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Post by jdredd on Oct 3, 2012 0:22:27 GMT -5
Tell me I'm wrong? You are not suggesting Obama has any clue what the words "foreign policy" mean. Who cares what Romney is or what he thinks, the issue is, he's not a turd circling the porcelain fixture like the piece of crap you voted for. You'll never let me forget that, will ya? But perhaps you've mistaken me for someone who gives a crap if he is reelected or not. As I think I've said before, it's a choice between the candidate of the right wing party and the candidate of the other right wing party.
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Post by jdredd on Jan 31, 2013 22:57:57 GMT -5
I was quite amused at the exchange between Big Bully McCain and ck Hagel over whether the Iraqi "surge" was a success. I guess Hagel opposed it, and BBM tried to pin him down on whether Hagel thought it was a success now. Hagel replied that the verdict of history was still out, and McCain told him it wasn't, that it was a proven success. Sorry, John, but there is never a totally final verdict of history on any subject. If in 10 years from now Iraq is in the hands of another Saddam, how can you claim the surge was a success? It probably was successful in giving the US cover to bug out, though.
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Post by jdredd on Mar 19, 2013 16:39:05 GMT -5
Today is the tenth anniversary of Bush's invasion of Iraq, and an opportunity for the pundits to put their spin on it. Fine with me, that's what I like about history: everyone gets to invent their own.
I remember watching the tanks roll into Iraq in 2003, and the Talking Head's "Road to Nowhere" playing in my head.
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Post by jdredd on Jun 14, 2014 18:49:37 GMT -5
I haven't had this good of a time watching geopolitical fun and games in a while: Hezbollah and the US joining forces to defeat a militant Islamic movement in Iraq! LOL!!! What's becoming more and more obvious is the cluelessness of American foreign policy, dating back at least to Desert Storm.
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Post by jdredd on Jun 19, 2014 10:55:25 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/world/middleeast/former-loyalists-of-saddam-hussein-crucial-in-helping-isis.html?hp&_r=0"Now, though, with Iraq facing its gravest crisis in years, as Sunni insurgents have swept through northern and central Iraq, Mr. Maliki’s claims about Baathist plots have been at least partly vindicated. While fighters for the extremist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, once an offshoot of Al Qaeda, have taken on the most prominent role in the new insurgency, they have done so in alliance with a deeply rooted network of former loyalists to Saddam Hussein."| This is what I don't understand, why the Neocons who pushed President Cheney Bush to invade Iraq didn't realize that Saddam was a product of Iraq, and chances were as soon as we left they would make another Saddam, or worse. Or were we supposed to occupy Iraq forever?
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Post by jdredd on Aug 7, 2014 15:43:37 GMT -5
www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28686998"Up to a quarter of Iraq's Christians are reported to be fleeing after Islamic militants seized the minority group's biggest town. The Islamic State (IS) group captured Qaraqosh overnight after the withdrawal of Kurdish forces. IS has been gaining ground in northern Iraq since June, and also controls some of Syria. The US has warned that the situation for Iraq's minority groups threatens to become a "humanitarian catastrophe". ``We are gravely concerned for their health and safety," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. But he refused to confirm a New York Times report that the US is considering air strikes to help the Yazidi community, another minority group in northern Iraq that has been targeted by IS. About 50,000 Yazidis are thought to have been trapped in the mountains after fleeing the town of Sinjar - although the UN says some of them have now been rescued." Gosh, air strikes? That should help. Look how 23 years of air strikes have done so much good in Iraq so far. They certainly have done a lot of good for the bottom lines of defense contractors.
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Post by jdredd on Aug 8, 2014 14:50:08 GMT -5
So much for Iraq flying solo. Now there are airstrikes at the bogeyman de jour, ISIS, or whatever you call it. We already did in Saddam for these clowns because I guess they were too chicken do it themselves.
How long do we have to be their keeper?
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Post by jdredd on Aug 17, 2014 4:47:50 GMT -5
www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/16/us-airstrikes-iraq_n_5684852.html"WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. officials say a mix of fighter planes and remotely piloted aircraft have attacked Islamic State militants near the Iraqi city of Irbil and the Mosul Dam. In a statement, U.S. Central Command said the airstrikes Saturday were launched under the authority to support humanitarian efforts in Iraq, as well as to protect U.S. personnel and facilities. Central Command says the nine airstrikes conducted so far had destroyed or damaged four armored personnel carriers, seven armed vehicles, two Humvees and an armored vehicle. The Islamic State group captured Mosul Dam, in northern Iraq on the Tigris River, earlier this month. It is the nation's largest dam." As I said before, 23 years of air strikes on Iraq have done the country SO much good. Of course defense contractor shareholders aren't complaining.
