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No. I'm not outraged at all about that currently. But what about the hundreds of thousands that have been killed, maimed and forced into living in misery because of Iranian actions? Regardless, we're talking about actions that have taken place more recently. Illegal actions by Iran. But they always get a pass from you people, not matter what, and no matter when. You guys love the Mullahs!

The Koran was written in the same fashion as the bible, and has about as much truth and accuracy to it. The one all you Muslims love to hate. There are no laws to that affect. Christianity does not come with a legal code.

He's a very nice man. He just acts grumpy. How can you say that. To be clear, we hate Iranian extremists not Iranian moderates many of whom are pro Western and have always gotten along quite well with Israel and European nations or the US hard as that is for you to believe.

Of course whoever happens to be the US President at any given time he represents the US politics, a kind of personifcation of it, but it would be foolish to think that especially concerning military operations the President would alone make the decisions. Of course he is a rubber-stamp whose approval is needed but he doesn't come up with the ideas. Do you think starting a war against Iraq was George W Bush's original idea? Me neither. Or can you imagine a scenario whereby a President would come up with a totally unworkable idea of a military operation and his generals would tell him "Mr. President, that's a very bad idea and we strongly advice you against it" but they would have to obey since the President is the boss after all?

Very true...and all the more reason not to give it back.

I already proved that you were lying, and your last resort is an ad hominem attack. Nice try liar. 1) Reservations are there so that people who want to preserve their ways have enough land set aside to do so. It takes a vast area for humans to survive without farming. 2) Indigenous people don't have to stay there at all if they don't want to. They are all free to leave at any time. 3) It's a conflict because you act like reservations are a bad idea but you're also offended by rights that indigenous people have as a result of living on reservations. If they didn't want the reservations they'd get rid of them. Idiot. 4) go find some land somewhere that is only occupied by "indigenous" people of that area. There's no such place. If you find something in the preamble with legal ramifications which give a group special status let me know. Until then it's just you, your current pack of lies, and not much else.

By the way it was total idiotic comment by Trump to threaten to bomb Iran's cultural sites. What a total IDIOT. How is that going to bother the anti-Iran occupying mullahs where are scared to death of pre-islamic Persian culture and close off all the roads to Persepolis weeks before the Cyrus day in October so that Iranians don't celebrate cultural events. He certainly got himself lots of enemies among Iranians by this stupid comment. TRUMP IS A TOTAL IDIOT.

I didn't move at all. I said that you're a liar, you have a pack of lies, same diff. If you don't like it then start telling the truth ffs. I didn't make a vague accusation. I made a specific accusation which you're free to copy and paste if you'd like. It's still there. You have the option to make your case. You might not actually be a liar, but it's extremely unlikely that a person with your command of the english language is unable to interpret the preamble with far greater accuracy than you have done here. So, I'l backtrack a bit, and say that what you said is completely untrue and the only possible explanation, as far as I can see, is that you'r lying.

Israel won all its major wars without any help from the USA.

Mostly barely qualified to find their own mailbox let alone things that are hidden well out of sight well beyond their hotel rooms.

Well the Democrats & their fellow travelers sure seem to think he was a saint.

Of course, we both recall when Iran and Israel were allied...good friends...in opposition to the Arabs.

No but I call you out directly as having an extremist pro terrorist agenda based on extreme Islamic fundamentalism as evidenced by previous posts so your anti Iranian position means sweet phack all to me. Unlike you I support moderate Iranians and other non Shiite Muslims and Kurds. Clear enough?

Because the Iranian government are a bunch of crooked liar bastards that don't act in good faith and can't ever be trusted. Iran wants all the Israelis dead, good luck negotiating with that.

Btw, you wouldn't be downplaying hostages if it was the other way around, and the United States had taken Iranian hostages. You also have no problem with Iran sticking it's nose in other people's business, like in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc. You got no problem at all with it.

Iran...like the PLO & Hamas...use these "cultural sites" to hide various things they don't want smart bombed.

All it has to do is get you through the next election. That is why I don't have absolute faith in democracy.

Predictions...dime a dozen.

McConnell doesn't have to call anyone he doesn't want, just like Pelosi. Pelosi doesn't get to force him to call who she wants anymore than Mitch got to force her to call who he wants. That's not how it works, Pelosi doesn't run both the house and senate, maybe in your dream world she does, but not in reality.

