severance pay, or pensions, Bremer created a vast cadre of what the US Army’s official war history would call “seasoned military men who suddenly had no livelihood.” As Bremer’s two orders “sent shockwaves throughout the country,” there were angry anti-American demonstrations and “violent confrontations” between Iraqi ex-soldiers and coalition forces. Those demobilized former soldiers also included countless trained experts with access to cached military munitions and knowledge of how to build lethal improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Three days after Bremer’s Order Number 2, a US Army private died when the first of these new weapons exploded under his vehicle. Over the next ten years, IEDs would kill 3,100 US servicemen and wound 33,000 more, including 1,800 amputations—forcing the Pentagon to spend $75 billion to prevent fatalities from a weapon as cheap as a pizza. “Orders 1 and 2 led to a far more sweeping implosion [of the Iraqi state] than US leaders intended,” the US Army’s official war history later reported, “after which factions of all kinds, including extremist militants, rushed to fill the void.”

Alfred W. McCoy, To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change

[1americanconservative]

Hezbollah media chief ELIMINATED

Hezbollah’s media chief, Mohammad Afif, was hiding at the Syrian Baath Party headquarters in Beirut, linked to Assad’s regime, when the IDF struck the building.

Afif had boldly claimed responsibility for targeting Netanyahu’s home.

[daloy-politsey]

The Daraya Youth’s most political project was to march, a hundred strong, through the main street of Daraya in silent protest against the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Syria’s government opposed the US invasion too, so you may think the Daraya Youth earned kudos from the Syrian government for this. Ah, but they organised a protest by themselves, without the Baath Party. You don’t do that in a police state. It was enough to land them in prison. In May 2003, women members were interrogated and harassed, and Yahya Shurbaji and 18 other men in the group were imprisoned. The group became defunct. Yahya spent over two years in prison. He emerged an insightful, congenial visionary of non-violent struggle.

[sortyourlifeoutmate]

Like, these people bending over backwards to justify Russia's actions just make me think of someone rattling off a list of Baath party misdeeds to explain why Iraq needed invading - you sound insane.

[mariacallous]

Twenty years after the American-led invasion, Iraq’s seventh prime minister, Mohammad Al-Sudani, has declared corruption to be one of the biggest challenges facing the nation, describing it as “no less serious than the threat of terrorism.” Many of Iraq’s 43 million citizens agree with Sudani, as evidenced by both public opinion polling and by widespread protest movements, but few connect the crisis of corruption with the 2003 war and subsequent American occupation. Iraqis largely pin the blame on the power-sharing agreement that props up their government and on the obscenely wealthy members of the political elite.

However, Iraq’s struggle with corruption — and specifically public sector corruption — can be traced back to occupation-era reconstruction policies and to Baathist-era patronage. In reconstructing Iraq, the United States scattered unregulated and unmonitored money at many projects and, in the process, unleashed a thirst for graft and easy money at nearly every level of government, and even arguably in civil society organizations. As the Sudani administration seeks to improve public services and infrastructure to appease disillusioned citizens, it must break the patterns of post-reconstruction corruption.

Corruption and the selective distribution of public services certainly existed prior to the invasion under Saddam Hussein’s regime. In 1968, Iraq’s Baath Party gained control of Iraq through a coup, and subsequently invested heavily in public service provision fueled by oil revenues. However, the decline in oil revenue in the 1980s, the war with Iran, and economic reform measures greatly reduced the Iraqi government’s spending on public services. The 1990 Gulf War and ensuing sanctions further decimated state infrastructure, particularly the electric grid and water networks. By the end of the 90s, most Iraqi households did not have consistent access to electricity and rates of malnutrition skyrocketed, especially among children.

In these difficult circumstances, the “Oil-for-Food” program allowed for the sale of Iraqi oil in exchange for humanitarian support. The program was beset by massive fraud by Iraqi officials, international companies, and United Nations personnel. Within Iraq, Saddam and his circle reaped the majority of benefits from this program and new patterns of corruption emerged during the sanctions period. The massive rise in unemployment spurred an increase in Iraqi bureaucrats charging for access to public services during the 1990s, a pattern that continues to this day.