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Post by jdredd on Aug 22, 2014 4:07:12 GMT -5
Let me see if I have this straight: Assad gasses hundreds of his own people and all is forgiven, but ISIS beheads one journalist and now we have to go after this "cancer" with all guns blazing, even if it means being allies with Assad, Hezbollah, and Iran. Isn't Foley's death just one more in the War for Iraq going on 23 years now? What BS, but if the American people are still buying the "War on Terrorism", so be it.
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Post by jdredd on Aug 25, 2014 2:19:19 GMT -5
www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/24/iraq-frontline-shia-fighters-war-isisze. "This land is what separates good from evil," says a Shia fighter, pointing at the no man's land between the two forces. "Here you see the flag of Imam Hussein and there you see the black flags of Isis. This is the same history repeating itself," he says, referring to ancient Sunni-Shia enmities that played out on these plains centuries ago. When the Iraqi army capitulated in the face of the Isis onslaught earlier this summer, it was left to Shia militias to fill the void and check the Islamist progress towards Baghdad. Like the Kurds in the north, the Shias are emerging as a far more effective fighting unit to confront the Islamists, whose murderous recent activities have elevated them to global public enemy number one." Ha-ha! "global public enemy number one", that's amusingly lurid. Of course, the Shia fighters thinks they are the good guys and the Sunnis are the bad. So what else is new? Are you Millennials buying this? You are the ones who are going to be paying for this geopolitical fun and games for decades to come. Why? Because your billionaire puppet masters say so. Just keep reading Murdoch's WSJ or watch his Fox News, and be a Believer. No skin off my nose, sucker.
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Post by jdredd on May 19, 2015 18:06:02 GMT -5
I was watching Fox News (yes, I am a masochist), and the narrative is that America "abandoned" Iraq. IMO you could just as easily say we ended our invasion. Semantics, as usual. But Krauthammer had a good point(!) that with the problems with Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, etc., the map drawn by France and England when they broke up the Ottoman Empire in 1919 is being redrawn once again. Why should we care?
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Post by jdredd on May 24, 2015 13:54:44 GMT -5
www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32867220"US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter has said the rout of Iraqi forces at the city of Ramadi showed they lacked the will to fight against Islamic State. Mr Carter told CNN's State of the Union the Iraqis "vastly outnumbered" the IS forces but chose to withdraw. The head of Iraq's defence and security committee said the comments were "unrealistic and baseless". This reminds me of way back when when I asked people who thought Boy George should invade Iraq "Why should we overthrow Saddam for the Iraqis? Why can't they do it themselves? And what's to stop them from just making another Saddam after we leave?". So now there is chance we will have an ISIS Iraq because the Iraqis don't want to fight for themselves. Or is it they don't want to fight for Big Stupid Bully America's vision of what the Middle East should look like?
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Post by jdredd on May 31, 2015 21:49:51 GMT -5
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/iraqs-tragic-unraveling/2015/05/31/0c1ac642-0490-11e5-bc72-f3e16bf50bb6_story.html?hpid=z2"Emma Sky expected to spend three months in Iraq apologizing to the Iraqi people for the invasion launched by George W. Bush and her prime minister, Tony Blair. That was in 2003, when Sky was a 35-year-old, left-leaning, Oxford-educated, Arab-speaking employee of the British Council, which was looking for civilians to help administer what allied troops had just conquered. Somewhat to her astonishment, Sky went on to spend much of the following decade there. Very much to her astonishment, for most of those years she worked alongside U.S. generals David Petraeus and, especially, Ray Odierno, helping implement the U.S. surge in 2006-2007 and the drawdown in 2009-2010." You don't suppose Emma Sky is actually a Brit intelligence agent, do you? Nah, I'm probably just being paranoid. But someone pretending to be "left-leaning" is a pretty good cover, don't ya think? But the narrative that Obama should not have "abandoned" Iraq is gaining a lot of support lately.
I say f**k Iraq and the horse they rode in on.
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Post by jdredd on Jun 1, 2015 15:46:46 GMT -5
america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/6/1/dozens-iraqi-soldiers-killed-in-army-base-attack.html"At least 42 members of Iraq's security forces have been killed in a suicide attack targeting an army base north of Fallujah, in Iraq's Anbar province. The bombing was carried out with an armored Humvee vehicle laden with explosives, military sources told Al Jazeera. Witnesses said ammunition stored in the base's depot continued to explode several hours after the initial attack, which occurred at 3 a.m. local time Monday. Iraqi officials said the death toll of the attack was likely to rise. The attack came a day after Haider al-Abadi, Iraq's prime minister, acknowledged the loss of about 2,300 Humvee armored vehicles when the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) overran the northern city of Mosul last year." Your tax dollars hard at work, people. Hey, I have a good idea: Let's send more American boys back to Iraq so they can be targets of these armored bombs too! Dick Cheney would approve.
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Post by jdredd on Mar 23, 2017 1:19:29 GMT -5
Well, the Prez of Iraq came to kiss the ring of our Fearless Leader the other day. And Fearless Leader mentioned that we "never should have left Iraq". Does that have something to do with "taking their oil"?
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