@izzythepush,
izzythepush wrote:Gitmo has long been a powerful recruiting sergeant for jihadis, but some idiots will only accept the bleeding obvious when a Republican president says it.
I see no reason for closing it no matter who says it. What are we going to do with the detainees if we close it? Summarily execute them?
Quote:Charles P. PierceVerified account @CharlesPPierce 51m51 minutes ago
America: We never did anything dumber than the war on drugs.
Sessions: Hold my hood...
Presently, there appears to be moves afoot to try to help those captured by massive opioid distribution.
Meanwhile, Sessions is apparently set to go militant on, particularly, inner city drug use.
The racism here is not even subtle.
@Lash,
Lash wrote:Remember Hillary during the campaign, talking tough about toppling the Assad regime? The people I talk to who are on the ground in and near Syria, military there and here, historians, etc. all say Assad is just a step toward the main event of overthrowing Iran's government.
All eggs in that basket and we are all in toward that goal. This is why Obama stepped away from Netanyahu late in his last term.
Obama's problem with Netanyahu was related to anti-Semitism.
Lash wrote:We are propping up one group of murderous beheaders and Russia, the other.
The US isn't propping up any murderers. Not since the end of the Cold War.
@Lash,
Yes. This article *is* much better.
I recommend sticking to this one. I only skimmed it, but it looks entirely factual.
@Lash,
Lash wrote:If he bombs that fat retard in Korea,
Easier said than done. (I like your characterization of him though.)
If we were to suddenly pounce on North Korea with a massive
nuclear attack, maybe we could pull it off. Maybe.
Re missile launches and cable TV's predictable and disgusting affinity for such sterile (but exciting!) war imagery...
As an al jazeera reporter said during the Iraq war, "US television shows pictures of missiles launching. We show pictures of them landing."
@McGentrix,
McGentrix wrote:Huh, why would the Federal Govt be involved in fixing water pipes in Flint?
The Obama Administration never cared about the people of Flint:
http://time.com/4190643/flint-water-crisis-susan-hedman-epa/
But Trump might care.
@blatham,
blatham wrote:Re missile launches and cable TV's predictable and disgusting affinity for such sterile (but exciting!) war imagery...
As an al jazeera reporter said during the Iraq war, "US television shows pictures of missiles launching. We show pictures of them landing."
Great pictures either way.
@oralloy,
I recall one clip from the first gulf war. A cruise missile contouring Bagdad, raising up, and diving straight down a ventilator before exploding. They must have liked it, because they showed that clip a dozen times.
See, US television really does show missiles landing.
@roger,
The Pentagon spent one million on a media center in Baghdad. A lesson taken from Viet Nam was that media access and content had to be controlled, as much as possible, by the Pentagon so as to inhibit photos and information which might get published in the US and turn sentiment against military operations (embedding reporters was part of this media strategy). Schwarzkopf broadcast from that center and acted as a master of ceremonies for briefings and for video footage taken from the nose of the missiles such as the one you allude to.
But again, this was all completely sterile (and exciting!). The technology was marveled at. It was like a video game.
What we didn't see was the human consequences of it. The bodies blown apart. The heads separated from torsos. The limbs and brains and eyeballs spread across a street. The children without legs.
@Lash,
I don't understand what all these various wack-ass muslims are backstabbing and killing each other about (apart from sectarian religious fanaticism) and I don't care.
I just hope they keep fighting. They need to move on from this "proxy" war in Syria, and go straight to the source of the disputes. I hope Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, Turkey, Iraq, et al form a coalition to directly invade Iran. After a decade or so of killing each other and destroying each other's infrastructure, the whole region will be "pacified," and they can spend the next few decades trying to rebuild instead of killing each other over petty religious disputes.
Yeah, that's what I'm talkin about!
Quote: Jan 4, 2016, 12:50pm EST
Only a few days into the new year, the Middle East has already taken a significant turn for the worse. The region's greatest rivalry, between Saudi Arabia and Iran, has become rapidly and significantly more toxic in the past few days, and it could have repercussions across the Middle East.