However, the influx of aid for reconstruction post-2003 and lack of accountability for contracting and spending brought corruption in Iraq’s public sector to new extremes. The invasion was followed by a large-scale reconstruction effort by the occupying U.S.-led coalition, the new Iraqi government, and a range of international donors. From 2003 to 2014, more than $220 billion was spent on reconstruction alone, including over $74 billion in foreign aid. In addition to violence and the exclusion of Iraqis undermining reconstruction, rebuilding efforts were hampered by massively wasteful spending and corruption at every level.

A significant number of aid project contractors, Iraqi officials, and U.S. personnel directly engaged in corruption while implementing reconstruction projects. Reports have documented cases of U.S. contractors and personnel committing outright theft of aid and implementing kickback schemes. Both international and domestic contractors were able to reap benefits from aid projects by overcharging project fees and engaging in waste and overspending. The U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction report estimated that at least $8 billion of the more than $60 billion for reconstruction was outright wasted.

While gains were made in rehabilitating destroyed or deeply undermined public infrastructure, such as the health system and electric grid, they took place over far longer timelines than initially planned and at far higher costs. Instead, the postwar reconstruction funding surge reinforced the perception that aid projects specifically and public services more broadly could be sources of individual and connection-based profit with little consequence. While many cases of U.S. contractor and personnel fraud were prosecuted, many were likely not due to poor record-keeping by the U.S. government that made knowing the exact extent of fraud and waste impossible. In Iraq, anti-corruption initiatives put in place following the invasion proved to be a weak barrier against government and ministry officials protecting individuals from accountability based on sect and party membership.

Iraqi officials within the public sector widely solicited bribes in crucial sectors such as health and electricity with limited accountability from either the government or the donors bankrolling public services. While this pattern predated the invasion, it was deeply exacerbated in the post-2003 period with the influx of funding. As Iraq expert Abbas Kadhim wrote in 2010, the U.S.-backed legal system enabled sectarian parties to protect corrupt officials at every level from accountability. Violence against and assassinations of anti-corruption officials proved another deadly challenge. In 2006, for example, Deputy Minister of Health Ammar Al-Saffar was kidnapped and killed by an armed group that controlled the Ministry of Health because of an anti-corruption investigation he was heading.

Key ministries in the post-reconstruction period were staffed on the basis of political ties rather than competency. As a result, aid-funded reconstruction projects were often mismanaged once completed and handed over to the government. Even many projects highlighted as successes were found to be nonfunctional or poorly maintained due to both corruption and the exclusion of Iraqis from decisionmaking processes. Over the years, Iraq’s public sector became a tool of patronage with the increase in the number of elite civil servant positions (“special grades”) for party loyalists. This has historical roots — political science research has demonstrated that in the 1990s, individuals from Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit were employed at higher rates in the public sector compared to the rest of the population.

Twenty years after the war, public services in Iraq remain deeply damaged by patterns of elite corruption entrenched in the postwar period. A PLOS study found that of the approximately 405,000 excess deaths resulting from the war between 2003-11, a third were because of failures of infrastructure such as sanitation, transportation, and health. A recent report by Will Todman and Lubna Yousef from the Center for Strategic and International Studies highlights how political factions receive kickbacks from public electricity projects. Already-common electrical outages are worsening, and the majority of Iraqis do not have power for half of the day. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, 3.2 million school-age children do not attend school. Iraq’s public sector was ranked as the 23rd most corrupt in the world in 2022 — an improvement from when it was tied as the second-most in 2006. The situation has prompted protests in recent years, particularly among youth frustrated with corruption’s impacts on public services and the economy.

Today, Iraq has $115 billion in foreign reserves and the Council of Ministers approved a budget (now pending parliamentary approval) of $152 billion. These are the highest numbers that Iraq has witnessed in its post-2003 history and represent an opportunity for long-term investment in the country’s infrastructure and public services. However, these numbers also risk inspiring more graft. After all, it was only a few months ago under the Kadhimi administration that $2.5 billion went missing from state-owned banks in what journalists dubbed “the heist of the century.”

