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ISIS Threatens Life of Twitter Founder After Thousands of Account Suspensions
Patrick O'Neill writes After a wave of account bannings that marks Twitter's most aggressive move ever against ISIS, new images circulated from militants shows founder Jack Dorsey in crosshairs with the caption "Twitter, you started this war." The famously tech-savy ISIS has met a number of defeats on American-built social media recently with sites like Twitter and YouTube banning the group's efforts in unprecedented numbers.
wonder if this is why YouTube never blocked or removed ISIS' videos.
Isis has access to Photoshop.
What horrors can they inflict with that?
He says they just need a job, but a majority had jobs before becoming radicalized. They often have college too. So to come out and say it's not faith based, when clearly they tie everything to their perverted version of Islam, either means he thinks we are not paying attention, or he's not.
if they aren't stopped now, you'll be fighting them in your streets someday
Precisely the argument used to rationalize the war in Vietnam.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
And basically every military action from 9/11 to today.
How will Europe stop Isis? Double down on appeasement?
If they begin to become an existential threat to the US, we have a big nuclear arsenal to keep them off our shores.
But they aren't even close right now. The challenge is to defeat them without killing tons of people in "collateral damage" that ends up turning people into militants who weren't before.
Because Obama is an islamic sympathizer. Whatever ISIS is doing, surely it's America's fault. And by God, It's Obama's destiny to correct that mistake.
For all you women out there being raped by these guys, my only advise is to carry lube. Oh, and learn to enjoy it. This isn't going away for a long long time.
Some stuff should be taken with a lot of salt. Jack Dorsey and most adults with some capacity of thinking wouldn't take this threat that seriously. ISIS is full of retarded youngsters who for some idiotic reason might be thinking that twitter "started" a "war" with them, if the news are true. But no one would believe that these youngsters could or ISIS themselves would waste time and money on this. They can't win or gain anything by this.
That said it doesn't mean that Jack Dorsey isn't in danger because some random lunatic now got another reason to kill off someone for whatever lunatic purpose. But that has always been the case, and always is for people that are more known than others. I'm sure Jack Dorsey as all rich and known people have appropriate security.
It's time to start seeing things a little bit more reasonable, especially when dealing with unreasonable people. I'd expect more of slashdot crowd than the "Daily Mail" one.
Fighting them in the streets? What silly notion is this? Are you trying to run for the Republican nomination or something?
Speaking of the Republican nomination I have to laugh that the Chicken hawk Commander-in-Chief wannabes when asked what they would do against ISIS list specifics pretty much right along the lines that which Obama is currently pursuing.
if they aren't stopped now, you'll be fighting them in your streets someday Precisely the argument used to rationalize the war in Vietnam. You mean precisely the rationalization for every war ever.
How will I avoid being struck by this online terror, forced to watch videos by these bullies? I am shaking in my........ oh wait, *click*
Funny how short your memory is. The last 10 years of fighting in foreign countries has worked out real well for us, hasn't it.
I think we'd have a much better chance fighting ISIS on our own turf than invading yet another Arab country that we could never hold and win.
Probably not. His head is too far up Mohammed's ass to see the real world.
According to the Wikipedia article on the subject, as of "15 January 2015, it was reported that over 16,000 airstrikes had been carried out by the Coalition". Please note that this coalition consists of both a backbone of U.S. military power, and surrounding Islam-majority states like Jordan, which the Obama administration has coaxed into the war.
Let me repeat that, in case you appear to misread it. 16,000 airstrikes
I'm not exactly sure how anyone can say we're not "stopping them". Indeed, about the only thing they can really do at this point is make snuff videos of idiots who wander into the region.
But go back to watching your wall-to-wall CPAC coverage and FOX lies. That seems to be what you prefer. No actual facts seem likely to persuade you.
Stop being a bunch of PIG DICKS and we'll stop hating you.
Love,
The Sane Part of The World
and the opposite argument was used to allow germany to take over poland. My guess is the right argument is somewhere in the middle
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The challenge is to defeat them without killing tons of people ...
Before we try to defeat them, maybe we should think about what will replace them. The reason we have ISIS is because we defeated Saddam Hussein without thinking much about what would come next. The rationale at the time was that whatever replaced him couldn't possibly be worse. Well, that was wrong.
Put "beheading" in the list of "against EULA" policies. Reopen the accounts. Play with the tweets to sow disorder in their ranks. If ISIS were "famously tech-savy" they could communicate without Twitter.
While I might disagree with the tactics and think murder is wrong regardless of who is committing it (ie the USA, ISIS, Saddam, Hitler, Stalin, George Bush, Obama, etc) I can't accept censorship. No matter how horrible the message is or how deprived the crime pictured is we need these freedoms to express ourselves free of oppression. Anything short of this and we are no better than those are attacking.
The reason for the short term memory is that for the average voter the last two wars cost them personally _nothing_ and were if anything entertainment. Now if the president came out and said we are going to mobilize again to fight ISIS and a new 2015 tax of $200/person will be levied to pay for the war you would see a change of heart in minute.
We're all in ISIS' gunsights. It's just a question of who's first
Finally, someone uses their brain. Sure, we could send a big army over there and stomp them into the ground. But then what?
And if anyone thinks Saddam's dead-enders were a big headache, what do you suppose a bunch of religious zealots will be?
Cue Mencken on problems and solutions.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
if they aren't stopped now, you'll be fighting them in your streets someday
Precisely the argument used to rationalize the war in Vietnam.
It was correct then it's correct now. The sad thing is you are too stupid to understand that.
The reason we have ISIS is that we were in such a rush to leave IRAQ we didn't bother to finish stabilizing the situation.
Seeing as Vietnam has been mentioned, I'll point out the exact same thing happened there. The war was brought to an acceptable conclusion and we pulled out before stability had been achieved. The cost that time was 4million dead Vietnamese and Cambodians. What do you think it will be this time around ?
If ISIS, Boko Haram, and Al Queda aren't stopped now, pretty soon they'll all be fighting each other... the plan each one has to be the only Muslims to establish a global caliphate are pretty much mutually exclusive, don't you think?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
No, they can also continue kidnapping young women to hand out to their soldiers as sex slaves, which as near as I can tell is their primary recruiting tool. I appreciate the air strikes, but air strikes alone don't solve the problem. What is needed is a regional coalition to put boots on the ground. The country in the best position to put boots on the ground is Iran, which may be why we are currently attempting to cozy up to them -- we share a common enemy.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Can i have the rabbit? Oh and the lettuce....I named him lenny
As I recall, the U.S. LOST the war in Vietnam; From your statement, I can only assume that you are seeing a lot of V.C. activity and heavy guerilla warfare in your neighbourhood these days?
-AC
Appeasement? Where have they engaged in "appeasement"?
That's part of it. The other parts were talking tough about Assad in Syria (and not DOING anything), and killing Khadaffi in Libya.
Vietnam: Crashmarik is exactly correct. The United States _won_ the war in Vietnam. The North Vietnamese were powerless, and the US left. But then the Soviets spent 2 years giving the North everything they needed, and then the North attacked again. The Dems in the Senate banned any additional military aid to the South. The South fell to the communists.
That's one of the reasons why ISIS is so fierce now; they know that the US is an inconsistent ally, especially with this administration. We're not going to do anything about it. (Of course, that's what the Germans and the Japanese were counting in in 1940 and 1941.)
...and not one has said that killing the founder of Twitter is a good idea!?
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
Our problem is that we believe the best way to stabilize Iraq is to force it to maintain unity under the borders dictated by the end of World War 1, while not recognizing there are three distinct cultures there who have a lot of bad blood betweeen them.
They are half a world away from the States. Why not let European countries, who are practically next door, take care of them?
"Here are the countries most concerned about ISIS" http://www.dailydot.com/politi... (Google Trends)
linked from summery link http://www.dailydot.com/tags/i... listing any news story they printed over ISIS.
"It is worth pointing out, however, that Brazil’s outsized interest most likely stems not from a concern with the terrorist group but from a fascination with the 27-year-old actress Ísis Valverde, who appears under the country's "related searches."
I'd point out that you are almost certainly a chicken-hawk too, but that would be an insult to poultry.
The US Quit the war in Vietnam. Big difference.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
" we didn't bother to finish stabilizing the situation."
And how exactly do we do that? There are no jobs to be had there, that's the problem. Bunch of poor people running around without handouts to appease them and this is what happens. Saddam dealt with it through fear and punishment...what other options are there?
At what point to you actually think that they would appreciate us invading their country and killing their citizens by the tens of thousands based on a lie?
Well then you must have missed the speeches and questions asked of the candidates at the recent CPAC.
BTW the Afghanistan and Iraq war price tag topped 6 Trillion dollars! Wars started by the last presidency. And the same crowd is now asking for another war! And you talk about deficits... LOL.
"The reason we have ISIS is because we defeated Saddam Hussein without thinking much about what would come next"
Such bullshit, imo - you don't think they knew of the possibilities? the mil plans for all sorts of things, don't rule this out.
The situation in Iraq could never be stabilised without essentially destroying part of the population. Successive decisions by external powers have weakened the various states that exist in that region. If the countries that surrounded Iraq had been strong enough to control their own borders and internationally integrated enough to not want to risk economic backlash by extending their borders we perhaps could have seen another Yugoslavia civil war and break up as a best possible outcome.
But instead Iraq was destabilised along with Afghanistan at the same time. This led to massive numbers of people moving around and their supporting infrastructure being destroyed. Pakistan then started to follow Afghanistan down the toilet as militant forces crossed the border causing even more people to join the fight. Then Syria started to collapse and support was given to the rebels meaning weapons and funds leaked into ever more radical hands.
At the moment the only things holding ISIS back is Asad in Syria and Iran.
The irony of this is so sad.