On Saturday, protesters in Tehran attacked the Saudi embassy, ransacking and burning it as Iran ignored or refused Saudi requests to protect the building. Saudi Arabia formally broke off diplomatic relations with Iran on Sunday, on Monday saying it would cut commercial ties and ban Saudi travel to Iran as well. Sudan and Bahrain, both Saudi allies, severed ties as well.
There had been hints that Saudi Arabia and Iran, perhaps exhausted by their conflict, might be willing to deescalate in 2016, maybe even finding peace deals for the wars in Syria and Yemen. But this week's events have ended those hopes, and suggest things may rather get worse.
One of the biggest drivers of conflict in the Middle East today is the enormous tension and violence between Sunni and Shia. The wars in Syria and in Yemen split largely between Sunni and Shia
"Sectarianism is really no longer a radical project. Probably better to call it a mainstream one," Jones told me. "It used to be for the crazies. No longer."
http://www.vox.com/2016/1/4/10708682/sunni-shia-iran-saudi-arabia-war
You'd think they might have learned from Jimmy Carter that establishing an embassy is Iraq it just an invitation for the double-crossing fanatics to attack it, eh?
@RABEL222,
Well yes, Trump only cares about Trump, only the delusional believe otherwise.
@blatham,
Re Pentagon Iraq propaganda, let's keep in mind the "Pentagon Analyst Program"
Quote:The Pentagon military analyst program was a propaganda campaign of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) that was launched in early 2002 by then-Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke.[1] The goal of the operation is "to spread the administrations's talking points on Iraq by briefing retired commanders for network and cable television appearances," where they have been presented as independent analysts;[2] A Pentagon spokesman said the Pentagon's intent is to keep the American people informed about the so-called War on Terrorism by providing prominent military analysts with factual information and frequent, direct access to key military officials.[3][4] The Times article suggests that the analysts had undisclosed financial conflicts of interest and were given special access as a reward for promoting the administration's point of view. On 28 April 2008, the Pentagon ended the operation.[5] A DoD Inspector General investigation found no wrongdoing on the part of the DoD.
wikpedia
And, of course, the total bullshit Jessica Lynch "heroine rescue" story. And Pat Tillman. And, as told to me by an Iraq war veteran, Limbaugh's show was pumped into the Green Zone twice daily during the conflict.
Quote:The search for a unified approach to the Syria conflict after last week's suspected chemical attack looks set to dominate talks between the G7 group of leading nations in Italy on Monday.
Foreign ministers will focus on how to pressure Russia to distance itself from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Allies will also be seeking clarity from the US on its Syria policy, after some apparently mixed messages.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson strongly criticised Russia on Sunday.
He said it had failed to prevent Syria from carrying out a chemical attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun last Wednesday which left 89 people dead.
But he also clarified there had been "no change to our military posture" in Syria following a retaliatory US strike against a Syrian airbase, and that Washington's "first priority" in Syria was to defeat the Islamic State terror group.
Those comments came a day after the US ambassador to the United Nations said there was no way to stabilise Syria with Mr Assad as president.
"In no way do we see peace in that area with Assad as the head of the Syrian government," Nikki Haley told NBC's "Meet the Press".
However, she had said last week that Mr Assad's removal was no longer a US priority.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-39551463
Let's hope they come up with something that at least sounds coherent because that would be a start.
@izzythepush,
Quote:Let's hope they come up with something that at least sounds coherent because that would be a start.
President I-love-the-uneducated will surely demand coherence in foreign affairs policy just as he demands it of himself in thought, speech and written text. He will certainly not be driven by media commentary on himself or on his administration and most of all not by perceptions of whether he is a winner or a loser.
A very good piece up on how Bannon has made himself very wealthy through a tangle of related entities playing the right wing media con game
Quote:Stephen K. Bannon could barely finish his sentences as he implored the listeners of his Breitbart News radio show to see the new movie “Clinton Cash.”
It was July 20, the homestretch of the 2016 presidential campaign, and Bannon was describing Bill and Hillary Clinton as “scumbags” and “bandits” who had made millions of dollars through political connections.
“Hillary and Bill Clinton are the two single-biggest grifters ever to run for president of the United States,” Bannon told his guest, Peter Schweizer, the author of the book behind the movie.
Bannon, now President Trump’s chief strategist, framed his radio show that day as an urgent effort to reveal important information for voters — but there was more to it.