What can be reasonably done to protect Iraq’s wealth for its people? Fighting corruption is both a preventive and reactive exercise, and experts have long called for redoubled efforts on anti-corruption initiatives in Iraq. Research from other contexts such as James Loxton’s study of Panama has promoted ideas including the creation of “islands of integrity” that protect key public institutions even amid broader systemic corruption. The Century Foundation’s Sajad Jiyad put forth concrete recommendations including building an anti-corruption network of civil society members and politicians and strengthening domestic institutions such as the Integrity Commission.

Other Iraq analysts have recommended transitioning the country away from a cash-based economy. The Sudani administration has started to work on this under pressure from the United States — though the United States was directly involved in setting up Iraq’s banking sector and in organizing the dollar auction that later became a money laundering vehicle for neighboring Iran and Turkey. Finally, Iraqi governments have come to view Iraq’s oil wealth as unregulated and political parties and armed groups have actively fought against any regulation. This wealth, which has been used as a tool of patronage in Baathist and post-Baathist Iraq, must be regulated by the Iraqi people if Iraq has any chance of overcoming corruption.

As the popular saying in the Arabic-speaking world goes: “loose money teaches theft.” Iraq post-2003 is a prime example of this. The long-term effects of the flood of money during the reconstruction period were to help establish the public sector as a center of corruption. Understanding the patterns of corruption entrenched during reconstruction is an important part of helping Iraq undertake much-needed public sector reform to build functioning public services for its citizens.

[xtruss]

Abu Ghraib: The Crimes of the “War Criminal US” and Horrors of Its Occupation of Iraq

© Photo : 1st Lt. Daniel Johnson/U.S. Army/

Abu Ghraib was a prison in the Iraqi city of the same name, located 32 kilometers west of Baghdad. The first buildings were constructed by a British contractor in the 1950s and were designed from the outset as a place of detention.

Under Saddam Hussein

During Saddam's leadership, the Mudiria al-Amn al-'Amm, or Directorate of General Security (DGS), operated the high-security prison where, according to Western media reports, mass torture and execution of political prisoners of the government took place.

In fact, however, there was no evidence that the prison was a political and not a conventional one. The latter is suggested by a mass amnesty for common law prisoners who were paroled in 2002, just before the Western coalition invaded Iraq.

There is also little evidence of mass executions, as research on mass graves near the prison has confirmed the burial of 993 prisoners over the entire period. However, according to Western claims, between 4,000 and 12,000 prisoners were executed in "Saddam's torture center" in 1984 alone, and about 1,500 in 1997.

During US-Led International Coalition Invasion

In 2003, after the fall of Saddam Hussein's government, the Americans inherited an already empty prison. With its convenient location and ready-made infrastructure, Abu Ghraib became the main detention center for Iraqi prisoners of war and political prisoners.

Until August 2006, the prison was used jointly by coalition forces and the Iraqi government. Convicted criminals served their sentences in the block under the full control of the local authorities. The rest of the prison was under the control of US Armed Forces and was used as a forward operating base and correctional facility.

Under the control of US forces, Abu Ghraib had several categories of detainees:

Members of the Baath Party that ruled under Saddam. Among them was Tariq Aziz, former deputy prime minister of Iraq;

People suspected of Baathist activities, former military and police officers. Because the party was popular, everyone from teachers to merchants was imprisoned;

Religious figures, tribal sheikhs, and social authorities accused of supporting the regime. One such detainee was tribal sheikh Karim Rashid al-Janabi of the small town of Babil;

Those suspected of involvement in attacks on US forces. They could have been any passerby who happened to be in the area at the time of the attack;

So-called "hostages" - relatives or friends of suspected insurgents to put pressure on the latter. Thus, women, the elderly, teenagers, and children were detained without charge;

Those arrested for felonies and misdemeanors. After the dissolution of the army and police, the country descended into chaos and anarchy.

Thus, during the US presence, Abu Ghraib became a place of detention for prisoners from a broad spectrum of the predominantly local population, held on arbitrary grounds and suspicion, in violation of the "detention and imprisonment" principles of the Geneva Convention.

