As expected, here we have a timely account from influential insider media, carrying out preliminary "soundings" (nautical term for determining water depth) from the WH occupier regime, setting-up of war-measures rationale.
That is, the regime is clearly, quietly, beginning the war-drumbeat.
We can hypothesize this will escalate as we go on into October.
Yet the regime has created so many crises and lies, and the GOPers are expending much political capital on the Ginsberg replacement SCOTUS pick, and so many other influence-efforts, that it may be the war-drum subterfuge will not work, this election cycle.
However, it's worked in past elections, and it's a proven authoritarian ploy, going back centuries--the convenient "external threat."
Below is the text of the Washington Post article that outlines the "soundings." The article itself represents part of the drumbeat--conveniently-leaked, timely, State Department internal information.
The present blog post is a transformative essay provided for purposes of textual criticism, news value, and education, based on close reading and textual analysis. Underlining represents value-added emphasis. The post is written not-for-profit, and urges you to go to the original website and negotiate their market’s commercial access requirements.
Learn as you will, as with any educational offering. Yet this blog post is not just "For Your Information"; it’s essentially strategic intelligence. Strategic intelligence allows you to choose actions in context, in the light, not in the dark.
Reiterative conclusion: The war-drums are beating, as scheduled, just before an election. A fomented crisis, yet not overly dangerous, as threatening China, North Korea, or Russian spheres--Syria, Libya--would be. Iran is "just right" for a convenient, external-threat crisis.
Forewarned is fore-armed. ¡Venceremos! (We shall overcome!)
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/25/just-ahead-election-pompeo-is-pressuring-iraqs-leader-raising-tensions-with-iran/
Global Opinions
Just ahead of the election, Pompeo is pressuring Iraq’s leader and raising tensions with Iran
Opinion by
David Ignatius
Columnist
September 25, 2020 at 2:48 p.m. PDT
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo privately [emphasis added; sic; sure, and leaked to Washington Post in near-real time] warned Iraq this week that the United States would close its embassy in Baghdad [emphasis added; nonsense; after 17 years of warfare to establish USA presence in Iraq?] if the Iraqi government doesn’t move to stop attacks by Iranian-backed militias on the American compound.
Pompeo’s demand creates a stark dilemma for Iraq’s new prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, who until now had been a Trump administration favorite [emphasis added; Nota Bene]. The Iraqi leader wants to curb Iran’s proxy forces, but not at the cost of committing political suicide. If Pompeo follows through and closes the embassy to protect Americans, Iran and its allies might claim a major propaganda victory [NB: why would USA Secretary of State hand "a major propaganda victory" to our enemies?]; but [emphasis added] the closure could also be a prelude to heavy U.S. airstrikes against the militias.
Iraq is the place where a U.S.-Iran confrontation could explode in the next few weeks, creating an “October surprise” before the U.S. presidential election. Iran has been cautious about directly provoking the Trump administration in this campaign season [emphasis added], preferring to operate in the deniable battlespace of Iraq. Pompeo has now made that covert campaign more difficult [*nah*], but in the process has increased the possibility of open conflict. [*yup*]
The Iraq standoff poses potential dangers in every direction: If attacks by Iranian-backed militias kill Americans, the Trump administration will likely counterattack. If Kadhimi strikes at the Shiite militias, as Pompeo demands, Iran could punch back hard, and his fragile regime could implode. Pompeo wants to stiffen Kadhimi’s backbone, but presumably not to the breaking point.
“We believe that Kadhimi wants to do the right thing, but he’ll have to do more and faster. We won’t be sitting ducks,” a senior State Department official said in an interview Friday. [emphasis added; possibly Pompeo himself] The official said there is an “obvious risk to American life if these attacks continue.”
Violence by Iranian-backed militias has been escalating in recent weeks, despite Kadhimi’s promises of a crackdown. So far this month alone, there have been 25 attacks on convoys carrying supplies to U.S. or coalition facilities, on the Green Zone where the U.S. Embassy is located, or on the Baghdad airport, according to a compilation by Iraq analyst Joel Wing. Last month, he counted 24 such attacks.
An encouraging call [emphasis added; Columnist value-judgment phrase, carrying DoS message; a tell] for greater protection of embassies came Friday when the influential Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, a radical nationalist [and killer of Americans in the W. Bush occupation time; familiar name, recognize it?] who sometimes resists Iranian pressure [emphasis added; unsourced "insider" phrase carrying DoS message; another tell, as it provides unverified rationale for DoS propagating al-Sadr's argument--a cat's paw, as they say in rhetoric] proposed the creation of a committee “to investigate the security violations that the diplomatic missions … are being subjected to in a way that is detrimental to Iraq’s reputation in the international arena.”
Kadhimi immediately endorsed Sadr’s proposal, [emphasis added] tweeting: “We affirm that the hand of law is above the hand of those who break it. … The outlawed weapon has no place in Iraq.”
Pompeo’s pressure campaign began with a call Sunday to Iraqi President Barham Salih, according to Iraqi24, a Baghdad news site [standard CIA use of foreign media to leak a narrative]. The Iraqi news account said Pompeo [emphasis added] had warned: “The decision to close the embassy in Baghdad is in President Trump’s hands and is ready. … If our forces withdraw and the embassy is closed in this way, we will liquidate all those who have been proven to have been involved in these attacks,” according to a translation of the Arabic news article. Pompeo specifically named two Tehran-backed groups, Kataib Hezbollah and Asaib Ahl al-Haq.
[Here is the war-drum rationale. Sure, of course, no question: an Iraqi public media site leaks classified government-to-government communication, with specifics from the USA Secretary of State's call. Total political groundwork and soundings. Classic USA intelligence & covert-action tactic, planting a story in foreign press, but not in USA press. So the USA press picks up the foreign press story; mission accomplished, all by the book. Deployed many times before. Note Well, this is happening in plain view, if we have ways of seeing.]
Kadhimi, a former Iraqi intelligence chief, was welcomed by Trump at the White House last month. [emphasis added] U.S. officials view him as the most promising Iraqi leader in years, in part because he’s not tied to any of Iraq’s corrupt, sectarian political parties and has tried to keep his distance from Tehran.
One Iraq analyst summed Kadhimi’s appeal to disgruntled Iraqis this way: “The Iraqi people are turning against Iran’s influence in Iraqi internal affairs, against the Iran-backed militias and the politicians who enable them, and against the rampant corruption that Iran’s influence promotes.” [Anonymous source, laying out war-drum rationale, positing without any evidence whatsoever, that this is the political state of “The Iraqi people.”]
[NB, Columnist’s concluding paragraph, and sentence follows]
The danger of Pompeo’s ultimatum is the same one that has plagued the United States since it invaded Iraq in 2003. Iran is near and plays a long game; America is far away and demands quick results. Iraq has shown us repeatedly that American military power is overwhelming but can’t dictate political outcomes. Direct threats that become public, like Pompeo’s, rarely work out as intended.
[Note Well; it's not supposed to "work out"; it's designed to provoke an international incident. We may hypothesize that the columnist, as a well-connected D.C. insider, is either being played (unlikely, given his extensive experience), or is cooperating by bearing the message.
Classically, he has "buried the lede" with his exact text below, in paragraph 3, though note his headline editor hints at the actual journalistic lede —
"Iraq is the place where a U.S.-Iran confrontation could explode in the next few weeks, creating an “October surprise” before the U.S. presidential election."
Conclusion: The war-drums are beating, as scheduled, just before an election. A fomented crisis, yet not overly dangerous, as threatening China, North Korea, or Russian spheres--Syria, Libya--would be. Iran is "just right" for a convenient, external-threat crisis.]
