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 Post subject: Re: The War on Terror /Central Asia/Mid East/Africa thread
PostPosted: Tue May 07, 2013 10:59 pm 
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Harry Lime wrote:
So will there be anything new coming out of this whole Benghazi Sept 11th fiasco? I can't count on the news media, because they're too busy finding ways to paint a perfect image of the Obama administration.

You must live in some alternate-reality Arizona. Everything I hear on talk radio and read in the AZ Republic is about the Obama administration's "mishandling" of Benghazi.


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 Post subject: Re: The War on Terror /Central Asia/Mid East/Africa thread
PostPosted: Wed May 08, 2013 3:53 am 
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turned2black wrote:
Harry Lime wrote:
So will there be anything new coming out of this whole Benghazi Sept 11th fiasco? I can't count on the news media, because they're too busy finding ways to paint a perfect image of the Obama administration.

You must live in some alternate-reality Arizona. Everything I hear on talk radio and read in the AZ Republic is about the Obama administration's "mishandling" of Benghazi.



I stay way from pretty much anything Arizona news related. Especially the radio. I'm afraid I'll inadvertently run into Ron Wolfley's commentary.


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 Post subject: Re: The War on Terror /Central Asia/Mid East/Africa thread
PostPosted: Wed May 08, 2013 4:47 am 
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turned2black wrote:
Harry Lime wrote:
So will there be anything new coming out of this whole Benghazi Sept 11th fiasco? I can't count on the news media, because they're too busy finding ways to paint a perfect image of the Obama administration.

You must live in some alternate-reality Arizona. Everything I hear on talk radio and read in the AZ Republic is about the Obama administration's "mishandling" of Benghazi.


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 Post subject: Re: The War on Terror /Central Asia/Mid East/Africa thread
PostPosted: Wed May 08, 2013 1:31 pm 
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cutuphalfdead wrote:
turned2black wrote:
Harry Lime wrote:
So will there be anything new coming out of this whole Benghazi Sept 11th fiasco? I can't count on the news media, because they're too busy finding ways to paint a perfect image of the Obama administration.

You must live in some alternate-reality Arizona. Everything I hear on talk radio and read in the AZ Republic is about the Obama administration's "mishandling" of Benghazi.


Kind of a stretch, but:

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-05-07/benghazi-new-evidence-emerges

:?

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 Post subject: Re: The War on Terror /Central Asia/Mid East/Africa thread
PostPosted: Wed May 08, 2013 2:05 pm 
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elliseamos wrote:
Bc we'll be welcomed as liberators.

Seriously though, I'm fine with the USA sitting this one out.


I'm not ok with it and watching nearly 100K people die from it. I just don't have any real good ideas on how to provide "real" assistance. Perhaps a no fly zone, but there's no way that would even pass the UNSC - nor would any real concrete action...


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 Post subject: Re: The War on Terror /Central Asia/Mid East/Africa thread
PostPosted: Wed May 08, 2013 9:53 pm 
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Fuck You Jobu wrote:
elliseamos wrote:
Bc we'll be welcomed as liberators.

Seriously though, I'm fine with the USA sitting this one out.


I'm not ok with it and watching nearly 100K people die from it. I just don't have any real good ideas on how to provide "real" assistance. Perhaps a no fly zone, but there's no way that would even pass the UNSC - nor would any real concrete action...
that's just it. if neighbors won't get involved, then the US certainly has no place. which is a major difference from the Libya NFZ where Euro nations provided additional support.


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 Post subject: Re: The War on Terror /Central Asia/Mid East/Africa thread
PostPosted: Sat May 18, 2013 2:38 pm 
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at least this takes the guess work out of what influence my vote will have on foreign policy.

Quote:
"Asked at a Senate hearing today how long the war on terrorism will last, Michael Sheehan, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, answered, 'At least 10 to 20 years.' . . . A spokeswoman, Army Col. Anne Edgecomb, clarified that Sheehan meant the conflict is likely to last 10 to 20 more years from today - atop the 12 years that the conflict has already lasted. Welcome to America's Thirty Years War."


http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/05/decades-of-war/

boy how i wish the military industrial complex didn't control so many jobs in this country.