Attacking people who believe in free press and then threatening those that deny it to you on their own platform makes me both sad and happy at the same time.
What a confused, sad group of people.
Indeed evil will eventually turn on itself.
The difference being you can claim you quit the war to soothe your bruised ego?
But go back to watching your wall-to-wall CPAC coverage and FOX lies. That seems to be what you prefer. No actual facts seem likely to persuade you.
Why are you pretending that CNN and, to a lesser extent MSNBC, aren't also beating the war drum about ISIS?
There are more than 100 Twitter like networks all over the world. And there are about 70 or more YouTube networks some of them older than YouTube, just a small list of them can be found on Wikipedia, the biggest being in China, the second biggest is in Russia, and then you have YouTube and the Arab network equivalent to YouTube. The "ISIS" banning story is nonsense it is just meant for isolated social network users as in Twitter, and YouTube, I think they call it the wall around the Internet, is for people who do not use the real Internet www. Isolated Internet originally existed with AOL, which I believe is virtually dead now. For anybody who really users the Internet, understands exactly what I am saying. The killings of all those who have had their head chopped off are on the ISIS networks. If you speak to any of these people face-to-face the first thing they want to do is to show you pictures of killings which they have on their mobile phones. The Pakistanis laugh about it "you have got to be a man to look at this gruesome killing" is usually what they say when they are amongst a group of their own. The Twitter, story is literally nonsense.. The NSA = YouTube and Twitter, only wished they were on their Twitter network so they could monitor them. Those who don't know what I'm saying I don't care. Those who know what I'm saying you know what I mean ZzZzZzZz.
What if he just dropped money, and the terrorists bought TVs and sat around getting high on all that good hash, watching cartoons, instead of terrorizing.
ITT: chicken hawks.
They've destroyed 6000 old artefacts. They'll destroy the TVs too.
Scapegoat the Greeks, and double down on austerity.
I wonder, would the people screaming loudest to get involved yet again in that neighborhood be so loud if we tried to fund a war the proper way, with tax increases and belt tightening? Would you make personal sacrifices like pay cuts, strategic material rating,
If so, write your congresscritter and let them know.
Otherise you are pretty fscking financially irresponsible, or believe in some sort of infinite money supply, where we can be at war forever, and never have to pay the bill.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The US Quit the war in Vietnam. Big difference.
For really small values of Big. Ask the people of Vietnam who won.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Oh, wait, did you mean the airstrikes were IMPROVING our safety? ROFL WAFL!
It has allowed the Kurds to take back some territory. Without it, ISIS would have continued to expand their territory, and become a greater threat.
Oh yes, that's so very relevant. *eyeroll*
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Before we try to defeat them, maybe we should think about what will replace them.
Exactly. We have fallen into the same mentality of the people who live in that area. The problem is that they use whatever excuse is handy to justify killing their enemy. And their enemy does the same. And their enemy is everyone around them wh odoesn't pick their version of their diety. And they have been doing it forever and ever, world without end, amen.
If people want understand, read the bible. Not as a God so loved the world book, but as expressing the constant and neverending killing and war going on in it.
1. It's what they do.
2. They is all of 'em. 2. They will not stop until they decide to stop.
3. There is no forseeable time that will happen.
4. Because at some level, they enjoy it. You don't kill enemies for religion for thousands of years without enjoying it. It is religion and faith, and parts of that faith want the war to go on forever And we've been dropped ass deep into that shitstorm by people who want the world to end also. Just a different flavor of jerks. It's not hard to fan the flames of most of us either, because it is horrible what they are doing to each other, and yeah, that area is populated by some of the most evil motherfuckers ever hatched. They deserve death.
But, our involvement won't change a thing, except drive us bankrupt, and get people killed. 500 years from now if there are humans on the planet, they'll still be killing each other for their religion.Maybe they'll go high tech and lop of ftheir enemies heads with a laser.
And the asshats can spare us the "appeasement" crap, because I don't think Chamberlain was dropping bombs on (that place that shall not be named on the Internet) when he waved that stupid piece of paper at the British people.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Amusing news but I struggle to give a fuck. Honest. Next story please.
Discuss.
The US military don't get to make policy. They get to follow orders from the C-in-C.
Or maybe you forgot what happened during the Korean War when a certain US general tried to slip his leash?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The reason we have ISIS is because we defeated Saddam Hussein without thinking much about what would come next.
Not true. There were people talking in front of the UN audience, warning exactly what would come next in 2003.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Is it good to cut off access to the modern equivalent of the public square just because we don't like what is being said? Our ideas are better; must we fear, and attempt to silence, the toxic ideas we do not agree with? Which toxic ideas should we silence next?
Is it a victory to beat them by cutting off their ability to speak? How is this different from cutting off Mega's cashflow via PayPal and the credit cards?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
And you are actively trying to hamper Irans development. Syria has been the enemy of Israel (and because of that, the US) for a long time. Funny how things go. You creaty a bogieman out of some country, and suddenly they are your best hopes in the area because you can't do anything yourself. I guess the problem of attacking or not attacking ISIS will kinda start solving itself after ISIS manages to do some big strike on US soil. After that US will cry for blood and then it's politically imperative to go bomb their deserts. Long term that won't fix the problem, butthen again, long term has never been any consideration for financial or political elite. (or, well, it's only a concideration for personal wealth and matters)
Mod up as insightful!
Do you two even know anything about geography?
"Boots on the ground".
Fine, as long as they're your boots, or your children's boots. None of this 'deferment' or 'National Guard' exemption stuff.
AC
Should I take it as an unflattering reflection of the true strength of The Caliphate(tm) that it is being actively butthurt about having its twitter privileges revoked? That's the sort of thing that is pretty pathetic among individuals, much less would-be nation states allegedly arranged allong deity-ordained lines.
I heard one theory that ISIS is really a creation of Bashar al-Assad. Before ISIS was around, the West was all for regime change in Syria. Now we are effectively supporting the dictatorship in Syria.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Ask the people of Vietnam who won.
Oh, that's easy! The people who won are the ones who emigrated to the US and opened a chain of restaurants named "What the Pho . . . ?"
Slightly off topic, but Pho tastes absolutely delicious. An Asian shop nearby sells soup-base for Pho in jars. One teaspoon of that in boiling water and anything tastes great!
I actually speculated that my own, sweaty tennis shoes, would taste good when cooked in that stuff!
Back on topic, maybe if those ISIS folks sat down, with the rest of their enemies, for a communal meal of PolygamousRanchKid tennis shoes Pho . . . maybe they could hammer out a peace plan . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
A very easy thing to say when it isn't your boots.
Well, if you live in San Francisco you may well have been forced out of your home by V.C. activity; but that's a slightly different operation...
Because the rest of the civilized world has become dependent on the US military and our aerospace industry to actually do anything except posture and make speeches. It's convenient when we want to control the agenda, but it's inconvenient when April 15 rolls around or when there's a battle that doesn't yet seem to be ours. Perhaps with the leader of a social media site threatened, we will finally "get it" that this is our battle (yes, we are that shallow).
Our incredible spending on military and on pharmaceuticals are both forms of foreign aid to the rest of nations in the world, rich and poor alike -- we should count it as such and extract payment from the rich countries that benefit.
"'You know you never defeated us on the battlefield,' said the American colonel. The North Vietnamese colonel pondered this remark a moment. 'That may be so,' he replied, 'but it is also irrelevant.'"
-- Colonel Harry G. Summers Jr. and Colonel Tu, April 1975, described in the book On Strategy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Accomplished_speech
It's relevant. It's not particularly topical, I'll grant you that.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So Twitter has made a choice and choose to be a US propaganda channel? Do they ban all those repoblican warmongsters too, who I consider far more dangerous for this plannet than some fanatics in the middle east? Or can they just continue to use their free speech?
If you publicly choose sides, don't be surprised when it has consequences.
yeah, that will maybe piss everyone off, but still not enable ISIS to spread their terror messages.
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
Boko Haram are active in Chad. Chad borders Libya, where ISIS operate. Iran is currently in the way between ISIS and the Taliban, but it's debatable whether that makes things better or worse. It's not like two apparent enemies haven't attacked a third party before.
The world's smaller than you think.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Before we try to defeat them, maybe we should think about what will replace them. The reason we have ISIS is because we defeated Saddam Hussein without thinking much about what would come next. The rationale at the time was that whatever replaced him couldn't possibly be worse. Well, that was wrong.
Depends on your perspective. From a national security standpoint, if you really thought Saddam Hussein was going to be unleashing terrible modern weaponry, I would say job well-done. ISIS can probably keep that region from developing nuclear weapons any time in the next thousand years.
But from a humanitarian standpoint, what is worse than the prevalent rape, torture, murder, forced conversion, and the kind of oppression that outlaws any opposing thought? The oppressive leaders in the region such as Saddam Hussein have deserved credit for holding back the tide of lawless extremism, but what evil is it that ISIS could be credited with standing in the way of? Being as evil as possible is pretty much their objective. Saddam tried to conceal his atrocities. They literally publish theirs in their newsletters.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
What if he just dropped money, and the terrorists bought TVs and sat around getting high on all that good hash, watching cartoons, instead of terrorizing.
A thought just occurred to me. It seems to me we may have been going at this all wrong. We keep on dropping bombs on them and they keep going more batshit insane with rage. What would happen if instead we started a black market to funnel liquor, cocaine, meth, and heroine into ISIS controlled territory? If we got their soldiers more interested in getting high and/or drunk would this effectively crush their will to fight?
Then why did the USA turn their back on an ally and a now liberated country? Why did the peace treaty not contain any restrictions or war debts against the now defeated North Vietnamese? Why were so many of the combat statistics released by the victorious US military, false?
We can counter their claims with arguments.
