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Old 05-10-2016, 02:23 PM
 
1,423 posts, read 2,541,315 times
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The problem with you guys is that you only know a tiny fraction of what's really going on in the world behind closed doors. The information we all get via public media is terribly one sided and full of holes. Not making a move with Iran will further push and strengthen China and Russia's grip in Asia. We made a move, a risky one betting on Iranian ppl not their gov't. Their ppl are generally very well educated and contrary to our beliefs actually love and embrace Western ways more than we led to believe. Its the same reason we pushed forward with Cuba. Sitting around and no doing anything, only weakens us and strengthens our adversaries. While we stick to self imposed embargoes, other nations like China go around making lucrative trade deals which further diminishes our influence in the world.



Obama did something not done before. He did what is best for American interests not some other country, ppl or lobbyists.
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Old 05-10-2016, 02:24 PM
 
Location: NYC
20,550 posts, read 17,604,980 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by OyCrumbler View Post
Several things here.

He didn't create and enable ISIS. The invasion of Iraq and believing that it was going to be a simple affair was what caused Isis to be created. The only reason why we need allies in the region now is because we basically headed out to a completely ruinous policy in our invasion of Iraq due to an unrelated attack from a government in Afghanistan, hence our wavering relationship with Israel as we try to appease other allies or to court new ones as well as trying to tone down our enmity with Iran. The US does not want to be involved in a rapidly expanding quagmire in the region though the US did get the ball rolling with that invasion which in almost no terms could have been a good idea.
If you haven't followed, ISIS formed from a collaboration of fighters from different parts of the middle east. Many of them were soldiers and rebels that were trained by our military in Iraq who defected from the corrupt Iraqi govt that we installed. They know how to use US military weapons and use tactics learned from US training. Some of the fighters from all over the world including from our own military have joined ISIS.

Quote:
Originally Posted by OyCrumbler View Post
He also did not "give" Iran nukes. Do you understand that "nukes" generally means nuclear weapons and not nuclear power plants, right?
Obama packaged it as a peace settlement to open up for inspections and for sanctions to end so they can resume trade with the open market. Obama clearly think business could care less what Israel thinks. After all the refugee crisis that Europe is blaming us for he could care less. He has stated it is not our problem while EU is telling US to take more refugees as our responsibility.

You haven't followed the news as the liberal media kept Obama's dealings quiet. Obama told Israel to back off when they wanted to bomb Iran 3 years ago to prevent the enrichment of Uranium. It is already enriched today and Iran is firing ballistics to test their missile tech. Years from EU will regret they gave Obama the Nobel Peace Prize.

Quote:
Originally Posted by OyCrumbler View Post
The Iraqi invasion destabilized Syria. It's harder to say what it was in Egypt though Egypt is also a very different situation where it is far more stable as a country and has far less split ideological lines since Egypt is overwhelmingly of just one sect (Sunni) and the nascent conservative political movement that everyone feared Egypt was swinging towards initially is actually now banned and their leader in jail. Meanwhile, the elections that happened subsequent to that, while not completely without issue, were certainly much more transparent than anything that happened under Mubarek. So, I'm not sure why you are lumping in Egypt with Syria on this one as these are two extremely different turnouts. Can you piece this one together for me on why you think these two are comparable?
Hillary Clinton and Obama credited themselves for assisting rebels and anti-government forces there for overthrowing dictatorship govt in Egypt and in hopes of bringing democracy. Hillary was trying to take credit for it and those people thank Facebook for giving them a way to communicate. Obama said the people in Egypt chose democracy. Today it is far from democratic. Remember all of those liberal media who listened to Obama sent reporters to Egypt to watch the whole thing unfold? You have reporters getting gangraped and beaten up there. Democracy in the making.

Quote:
Originally Posted by OyCrumbler View Post

Just curious though--do you recall what you thought of the Iraq war? Did you at the time have an opinion in either direction?
I never agreed with the Iraq invasion, it was a waste of lives. I said in other posts on this forum that our government sold us out for oil and control of the middle east. Hey, I don't have a single person in my family that served the military here and would never do so because the US have been the meddling with global affairs of other countries since the creation of the USA.

Should the U.S. Military continue to police the world or come home?

Last edited by vision33r; 05-10-2016 at 02:39 PM..
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Old 05-10-2016, 03:01 PM
 
931 posts, read 798,734 times
Reputation: 1268
Quote:
Originally Posted by OyCrumbler View Post
I also think it's not great that before we went into Iraq, Trump had explicitly been in favor of the invasion.
First, stop spreading lies and get your facts straight. Trump publicly said he was AGAINST the Iraq war as it will destabilize the middle east. This has been well documented and is public knowledge. So no, Trump was NOT in favor of the Iraq war. Look it up.

I agree that the Iraq war was a big mistake but it was due to bad intelligence of there being WMDs. Obvious there were no WMDs found but by then it was to late.