Exposing Torture

In the spring and summer of 2003, human rights organizations that went to Iraq with the US began to draw attention to the use of violence by the occupying forces against Iraqi prisoners of war and detainees.

In November 2003, Abdel Turki, the US-appointed human rights supervisor for the Iraqi interim administration, reported to Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, numerous cases of torture and abuse of detainees in the country's prisons, including Abu Ghraib. As Turki later recalled, there was no response.

Word of what was happening at Abu Ghraib got out, and the news spread quickly. One such report in the spring of 2004 nearly sparked a large-scale popular uprising in Baghdad.

It all started when a letter written by one of the female prisoners began to circulate and ended up outside the prison. The gist of the message was that the women imprisoned at Abu Ghraib were constantly being abused by the Americans, and sometimes by loyal Iraqi guards, and that many of the women ended up pregnant because of their abusers.

A copy of the letter was distributed by hand and posted on the walls. In one Baghdad mosque, the letter was read during a sermon.

As a result, popular resistance to the coalition intensified in Iraq. Unarmed people stoned US military convoys, shouted anti-American slogans, and attacked military vehicles. And in some parts of Baghdad, there were armed ambushes.

But the investigation into the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib did not begin because of this, but because of the curiosity of Joseph Darby, an American military police officer who, in December 2003, borrowed a CD from his colleague Charles Greiner for his own use. The CD contained, among other things, gruesome evidence of torture and abuse of prisoners in the prison. Three weeks later, he reported this to his superiors.

On January 13, 2004, a command investigation was opened against 17 members of the military for abuse.

The commander of the coalition ground forces in Iraq, Ricardo Sanchez, appointed Major General Antonio Taguba to lead the investigation into the torture at Abu Ghraib.

On February 23, 2004, 17 military personnel, including a battalion commander, company commander, and 13 military police privates, were suspended from duty pending the investigation.

On March 20, a spokesman for US coalition forces announced that preliminary investigations had resulted in criminal charges against six soldiers. Hearings in the case began on April 9.

None of the official statements at the time were much of a secret, because the information was softened as much as possible - it was about "abuses," "abuse of power," and "antics of individuals."

In early to mid-April, however, CBS obtained a copy of Taguba’s report, along with all of the photos. US authorities tried to stop reporters from publishing this information, but when they learned that famed journalist Seymour Hersh knew what was going on and was preparing to publish it in The New Yorker, they began to act proactively.

On April 28, 2004, CBS aired a report on the investigation, accompanied by some pictures of torture of detainees (some of the most innocuous) - and the report soon appeared in media around the world. The information was presented in a very softened form, with references to the Taguba Report - what was happening were the antics of individual sadists and abusers who had somehow infiltrated the US forces, and it was an isolated violation, not a systematic practice.

The prison authorities and Brigadier General Janis Karpinski were blamed for failing to educate the guards about the provisions of the Geneva Convention regarding the treatment of prisoners of war and detainees.

Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, Sergeants Javal Davis, Michelle Smith, Santos Cardona, and Jeremy Sivits, and Armin Cruz were "designated" as direct organizers of the torture. Among the most active participants were two servicewomen, Lynndie England and Sabrina Harman. Sgt. Charles Greiner was recognized as the unofficial leader.

They all came from rural America and had a low level of education, so they were perfectly suited for the role of “outsiders.” Especially since there was no doubt about their guilt - they appeared in the abuse photos.

In the course of speaking with Janis Karpinski, it became clear that there was a separate Cell Block 1A at Abu Ghraib, run by military intelligence, where high-value detainees were interrogated. CIA and Pentagon officials regularly appeared there, and their visits were not recorded in any way.

Karpinski went on to say that Israeli special forces were present at the prison (something denied by the Israeli Defense Ministry).

According to Karpinski, the intelligence officers were behind the torture, and she and her subordinates decided to take the blame. The guards themselves stated that they were following orders from military intelligence officers to extract confessions and useful information from the detainees.

However, orders from military intelligence regarding the treatment and torture of detainees were only given verbally and never in writing.