Religion is not a valid argument for anything.
Sadly though many westerners also depend on religion, so they don't make that argument.
So instead: oppression.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
Both Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland (and divided it up between them when they won). It would have been hard to wage a war to liberate Poland from Germany without getting drawn into a war against the Soviet Union.
While one could quibble whether it was more the USA or more the Soviet Union that ultimately defeated Germany, it's hard to disagree that the Soviet Union switching sides in the middle of WWII wasn't a major event. Maybe it was inevitable that the Soviet Union would switch sides and maybe it wasn't. But if an attempt to liberate Poland were to have prevented the Soviet Union from switching sides then the outcome of WWII would almost certainly have been very different.
We hate you and want to kill you. And if you don't let us use your things we will threaten to kill you even harder. They have the logic of a whiny three year old..
Terrorism builds on fear, but when one leaves out emotion and rationally looks at numbers, daily traffic is still far deadlier than these nincompoops. So any fear built has to be irrational for terrorism to work. Without fear, they have no power. Without media attention, they'd likely go mostly unnoticed. Social media are media too, but things aren't working their way there due to the terms and conditions (what a bummer!) ... hence the death threats. Which made the news. Aaaand presto! They got what they wanted.
People always bring up Neville Chamberlain and his "peace in our time" speech - let me ask you this: what would you have done in his stead?
Go to war? Kick Germany's butt? Yeah, lets put Nazi aggression in its place, teach them a lesson.
Ok. Go to war with what? in 1938 we didn't have an effective army or airforce, our only real might was in the Royal Navy. Which works wonders for stopping land based aggression. Our airforce was still largely made up of older designs, especially the Hawker Hurricane which was a design based on a biplane... It would be a few years yet until we had an airforce of any real capability.
So he tried a different approach - it was well recognised even back then that Germany had been royally screwed over by the agreements at the end of the first world war, so perhaps some appeasement was in order to try and placate that issue - was Germany just taking back what should never have been taken from it in the first place?
Of course we went to war anyway, and under Chamberlains watch - and guess what happened on our first outing? We got our butts kicked and sand kicked in our face. We lost 40,000 troops to German prison camps and got thrown off the continent at Dunkirk.
And that was after we had stepped up our war footing. Imagine what it would have been like if we didn't have have Neville Chamberlains two years to get to a point where we were able to just about ensure that Nazi Germany didn't take the British Isles as well as the continent...
You are confusing money - liquid institutional financial liabilities - with real resources. The United States can never run out of US dollars. It can run out of real resources. You have to make the case that the US is in danger of running out of food, metal or human capital, since it can never run out of a financial asset of which it is sole issuer.
.: Semper Absurda
You do realize that the ISIS uprising is a direct consequence of the Iraqi war, don't you?
Simple. Because political correctness and spineless coward politicians prevents European countries from doing anything that would in anyway inconvenience the islam enemy that is already heavily infiltrated in many European societies and upper establishment. Those brave enough to stand up and speak out are quickly labeled racist, compared to Hitler or otherwise framed so their worries don't count. Muslims have made it an art to label themselves 'victim' of every attempt to stop their sick ideology. They even go as far as trying to change the laws so criticism on their fascist ideology will be made illegal.
Europe is lost. I tell my kids to move to another country as far away as they can, and if they find a place that isn't infested with islam, set up defenses.
Ask me how I really feel..
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
You have "the most virtuous man in the city" engaging in incest and offering up his daughters (underage by today's remit) for gang rape.
And don't give me "That's in the OT, we don't believe THAT!", because without the OT, there's no God and no Original Sin for Jesus Christ to die on the cross for that requires me to believe in him or not get into heaven.
A historical aside: it was common in Europe for kings and princes to get betrothed to girls who are still toddlers, get married at 9 or a little later so that in three years, if they're still wanted and the political agreement working (it was usually political marriages), they would consumate the marriage and it would become un-nullable when puberty hit, if not, then the marriage would not have been consummated, the girl still a virgin, and nobody has been given unavoidable insult requiring war.
More recently, USA purchased and trafficked in underage boys for the sex industry in the Middle East to keep local warlords happy. You can't go decrying the warlords buggering little boys when you're the one supplying.
The country in the best position to put boots on the ground is Iran, which may be why we are currently attempting to cozy up to them -- we share a common enemy.
Huh? The Iranian dictator was put in place by the US. Cozening up shouldn't be needed unless they screwed up majorly and put a psychopath in charge as usual.
The Iranian people once looked up to western democracies, removed their dictator and got a democracy. When their elected leader started talking about nationalizing the oil (As a way to build a welfare society without having extreme taxes.) CIA decided that it was against the interest of the US and helped with reinstating the dictatorship.
Now's the time for ISIS to launch their own TerrorTwitter© service. They can charge a subscription for the use of the service :)
@ShanghaiBill: "The reason we have ISIS is because we defeated Saddam Hussein without thinking much about what would come next."
@hcs_$reboot: "Not true. There were people talking in front of the UN audience, warning exactly what would come next in 2003."
I think what ShanghaiBill meant is that no one in the Bush administration did much thinking, if indeed they were capable of rational introspection.
Ehh... Hawker Hurricane based on a biplane? Are you serious?
Yes, the punishment of Germany after WWI was way to harsh and we should kick the French in their nuts for that... but Nazi Germany could have been stopped early 1930's.
Chamberlain was only thinking shortterm and was to eager to preserve peace while war was inevitable...
Nice troll man.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Note that both points in your quote are quite true.
The North Vietnamese never beat the US on the battlefield and lost the war with the US.
Alas, once the US went home, there was a SECOND Vietnam War, with the sides being USSR+North Vietnam vs South Vietnam. The North won that one.
It's one of the things that can happen when you decide to quit fighting unilaterally.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Its interesting that you brought up the foreing aid aspect of military spending. Its also world security as most of Europe has demonstrated through history that whenever they have large armies, they tend to use them against each other. But your point is proven recently as Itally made a few threats against ISIS and had to walk them back when they realized ISIS forces outnumbered their own troop strength significantly. While not a permenant problem, it shows how little concern they had for their national protection because of the strength of allies.
No, the reason we have ISIS is because Obama tried to defeat Assad without actually fighting him. Obama empowered anyone who wanted to overthrow Assad in Syria to do so and provided them with some logistical support without paying any attention to what they wanted to put in his place. Further he did so without providing them sufficient support to actually overthrow Assad. He did the same thing in Libya, although there he provided sufficient support to overthrow a stable government. For that matter he attempted to do the same thing in Egypt, but it turned out that Egypt had not only a stable government, but a legitimate one (as in the people actually supported the government they had despite not supporting its head--Mubarak).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
"You know you never defeated us on the battlefield.."
Actually, not true. Many battles were lost by the US during the Vietnam war. I indicate a few below. There were more, but hiding embarrassing losses is standard procedure in any military organization, and the American military were HUGELY anxious to present a victory to the American public.. This is shown in that documentary about the Battle of Ong Thanh, where survivors tell how commanders tried to spin that loss as a victory, while the loss of FSB Ripcord was hidden from the public until 1985, and the slaughter at Ho Bo Woods wasn't recognized until 2011.
Battle of Ap Bac
Battle of Dong Xoai
Death of Supply Column 21
Battle for LZ Albany
Operation Paul Revere IV
Battle of Cu Nghi
Battle of Ho Bo Woods
August 1967 Air Battle
Kingfisher Battle
Slaughter at LZ Margo
Convoy Ambush near An Khe
Operation Houston II
Battle for LZ Loon
Battle of Two July
Battle of Hamburger Hill
Battle near FSB Professional
Firebase Airborne Overrun
"...Before we try to defeat them, maybe we should think about what will replace them...."
Exactly!
The most sensible way to run these feuding countries is to have a strong leader, like Nasser. Someone from the more moderate Sunni side, but with his fingers on the levers of power. Someone from the Baathist party? Someone with a track record of reconciling religious differences and running a successful secular state in this difficult environment.
We used to have just such a person. But we had him killed in 2006....
Well we thought we'd copy America's lead but you dive headfist into dumb-fuck un-winnable wars so fast we never got the chance. Also, before you get too smug about the mistake European leaders made with appeasement 60 years ago, look at how your own country was reacting to the exact same threat at the same time.
That likely could have been stopped before poland was even invaded had the allies from WWI enforced the provisions of the versailes treaty and did something when germany remilitarized the rhine.
But yes,we often forget that Russis was aiding germany at the start of WWII.
No. Appeasement in the context of WWII was the other European powers lack of response to German militarisation and its actions in Czechoslovakia. It should be highlighted that the American president at the time openly praised Chamberlain for appeasing Germany. People who think appeasement was a mistake see Poland as the consequence of this (Germany got away with earlier actions and thought it could get away with this), but the response to Hitler's invasion of Poland was to go to war.
If you're going to use historical examples then at least stick to the established facts.
But that was te phony war(Sep 1939-May 1940): the English helped the French man the Maginot line, but not anything else. In May, Hitler then really started the war and overran Belgium, Holland and France.
These people (ha, such a word for that kind of pond scum) do not want peace. What they really want is that other Islamic people say: yes, you do get a free card for murdering people if you are a muslim, even if you kill other muslims.
And the Kurds
Actually, no country went to war against Germany because of their attack on Poland. Neither England, until Germany attacked them. Nor Russia, which actually attacked Poland from the East. Nor France which didn't do anything. Declaring war by itself means nothing, in situation like this. It's like saying "I support you" to someone being murdered when you stand nearby an just watch.
Everyone knew that war was inevitable, Chamberlin included, I personally believe. The agreement gave them time build their army and make alliances with other countries. England didn't have the military power to anything but make an agreement. A few years later, they did.
