Update for Thursday, July 7, 2016

Death toll in the Karada bombing reaches 281. I'm still waiting for the candle-light vigils in western cities. The corporate media in the U.S. has already forgotten about this completely. (As the linked story reports, there was indeed a candle-light vigil in Kurdistan.)

A couple of takes on Chilcot, from Zack Beauchamp and Tom Switzer. Switzer asks, "So will the British Establishment learn the lessons of its failures and hold to account Blair and others responsible for the debacle? As Oborne warns here today,  if the Chilcot report does not achieve this, then the British system of government is in serious trouble." Well, I have the same question about the U.S. The Chilcot report in fact indicts George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld even more powerfully than it indicts Blair. He does indeed appear in the report as Bush's poodle, and is following the U.S. lead the whole way. He was just a ventriloquist dummy for the lies of the Bush administration. But the report is being portrayed in the U.S. corporate media as being all about Britain, with no particular relevance to the United States. Astonishing.

While U.S. jets were bombing IS troops fleeing Fallujah, they were called away from providing air support to New Syrian Army troops in a battle at Al-Bukamal, leading to a defeat and the apparent capture of weapons by IS.

Obama has abandoned plans to reduce U.S. troop level in Afghanistan to 5,000, and now says 8,400 will remain when he leaves office.