MH17 Crash Site Canard + Maliki on His Way Out, So U.S. Moves the Goal Posts

Yatsenyuk submits his resignation as the junta prime minister of Ukraine, clearing the way for new parliamentary elections this fall. Europe is set to announce today a list of targets for a new round of sanctions against Russia. And the Western media monopoly persists in the canard, even when stories it publishes prove the exact opposite, that there is a Russian-backed conspiracy to tamper with evidence and block access to the Malaysia Airlines crash site in eastern Ukraine. Let's start there, with Sabrina Tavernise and Thomas Erdbrink and the misleading headline "Ukraine Disaster in Search of an Investigation":

There were a few new faces at the site on Thursday. Three Australian investigators worked in the field, joining three Malaysians. Before departing Thursday, the Malaysians said that they were surprised at the amount of access they had to the site and that they felt safe, Mr. Bociurkiw [a spokesman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] said. 

There have been widespread reports of looting, but Mr. Bociurkiw said his monitoring group, which has now spent more time at the site than any other, had not seen any. The Malaysians said they had seen valuables in the fields untouched, he noted, including a bottle of duty-free perfume, auto parts, backpacks full of belongings, a watch and some jewelry.

The Dutch Safety Bureau said in a statement that an initial examination showed that both of Flight 17’s so-called black boxes had been damaged, but that their memory chips were intact. The bureau added that there was “no evidence or indications of manipulation” of either the cockpit voice recorder or the flight data recorder, and that the data from both had been downloaded by experts from Britain’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch in Farnborough, England.

Given the high-volume mendacity of the junta, one wonders what the condition of the black box would have been if it had fallen into the hands of Kiev instead of the DPR. What is important to note is the prevalence across a wide range of stories -- stories coming out of Kiev and Brussels and D.C. -- of the bald lie that the Novorossiyan militia is somehow restricting access to the site and impeding the collection of evidence. This is such a bald lie, supported by not a single shred of evidence, that it leads me to believe that it is being used to 1) justify a Western military footprint in Donetsk, and 2) dismiss any evidence that emerges which shows the junta was to blame. That is why the crash-site story is being kept alive, even as Tavernise makes clear there is no story there. It is strange to see the prestige press engaged in conspiracy theories. In this case though there are no inconvenient facts exposed or complex theories limned; it is all bald lies and misleading headlines.

Speaking of bald lies, the goal posts are now being moved on the "It's All Maliki's Fault" canard. You'll recall from last month that as soon as Islamic State launched its blitzkrieg that captured Mosul the messaging across all sectors of the Western media and government was that the success of the ultra-jihadis was due to the Iraqi prime minister's authoritarianism driving normal Sunnis into the ranks of the Salafis. Therefore Maliki had to go.

Well, come to find out, now that it appears that Maliki is on his way out, he really isn't the problem after all. The Kurds selected their choice for president yesterday, clearing the way for the Shia to select their candidate for prime minister and seating a new government. According to Tim Arango and Suadad al-Salhy in "Iraq Picks New President to Confront Militant Threat":

The Parliament voted to approve Fouad Massoum, 76, a Kurdish politician and former guerrilla fighter against Saddam Hussein’s regime, as the country’s new president. He replaces Jalal Talabani, a Kurd who had been president since 2005 and was seen as a rare unifying figure among Iraq’s many factions but has been largely absent from the political scene since suffering a stroke in late 2012.

“Everyone likes him,” Abbas al-Bayati, a Shiite lawmaker, said of Mr. Massoum. “He is a moderate man and was agreed to by everyone.”

A week before, Parliament elected Salim al-Jubouri, a moderate Sunni Islamist, to the position of speaker, which was the first step in forming a new government after national elections in April. Under an informal political bargain forged after the toppling of Mr. Hussein in 2003, the Iraqi presidency is held by a Kurd, the speaker of Parliament is a Sunni Arab and the position of prime minister, the most powerful post, goes to a Shiite. 

The next political step, the selection of a new prime minister, will be more fraught. That process will determine the future of Mr. Maliki, who has been in power since 2006 but who has become an increasingly polarizing figure as the insurgency has grown and sectarian violence has intensified to a level not seen since 2006 and 2007.

***

Mr. Maliki has insisted that he will seek a third term, but he faces an array of opponents and has lost support from abroad. American officials, who believe he has become too divisive to lead the nation out of its current crisis, have been working behind the scenes to push Iraq’s leaders to select someone else. And Iran, which exerts enormous influence here, has signaled it would like to see new leadership. 

Last week, several Iranian officials, including Ali Shamkhani, a top national security official, visited the holy city of Najaf, in southern Iraq, and conveyed to religious leaders that Iran would prefer that Mr. Maliki be replaced, according to a senior Shiite lawmaker in Baghdad. 

But even if Mr. Maliki were replaced, there is little sense that the Iraqi political class would be able to establish a new political bargain that could bring peace. “There’s no glue to hold whatever grandiose governing coalition that emerges together,” said Ramzy Mardini, an Iraq expert and fellow at the Atlantic Council. He added, “the idea that if Maliki should leave and then we’d be on the path of reconciliation and compromise is wishful thinking.”

Lo and behold! Once the Iranians line up with Great Satan and agree that Maliki should be ushered off the main stage in order to get down to business of smashing the caliphate rising and piecing Iraq back together the story is changed. Now it is not Maliki's fault but the inherent politically instability of Iraq. Brett McGurk was back in front of Congress arguing for a friendly neighbor policy towards Islamic State:

In testimony before the House on Wednesday, Brett McGurk, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Iran and Iraq, portrayed an increasingly decentralized Iraqi government as the most likely way forward. “There is a recognition in Iraq that from the center out you’re never going to fully control all of these areas, and particularly given the capacity of ISIL,” he said, using an alternative acronym for ISIS.

Combine that with yesterday's soft focus almost loving portrayal of Islamic State's stewardship of Raqqa that appeared on the front page of the Gray Lady and it is not hard to make out the handwriting on the wall. The caliphate, backed by the United States and its client Gulf Sheikhdoms, is the answer the people of the Middle East are being given to the question raised by the Arab Spring.