"Lost" and "Won" are very relative things when it comes to wars. The US bogged down and drained the communists in Vietnam. It did not achieve total military victory, no, but not did it did it lose the big-picture fight (the cold war) in the end either.
The heads of several other South East Asian states (Singapore, Malysia) have stated that US presence in Vietnam did state that US action in Vietnam did reduce communist influence. Eliminate, no. Reduce, yes. The US did win die Cold war without much of a shooting war too.
Wars do not have to end with military victory or loss. Nor do they have to be fought in the classic sense either. Witness peacekeeping forces in Africa. They do not (too often) get involved in shooting, nor is there much hope for something like total victory, but they do use the threat of force to limit more serious violence.
In the much larger context of the cold war the US intervention in Vietnam was something like this. A battle that showed other allies that the US was, in fact, prepared to put boots on the ground when it came down to it.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
Maybe the USA should stop sending weapons to ISIS.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
This. The Sykes-Picot Agreements were a bad idea and now, 100 years later, the world is paying. The fighting would have happened sooner or later in any case.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
Oh, wait, did you mean the airstrikes were IMPROVING our safety? ROFL WAFL!
It has allowed the Kurds to take back some territory. Without it, ISIS would have continued to expand their territory, and become a greater threat.
I firmly believe that the Kurds are the only ones with the willpower to stand up to and defeat ISIS. The problem is that the US cannot supply arms to the Kurds because they also want an independent Kurdish state which would essentially destroy the friendly government we have in Iraq.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Good! We can take the arrows. And those pinko liberal fucks can suffer in the truth being espoused. They should be afraid; very afraid!
The Hurricane was descended from the Hawker Fury biplane, and more generally used "proven" design methods rather than innovating like the Spitfire did, which meant it was quicker & cheaper to manufacture and repair.
It did not achieve total military victory, no, but not did it did it lose the big-picture fight (the cold war) in the end either.
Those are all english words but I have no fucking idea what it means. If you were trying to convey a thought, you failed.
Drivel. There was no "second" Vietnam war, it was all just part of the same struggle between capitalist West and communist East that started in the early '50s when Ho Chi Minh rebelled against France.
The North Vietnamese won because of Ho Chi Minh's strategy of attrition. His people would tolerate terrible casualties for far longer than we would, so he didn't need to win, he just had to not lose until we couldn't take the toll any longer.
This time it's different though.
Because of the Arab Spring, Western Muslims started to be more engaged around freedom in the Arab countries.
The civil war in Syria (where at first freedom fighters started fighting against the Assad government) succeeded in actually engaging young and influenceable Western Muslims on the field who struggled with their mixed Western and Muslim identity.
ISIS was very successful in utilizing that momentum to draw more young Western Muslims into their ranks later on and many tens of thousands European young muslims (many of them under-age) are now fighting with ISIS.
This is very worrisome because these can get back into Europe since they have passports and under the Visa-Waiver program could just board a plane to the US for example.
In that sense, this is now a global conflict. It's not just some tribes fighting against each other and the US intervening to keep control of the oil. It's an exodus of young people who are getting brainwashed and are ticking time-bombs when/if they get back to their actual Western home country.
You'll find that the people you want to kill aren't as docile as we were in the 1930s.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The only way the US cannot run out of US dollars is to print a bazillion of them, just like the US is doing for a few decades now. This duels inflation which in turn makes everything more expensive for US citizens. It's a bit like raising VAT.
As long as your economy grows more than the raise/inflation, you're fine. I mean, your standard of living doesn't decrease, but it will not increase as much as if there was no dollars printed.
All in all, YOU are paying with real US dollars every time the government prints out new bills.
Where in Europe are we talking about? The UK has only just withdrawn troops from Muslim Afghanistan and is currently bombing Muslim ISIS. The government also enacted the extremely unIslamic gay marriage law last year, so if the Muslims are taking over our country and imposing whatever on us then where are they?
Actually France and the UK both had a better Army and Air Force than Germany in 1938. They were in even better position than in 1936 when the allowed Germany to re occupy the Rhineland. Of course WWII might have been avoided if the UK and France had listened to the US and tried to create a just peace. Instead they threatened to not pay back the loans they took out...
BTW France and the UK never did repay the loans for WWI. They thought that the US was being greedy. I guess 116,000 American lives plus the billions the US spent on a war that had nothing to do with the US was not enough.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
LOL it's like he decided that the "F-Troop Theme Song" was an accurate descriptor of military tactics.
It also shot down more German aircraft than the Spitfire.
Frankly the Spitfire is one of those aircraft that was built way too long. After about 1943 it was just not all that useful since it lacked range.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
What I really can't understand is why young girls are leaving Europe to go and be with these guys in Syria. They don't get to fight, that is forbidden except in the most desperate of circumstances. Instead they get to be sex toys and baby factories for beaded losers with poor personal hygiene, who will eventually die and quickly forget about them while indulging in their 72 virgins.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Nothing like censorship.
Such bullshit, imo - you don't think they knew of the possibilities? the mil plans for all sorts of things, don't rule this out.
At the time they said we'd be greeted warmly as liberators by the Iraqi populace. Bush is not a smart man.
On the other hand, splitting up the country in three parts isn't a happy solution either, when one of the territories has most of the oil.
Finally, someone uses their brain. Sure, we could send a big army over there and stomp them into the ground. But then what?
It would be fun to watch, though. *getspopocorn* ISIS are finally evil villains who are just plain evil and ntohing else.
The stupidity of Britain in pathetically weakening their defenses after WW1 and right up through the late thirties was responsible for not being able to stomp Hitler when the necessity arose and the opportunity to do so was golden. "Peace in our time" was effectively the mantra right from 1919 until 1 September 1939. The US suffered from the same moronic weakness. Germany was not a very strong power in 1939; they were furiously racing to rearm while Britain slept, and they were more than a match for Poland when the time came and Britain and France were too cowed to lift a finger to help Poland.
It would have been royally appropriate if Germany had walked over Britain like they did France. They came within an inch of doing it, but in the event the tiny RAF fighter force ended up showing that Germany's luftwaffe was terribly deficient. Also, the British and US navies hadn't been gutted as badly as the land and air forces, and Hitler didn't even try for a surface fleet. Luckily, Germany, Italy and Japan could not coordinate their forces enough to fight their way out of a paper bag.
Then after WW2, exactly the same thing, as the west couldn't fall over themselves fast enough to disarm, until Korea woke them up.
The cold war was the exception. And after 1992, the same broken record with getting suckered by twits nattering about the "peace dividend" lie. Even now Britain and the US are weak as kittens, and you got the absurdity of trying to fight Iraq and Afghanistan in laborious slow motion on the cheap in terms of manpower and equipment. Not cheap in terms of back-breaking expense though.
Nonsense. Germany was zero threat to the US. The Japanese threatened our naval power in the Pacific, but were never the slightest threat against the homeland. What should the US have done? Act as the hired mercenaries of Europe?
How is that in ANY WAY different from the US.
SO CLOSE!
Yes, we deposed Saddam Hussein. HOWEVER, one of the collosal military mistakes of all time was made by disbanding the Iraqi Army! That led to essentially, unbridled anarchy for all of Iraq. If you really want to look to a single event, cause for ISIS to develop, IMO, that is it!
I would imagine that he can afford some pretty bad ass security. Maybe attacking him can help thin their ranks a bit.
Taking on the 1938 German army would have been a relative cakewalk. The problem with Dunkirk (wasn't that a great victory?) is that the British stayed on the defensive, and by definition it's impossible to win whilst playing defense.
Add the Czechs and their surprisingly good army, and the Little Maginot Line (the Germans tested the fortifications after invading and found them shockingly sound) , and 1938 Germany has big problems. Its army gets bogged down in Czechoslovakia while the British drive for Berlin.
People always bring up this "educated, balanced" riposte to Chamberlain's infamous act. It's bullshit. Let's put the dagger in the back of this theory once and for all: you know who Chamberlain saw fit NOT to invite to the Munich conference? The Czechs! He gave them the middle finger and handed them a fait accompli. Don't even get me started about the great betrayal of Poland, a nation Britain was pledged to defend and yet did fuck-all to help. Fuck Chamberlain and fuck appeasement.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Rapist or wannabe.
Girls are for doing whatever they want to do.
Read the law.
You do realize that the ISIS uprising is a direct consequence of pulling out too early after the second Iraqi war, don't you?
"He did the same thing in Libya, although there he provided sufficient support to overthrow a stable government"
Yes, a civil war/revolution is the definition of stable. Seeing the next sentence it seems you believe the US engineered all these revolutions... Conspiracy theories are so funny.
"For that matter he attempted to do the same thing in Egypt, but it turned out that Egypt had not only a stable government, but a legitimate one (as in the people actually supported the government they had despite not supporting its head--Mubarak)"
Yes the egyptian revolution is totally Obama's doing, well if you ask the mubarak supporters, if you ask the morsi supporters, they will tell you the second revolution is totally Obama's doing. Of course the truth is that the US doesn't have as much power of egypt as a lot of people seem to think.
And again revolution are the hallmark of a stable government, and the people totally support this dictatorship that's why it's still there, not because the military/police are so powerful that they managed to regain power as soon as the new government had popularity problems.
And they were right! Did you end up fighting them on your streets???
This is as old as the bible. In fact, it's in the bible and it's not only approved of by God, it's actually Moses that gives the order to do it in at least one case. That wise, gentle and worthy in the sight of God man.
Numbers 31:7-18
They attacked Midian just as the LORD had commanded Moses, and they killed all the men. All five of the Midianite kings – Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba – died in the battle. They also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword. Then the Israelite army captured the Midianite women and children and seized their cattle and flocks and all their wealth as plunder. They burned all the towns and villages where the Midianites had lived. After they had gathered the plunder and captives, both people and animals, they brought them all to Moses and Eleazar the priest, and to the whole community of Israel, which was camped on the plains of Moab beside the Jordan River, across from Jericho.
Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the leaders of the people went to meet them outside the camp. But Moses was furious with all the military commanders who had returned from the battle. "Why have you let all the women live?" he demanded. "These are the very ones who followed Balaam's advice and caused the people of Israel to rebel against the LORD at Mount Peor. They are the ones who caused the plague to strike the LORD's people. Now kill all the boys and all the women who have slept with a man. Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves.
Here he is clearly calling to murder all the civilians (a war crime), except for teenage and pre-teen girls who are virgins. Those are handed out to his troops to rape and force into marriage.
BTW France and the UK never did repay the loans for WWI. They thought that the US was being greedy. I guess 116,000 American lives plus the billions the US spent on a war that had nothing to do with the US was not enough.
That's okay. Eisenhower broke them over the 1956 Suez Crisis. The UK, in particular, was taught a hard lesson about its new role in the world.
Interestingly, the major point of leverage against the UK was their debt held by the US government. Ike threatened to dump their debt, which would have destroyed their currency.
There is actually a growing consensus not only that Chamberlain did what he could, but that he also doesn't get enough credit, especially since a good bit of the common knowledge of the war's history came from Churchill himself and his books, who not only didn't like Chamberlain but had little reason to give him any credit (and was rather fond of giving himself a lot of credit*). The worldwide depression had hurt everyone, the Brits included. England wasn't ready for war. And Chamberlain wasn't "just an appeaser". So while he declared "peace in our time", which I honestly see as little more than basic politicking, he also upon his return began gearing up for the coming conflict. Chamberlain is the one that began the rebuilding of England's military and industrial forces, and if he hadn't done that when he did we may very well have lost England.
(*this is not to overly denigrate Churchill who was an exceptional wartime leader. but there is a reason he didn't stay in power long after the war.)
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
again: we've bombing them since September.
and they are actually losing at this point because they aren't running an insurgency, but instead conventional combat tactics. which leaves them very susceptible to our superior tech, training, and numbers.
remember: there actually aren't that many ISIS fighters.
what they got, they got through surprise and the time it took us to organize a response.
and they are all over in Iraq/Syria with no way or means of attacking the US let alone getting here.
They aren't interested in fighting an insurgency or committing terror attacks because they truly believe their eventual victory has been ordained by God, therefore they have been fighting us, the Jordanians, the Kurd, and everyone else in open combat. Whether that will last, remains to be seen. But for now, they are not a threat outside the region they've claimed for themselves, and they are losing.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
if they aren't stopped now, you'll be fighting them in your streets someday
Precisely the argument used to rationalize the war in Vietnam.
Tell that to the (North) Koreans.
One of the main tenants of American foreign policy during the Cold War was that of containment. If Communism could be contained it would implode on itself instead of devouring others. This worked in Korea and the two sides reached a stale mate that we're continue to see 'til this day.
In Vietnam, a similar stale mate was reach in that there was a North and South as well when the Paris Peace Accords were signed, and the US withdrew in 1973. The South then generally only used its owns soldiers to protect itself from the North with support of the US through money and materials. Until 1975 when Congress voted to end support. And then the South fell.
While a lot of the people that US supported in Vietnam (and elsewhere) weren't angels, the alternative/s weren't much better. Or do you think that people are better off under Communist regimes?
ISIS may have come to the fore because of the vacuum, but don't make the mistake of thinking these groups are all the same.
They are not.
Particularly in this case.
ISIS is an outgrowth of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
But it's worldview is fundamentally different.
AQII was an insurgency.
ISIS is not.
ISIS began attacking Bashar Asad's forces in Syria, but not because they supported the rebellion, but because it was to them the beginning of the building of the caliphate they believe in. And that's also were they first began alienating people as they also attacked other rebel group, or basically anyone who didn't support their quest for the caliphate.
Then they began moving into Iraq, again to seize the territory they believe to the sacred caliphate. They moved fast, taking advantage of the fact it always takes the west time to organize any sort of response. But they haven't made any progress since we've started engaging them in combat. They are actually losing now, as they have alienated everyone in the area. Everyone is fighting against them.
And they aren't waging an insurgency, but open conventional warfare.
And because they are outmatched in terms of training, equipment, and numbers, that has led to their momentum being halted, and them losing ground.
But they don't seem to case because they don't believe they can lose. So that also so far show no signs of converting to an insurgency. This isn't like the Taliban, who prior to our invasion was essentially the ruling party of Afghanistan, in charge of everything, but once we showed up they gave everything up and melted away, blending into the population to fight an insurgency.
No, ISIS is instead intent on meeting us and our coalition head to head.
And as long as they continue to do so, they will continue to lose, their horrific videos and social media propaganda not withstanding.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Complete bollocks Im afraid - the Hurricane was a good, stable gun platform but it lacked the speed, rate of climb and agility of either the Spitfire MkI or MkII or the Bf109 during the Battle of Britain - the reason the Hurricane achieved higher kill numbers than the Spitfires was because Hurricane squadrons were tasked with bomber interception, while the Spitfire squadrons were tasked with ensuring the accompanying Bf109 fighter escort was kept off the Hurricanes.
The Hurricane had no developmental capacity in the airframe, by the time of the Battle of Britain it was pretty much done as an airframe - once the later marks of Bf109 and the Fw190 were introduced by the Luftwaffe, the Hurricane was horrifically outclassed and relegated to other duties (most either shipped out to Africa or the far east, where they were still a match for early Japanese fighters or could carry out convoy escort duties - you also saw Hurricanes used as catapult launched convoy protection aircraft, because they were considered disposable).
The Spitfire, on the other hand, was developed into the MkV as a stop gap measure, and then into the MkIX as a full Fw190 competitor which more than held its own. The Spitfire was then further developed into later marks, including a full engine change with the switch from the Merlin to the Griffon engine.
The Spitfire didn't have the legs of later aircraft because it was designed as a home country defence fighter - in its later guises it certainly spent time over occupied France and Germany from home bases in the UK (hence the camo cahnge from green and brown to green and grey - that was purely for aircraft intended to fly over occupied europe), but it was never designed as a long range bomber escort, which is why the RAF asked for the North American P-51 Mustang to be developed (yup, would never have been built if the RAF hadn't asked for it - the USAAF wasn't interested until it received several demonstrator examples from the RAF production line).
This is how out of touch a growing number of RWNJs are:
"Growing Number Of Conservatives Seem Utterly Unaware That Obama Is Attacking ISIS"
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/...
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Actually France and the UK both had a better Army and Air Force than Germany in 1938. They were in even better position than in 1936 when the allowed Germany to re occupy the Rhineland.
I disagree with both of those assertions - the Luftwaffe already had 2,100 Bf109 aircraft delivered pre-1939, while the RAF had a grand total of 500 Hurricanes (which were already outclassed by the Bf109) and no Supermarine Spitfires until mid-1938.
The Luftwaffe were also combat experienced through their involvement in the Spanish Civil War etc, while RAF pilots were not.
Also, the UK did repay our WW1 loans - they were paid back by the proceeds of a War Bond issued by Neville Chamberlain in 1932 (which the current government is refinancing this month).
These people (ha, such a word for that kind of pond scum) do not want peace. What they really want is that other Islamic people say: yes, you do get a free card for murdering people if you are a muslim, even if you kill other muslims.
Even more than that, they just have a deep seated need for, and joy of, killing other humans. It's in all humans to some extent - witness our long history of death dealing to other humans - but the middle east has what I think is a genetic predisposition to the trait.
If the entire world was converted to whatever they worship, they'd certainly not stop killing.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I always thought about this. What if in all these war torn areas instead of becoming militarily involved we just started doing massive aerial drops of food, water, possibly some simple tech for getting online, maybe some power generators. Everything dropped would have the american flag plastered all over it. Over time imagine the amount of good will that would begin to foster with local populations. If you did it long enough and on a large enough scale, whenever some fundamentalist comes along and starts spouting about America being the great Satan how many would get behind him then. And I bet it would cost a lot less than direct military action anyway.
The guy does have a point.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
ISIS just needs a little minding. Waves of drone attacks like starlings in migration ought to keep them dodging instead of slicing.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
So we "rushed" to leave the single longest military engagement in the history of the United States? (Afghanistan is probably #1 now, but we're having problems with stability)
What would stability have looked like? Everyone getting lattes at Starbucks?
The reason we have ISIS is because the US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. It was a war of attrition from day one on the part of those who call the area home. The current result is not a surprise, the only question was how long would we occupy? The balance of power shifted and the bad guys just went underground, planning what they would do after the US left. And then they did it.
BlameBillCosby.com
Unless you have an enemy with obvious logistical targets, airstrikes are pretty useless. Great, you blew up a jeep with a machine gun on it. The cost of your bomb plus the flight time of the drone is probably more than the jeep was worth. Oh, by the way, which side was that jeep on? With intermingled and fluid borders, and little direct intelligence, it's kind of hard to be sure...
Anyway, as others have pointed out, all US intervention has accomplished since 9/11 (and before, but that's a different discussion) is to make bad situations even worse. What's the saying? "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result". US interventions are not working. It's time for the US to mind it's own business, and let the Middle East sort itself out.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
and Iraq
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
We didn't "let them" take over Poland. They did it despite us drawing a line in the sand there, and we made good our threats and went to war over the invasion of Poland. You might be thinking of Czechoslovakia?
And the even bigger concern that an independent Kurdistan would also include a sizeable chunk of NATO ally Turkey? That is a bigger concern than Iraq. I'd bet we would have carved out an independent Kurdistan in a heartbeat if not for Turkey.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
It's well known that the EU routinely negotiates with terrorists. They've paid millions to ISIS: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07...
