Quasem Soleimani Taken Out

[marcus]

19 hours ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

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

There is a difference between giving and giving back. The reality is that this money was already Iran's money.

[bush_cheney2004]

4 minutes ago, marcus said:

There is a difference between giving and giving back. The reality is that this money was already Iran's money.

 

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

[marcus]

On 1/3/2020 at 10:41 AM, Rue said:

Whether the attack is a ploy to detract from more memos showing direct orders from Trump to delay military transfers to Ukraine is also interesting. Coincidence?

You got it right.

 

[DogOnPorch]

4 minutes ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

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

 

All part of normalizing this sort of government as acceptable.

But acceptable to whom? 

[Shady]

15 minutes ago, marcus said:

OMG! HOSTAGE TAKING SO SO BAD!

That's a good boy. They tell you to be up in arms about a hostage taking from 40 years ago where no one was skilled, while  totally ignoring the hundreds of thousands of people who have been killed, maimed and forced into living in misery because of U.S. actions. Things like shooting down a passenger airplane. Or directly assisting Saddam to attack Iran and working with him to hit the Iranians with WMD. 

Your ignorant outrage is comedic. 

 

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!

[DogOnPorch]

Just now, Shady said:

  You guys love the Mullahs!

 

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

[kactus]

20 minutes ago, DogOnPorch said:

 

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

And you hate all Iranians therefore it must be good

 

[DogOnPorch]

11 minutes ago, kactus said:

And you hate all Iranians therefore it must be good

 

 

I don't hate Iranians, Never said anything remotely like that.

 

[kactus]

4 minutes ago, DogOnPorch said:

 

I don't hate Iranians, Never said anything remotely like that.

 

 

21 hours ago, DogOnPorch said:

 

What's to be done? The population will hit 10 then 12 billion before we know it.

We're gonna go extinct...along with much of Earth's current diversity. This one will match the Permian Event in scale.

Good news...the Earth will recover. And Iran will be long gone...many problems solved.

 

[DogOnPorch]

6 minutes ago, kactus said:

 

 

 

After humans become extinct, did you expect Iran to still be around?

[Shady]

1 hour ago, marcus said:

OMG! HOSTAGE TAKING SO SO BAD!

That's a good boy. They tell you to be up in arms about a hostage taking from 40 years ago where no one was skilled, while  totally ignoring the hundreds of thousands of people who have been killed, maimed and forced into living in misery because of U.S. actions. Things like shooting down a passenger airplane. Or directly assisting Saddam to attack Iran and working with him to hit the Iranians with WMD. 

Your ignorant outrage is comedic. 

 

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.

[marcus]

1 minute ago, Shady said:

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.

I have problems with it. 

U.S. has military bases all around Iran and flies a drone into Iranian airspace and nothing. The drone gets shot down by the Iranians and OMG OMG!

Saudi Arabia has done numerous terrorist attacks inside Iran and nothing from you. An Iranian backed group attacks the Saudi oil field and OMG OMG!

The U.S. is in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gulf States and nothing from you. Iran has groups in other countries, where they are mostly welcomed by the governments and OMG OMG!

Your empty and superficial outrage is amusing.

 

[eyeball]

21 hours ago, Moonlight Graham said:

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.

We need to up our game...bigley.  From where I'm sitting we have zero influence right now.  What we need is an alliance of countries who insist on projecting virtue not power. 

Will it hurt, sure. The worst pain will probably be the hoots of laughter and rolley eyes thrown our way in the public square.

I said it before and I'll say it again our grandparents sacrificed 25% of their GDP in their war against tyranny and I'm pretty sure many would look like your avatar if they could see how much of our GDP is now dependent on tyrants.  You say you're not a cold-hearted bastard and I think you're right. It's probably more a matter of being a chicken-heart.

[eyeball]

21 hours ago, Moonlight Graham said:

The Iranians can't be trusted.  But Trump is just making things worse.

Why can't we trust the IAEA, are they just a bunch of virtue signalling lefty elitists or something?

[bush_cheney2004]

4 minutes ago, eyeball said:

I said it before and I'll say it again our grandparents sacrificed 25% of their GDP in their war against tyranny

 

That was for real (hard) power...not virtue signaling circle jerks.

[DogOnPorch]

Just now, eyeball said:

Why can't we trust the IAEA, are they just a bunch of virtue signalling lefty elitists or something?

 

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

[eyeball]

17 hours ago, OftenWrong said:

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.

What's probably confusing you is the way outbreaks of violence or instability become the newest latest reason why things are so fucked up. The memory of past events fades from public consciousness and makes it harder to place current events in a historical perspective. It's a very convenient process for anyone interested in exploiting or initiating these event for personal/economic/ political/ideological interests.

[eyeball]

8 minutes ago, DogOnPorch said:

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

I see, so Trump the expert can see clearly what's happening from the safety of his resort.

[Marocc]

47 minutes ago, Shady said:

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.

You know those are Iran's neighbours, right?

1 hour ago, Shady said:

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.

Like what?

1 hour ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

and all the more reason not to give it back.  

Another proof that secular countries are not any more righteous than non-secular countries.

[DogOnPorch]

8 minutes ago, eyeball said:

I see, so Trump the expert can see clearly what's happening from the safety of his resort.

 

I'm telling you that if I wanted to hide anything in the British Columbia wilderness with 100% funding and support from the BC & Canadian gov'ts...you're not gonna find a single thing that I hid. 

Edited January 6, 2020 by DogOnPorch

[-TSS-]

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?

[Rue]

3 hours ago, kactus said:

And you hate all Iranians therefore it must be good

 

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.

[Rue]

2 hours ago, eyeball said:

Why can't we trust the IAEA, are they just a bunch of virtue signalling lefty elitists or something?

Because they themselves admitted they could not properly verify conformity and repeatedly complained Iran was making a mockery of the inspection process.

[eyeball]

2 hours ago, Rue said:

Because they themselves admitted they could not properly verify conformity and repeatedly complained Iran was making a mockery of the inspection process.

Things seemed to be going ok up until August 2017 but then came Trump and a whole new tone of bellicosity and BS from the US.  No wonder Iran got cold feet.

The path to nuclear weapons is the only option for tyrants seeking longevity to their rule so naturally that's the path the Ayatollahs will take.  As for ordinary Iranians it's clear by the millions who are out in support of standing up to Trump and the US that there is a common outrage that transcends internal divisions, apparently even between the worst hard-liners in power and the best intentioned protesters against them.

There are other precedents for nations and peoples who've faced decades of humiliation and threats to their culture who've pursued a nuclear option as the only available hedge against unremitting molestation.

Yes yes I know, how can one talk about Iran molestation and other peoples without triggering a bunch of finger-pointing at Hezbollah and screaming "whadabout that!?!" But tell me...were Iranians secretly overthrowing democracies and generally running around vandalizing the ME or funding terrorists there prior to 1953?

BTW how long do you think it would it take for Canada to recover from the overthrow of our democracy and almost 7 decades of subsequent destabilization, tyranny and unremitting international pariah-ship? 

Edited January 6, 2020 by eyeball

[CITIZEN_2015]

6 hours ago, marcus said:

There is a difference between giving and giving back. The reality is that this money was already Iran's money.

It was Iran's money and belonged t the people of Iran but the damn mullahs stole it from the people for themselves and got richer while the people became poorer. Damn Obama made corrupt mullahs richer.