Quote:
It is hard to resist the conclusion that this war has no purpose other than its own eternal perpetuation. This war is not a means to any end but rather is the end in itself. Not only is it the end itself, but it is also its own fuel: it is precisely this endless war - justified in the name of stopping the threat of terrorism - that is the single greatest cause of that threat.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... rror-obama


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 Post subject: Re: The War on Terror /Central Asia/Mid East/Africa thread
PostPosted: Fri May 24, 2013 5:29 pm 
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I need to vent.

So I was listening to the New York Times field journalist in Syria on The Colbert Report. And he was telling Colbert about how all the Syrian rebels are wishing America would have more of a central role in the conflict. What the fuck, Mideast? Do you like our intrusions or don't you?


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 Post subject: Re: The War on Terror /Central Asia/Mid East/Africa thread
PostPosted: Mon May 27, 2013 2:06 pm 
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Harry Lime wrote:
I need to vent.

So I was listening to the New York Times field journalist in Syria on The Colbert Report. And he was telling Colbert about how all the Syrian rebels are wishing America would have more of a central role in the conflict. What the fuck, Mideast? Do you like our intrusions or don't you?


Maybe this New York Times person was just part of a media network telling you that the Middle East appreciates your interventions.

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 Post subject: Re: The War on Terror /Central Asia/Mid East/Africa thread
PostPosted: Mon May 27, 2013 2:53 pm 
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harmless wrote:
Harry Lime wrote:
I need to vent.

So I was listening to the New York Times field journalist in Syria on The Colbert Report. And he was telling Colbert about how all the Syrian rebels are wishing America would have more of a central role in the conflict. What the fuck, Mideast? Do you like our intrusions or don't you?


Maybe this New York Times person was just part of a media network telling you that the Middle East appreciates your interventions.



There's always that. Sure.


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 Post subject: Re: The War on Terror /Central Asia/Mid East/Africa thread
PostPosted: Tue May 28, 2013 12:38 am 
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Harry Lime wrote:
I need to vent.

So I was listening to the New York Times field journalist in Syria on The Colbert Report. And he was telling Colbert about how all the Syrian rebels are wishing America would have more of a central role in the conflict. What the fuck, Mideast? Do you like our intrusions or don't you?
they got their wish:

Image


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 Post subject: Re: The War on Terror /Central Asia/Mid East/Africa thread
PostPosted: Wed May 29, 2013 1:37 am 
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Syria is approximately 74% Sunni, so you'd figure sheer numbers would win out for them in the end. However, if the Al-Nusra front ends up in power I'm not sure how exactly thats better than Al-Assad.

Oh, and Russia is sending Syria the S-300 complex. Any chance Israel has an effective countermeasure to that?


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 Post subject: Re: The War on Terror /Central Asia/Mid East/Africa thread
PostPosted: Fri June 14, 2013 10:36 am 
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This Syrian conflict is a head trip.

I canot see the forest for the trees with this. Now we're sending small arms to the Syrian rebels, advocated by both Bill Clinton and John Mccain. And some of them rebels are Al Qaeda in Iraq?! So is this actually a Sunni-Shiite battle? And Russia aides Al-Assad. What's our relationship with Russia regarding this problem? What do bordering countries with Syria think about this? Aren't they taking in a bunch of refugees?

What the fuck is going on?


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 Post subject: Re: The War on Terror /Central Asia/Mid East/Africa thread
PostPosted: Fri June 14, 2013 11:17 am 
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Harry Lime wrote:
This Syrian conflict is a head trip.

I canot see the forest for the trees with this. Now we're sending small arms to the Syrian rebels, advocated by both Bill Clinton and John Mccain. And some of them rebels are Al Qaeda in Iraq?! So is this actually a Sunni-Shiite battle? And Russia aides Al-Assad. What's our relationship with Russia regarding this problem? What do bordering countries with Syria think about this? Aren't they taking in a bunch of refugees?

What the fuck is going on?



Now I hear that yesterday jihadist rebels were battling moderate rebels in control of the opposition vs. Al-Assad. :shake: My word.


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 Post subject: Re: The War on Terror /Central Asia/Mid East/Africa thread
PostPosted: Fri June 14, 2013 12:44 pm 
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Syrian rebels pledge loyalty to al-Qaeda

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/04/11/syria-al-qaeda-connection/2075323/


U.S. considers taking in Syrian refugees:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-syria-refugees-20130610,0,6484601.story



*********


It seems like they are not thinking this through in terms of putting the security of American citizens first.