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
If that's what you got from the Bible maybe you do belong over in the Middle East.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Dear ISIS:
May I suggest a novel approach to your otherwise doomed venture into society building.
Instead of threatening the life of Twitter's founder, why not do something productive and BUILD an equivalent competing service which you can use without the threat of having your accounts suspended. I would suggest the name iSitter (it kinda rhymes with ISIS, but Apple may have issues with it).
Otherwise, sit down and shut up, and let the grown-ups discuss.
I think I may have the solution to all of this, with one quick stroke: Build a wall surrounding the entire USA. I would suggest something that would be permanently manned and would stretch out into the sea as manned outposts (think militarized oil rigs). Anyone coming in via land or sea would have to go through strict immigration (cavity search please).
The sheer scale of the project would ensure full employment for decades. The military budget could be scaled back significantly, to provide the $$$. Provisions for trade would be ensured, but the idea would be for the US to basically completely pull back from the world. Let others deal with China and Russia. We have enough resources and land to become completely self dependant. We could build a virtual eden, leaving the rest of the world to rot.
Why the hell do people love "moderates"? This is how I see it.
A moderate is downright scary. A moderate is someone who claims they believe in one thing, but consistently practices another, someone who does things that they know is wrong or evil, but does them anyways due to external pressure. A moderate, in a sense, does not even care about good or evil. They care about how they look.
"Extremists", by contrast, know what they do, know what they want, and know how they want to get it. The extremist will not likely change sides very quickly due to external disapproval. An extremist knows his good from his evil, and will fight for what they call good to the death.
The moderate can be led to do anything with enough rationalization, can be convinced to follow any sociopath into battle. Extremists will not.
But no, hypocrisy is normal, is ENCOURAGED. No, you who follow the holy book as you proclaim you do, YOU are evil. YOU are without morals. YOU need to be destroyed.
Fuck this.
Or read TE Lawrence's The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Lawrence as in "Lawrence of Arabia". In it while describing Arab history and culture he briefly mentions Wahabism as this heresy (the Arab majority opinion on it not his) that pops up once or twice a century, the vast majority of Arabs try to ignore it but eventually put it down once its practitioners start to get too annoying.
This was general opinion 100 years ago before petrodollars allowed its practitioners to export and evangelize Wahabism (build mosques and schools promoting it) to formerly "moderate" regions. Before petrodollars created a more isolated country and local economy (Saudi Arabia), when ordinary people had more interaction with foreigners.
Bill Clinton once stated that it is the policy of the US government to remove Sadam from power. So its not solely a Bush thing.
Regarding stupidity, that was more the career diplomats not the white house of military. The invasion went well, its the long term occupation that went badly. Most notably due to the decisions of career diplomats, not those in he white house or pentagon. For example the disbanding of the Iraqi army, the diplomat in charge of the provisional authority did that without consulting the white house or pentagon. The pentagon would have liked to remove high ranking officers and put junior officers under command of US officers, so as to use Iraqi units for day-to-day peacekeeping and maintaining order in the streets. As was done with some German and Japanese troops at the end of WW2.
I'm sorry but ISIS was not created by the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. ISIS was created by the "Arab Spring", ...
No. ISIS is a re-branded al-Quaeda in Iraq. Which was thoroughly defeated by US and local Sunni forces during the Anbar awakening. Things went so poorly for proto-ISIS that they told AQ leadership to stop sending volunteers, the cause was failing too badly.
After the US' total abandonment of Iraq al-Quaeda rebranded as ISIS and made a second attempt. With the Sunni's no longer being able to call on US support, in particular air strikes, and being alienated from a dysfunctional Shia-dominated government ISIS was able to get many Sunni leaders to flip sides once again.
In short, ISIS is just al-Quaeda 2.0. Dad's al-Quaeda 1.0 lost its cool as it leadership went into hiding, became ineffective and died one after another in US bombings or raids. AQ 1.0 was just an old guy ranting about his lawn on video. AQ 2.0 has all the hip videos and stylish modern fashions the kids love.
The reason we have ISIS is because
We tolerate Islamic Wahhabism in exchange for Saudi oil. To stop what comes next we have to demand that the Saudi religious leaders tone down their extreme version of Islam which encourages splinter groups of extremists outside of Saudia Arabia to thrive. The only way to do that is to stop buying their oil. Unfortunately the west is not in an economic or political state to wean themselves off cheap Saudi oil, to do so would dangerously weaken the west.
The BBC says you are wrong.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_...
"And while the UK dutifully pays off its World War II debts, those from World War I remain resolutely unpaid. And are by no means trifling. In 1934, Britain owed the US $4.4bn of World War I debt (about £866m at 1934 exchange rates). Adjusted by the Retail Price Index, a typical measure of inflation, £866m would equate to £40bn now, and if adjusted by the growth of GDP, to about £225bn.
"We just sort of gave up around 1932 when the interwar economy was in turmoil, currencies were collapsing," says Prof Harrison."
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Nah - look at Somalia. Just makes them crazier.
What killed the ME-109 in the Battle of Britain was lack of range. The need for a defensive fighter for the allies was pretty much done by 1943. Even without the Mustang the US had the P-47 and the P-38 both of which could do escort duty. The problem with 38 where solved with the j model. The UK had a much better aircraft in the Tempest and could have had an even better one if they had developed the Fury.
The UK really seems to have an odd obsession with some aircraft and keep them around way longer than the should have. The Spitfire, Meteor, and the Nimrod are three that come to mind while letting other really good aircraft rot away like the Victor and Vulcan.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
We are playing by the rules with ISIS and we shouldn't be. We have an administration that refuses to call them "Islamic terrorists" which is what they plainly are.
Any ground that ISIS holds needs to be seen as tainted, regardless of inhabitants. We know where they store their women and children. We know the cities in Syria they see as holy. A couple of fuel air bombs will really hurt them. After this, keep dropping fuel air bombs 24/7. Even if they don't die from the heat and explosions, they will die of suffocation. Ask the Vietnamese what napalms strikes are like. I served in the military and have witnessed napalm strikes. They work, they are highly effective, but... you have to have guys with balls leading an effort to use them. Napalm is cheap and it works. Whatever captured lands they occupy should be fair game regardless of occupancy of innocents. Short of actually killing these terrorists like the roaches they are, they will never be eradicated.
Ask Germany, Japan, and Vietnam what it's like to have be carpet bombed. It works. Full stop.
Before we try to defeat them, maybe we should think about what will replace them.
Exxon?
Send infected whores, too.
And forced impregnation. "Sons for Soldiers" you can call.
Life is not for the lazy.
Animals!
Not likely. It isn't like simply making that stuff available makes a user out of you.
These guys are brainwashed into killing people with rusty, dull knives, they can certainly be brainwashed into not buying some smack.
What will actually happen is that the "targets" will collect the drugs and then sell them back to the West to make more money to kill more people.
These guys are already high on something completely different.
We already sort of do that. All they need to do is either tell everyone that they have bombs in them, or go collecting them in pickup trucks with machine guns. At that point, they'll re-paint them with ISIS logos and "provide" them to themselves or their population.
These guys aren't stupid, they control the ground, and they've been turning our own shit back on us for years. You need to give the regular people some hope that ISIS isn't going to rule them forever and then you may have some uptake. Maybe.
Is it good to cut off access to the modern equivalent of the public square just because we don't like what is being said?
Let's not pretend that anything this ISIL group does is in any way an attempt at a discussion. These are psychopaths who even other terrorist groups have cut ties with because they think they have gone too far. These are people who would subjugate and kill you in a brutal and public manner without a hint of remorse. This isn't a public square debate. This is a war. Never confuse the one with the other. This isn't two civilized groups agreeing to disagree. ISIS has engaged in genocidal activities. And you seriously think that is a situation where we should just sit back and respect their rights?
Is it a victory to beat them by cutting off their ability to speak?
Very possibly. While I don't pretend to understand everything about them, literally everything I've heard from this group leads me to believe these are people who promote extreme violence and use the islamic faith to justify their psychosis.
How is this different from cutting off Mega's cashflow via PayPal and the credit cards?
How many people has Mega executed?
Figures the PC pussies would label it a "troll."
ISIS behaves exactly as Muhammad did, and exactly as Muhammad instructed his followers to behave.
If you don't know that, then you don't know the history of Islam, or the teachings of Islam.
ISIS was inevitable.
Time for the west to pull it's head out of it's ass and see Islam for it is.
The United States _won_ the war in Vietnam.
In what universe? I've been to Vietnam. If you think the US won you have no idea what actually happened there. There is no point at which you can claim the US "won" that war by any reasonable definition of the term. The US rarely lost battles in Vietnam but ultimately accomplished none of their objectives and the moment the US pulled out, South Vietnam fell.
The North Vietnamese were powerless, and the US left.
Really? Then explain why the Vietnam war ended with the fall of Saigon. The US did the largest air evacuation in history. That is not what you do when you have won a war. "North Vietnamese were powerless"? Don't make me laugh.
It would be a waste of ink and paint. Good cartoons do require the viewer have *some* brainpower and *some* willingness to learn / embrace new things.
Now, if we expose them to 24x7 Barney, their collective heads would surely implode!
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
No. We need to send sugar. Everyone knows, first you get the sugar...
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
No, thats a common misconception - the Bf109 had time enough for between 30 minutes and 45 minutes over target, while also escorting their bombers to and from the target. While carrying out bomber escort duties you do not want to loiter, so there was no requirement for a longer loiter time for the Bf109s - as such, it was a very effective aircraft during the Battle of Britain. BTW there was no such thing as the ME 109 - the aircraft didn't carry that designation, its been a long running post war media misconception.