Ultimately, clarity on all these questions was provided in the New Yorker articles by Seymour Hersh himself. He received information from his sources that what happened at Abu Ghraib was not the antics of guards who violated their official duties, but a secret special Pentagon program, codenamed "Patina," aimed at tracking and destroying Al Qaeda terrorists, previously worked out in Afghanistan and the Guantanamo Bay prison. US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was in charge of the program, and George W. Bush could not have been unaware of what was going on.

As it turned out, the systematic torture began in August 2003, when Major General Geoffrey Miller, the head of the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities, arrived in Baghdad, where sleep deprivation interrogations, cold torture, and fixation in uncomfortable positions were widely practiced. He also persuaded US commanders to place all prisons under the control of military intelligence. All of this was authorized by Ricardo Sanchez.

It was this program and Miller's recommendations that were applied at Abu Ghraib, in an even harsher form than at Guantanamo. The program was also adapted to the realities of the Middle East, so that the emphasis of the harassment was on the sensitivity of Arabs to humiliation of a sexual nature, especially in public. The photos were taken for the purpose of further blackmail and coercion to become informants for US intelligence agencies.

According to the testimony of a number of detainees, US soldiers raped them, rode on them, and forced them to fetch food from prison toilets. In particular, the detainees said "They made us walk on all fours like dogs and bark. We had to bark like dogs, and if you didn't bark, they hit you in the face without mercy. Then they threw us in our cells, took away our mattresses, poured water on the floor and made us sleep in this mud without taking the hoods off our heads..."

In early May 2004, US military leaders acknowledged that some of the torture methods did not comply with the Third Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War and agreed to issue a public apology.

12 members of the US Armed Forces were found guilty of charges related to the Abu Ghraib incidents. They were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment.

The investigation did not identify any senior Pentagon officials responsible for the incident.

On March 9, 2006, the US military command decided to close the prison.

In August 2006, all Abu Ghraib detainees were transferred to other prisons in Iraq, and on September 2, the prison was taken over by the Iraqi government.

— Sputnik International | March 19, 2023

[newsbreak365blogs]

Hezbollah’s media chief, Mohammed Afif, has been killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit the headquarters of the Lebanese Baath Party in central Beirut on Sunday. The strike targeted the Baath Party office in the densely populated Ras al-Naba neighborhood, resulting in the deaths of at least four people, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News […]

[hicginewsagency]

Hezbollah Media Chief Killed in Israeli Strike in Beirut.

Hezbollah’s media chief, Mohammed Afif, has been confirmed dead following an Israeli airstrike that targeted central Beirut on Sunday. The attack struck the headquarters of the Lebanese branch of the Syrian Baath party, located in the densely populated Ras al-Naba neighborhood, a central area of the capital. Advert According to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency, the Israeli strike…

[sylvia-on-the-run]

i think if you cant recognize the role of the syrian arab republic in the axis of resistance the deep ties between the baath party and the palestinian resistance and between the palestinian and syrian people as a whole youre an imperialist running dog

[ucor3400]

Weeks 4 & 5

Blog Post #2: Academic Research on "Brothers of the Gun"

Emadi, Hafizullah. "Requiem for the Baath party: Struggle for change and freedom in Syria." Mediterranean Quarterly 22.4 (2011): 62-79.

Galvani, John. “Syria and the Baath Party.” MERIP Reports, no. 25, 1974, pp. 3–16. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3011567. Accessed 30 Apr. 2024.

Hinnebusch, Raymond. "Syria’s Alawis and the Ba’ath Party." The Alawis of Syria: War, faith and politics in the Levant 107 (2015).APA

Pierret, Thomas. "The Syrian baath party and Sunni Islam: conflicts and connivance." Middle East Brief 77.2014 (2014): 1-8.