The bottom line is the military had the Iraqis on check with boots on the ground. Everything had died down towards the end of Bush's term.

The uprising occurred when Obama pull out the troops to early. That gave the radical Islamics the oppotunity to do their thing. And now its one big mess because of Obama's decision to pull out early. Mind you, he was total by military personel not to do so and he did it anyway.
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Old 05-10-2016, 03:08 PM
 
Location: In the heights
37,022 posts, read 39,094,778 times
Reputation: 21056
Quote:
Originally Posted by vision33r View Post
If you haven't followed, ISIS formed from a collaboration of fighters from different parts of the middle east. Many of them were soldiers and rebels that were trained by our military in Iraq who defected from the corrupt Iraqi govt that we installed. They know how to use US military weapons and use tactics learned from US training. Some of the fighters from all over the world including from our own military have joined ISIS.



Obama packaged it as a peace settlement to open up for inspections and for sanctions to end so they can resume trade with the open market. Obama clearly think business could care less what Israel thinks. After all the refugee crisis that Europe is blaming us for he could care less. He has stated it is not our problem while EU is telling US to take more refugees as our responsibility.

You haven't followed the news as the liberal media kept Obama's dealings quiet. Obama told Israel to back off when they wanted to bomb Iran 3 years ago to prevent the enrichment of Uranium. It is already enriched today and Iran is firing ballistics to test their missile tech. Years from EU will regret they gave Obama the Nobel Peace Prize.



Hillary Clinton and Obama credited themselves for assisting rebels and anti-government forces there for overthrowing dictatorship govt in Egypt and in hopes of bringing democracy. Hillary was trying to take credit for it and those people thank Facebook for giving them a way to communicate. Obama said the people in Egypt chose democracy. Today it is far from democratic. Remember all of those liberal media who listened to Obama sent reporters to Egypt to watch the whole thing unfold? You have reporters getting gangraped and beaten up there. Democracy in the making.



I never agreed with the Iraq invasion, it was a waste of lives. I said in other posts on this forum that our government sold us out for oil and control of the middle east. Hey, I don't have a single person in my family that served the military here and would never do so because the US have been the meddling with global affairs of other countries since the creation of the USA.

Should the U.S. Military continue to police the world or come home?
No, I have followed, but that isn't the same as being the creator of ISIS. There are myriad issues at stake there and all of it could have gone either much better or much worse. It's not really known because it's a large hypothetical alternate history with no diverging points that have particularly clear cut and dry pathways for what might have happened. I think the only solid issue here is the only large point of departure that was possible and had a pretty clear pathway forward was to have never engaged in that war in the first place.

Did you actually read the original article? Yes, he did have to sell the argument because there are a lot of pros and cons to it. It is definitely a gamble. I think as a whole it might work, but I'm not sure his presidency should have been the one to broker this agreement. Obviously the whole thing was going to be an impasse that was going to be there for quite a while, so I think he should have let it sit for a while. I think the same exact deal probably could work but it makes more sense for a presidency during a time that is far less politically contentious in the US and with at least some fairly good guarantee that the US would at least stick to its side of the deal. If Iran has no confidence that the US can stick to its side of the deal or would renege then this deal is actually terrible, because then what incentive does Iran have for sticking to our stipulations?

Yea, I follow the news on Egypt a lot because I am friends with a lot of Egyptians and we talk about it a lot. The democracy is far from being a great one, but it is very different from the Mubarak rule not really worse and to some more hopeful as a transition point to a true democracy. Much of the political violence is actually directed at extremely conservative ideologues (the Muslim Brotherhood) so that's bad in terms of human rights, but perhaps unfortunately good in terms of keeping the peace. One thing for sure is that it is leagues away from where Syria and not necessarily worse off than before the Arab Spring and arguably better off. Basically, it went from authoritarian power and terrible misrule to an authoritarian power at least stating it intends to transition out of authoritarian rule and without history having yet proven if they will terribly misrule. It's not ideal at all, but do you feel on the balance it's that much worse? This is very different from Syria, so I don't understand why you chose to lump the two together. I think maybe I'm misunderstanding you? What is it that you think got much worse for Egypt after the Arab Spring and with nothing getting better? Why do you think it's comparable to Syria?

Yea, glad we agreed on the Iraq War. Largest blunder of the 21st century, but I guess we still have time to top it. Ugh.

Last edited by OyCrumbler; 05-10-2016 at 03:19 PM..
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Old 05-10-2016, 03:33 PM
 
Location: In the heights
37,022 posts, read 39,094,778 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by allpro123 View Post
First, stop spreading lies and get your facts straight. Trump publicly said he was AGAINST the Iraq war as it will destabilize the middle east. This has been well documented and is public knowledge. So no, Trump was NOT in favor of the Iraq war. Look it up.