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 Post subject: Re: The War on Terror /Central Asia/Mid East/Africa thread
PostPosted: Fri June 14, 2013 1:56 pm 
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Ok, so how is this not like repeating mistakes made in the 80's in Afghanistan?


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 Post subject: Re: The War on Terror /Central Asia/Mid East/Africa thread
PostPosted: Mon June 17, 2013 5:57 pm 
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Quote:
The Russians Think We’re Wrecking the World on Purpose
by David P. Goldman

“In Russia, most analysts, politicians and ordinary citizens believe in the unlimited might of America, and thus reject the notion that the US has made, and continues to make, mistakes in the [Middle East]. Instead, they assume it’s all a part of a complex plan to restructure the world and to spread global domination,” writes Fyodor Lukyanov on the Al Monitor website today. Lukyanov, who chairs Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, laments what he derides as a “conspiracy theory.” Nonetheless, he reports, President Vladimir Putin and the Russian elite think that the United States is spreading chaos as part of a diabolical plot for world domination:

From Russian leadership’s point of view, the Iraq War now looks like the beginning of the accelerated destruction of regional and global stability, undermining the last principles of sustainable world order. Everything that’s happened since — including flirting with Islamists during the Arab Spring, U.S. policies in Libya and its current policies in Syria — serve as evidence of strategic insanity that has taken over the last remaining superpower.

Russia’s persistence on the Syrian issue is the product of this perception. The issue is not sympathy for Syria’s dictator, nor commercial interests, nor naval bases in Tartus. Moscow is certain that if continued crushing of secular authoritarian regimes is allowed because America and the West support “democracy,” it will lead to such destabilization that will overwhelm all, including Russia. It’s therefore necessary for Russia to resist, especially as the West and the United States themselves experience increasing doubts.

It’s instructive to view ourselves through a Russian mirror. The term “paranoid Russian” is a pleonasm. “The fact is that all Russian politicians are clever. The stupid ones are all dead. By contrast, America in its complacency promotes dullards. A deadly miscommunication arises from this asymmetry. The Russians cannot believe that the Americans are as stupid as they look, and conclude that Washington wants to destroy them,” I wrote in 2008 under the title “Americans play monopoly, Russians chess.” Russians have dominated chess most of the past century, for good reason: it is the ultimate exercise in paranoia. All the pieces on the board are guided by a single combative mind, and every move is significant. In the real world, human beings flail and blunder. For Russian officials who climbed the greasy pole in the intelligence services, mistakes are unthinkable, for those who made mistakes are long since buried.

From a paranoid perspective, it certainly might look as if Washington planned to unleash chaos. The wave of instability spreading through the Middle East from Syria is the direct result of American actions. I wrote yesterday in Asia Times Online:

Syria’s Sunni majority started an insurgency against the minority Alawite government of Basher al-Assad in response to the ill-named Arab Spring uprisings in North Africa. America’s abrupt dismissal of its long-ally Hosni Mubarak and the ascendancy of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood emboldened Syria’s long-suffering Sunni majority to stake its claim to power. Like Mubarak, the Assads suppressed the Muslim Brothers, but far more viciously, leveling the Sunni town of Hama in 1982 with casualties estimated at between 20,000 and 40,000.

Western policy thus provoked Syria’s civil war. The prospect of a Sunni fundamentalist regime in Egypt under American patronage, the emergence of the ”Sunni Awakening” in Iraq during the Petraeus ”surge”, and the victory of Western-backed Sunni jihadists over Libya’s Gaddafi, gave Syria’s Sunnis little choice. America’s fecklessness with respect to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, moreover, gave Saudi Arabia and Turkey strategic reasons to fund and arm various branches of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood.

In this tightly scripted tragedy, America’s blundering provided the impetus for each step, except, of course, for the blundering of the European Union. The Europeans forced Assad to undertake agricultural reforms among the conditions for a new trade treaty, forcing tens of thousands of small farmers off their land in the Sunni Northeast of the country, into tent cities around Damascus.

Iran responded to the Sunni insurgency in the obvious way, by sending Revolutionary Guard regulars as well as its Lebanese-based Hezbollah auxiliaries into Syria to fight for its ally, the Assad regime. Iran’s involvement prevents the loosely organized insurgent coalition from toppling a minority regime.