These sources delve into the history and dynamics of the Baath Party in Syria, shedding light on its rise to power and its role in shaping the country's political landscape. They offer valuable insight into the political context that frames the events described in "Brothers of the Gun." In "Brothers of the Gun," personal accounts of life are provided in Syria during the civil war, including the early stages of the uprising against the Assad regime. One relevant passage in the memoir is when he reflects on the oppressive nature of the Baath Party and its influence on Syrian society. He describes how the party's grip on power perpetuated a culture of fear and repression. These sources help contextualize Marwan's observations by providing a historical overview of the Baath Party's authoritarian rule in Syria. They highlight the party's consolidation of power through alliances with military elites and its suppression of political opposition. This background information enhances our understanding of the political tensions that fueled the Syrian Arab Spring and the subsequent civil war. Moreover, the sources underscore the complexity of Syria's political landscape, illustrating how the Baath Party's ideology and power structure shaped the country's trajectory. By integrating insights from these sources with the memoir's narrative, we can gain a deeper appreciation for the historical and political forces at play in Syria.

[kirstythejetblackgoldfish]

[marxistlovingmeninist]

this is layered in so much stupidity where do i even begin

first off, this war is between the palestinian people and the settler colony of Israel, if any other group occupied the strip, Israel would be commiting the same genocide it is doing now and has been doing since it's inception as a state. the PLO outnumbers Hamas, the war being won against Israel would mean Hamas retains a supporter base in the Gaza Strip while the West Bank and the rest of a free Palestine align with groups such as Fatah or the PFLP

second, every apartheid state says this, South Africa said their white population would be "exterminated" should the ANC take power and apartheid end. and it turns out their are still white people in South Africa. not to mention Israel has already killed palestinian jews and christians in the gaza strip, including one of their own hostages. Hamas has repeatedly stated their intentions are against Zionism and not Jews.

third and fourth, the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state would arguably lead to greater freedoms for women and queer people than they currently face. Hamas would bicker and moan as any religious fundamentalist group would, but the PLO is overwhelmingly dominated by left-wing factions. Fatah and the PFLP support the further liberation of women and queer people.

fifth is just awful and downright racist. from the fact that you called iranians "arabs" admits you don't just even know nothing about history, you know nothing in general! the three countries you named were each former colonies that were caught in the cold war. Syria was essentially sabotaged by the USA at every step from working towards a United Arab Republic, with the ruling Baath party being a byproduct of american anti-communist foreign policy. Yemen was split in two and was governed between a western puppet state in the north and an authentic socialist regime in the south. Iran again was another victim of american imperialism as a result of the Shah. These countries did not magically appear as dictatorships, they became so as a result of the USA seeking to maintain it's status as a global hegemon through capitalism and imperialism.

fifth, Palestine has been a cornerstone for pan-arabism since the end of the ottoman empire. The establishment of a Palestinian state would most likely mean a left-wing revolutionary republic interested in unification with other neighboring arab states. The civil wars aren't going to end overnight, but a free palestine will eventually lead towards an unified and socialist arab republic

finally, i understand your entire worldview is baked in justifying a settler colonial project that only has the actual international support of evangelical christians awaiting the rapture and the western bourgeois desperately clinging onto the collapsing state of late stage capitalism, but you gotta put some more effort into blatantly lying to yourself about the genocidal regime your defending.

I want to make this clear that if Hamas (God forbid), wins this war it will not be the win you think it will be.

They will kill all Jews in Israel, weather there right wing or left, religious or not, they will be slaughtered.

Arab women will no longer have a choice to cover our not they will be forced too.

No more pride will happen, every person that is found engaging in homosexual activities will be brutally punished.

There economy and infrastructure will collapse. Don’t want to believe. Just look at Syria, Yeman, and Iran. All Arab countries run by dictators, all with failing economies and infrastructure.

Wars will continue in that area. Israel is not the problem for all wars that happen in that area, it is the mindset these people have. Yeman, Jordan, and Syria, have gotten into massive wars with death tolls reaching almost and above half a million and guess Israel nothing to do with it.

Who knows maybe Hamas and other Iranian back groups would be able to make it out of the Middle East, and go on killing every Jew, even Jews for Palestine.

So no, you don’t actually want a better Palestine, you want no Jews.

