REPORTS SHOW LGBT PEOPLE LIVING UNDER ISIS CONTROL IN IRAQ ARE 'AT IMMINENT RISK OF DEATH'

Two publications released yesterday report that LGBT people in Iraq are experiencing levels of persecution that puts many at imminent risk of death, reports the Washington Blade.

The reports by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), international women’s human rights group MADRE and the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) show that while the conflict in Iraq has placed hundreds of thousands of citizens at risk of serious human rights abuses, LGBT individuals continue to be among the least protected of all groups.

A briefing paper entitled When Coming Out is a Death Sentence, documents violence and serious human rights abuses against LGBT individuals perpetrated by relatives, tribal factions and Islamist militias and vigilantes.

The briefing concludes that LGBT Iraqis are among the least protected groups in terms of the escalating threats to safety because their persecutors range widely across society-at-large; they have little to no protection from family, community or government; their physical appearance may put them at risk in public; they face hostility in refugee circumstances; and their movement has been curtailed by the conflict.

Though little concrete information is known about the situation for LGBT people in the areas controlled by ISIS, it is known that the group prescribes death for individuals engaged in same-sex activities.

Jessica Stern, executive director of IGLHRC, said:

“LGBT Iraqis are in a desperate situation that demands action. Many Iraqis face violence and serious human rights abuses but LGBT Iraqis, reviled across large segments of society, have none of the protection that can come from families, tribes and the community-at-large. Now, many LGBT Iraqis literally must hide to protect themselves. Exposure can mean death in the chaos of present-day Iraq.”

Yifat Susskind, executive director of MADRE, added:

“Human rights advocates, in Iraq and across the world, are banding together to sound the alarm. Respect for all human rights, indivisible and universal, demands that we stand up for LGBT people who are in grave danger now. This struggle, to defend all who are targeted for their gender and sexuality, is central to securing human rights for all people.”

IGLHRC, MADRE and OWFI have made recommendations for how foreign embassies, relief organizations, donor countries and others can protect lives.

These recommendations include:

• Pushing the Iraqi government to lift the prohibition on civil society organizations operating shelters for those fleeing violence and increase resettlement spaces for LGBT individuals.
• Expediting appeals for gay and transgender people who want to leave the country.
• Monitoring reports of ongoing violence against gay Iraqis with the goal of urgently expanding protections.
• Holding militias accountable for harassment and abuse of individuals because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Still Don’t Think Dick Cheney is a Disgusting Hypocritical War Criminal? This Clip From the Archives Should Change Your Mind

It seems like a lifetime ago when Bush, and his cronies like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, were beating the war drums back in 2002 and 2003 about how “grave” a threat Iraq was to the security of the United States. I can still remember the day the war started and the day just a few weeks later when Bush ridiculously landed on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit declaring “mission accomplished.”

Yet here we are, it’s 2014, and Iraq is back in the news as radical Islamic militants known as I.S.I.S. continue to take over numerous cities within the country.

Recently I ran across comments made in 1991, by a Republican of all people, who essentially predicted the chaos we’re now seeing in Iraq if we were to ever invade and overthrow Saddam Hussein:

I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is also fallacious. I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force because I do not believe he would wait in the Presidential Palace for us to arrive. I think we’d have had to hunt him down. And once we’d done that and we’d gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we’d have had to put another government in its place. 

What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shi’i government or a Kurdish government or Ba’athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the government once U.S. forces withdrew? How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable? 

I think it is vitally important for a President to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U.S. military force. And it’s my view that the President got it right both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq.

Absolutely Nothing: A Veteran’s Savage Indictment of the Iraq War

All we fought for in Iraq.

All we fought for in Iraq is on the cusp of vanishing.

That’s what Mitt Romney says.

We fought for. We fought for. We.

Oh, so it’s we now, is it, Mitt?

We.

I must have missed you over there, but it was a busy place. We. The guy who helped set up “pro-draft” rallies and yet somehow managed to avoid service in Vietnam is upset about losing what “we” fought for? We.

Yeah, fuck you, Mitt.

And you’re all welcome to quote me on that.

Somebody stepped into my office yesterday and asked how I felt about it. He wanted to know how I felt about “losing” Iraq.

How do I feel about losing all we fought for?

I don’t know.

First, I’m going to need somebody to explain to me exactly what it was that we were fighting for.

What was it? What is it that we gained, according to Mitt Romney? And what is on the cusp of vanishing? What is that? No, really, somebody please explain it to me.

Because I’d love to know.

Jon Stewart Reminds Us Why John McCain Has No Business Offering Advice on Iraq

Jon Stewart calls out the Republicans pointing fingers at Obama over Iraq and reminds us that they're all "completely f--king wrong" about it, particularly lead singer John McCain.

Said McCain: "We had that war won, and we blew it."

Stewart: "And all we would have to do to maintain the victory is stay there forever. It's like when you win at a casino, and to get the money you have to live there."

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive

Massacre In Iraq: Congratulations GOP! You Built That!

The Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIS), the Al Qaeda splinter group that took Iraq by storm last week with the capture of two major cities, has done something so reprehensible that even George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, or any other framer of the Iraq War, would call it reprehensible.

A series of images posted to a militant web site appear to show ISIS “freedom fighters” (or whatever they are calling themselves these days) loading captives onto a flatbed truck. The group’s victims are then forced to lie down in a shallow ditch, arms tied behind their backs. 

With rising GOP support for yet another invasion of Iraq in light of ISIS’ capture of Mosul and Tikrit, we’re reminded that, without United States intervention in Iraq ISIS would not have been able to become the richest terrorist organization in the world.

Without the Bush regime’s lies and manipulations aimed at an Iraq invasion, Saddam Hussein would have remained a stabilizing force in Iraq. Killing Saddam Hussein may have been gratifying on some level, but removing him from power opened Pandora’s Box in the region, allowing an explosion of sectarian violence.

Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, no matter how much right-wingers still wish to claim, were not allies. In 2002, Daniel Benjamin wrote in the NY Times:

Iraq and Al Qaeda are not obvious allies. In fact, they are natural enemies. A central tenet of Al Qaeda’s jihadist ideology is that secular Muslim rulers and their regimes have oppressed the believers and plunged Islam into a historic crisis. Hence, a paramount goal of Islamist revolutionaries for almost half a century has been the destruction of the regimes of such leaders as Presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar el-Sadat and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, President Hafez al-Assad of Syria, the military government in Algeria and even the Saudi royal family.

To contemporary jihadists, Saddam Hussein is another in a line of dangerous secularists, an enemy of the faith who refuses to rule by Shariah and has habitually murdered Sunni and Shiite religious leaders in Iraq who might oppose his regime. During the Persian Gulf war, Omar Abdel Rahman, the radical sheik now imprisoned in the United States, summed up the Islamist view when he was asked what the punishment should be for those who supported the United States in the conflict. He answered, ”Both [those] who are against and the ones who are with Iraq should be killed.’