Winning!
:bitter laugh:
You know, people said that about Iraq too, but altho we could have taken over their oil fields and drained them- we didnt.
Oil is not the reason here. It is a reason why these pissany nations are more important than they shoudl be, but it’s not why we are involved.
We are involved due to Wag the Dog, 100% pure and simple.
Sure that general was a bad guy that deserved to die. But there are plenty of evil men in this world. We could use up a thousand drones in sub-saharan Africa alone based on that.
For those of us who are familiar with the phrase (hell, I even saw the movie), but can’t make sense of how you’re using it, could you say what you mean without catchphrases?
There is a good article in the Financial Times by Gideon Rachman about what he calls America’s “Dr Evil Syndrome”.
It may be behind a paywall for some but he describes this syndrome as “the idea, popular in Hollywood, that killing or capturing a “bad guy” is the key to solving a complex foreign policy problem.”
Soleimani was no saint, but neither was he a terrorist. He was an Iranian patriot, a soldier who had fought and prevailed against Saddam Hussein, ISIS, the Taliban and Al Qaeda. He also fought for his co-religionists in the region, and to ensure that Iran was able to influence events in it’s near abroad.
He was an enemy of the United States, but remember that this enmity between the US and Iran was started and maintained primarily by the US. There is a saying “If you will be my enemy then I’ll be your enemy too”. The United States government insists that Shia Iran is the enemy, but the truth is that it is Sunni Islam that is the problem, particularly the virulent form espoused by Saudi Arabia and it’s proxies.
Former UK Ambassador Craig Murray puts it as follows: *"The truth of the matter is that if you take every American killed including and since 9/11, in the resultant Middle East related wars, conflicts and terrorist acts, well over 90% of them have been killed by Sunni Muslims financed and supported out of Saudi Arabia and its gulf satellites, and less than 10% of those Americans have been killed by Shia Muslims tied to Iran.
This is a horribly inconvenient fact for US administrations which, regardless of party, are beholden to Saudi Arabia and its money. It is, the USA affirms, the Sunnis who are the allies and the Shias who are the enemy. Yet every journalist or aid worker hostage who has been horribly beheaded or otherwise executed has been murdered by a Sunni, every jihadist terrorist attack in the USA itself, including 9/11, has been exclusively Sunni, the Benghazi attack was by Sunnis, Isil are Sunni, Al Nusra are Sunni, the Taliban are Sunni and the vast majority of US troops killed in the region are killed by Sunnis."*
An escalation of tensions or a war with Shia Iran will not make America safer!
Soleimani was no Dr Evil, he was a full general of the lawful army of a member of the United Nations. If he was a legitimate assassination target, then all of the American generals operating in a military capacity outside of the territory of the United States must also be legitimate assassination targets.
trump is using this to distract attention away from his wrongdoing. Now the news is all about this and not about his crimes.
Mission Accomplished.
Right up until Bolton made his announcement. Time for more speculation.
I think I was the first to point that out! 
I have to admit that the timing of the airstrike and escalation of animosity is beyond sketchy, so I’m on board with the idea of this being the tail that they’re hoping will wag the dog.
I think Bolton’s trying to spook Trump to make sure he follows through on the whole war thing.
Bolton is such a disgusting coward. “I’ll do the right thing if you force me to.” :smack:
Americans to bug out:
The tweet is from a Washington Post reporter which includes a photograph of a letter just sent to Lt General Amir of the Iraqi Ministry of Defense advising him that their “repositioning” of forces “out of Iraq” will require additional traffic of various aircraft.
I asked Dan Lamothe, military writer for the Washington Post, if this was second-sourced, and he responded saying that the Washington Post has verified that this letter is genuine.
Hell, this isn’t the tail of a dog; IMHO, this is a whole 'nother, even bigger, dog. Hence my confusion.
A war crime is more than a mere distraction from extortion, and should be regarded as a new and even more major impeachable offense by the House Democrats.
Glad I apologized in advance! 
Things are moving too fast for anyone but two or three people to stop it, and since there are really no rational actors on either side of this conflict, I expect it only to get worse. Both sides are fueled by religious extremism as well as (in America’s case at least) racial nationalism, they both consider the other evil, and Donald Trump is seen by his advisors and supporters as someone heralded to bring about the End Times.
Evangelical Pastor Says God Chose Trump to Begin End Times and the Second Coming (This one is from 1.1.2020 and the pastor is the one who sponsored Trump’s latest rally, where DJT spoke to worshipful Evangelicals. Wonder what this guy is doing now, beside creaming his jeans?)
Netanyahu underbusses Trump, calls it an “assassination”, warns Israel not to get involved:
“The assassination of Soleimani isn’t an Israeli event but an American event. We were not involved and should not be dragged into it.”
There is no way the US would allow anyone to shut down that strait down indefinitely, but could fairly easily shut it down long enough to cause some serious economic chaos. Whether they would go that route before, say, cyber warfare or attacks on military personnel in the region is anyone’s guess. But we’re not nearly as omnipotent as we think.
As another posted stated earlier in the thread, I tend to think Iran’s likely to go for low hanging fruit first, and fruit that won’t provoke a massive counter-attack. So they’ll start first by using their leverage in Iraq to get us out there, and that appears to be happening as we write. But they won’t end there. As far as Iran is concerned, the survival of their regime is already at risk, and they are already at war. It’s the degree of their desperation that will dictate the measure of their response.
Lol, this is cool. From 5 minutes ago:
BREAKING: @EsperDoD says memo on withdrawal is not accurate “there’s been no decision whatsoever to leave Iraq.” -
MORE: @EsperDoD adds that his staff is “trying to figure out” what memo is “there are no plans to leave” - may reflect repositioning, but not a withdrawal -
lololol
Who here is still defending these guys? Are you sure this administration is capable of going to war? Because the letter that was released? It was released by the Iraqi Prime Minister’s office.
LOL, I think we might know why Esper’s Chief of Staff quit this morning.
here is the letter https://twitter.com/Mustafa_salimb/status/1214272542506209280/photo/1
This will be the last time that the Pentagon awards a billion-dollar contract for cloud computing to a Ukrainian company.
Ok, it might happen two more times, then that is it!!