[nyt-crossword]

NYT Crossword 25 January 2024

Across Hints

Three-point letter you won’t find in Scrabble? NYT Crossword Clue

One of the Pointer Sisters NYT Crossword Clue

Chips, cookies, etc. NYT Crossword Clue

Response to “Who’s ready?” NYT Crossword Clue

Not free NYT Crossword Clue

Word with square or air NYT Crossword Clue

Mercury is in this NYT Crossword Clue

I’ve got it! NYT Crossword Clue

Dangers in the Amazon NYT Crossword Clue

What subs may sub for NYT Crossword Clue

Afterword NYT Crossword Clue

One with many stuffy clients, for short? NYT Crossword Clue

Mercury might be in this NYT Crossword Clue

___ Polo NYT Crossword Clue

Christmas party? NYT Crossword Clue

Party in the U.K. NYT Crossword Clue

Light touches NYT Crossword Clue

Is insufficient NYT Crossword Clue

Hipsteresque, say NYT Crossword Clue

Something posted from an online account NYT Crossword Clue

___ nationalism, movement associated with the Baath Party NYT Crossword Clue

Here we are! NYT Crossword Clue

The Mercury might be in this NYT Crossword Clue

Rio or Sorento NYT Crossword Clue

Have no more in stock NYT Crossword Clue

Unit of radioactivity NYT Crossword Clue

Lab report component NYT Crossword Clue

Doesn’t bother NYT Crossword Clue

Mercury was in this NYT Crossword Clue

English poet Wilfred ___ NYT Crossword Clue

Ice cream brand in West Coast supermarkets NYT Crossword Clue

Prefix with -phyte NYT Crossword Clue

One’s parents, slangily, with “the” NYT Crossword Clue

Square NYT Crossword Clue

Sch. in Texas NYT Crossword Clue

Down Hints

Chewy, meaty dog treat NYT Crossword Clue

Show of hands? NYT Crossword Clue

Turkish inn NYT Crossword Clue

“___ way!” (“Nice job!”) NYT Crossword Clue

Reply found backward in “No thanks” NYT Crossword Clue

Clinch, as a victory NYT Crossword Clue

Lethargic NYT Crossword Clue

Answer to the riddle “What can someone wear that never goes out of style?” NYT Crossword Clue

Some Feds NYT Crossword Clue

Choice words NYT Crossword Clue

Having a neat appearance NYT Crossword Clue

The 19th Amendment is part of this NYT Crossword Clue

Reply in which one parent says to go talk to the other parent NYT Crossword Clue

Bye! NYT Crossword Clue

“Tee” follower NYT Crossword Clue

Bullfight bull NYT Crossword Clue

Burn the surface of NYT Crossword Clue

Heated pool? NYT Crossword Clue

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Total hassle NYT Crossword Clue

Goggle NYT Crossword Clue

Org. for lawyers NYT Crossword Clue

Sliceable food purchase NYT Crossword Clue

Game for a toddler NYT Crossword Clue

Smoothie bar order served with a spoon NYT Crossword Clue

Defeated soundly NYT Crossword Clue

Good to go NYT Crossword Clue

Brand once promoted as the “forbidden fragrance” NYT Crossword Clue

Phooey! NYT Crossword Clue

Allure NYT Crossword Clue

Curling targets NYT Crossword Clue

Cautionary store sign from an alcohol retailer NYT Crossword Clue

Used NYT Crossword Clue

Light charges? NYT Crossword Clue

Centrist in British politics, informally NYT Crossword Clue

Fridge visit for a midnight snack, say NYT Crossword Clue

Bowling pins on the back right NYT Crossword Clue

___ gai (Thai dish) NYT Crossword Clue

Main ingredient in a Longshoreman NYT Crossword Clue

[ellowynthenotking]

Jan 13

Dear Dad,

I’m not frozen into a Jackscicle!

It’s a miracle!

We found somewhere warm and dry to stay for a little while. It’s weird. This lord’s hall wasn’t on the map. I didn’t even know if it was around here. I mean, like I said, there’s nothing on the map.

Also, weirdness unto weirdness, the lord of this place is a little kid.