And once again, you are wrong - Germany was still attacking mainland Britain and the convoys in the English Channel right up until Germany was overrun, so there was plenty of defensive roles to be filled by the Spitfire. And of course you ignore that by 1943 the bulk of Spitfire sorties were over occupied France, Belgium and northern Germany in roving attacks and enemy air force suppression. So it wasn't as if we had a pointless load of Spitfires sat around waiting for the Luftwaffe to attack while the USAAF took the fight to the continent...
British bombing policy was, after fairly disastrous attempts early on in the conflict, limited to the night stream approach - a steady stream of bombers attacking a single area target from night fall to dawn. As such, the British had no requirement for a bomber escort aircraft, unlike the USAAF which conducted "precision" daylight bombing and as such needed long range escort fighters to protect the bombers.
Both the Tempest and the Fury were decent aircraft, and the fact that over 1,700 Tempests were built shows that - however it was hampered by low availability of the Napier engines after its introduction in 1944. The Fury didn't even make it into service during WW2, so while it was a nice aircraft, its beyond the scope of discussion.
I'm also not sure that your comparison between "favoured aircraft" and "aircraft left to rot" is valid - the Spitfire performed exceedingly well throughout the war, and was even being produced after the war in certain versions. It is the only aircraft that was in continuous production throughout the war on all sides - even the Bf109 production ended before the war did.
The Meteor was a fair aircraft for its time, and it was in turn fairly quickly replaced in its role by the Hawker Hunter in 1954, so the RAF hardly had an obsession with it. The Nimrod was a damn fine airframe for the duties it was given to - it was the only fully British airframe which could carry out the post war roles it was put in, hence why it was chosen. Neither the Victor nor the Vulcan could fulfil the same role, so no comparison there.
As for those two, well, we used their conventional bombing capabilities once - the Black Buck raids over the Falkland Islands. They weren't used in anger before or after that - and right at that time the Tornado was being delivered, along with the capability of laser guided bombs, so we no longer had the need for a heavy bomber, and both the Victor and Vulcan were expensive to operate as tankers, so they were simply removed from service altogether when the time came (the Victor struggled on until we had enough L1011s and VC-10s converted, but once they were delivered the Victor was dropped like the proverbial hot potato).
The BBC doesn't say that, Professor Harrison says that.
The BBC does say that this year we will have paid off the last outstanding WW1 debt when we refinance the outstanding £1.9Billion balance of the 1932 war bond.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/busi...
The author of the article you point to, Finlo Rohrer, has also been heavily criticised in the past of biased and misleading articles, so I would take whatever he writes with a pinch of salt...
That doesn't make the argument false.
It is true that a distant threat can become an immediate threat if ignored. Of course, there are always more variables to consider, and oversimplification is a great way to make anything seem wrong.
You need to read General Giap's book. He knew full well the North Vietnamese had not one hope in hell of beating the USA in a war. He said the war will be won on the streets of Washington DC, not in Vietnam. He was 100% correct. By being an ongoing large PITA that would not quit no matter how many times we kicked his ass combined with the war becoming massively unpopular back home, he knew sooner or later we would decide we had "won" enough times and go home. And we did.
> If we got their soldiers more interested in getting high and/or drunk would this effectively crush their will to fight?
Didn't they already try that on America?
The Nimrod started out to be a fine aircraft for ASW but it is the only Aircraft that I know of that was a program disaster not once but twice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
And
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Have a carefully constructed, but plausible figure that claims to be Twitter's founder tweet pictures of him wiping his ass with the Koran and ISIS' flag in front of what no one knows is a safehouse in Kansas or Arizona, with the address readily visible/obvious. Wait for the jihad-bent buffoons to approach the house with the intent of doing him in, and let them fall into carefully placed containment pits. When the pits start to get full, unleash the Rancor and save a fortune in Purina Rancor Chow. Problem solved.
And which of those failures were down to fundamental airframe issues rather than program failures?
Twelve year old obnoxious kids sending innocuous and vague "threats" via twitter to "game devs" sends the game devs into spiraling panic attacks and highly public evacuations to underground protected lairs. So, surely, actual death threads from actual terrorists must be sending the founder of CEO into hiding and police protection, right?
The reason we have ISIS is that we were in such a rush to leave IRAQ we didn't bother to finish stabilizing the situation.
We could be there 50 years and still have no hope of stabilizing the situation (maybe if we just installed another dictator like Saddam). Stabilizing is not something we can impose but is something they'll have to work out internally.
also, everybody in the western world bends over backwards to say that the issue isn't with islam or muslims because it is the religion of peace and we are a multicultural society and we welcome all muslim faiths and no profiling or restrictions are allowed except oh yeah muslims are trying to kill americans and europeans. sounds like appeasement to me.
Well, you broke it and now the chickens are coming home to roost.
Doesn't matter that the bleeding heart left just wants to be left alone, and the hard right just wants to blame Obama.
The rest of the world doesnt give a f*** about these internal squabbles.
The US broke it, you own it.
It's not like you haven't been warned.
It could be stopped by allying with USSR before the latter allied with Germany. USSR did in fact explore the option of an alliance with UK and France first, specifically over the issue of providing protection guarantees for Poland. The USSR specifically wanted a clear and firm guarantee that if Poland were to be attacked, the Western countries would enter the war with Germany alongside with the Soviets in more than a token effort (i.e. they didn't want to end up being the only ones facing the Germans there). As the Phony War has shown later, it was not an unreasonable fear. The French were interested in exploring such an approach, but the Brits still believed the war was not imminent, and refused on the fear of being dragged into a war on behalf of someone else.
Additionally, Soviets wanted to extend the agreement beyond just Poland, and in particular to prevent the then-independent Baltic states from openly allying with Germany by treating such an act as German aggression that would trigger the joint military intervention provisions of the agreement.
While Soviets were already in talks with the Germans, it was the collapse of the tripartite agreement talks that prompted them to switch gears and seek a full fledged treaty with the Germans, which resulted in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
The run-up to WW2 was really quite a mess in terms of who was supporting whom. Most people do remember the pact, but fewer are aware of the fact that Poland has participated in the partitioning of Czechoslovakia in 1938 on Nazi side, for example.
Finally, someone uses their brain. Sure, we could send a big army over there and stomp them into the ground. But then what?
Then you occupy the country for 20 years or so. No games with grassroots democracy, just old fashioned military administration, rebuilding the infrastructure and de-radicalizing the society and enforcing stability by force, until it can actually have a stable government and economy on its own.
Which, yeah, is basically colonialism. Except for the part where you don't extract resources, so it's also crazy expensive (and remember, 20 years!). So about the only country that might be interested in anything similar is Iran, on the grounds that it can simply annex huge parts of Iraq on a permanent basis.
The single longest military engagement in the history of the USA was likely the occupation of the Philippines (1898-1935).
The problem is no-one actually understood what the hell "stabilizing the situation" even means, and most certainly what American forces were doing there wasn't that. Instead, it was all make-pretend that they could actually establish a democratic government run by the locals. But such a thing, built on as shaky grounds as it was, in a country that is by its very nature split, would never have held for long. In other words, with the way this was done from day 1, it wouldn't matter if American soldiers left when they did, or 5 years later, the end result would have still been the same.
They don't need to develop nuclear weapons, merely acquire them. That's much easier given that e.g. Pakistan already has them, and its military and intelligence services have been infested by Islamists for many years now. Granted, those are mostly people affiliated with al-Qaeda, but who's to say some of them won't switch their allegiance to ISIS? It already happened for large parts of the Pakistani Taliban.
Being defeated in battle is different from being defeated on the battlefield. The first is obvious, the second is that the US would be incapable of fighting in the next battle, and the one after that, which did not happen.
Which is no surprise, the US was not fighting at home, but overseas. It was the American people who got fed up, the Army could have kept going.
How about actually allying with the Soviets against the Germans before WW2 began, and striking together as soon as Poland was invaded?
It was a very likely possibility, and USSR has actively explored just such an alliance. But it demanded a firm commitment to such a joint military action, with full involvement by all sides, that Brits weren't willing to sign up for (because they didn't think that a full-scale European war was inevitable even if Poland were to be invaded). So Soviets walked away and signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact instead.
That idealism doesn't even work in this country. It hasn't fixed Detroit or St. Louis. Why should we have to build infrastructure when they are sitting on nearly unlimited wealth from oil?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I am not saying you are wrong but you are not right.
Da'esh got their initial serious funding from Kuwaiti and Saudi citizens who had family wronged by Iraqis during the US-led invasion of Iraq. Da'esh went into Iraq in small teams and started killing ex-military personnel, judges, etc. They made a video of these executions and other activities (which I can not say more about) and distributed the video to the "proper" personnel to prove what they had done. Those personnel then provided much larger funding and MUCH better equipment.
In short, Obama's actions may have created some of the "environment" but it was Bush, Kuwaitis, and Saudis who really created Da'esh, aka ISIS/ISIL.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Not sure why you're posting as everything you said is a complete lie.
Infact, Britain is paying off the last of its' WW1 debt next week as it happens.
Everything else you said is wrong also.
Don't post on the internet.
"Taking on the 1938 German army would have been a relative cakewalk. The problem with Dunkirk (wasn't that a great victory?) is that the British stayed on the defensive, and by definition it's impossible to win whilst playing defense."
France submitted to Germany whilst Britain was fighting IN France. This left the allies fighting force completely devasted with no supply lines and the full force of Germany flooding through open French borders.
From then on it was a case of immediate withdrawal from the continent (the 'defensive').
You really have an incorrect grasp of basic history.
We weren't exactly on good terms with the Soviets at the start of the second world war - remember that the continental royal families still had fresh memories of their Russian relations being massacred despite offers to secure their exile? When we did ally with them during WW2, it was more a case of a deal with the devil than a friendship, and it was acknowledged as such - Churchill even wanted WW2 to continue on against the soviet forces after Germany surrendered but was (thankfully) talked out of that stance.