Again...so what ? America easily afforded the Iraq-Afghanistan wars....economy is booming along with the debt.

America can do both if it wants to....remember the Vietnam War while going to the Moon ?

Trump has the Democrats in a bind....well played !

Of course....I hand over much more personal income for lots of other things. Very expensive carrier battle groups have been deploying to the region for many decades. ...nothing special about Iran.

So ? The U.S. federal budget is approaching $5 TRILLION...per year.

Who cares what Fox says? There's no way I'm going to support Iran's religious dictatorship. You're free to.

They hate Trump. Therefore...they MUST be good.

Nothing special about Iran...the Iran-Iraq war went on for 8 years and the world did not end. Ironically, Iran wanted regime change in Iraq, but failed to achieve its goal....over 1,000,000 killed. The Americans did it for them in 2003.

I don't want war with Iran. But there's no way in Hell I'll support the murderous Mullahs. They don't use gas chambers...they'll just shoot you or torture you to death in their torture chambers. You're free to love them like family for all I care. We all draw our own lines in the sand.

The United States was never intended to be a democracy....don't need Princeton to understand basic American history:

Got to keep your eye on the ball (sorry, Eyeball, that wasn't intentional). Reality is the world has NO other policeman than the US. The only other superpowers, i.e. China and Russia, are hardly champions of human rights. Throw into that mix two more absolute fruitcake cultures in Iran and NoKo that are on the brink of becoming nuclear powers. All of the hand wringing and ass kissing from the globalists and looney left, not to mention the totally ineffective, totally corrupt UN is doing nothing but playing into their hands - buying them the time to complete their nuclear ambitions. SOMEONE really has to step in and deal with this in real time. The second part of this is the notion that Donald J. Trump RUNS the USA. He is nothing but the mouthpieces (granted, a loud and profaine one) for a much longer term, very large and well established mechanism that provides him with the information and ideas about what is actually happening in the world.fd Crossing this particular jackass off of the list might advance several very important elements of stability. For one, it might provide an excuse to finally bring Iran's nuclear ambitions (and brutal regime) to an end. THAT will send a message to Kim, Vlad and Xi - all of whom played the Obama administration like a fiddle - that the US is no longer asleep at the policman-of-the-world switch. It will also pull out the huge financial, military and ideological backing that drives much of the Islamic fundamentalist movement in the ME and the world. If you think a rising sea level, rising temperature and all of the other climate change possibilities are dire, WTF do you think a nuclear winter will look like???? THAT is what is really at stake here, and Trump is the only game in town that can bring any effective deviation in that direction.

Not a thing.

You're just in denial of every basic fact that every single other human being on earth is well aware of. The fact that you don't think that Islamic State in Levant was an islamic group takes the cake. You're completely insane.

Keep adding billions to the population and nothing one does matters one bit. What's worse...too many already.

Agreed, Iran is still looking for a way to remove the sanctions against them, and is willing to make some concessions. Question is how far are they really willing to go, and how credible. Looks like they were caught trying to set up some kind of covert ops to attack targets of interest, and the US stopped the attack from happening. Given their General had already been involved in other attacks against US interests in the past, I see no reason to doubt the US government's story.

I was talking about the shift in power in Iraq. Or was it about Iran... the two words just became even more interchangeable and confusing in our media dialogue than before.

I read somewhere that this general told Iraqi PM during the peak of anti-government protests last fall that the Iraqi regime should learn from Iranian regime how to quick;y put down the protests (like shooting unarmed protesters in the hearts and heads as they did last November). I cannot guarantee the authenticity of this as it was in a few articles but how could they know? Also I read he was dispatched to Iraq to help putting down widespread anti-government protests and we saw over 400 shot and killed in a few weeks. Not to mention the fact that he was instrumental in Bashir Assad's murderous regime to survive. Regardless it is true that he fought against ISIS and defeated them out of Iraq but he was a top revolutionary guard general likely why many Iranians abroad are celebrating his assassination,

No, Trump is reversing Obama's huge mistake(s)....giving Iran billions to spend on arms and proxies.