But he’s already throwing a massive party for the season, so we can stay.

The place is enormous, and there are like a hundred “official party guests” and all their servants, horses, and stuff out in the stable, too. There’s like a thousand people altogether, and then there’s us. We each got rooms that I think are still “guest” rooms, just, like, really, really small guest rooms for a place this big. I mean, there’s so much in the rooms: beds, desks, tubs. I would probably never have to leave if I didn’t want to, but the lord of the place, I can’t remember his name right now, is a little bit of a creeper.

I mean, he's like 8. So.

Anyway, he said we’re to come join the festivities, which makes sense, but I think we’re all exhausted and just want to rest.

There’s this Bard who’s apparently performing all the time. He’s apparently been here for a while, and I think he’s the one who helped push for us to be able to stay.

He seems pretty cool. I think he saw the instrument Zunair was carrying and decided to help. Bard showed us around the place and helped us find some of the things we were looking for, like the kitchens, and someone to help us fill the baths because we SMELLED so bad!

I mean, it really wasn’t our fault we smelled terrible. That’s what happens when there’s a better part of a week between chances to baath, and you don’t actually get to bathe either of those times because it’s someone else’s house and rules. Anyway, it’s not like we went into that expecting to be able to just do anything we wanted. We's mainly planned to stay out of the way until it was a good time to keep moving forward.

We can’t leave right now cause there’s a massive Storm, a blizzard of unbelievable proportions hovering over this place right now.

Bad enough that we were trying to trek the wilderness in snow and winter, but a Blizzard?! If we hadn’t found this place when we did, we probably would have frozen to death.

Or worse.

Maybe we could have come back as ice mummies, and then we could have eaten all the celebrants here.

But we’re fine and here for now. We had a halfway decent place to stay, and the maid who helped us out didn’t mind giving me a few extra candles to write by.

We did have to go out and into the party. Luckily, some people gave us their extra clothes so we could go and not look entirely out of place. Still, all the clothes were uncomfortable and didn’t fit right. Willow said it’s probably because they were fitted on specific people in mind, and since we probably don’t have the exact same dimensions, they feel weird and wrong.

It was cool to see the party, though. I think it was a party that’s just for partying sake, though, cause there didn’t seem to be a real reason for it.

The lord of the place also had us sit with him at his table. I think it’s cause he was interested in our story, but he seemed more or less only interested in Grace. He’d start a question with Riley (who’s definitely in charge and has acted like she’s in charge the whole time, and then he’d pay more attention to Grace and only listen to her answer or ask her 5 questions afterward. She also wasn’t really even allowed to leave everything until really late. Our group made sure to stick around until everything wound down and there was a good reason to leave.

It was not great.

Riley is worried, and to be honest, so am I. It might be dangerous for us to stay here, but also more dangerous for us to leave. So we just have to stick around until the storm winds down.

But it’s weird and creepy, and the kid has way too much power in this situation, and it’s making all of us twitchy, I think.

Like, really twitchy, 'cause it’s weird, and none of us like this. Even if the clothes are kinda cool. We’re going to leave soon once the weather winds down. And our clothes are clean cause they kinda stole our clothes to clean them.

Anyway, I love you. Hopefully, there’s nothing too terrible out of this, but I think you’ll find out when we do if there's anything terrible or good or anything going on.

Love, Jack

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[arvidsgarden]

"I headed postwar Iraq planning for the U.S. State Department in 2002 and 2003. Once the White House decided in 2002 to remove Saddam Hussein by force, I cautioned my superiors that there needed to be serious planning for what would follow. The study I led — the Future of Iraq Project, only some of which is now public — gave U.S. leaders an understanding of what postwar Iraq would need.

But before we could put plans into effect, we were thrown out of the Pentagon by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at Vice President Dick Cheney’s orders in a dispute over what to do in Iraq. As a result, many of the American civilians who went there had little experience and even less knowledge of what Iraq needed to recover from decades of brutal and corrupt rule under Mr. Hussein and his Baath Party. The result contributed to the tragedy for Iraq, the United States and the entire Middle East."

Thomas S. Warrick NY Times