The show and “Clinton Cash” were components of an intricate multimedia machine comprising nonprofit organizations and private companies that Bannon had leveraged to advance his conservative, populist agenda and bring in millions of dollars. That effort ultimately helped propel Trump into the White House and Bannon into national prominence.
A close look behind Bannon’s radio broadcast that day offers insights about how that machine worked.
As it happened, the research behind “Clinton Cash” had been funded by the Government Accountability Institute, or the GAI, a tax-exempt public charity that Bannon had created a few years earlier and that had paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars as executive chairman, documents show.
“Clinton Cash” had been produced by Glittering Steel and Bannon Film Industries, two companies owned by Bannon, who was one of the screenwriters.
Bannon also was an owner of ARC Entertainment, the firm listed as distributor of the film.
And he was receiving a six-figure salary as executive chairman of Breitbart News, which heavily promoted the film through Bannon’s radio program and its controversial website.
WP
In a post yesterday, I said that Dems are disadvantaged as a consequence of a more responsible approach to governance than what we see from modern Republicans who behave with utter cynicism in a quest for power. Here's a rather perfect example. The Dems now are in the minority and the Republicans in power. And this happens...
Quote:With a deadline looming, nobody is threatening to shut down the government
Congress is off for two weeks, and when lawmakers return, they will quickly face a critical deadline to keep the government open. But in an unusual development on Capitol Hill, where budget brinkmanship has become a reliable expression of political dysfunction, nobody is threatening to shut the government down.
Instead, Republicans and Democrats appear to be working together to keep the lights on in Washington. Aides in both parties said negotiations are underway on a stopgap funding measure that both sides could support, one that sidesteps such political land mines as President Trump’s request for new funding to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
WP
A brief note here on the brilliant new strategy of determining the behavior of other nations through "sending a message".
First, let me just express my surprise that no one has thought of this before!
As I understand the strategy, through some act (a missile, perhaps, or a special ops attack or a beam from a fricking lazer) you let some bad guy nation know that you mean business. As soon as that bad guy nation receives the message, everything changes. They learn something they didn't know before, that is, that you are mad at them. Really mad. And the thing is, we've known about how this works for a long time and it's why, for example, some husbands will punch their wife. It's why police tazer or shoot people who don't get out of their car properly and quickly or who are walking on the road rather than the sidewalk. The wife, the driver, the pedestrian gets the message and they change their behavior.
Imagine if we'd thought of this before. Sadaam Hussein, as just one relevant case, would have behaved so differently - probably even converted to the one true faith of Christ - if only some message had been sent. Black people would have ceased using drugs and would have given up the improper notion they could sit anywhere on a bus if only some message had been sent.
And that's why I think that the missiles just sent onto an empty airfield in Syria will do the trick. We sent a message. They got the message.
Attend to this podcast with Andrea Mitchell
Quote:President Trump called her “Hillary Clinton’s P.R .person” when she got a scoop he didn’t like last week.
Controversial Fox News host Bill O’Reilly called her “unruly” when she shouted questions at Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
Well, it turns out Andrea Mitchell, the veteran White House correspondent and host of “The Andrea Mitchell Report” on MSNBC, has some words for them too. In a new interview for The Global Politico, our weekly podcast on world affairs in the Trump era, Mitchell says that after covering every president since Jimmy Carter, Donald Trump is by far the most hostile to the press—and to the truth—she’s ever seen, with a White House staff using the briefing room as a daily disinformation machine and a president and secretary of state outright undermining the ability of reporters to do their job.
“It is totally sui generis. I’ve never seen anything like this,” Mitchell says. “I have never seen anything like this where people just flat-out lie. You know, black is white and white is black, and they mislead you. It's really disconcerting to see the podium in the White House briefing room being used to mislead or misdirect or obfuscate.”
Politico
This ought not to be so. The dangers to democracy that flow from this are bad enough merely in an administration that acts in this manner but the dangers are made much, much worse when so many citizens excuse or justify or refuse to face what is happening through some deeply twisted notion regarding partisan loyalty. We do not know how far down his followers will accompany Trump. "You call him authoritarian or proto-fascist but I say he gets things done. And it's about time someone did!"