I don't know who created them, but if you were paying attention you'll have noticed that they appeared out of nowhere in one week. There were zero, absolutely zero references to ISIS/ISIL in any form until in less than a week there were literally thousands of articles, with everybody pretending to know all about them.
We've always been at war with Eurasia.
If Obama had not created instability in Syria and refused to negotiate a status of forces agreement with Iraq, Da'esh/ISIS would never have come into existence. The group which became Da'esh/ISIS may have existed before that, but that was what allowed it to become a "state".
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Both.
The for the AEW it was too small for the task using the tech the UK selected.
The MRA4 the airframes where not built to a common standard and frankly the engine location made mounting high bypass turbofans impossible.
Even the VC-10 would have been a better choice for the AEW but the UK had to keep the Comet line alive for some odd reason.
They really blew it by not buying older P-3 Orions and upgrading them. They where a newer design and used by nations around the world. The UK could have made a good bit of money upgrading P3s for other nations. Now they will go with the P-8 just as they went with the E3 for the AEW program.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
1. With meth or Cocaine you'd have a bunch of amped up religious fanatics going all berseker crazy on you.
2. With heroin or alcohol you'd have a bunch of religious fanatics with no inhibitions going crazy on you.
3. With Meth and heroin amped up religious fanatics with no inhibitions going berseker crazy on you and would be too high to realise they are suposed to fall down when you kill them.
4. it would probably be considered chemical warefare or something equally repugnant.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Top kek.
>Implying they can touch a guy who probably lives in the US, or has a home far away from anywhere ISIS can reach.
To the rest of the human race. After all, most people are on ISIS hit list if you understand their theology.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
remember that the continental royal families still had fresh memories of their Russian relations being massacred despite offers to secure their exile?
The Brits (or rather specifically George V) actually explicitly refused to shelter Nicholas after abdication. So did the French (granted, not a royal family, but a WW1 ally nevertheless). I'm not aware of any other offers.
As for the alliance - it was very seriously discussed by all sides from March to about July 1939 (UK and France kept talking after that, but Soviets weren't really listening anymore). So they were quite willing to make a deal with a devil. They - well, the Brits specifically, the French were more appreciative of the danger - just didn't want to go all the way in and "provoke" the Germans, especially since most everyone assumed that Soviets would be the next after Poland, so any committed allies of theirs would be dragged into war alongside.
But then what? The Marshall plan, of course. It has a proven track record. It is also very expensive, time consuming, and requires some level of moral credibility that the USA no longer maintains.
the DAESH sub-human animals started this war...against everything moral and decent in the world. Good for twitter!
This is an interesting view, in particular because the Czech army was not at all small, and definitely not a walkover. All they wanted was some support from the Western countries. But Chamberlain determined otherwise and gave up an army that would have been pretty useful when the inevitable happened. Maybe the Brits weren't ready for war, but the Czech's were, and that army got lost. So either Chamberlain was a lousy strategist, or he did believe that he could contain Hitler by giving him ground. Probably both.
Not likely. It isn't like simply making that stuff available makes a user out of you.
These guys are brainwashed into killing people with rusty, dull knives, they can certainly be brainwashed into not buying some smack.
What will actually happen is that the "targets" will collect the drugs and then sell them back to the West to make more money to kill more people.
These guys are already high on something completely different.
very true, the very thing used to brain wash them (radical islam) keeps them off and many muslim extremist groups are responsible for controlling the heroin triangle trade route into Russia from the middle east. Some of the soldiers use but hardly devout muslims. One of the bigger problems within the ANA and police in Afghanistan is the addiction.
So once they quit there was no longer a danger for the commies to wreak havoc in our streets? How does that work? Your mind I mean.
So drop more. How could it be any worse than what we're doing now?
I'm sorry, but if you are a "True Believer" (and what exactly is a "False Believer" anyways?) then you are by default dumb.
You believe things by faith, without evidence, and even ignoring evidence to the contrary. This allows you to do almost anything, in the name of faith.
It is a very dumb, stupid, and also scary way to lead ones life, since it literally can (and has) allowed normal intelligent people to otherwise do completely dumb, stupid, and scary things.
We need to fight this type of belief with strong evidence pointing to the facts of our existence. If ISIS wants a caliphate, they'd have a much easier time creating one through political means, but we all know that the Muslim world has been divided since Mohammed died (the son of a bitch that he was, good riddance IMHO) since the Sunni and Shia can't even agree on the form of the caliphate (should it be led by religious leaders or the descendants of Mohammed (may he rot in hell)). And we all know they won't solve that issue without copious amounts of bloodshed.
We should simply remove ourselves from the region, become self-reliant with regards to oil, and let the entire region rot.
Or how about instead we create a bomb that effectively creates a cocaine aerosol over a large area.
It would be very hard to not breath some of that in, and once that happens, you're pretty much addicted, and you are certainly not going to be in a condition to fight.
Or how about sleep gas? Put them all to sleep for a few hours, go in, remove all their weapons, and imprison them. No martyrdom for you, just life in prison. Oh, and sorry for the rock music and pigs everywhere, but the guards like it that way.
I bet you got an A in your DARE class. Idiot.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Duh. But why are you calling out military spending in particular? It's a small slice and shrinking.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It gave Germany time to build it's army. England not so much. Russia was still executing officers based on Stalin's paranoia up to a few months before Hitler invaded.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You need more practice reading non-native speakers English. The point is clear.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
They knew exactly what would replace Saddam. Sunni Shia war, just like what predated Saddam and what he carried out for a decade himself.
The only thing we're lying about is being against it.
But Bush could not have said 'We're going into Iraq to get them fighting among themselves until they pump the last of their oil'. It would have defeated the purpose.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Korea. 1950-today.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You can bet there is a US spy satellite that watches the Paki nukes full time and a pre-planned mission to pulverize them at a moments notice.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Kurdistan is already a semi-autonomous region of Iraq. The Turks have a problem.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You guys are funny.
Someone, spare some +1 Funny mods for this shit!
Huh? The Iranian dictator was put in place by the US. Cozening up shouldn't be needed unless they screwed up majorly and put a psychopath in charge as usual.
I... what?
The Iranian people once looked up to western democracies, removed their dictator and got a democracy. When their elected leader started talking about nationalizing the oil (As a way to build a welfare society without having extreme taxes.) CIA decided that it was against the interest of the US and helped with reinstating the dictatorship.
Are you confusing Iran with Iraq or something? The current leadership in Iran has been in place since 1979.
The problem seems to be with Greek society, specifically the corruption that has become a matter of course there. I was a bit sad that "austerity" did nothing to address one of the bigger issues: tax evasion.
You do realize that the ISIS uprising is a direct consequence of pulling out too early after the second Iraqi war, don't you?
How long were we supposed to stay? We had already been there for 10 years. Do we stay and send our soldiers to die from IEDs for ... 20 years? 25? 30? What is the cut-off?
When will we admit that maybe the Middle East has to solve their own problems, and that peace can't be militarily imposed upon them?
ISIS is just as dangerous as the Nazi Gestapo were in WW2. All the posturing people make is of little account when you have people coming to kill you and your family. We need to wake up that this is an organized terror group with plans to rule the world and kill everybody they don't agree with. It's only an matter of time until it comes home to America. I only hope America as a whole can man up and be ready.
I applaud Jack Dorsey for his courage. Were there more men like him.
And we wouldn't have caused WWII if we hadn't insisted on such punitive reparations after WWI, and had backed the League of Nations. But nope, that would have been too rational, so we had WWII to remind us that if we aren't reasonable, we'll forever repeat history.
Learn to love Alaska
The reason we have ISIS is that we were in such a rush to leave IRAQ we didn't bother to finish stabilizing the situation.
No, the reason we have ISIS is that we were in such a rush to ENTER Iraq we didn't think how we'd destabilize the situation. FTFY. Which is what Republicans and hawkish Democrats are plumping for again. They needs their wargasms to make 'em feel like men. Even Conservatard Hillary.
That is all.
ROFL
I am sorry I have never seen anyone stretch so hard to make their point. We waited nearly half a year while giving Saddam time to comply with the treaty obligations and allow U.N. inspectors in.
It started under a Republican, but it got bad under a Democrat, so let's blame the Democrats. I've heard that with Vietnam as well. It was Eisenhower that ordered democratic elections in Vietnam be disrupted to prevent democracy, fearing a vote favoring the North, and Eisenhower who sent in the first US troops, and under Eisenhower when the first US soldier was killed. But Kennedy sent more people in trying to clean up Eisenhower's mess, and LBJ get the largest share of the "blame". ISIS started under Bush, but got worse under Obama, so it's 100% Obama's fault. Got it. It's all the Democrat's fault. Care to blame Obama for the lunar and solar calendars not lining up?
And no, I'm not a Democrat. I don't like either of them. But the hypocrisy doesn't seem to be even between their supporters.
Learn to love Alaska
You need to read General Giap's book. He knew full well the North Vietnamese had not one hope in hell of beating the USA in a war. He said the war will be won on the streets of Washington DC, not in Vietnam. ...
More than you know...
The Russians and North Vietnamese had an active "fifth column" operation in the US to convince people to be anti-war and anti-South Vietnam. And it worked. You can even see the effects still today in the more rabid "liberals".
(Note that I put "liberals" in quotes, I used to consider myself Liberal, but not like that...)
So we "rushed" to leave the single longest military engagement in the history of the United States? ...
That depends on how you measure it. We are still in Japan, that might be longer.
Korea would probably be a better choice (still a declared war by the two Koreas).
I was more considering active wars, which, according to this Wikipedia page, Afghanistan is the longest ever:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
BlameBillCosby.com
Undo mods