The depleted ranks of the regular Syrian army will be replenished with Iranian soldiers or surrogates. The Alawite regime will continue to commit atrocities in order to convince its own base as well as the Syria’s Christian, Kurdish and Druze minorities that they must fight to the death because Sunni vengeance would be horrible. Saudi Arabia will continue to filter jihadists and weapons into Syria and Turkey will continue to provide logistical support.

Could the Americans really have been such idiots?, the Russians ask. Of course we could. George Bush and his advisers actually believed that we were going to bring democracy to Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. The Russians understood matters differently. Fyodor Lukyanov writes:

In the summer 2006, when then-President George W. Bush came to St. Petersburg for a summit of the “Big Eight,” an interesting dialogue took place between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a news conference. Bush drew attention to the challenges posed by democratic freedoms, especially freedom of the press, in Russia — and then noted that things had gotten much better in Iraq. Putin immediately responded, “Well, we really would not want the kind of democracy they have in Iraq.” The room filled with applause, and not everyone heard Bush’s response: “Just wait, it’s coming.” What Bush had in mind was increased stability in Iraq, but it sounded more ominous: you’ll see, democracy will be brought to you as well…

If the Russians sound mad, consider this: there is another substantial body of opinion that sees an evil conspiracy behind American blundering in the Middle East, and it votes for Ron Paul and Rand Paul. I am not suggesting that Sen. Rand Paul is a paranoid, I hasten to clarify: I have never met the man and don’t presume to judge his state of mind. But his popularity stems in no small measure from conspiracy theorists who think that the U.S. government really is planning to criss-cross the continental United States with killer drones and pick off American citizens on their home soil. A lot of the same people think that America invaded Iraq on behalf of the oil companies (who would make a lot more money if Iraq were zapped by space aliens) or by the Israelis (who never liked the project from the outset). A fair sampling of such paranoia gets posted on the comments section of this site.

Thus we have the strangest pair of bedfellows in modern politics, the Russians and the rubes. Try to explain to them that George W. Bush was a decent and well-intentioned man without a clue as to the consequences of his actions, and they will dismiss it as disinformatsiya. Tell them that the New York Times and the Weekly Standard both believed in the Arab Spring as the herald of a new era of Islamic democracy, and they will see it as proof of a conspiracy embracing both the Democratic and Republican establishments. How, the paranoids ask, could two administrations in succession make so many blunders in succession? It stretches credibility. I wish it were a conspiracy. The truth is that we really are that dumb.


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 Post subject: Re: The War on Terror /Central Asia/Mid East/Africa thread
PostPosted: Mon June 17, 2013 8:30 pm 
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The truth is, we really are that dumb.


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 Post subject: Re: The War on Terror /Central Asia/Mid East/Africa thread
PostPosted: Mon June 17, 2013 11:42 pm 
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these were my favorite bits:

President Vladimir Putin and the Russian elite think that the United States is spreading chaos as part of a diabolical plot for world domination


all Russian politicians are clever. The stupid ones are all dead. By contrast, America in its complacency promotes dullards. A deadly miscommunication arises from this asymmetry. The Russians cannot believe that the Americans are as stupid as they look, and conclude that Washington wants to destroy them


Could the Americans really have been such idiots?, the Russians ask. Of course we could. George Bush and his advisers actually believed that we were going to bring democracy to Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. :lol:

If the Russians sound mad, consider this: there is another substantial body of opinion that sees an evil conspiracy behind American blundering in the Middle East, and it votes for Ron Paul and Rand Paul. I am not suggesting that Sen. Rand Paul is a paranoid, I hasten to clarify: I have never met the man and don’t presume to judge his state of mind. But his popularity stems in no small measure from conspiracy theorists who think that the U.S. government really is planning to criss-cross the continental United States with killer drones and pick off American citizens on their home soil.

Thus we have the strangest pair of bedfellows in modern politics, the Russians and the rubes.

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 Post subject: Re: The War on Terror /Central Asia/Mid East/Africa thread
PostPosted: Tue June 18, 2013 4:17 am 
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malice wrote:


Could the Americans really have been such idiots?, the Russians ask. Of course we could. George Bush and his advisers actually believed that we were going to bring democracy to Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. :lol:




Was all this supposed to happen over night? What do you think all these young protesters in the region have been rallying against the past couple years?

It's going to be a shit storm in the coming years, but I have hope for progress.


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