(Part 1 of Al Jazeera interview with Crocker)

Part 2 of Al Jazeera's interview with Crock'o Shit.

It's rather amusing to watch Crock'o Shit squirm while being peppered with real hardball questions backed up with hard facts...

One memorable exchange was when Crocker finally admitted that the current hope is to have an interim Mou inked, rather than the more formal SOFA/SFA, before the UN Chapter 7 Authorization runs out in December. He did a miserable job in justifying the sudden switcheroo on Immunity for not only the troops, but the contractors too... He actually thinks we'll still obtain it...!

He further elaborated that we are drawing down; "...the last 'Surge' brigade has just left...," no mention that we're still at a higher tempo than pre-surge levels! How convenient!

Another fallacious meme was the respect for Iraq's 'Sovereignty' by not seeking 'permanent' bases in Iraq... As I've stated before that's a strawman, the legal eagles in DoD have flatly stated we have no legal term for permanent bases... In an aside, GITMO is leased, not owned or 'permanent'...

Crock'o Shit defended his Congressional testimony that 15 of the 18 'Surge' benchmarks have been met... Satisfactorily, at least...! Quite the difference from the GAO's scathing review stating only 3 of the 18 BM's have been met!

The ORA assessment of the Iraqi Army was another futile attempt at spin... He was fidgeting noticeably in answering the question of the poor ORA numbers... especially, why did IA and NSF still only have a 10% ORA 1 level...! Basically, the same level it was when he was confirmed by the Senate as Ambassador...!

It really is 'Must-see teevee'...!

In an interesting development, everybody; the US, Iraqis, and Israelis all deny this...

According to the Defense Ministry officials, retired Iraqi army officers in the Al Anbar district reported that (Israeli) fighter jets have been regularly entering Iraqi airspace from Jordan and landing at the airport near Haditha.

The sources estimated that should the Israeli jets take off from the American bases it would take them no more than five minutes to reach Iran's nuclear reactor in Bushehr.

Badger fleshed it out a tad bit...

The first story on this was on the Sadrist site Nahrrainnet on Wednesday (link here), and when I read it I thought it sounded not implausible. People around two US airbases (Assad in Anbar, and Ali bin Abi Talib in Nassiriya) had been noticing unusual nighttime takeoffs and landings of fighter planes, along with unusually tight security for several weeks, and anonymous Iraqi Defence Dept people had concluded it was American or Israeli (more the latter since the Anbar flights seemed to be coming from Jordan), and they pointed out that from the Nassiriya base you could in in Iranian airspace in 5 minutes and to Bushehr very quickly. So the sourcing seemed to be un-exaggerated and methodical. The next I saw was the Iranian PressTV picking up the report, and now YNet, but the YNet details seem to be no more than recycling of the Nahrainnet ("5 minutes to Iranian airspace from Nasiriya" and so on), so I don't know. Looks as if you're right, the only independent report is still the one in Nahrainnet...

Some serious F*ckery, folks...!