The problem with these things is also power vacuums. It's easy to say we should stop selling weapons to regime X or Y, but they're just going to buy them from some other country, probably our enemies who will make tons of money from it while developing new weapons technologies they can use against us too. It's also easy to say the US and the west should just leave the middle east, but again a vacuum would form and Russia or China etc would swoop in to fill the void and have more control over global oil resources. No sane person would want that. There's no easy solutions. The best option is to project power while also trying to respect human rights in the countries we have a sphere of influence in. Regime changes are usually about protecting our interests, not the rights of the people of those countries.

Stick to being Lewis. I'll be Martin.

....said one the Yeoman to the other as they marched towards Agincourt.

The testimony already given by apolitical public servants plus Trump's hand picked ambassador to Europe has already proven what he did. And if the Republicans involved could have in any way refuted this they would have testified willingly. They couldn't, therefore, they refused to testify. This is an open and shut case. Even the so-called Republicans aren't denying what he did. They're just saying they don't care.

I'm not a Democrat. In fact, I would, given my views, be a likely Republican - if the Republican party still existed. And looking at the testimony it is abundantly clear to me that Trump violated all kinds of rules, threatened his country's national security interests, and blackmailed a foreign leader to try to persuade him to investigate his political rival over something no American or Ukrainian police agency thinks is worth investigating. Wait? Until when? The Supreme court isn't likely to even issue a verdict about several previous subpoenas for things like Trump's tax receipts until the middle of the year. If they fought the subpoenas for testimony all the way to the supreme court too, which they would, they'd have to wait until September or October to get testimony.

Yes I would say shooting 1500 innocent defenseless young people including 400 women and 17 children in the back for just protesting economic hardship and while running away is crime against humanity which Iran regime committed against its own citizens just a month ago. Taking out the head of such force is crime against humanity? I am not so sure. It is called justice for all those grieving fathers and mothers who lost their children and were not allowed even to hold a public funeral.

Is the impeachment thing still on? Because I haven't heard much about it lately. I guess it's fallen off the news cycle radar, so no longer interesting then? Or what. Oh I'm sorry, I thought it was an emergency...

Waiting is for deadbeats. Will SNC-Lavalin get to keep their oil services contracts in southern Iraq after Trudeau runs away (again) ?

We have the same problems in Canada but they don't seem to attract as much coverage. Here's one article. Again, note the international comparisons on bed numbers: https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/mental-health-gap-in-b-c-psych-beds-dwindle-as-community-supports-struggle-to-keep-up Falling number of psychiatric beds in B.C. hospitals 2006-07: 1,305 beds or 30 beds per 100,000 population 2008-09: 1,239 beds or 28 beds per 100,000 population 2010-11: 1,273 beds or 28 beds per 100,000 population 2012-13: 1,242 beds or 27 beds per 100,000 population 2014-15: 1,219 beds or 26 beds per 100,000 population Source: Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) Comparable international rates: The Netherlands: 137 beds/100,000 population (includes beds not counted as psychiatric in other countries) Norway: 89 beds/100,000 population United Kingdom: 58 beds/100,000 population United States: 34 beds/100.000 population New Zealand: 21 beds/100,000 population Source: Mental Health Atlas 2011, World Health Organization

Here's that article by Green. These three sentences drily sum up his thinking on bed closures and community care: Here's are a few articles from the papers on the beds crisis in the UK: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/nov/06/hundreds-of-mental-health-beds-needed-to-end-shameful-out-of-area-care https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jul/21/mental-heath-crisis-beds-shortage-detentions-soar Half the beds in the NHS were once psychiatric beds. Given their progressive disappearance, it's hard to believe that now. Here's a recent official report on bed occupancy. It's rather polite on the subject of community care but you can read between the lines: A letter to the Lancet makes similar points. Note how low our per capita Canadian bed numbers are in the graph:

He ripped it up because it speed up the nuclearization of Iran and was an idiotic deal that never would have been ratified.

Right, so if China has to maintain minimum standards for labour, the environment, etc. in order to trade with the US, Canada, and Europe, many of these problems would be solved. The only counter to China is a coordinated approach, a big trading block in which the members abide by the rules and have virtual free trade or at least much freer trade than those who won't play by the rules. It could be a scaled membership, wherein partial compliance means fewer penalties than non-compliance and complete free trade requires complete compliance. Otherwise it's the US versus the world based on the unpredictable whims of elected officials that will merely shift production to whichever country hasn't had tariffs placed on it.