I agree that the Iraq war was a big mistake but it was due to bad intelligence of there being WMDs. Obvious there were no WMDs found but by then it was to late.

The bottom line is the military had the Iraqis on check with boots on the ground. Everything had died down towards the end of Bush's term.

The uprising occurred when Obama pull out the troops to early. That gave the radical Islamics the oppotunity to do their thing. And now its one big mess because of Obama's decision to pull out early. Mind you, he was total by military personel not to do so and he did it anyway.
I do have my facts straight. It's actually verifiable, so you can actually look for it yourself. Trump's first public comment on the war was on the Howard Stern show where he was lukewarmly in support of the war six months before the start of the war:

https://soundcloud.com/buzzfeedandre...n-sept-11-2002

The transcripts are there and it's quite public. You can find other sources, primary sources. But it's not like he was a warmonger, he just casually stated he was for it. Where he should get ample credit for is that soon after the war began he was pretty vocal in being against the war even while Bush/Cheney was claiming it was going quite well. This is where your statement is also correct and we are not contradicting each other at all. That's pretty great and I think a capable leader (or human being in general) should be able to understand when their information was wrong or their opinions were ill-formed and change them when they are presented with compelling evidence otherwise.

It was not just bad intelligence of WMDs. It was complete lack of fact checking on the insider source Khidir Hamza who set off the new push. This was already vetted as factually incorrect prior to any Congressional hearings from this guy on the war so who put the guy up in front? He was brought back in by the administration as an expert but without vetting him or not believing the vetting process. The CIA had already previously declared his claims to be likely fraudulent prior to this. It's insane that he was able to pushed that far in. That is at the very least is criminal negligence on the administration's part (and much worse on Hamza's part). Not only that, but the DoD internal figurings of the likelihood of a WMD was quite low even with having that charlatan considered. Even more on top of that, Iraq has no means to really come after us with them--so what are we going to do? Unilaterally (basically) invade each yahoo country that oppresses its poor citizens as soon as they have WMDs even if they can't really reach us? That whole thing was a stupid, stupid mess and it's important that there are criminal consequences for it. I believe Judith Miller, then of the New York Times, and many of the primary Fox News writers and commentators of the time should be punished. At least with Judith Miller her career was basically finished after that point and now she's relegated to a basic internet clickbait tabloid (Newsmax, such a fine name!).

Obama pulled out the troops according to the deadline the previous administration had brokered for with the Iraqi government. You can read the lettering of it here:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Statu...greement,_2008

I can believe a scenario where prolonged presence might have made things better (but as I've said, I can also see how it can have made our involvement far, far worse). In that case, it's not so much Obama pulling out early so much as not fighting hard enough to prolong our military presence there and renegotiate a longer term and mobilizing his political base to support it domestically. However, I don't know if that would have actually have been better. The whole thing was basically poisoned from the start as we shouldn't have been there.

Just curious, how did you vote in the 2000 and 2004 elections? Do you recall your opinions on the Iraq War during the time leading up to it as well as during the period?

Last edited by OyCrumbler; 05-10-2016 at 03:55 PM..
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Old 05-10-2016, 03:59 PM
 
Location: BROOKLYN NYC
1,356 posts, read 1,219,741 times
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Trump reluctantly saying "yea, I guess so" is about as lukewarm as it gets, which you stated. I don't see that as a true endorsement at all. I remember myself at the time being the same way, not thrilled about it but if we are going in you have to support our boys, period. But in my mind the entire time was, as bad as Saddam was he held sh*t down for 30+ years over there and what kind of hell would come after him? And like Trump, since we are there we better get something out of it...TAKE THE DAMN OIL to pay for the operation and then some.

If we believe the lie that we were giving these people freedom at great cost of our own blood and finances, we damn well should get paid for it. And Trump has been consistent with that throughout. He has my vote...
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Old 05-10-2016, 04:04 PM
 
25,556 posts, read 23,889,069 times
Reputation: 10119
Quote:
Originally Posted by DSNY...DirtyStayOut View Post
Trump reluctantly saying "yea, I guess so" is about as lukewarm as it gets, which you stated. I don't see that as a true endorsement at all. I remember myself at the time being the same way, not thrilled about it but if we are going in you have to support our boys, period. But in my mind the entire time was, as bad as Saddam was he held sh*t down for 30+ years over there and what kind of hell would come after him? And like Trump, since we are there we better get something out of it...TAKE THE DAMN OIL to pay for the operation and then some.

If we believe the lie that we were giving these people freedom at great cost of our own blood and finances, we damn well should get paid for it. And Trump has been consistent with that throughout. He has my vote...
He has recently said he will no longer spend his money to campaign and that he needs 1.5 billion for the general election. Are you going to contribute to his campaign?
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Old 05-10-2016, 04:07 PM
 
Location: In the heights
37,022 posts, read 39,094,778 times
Reputation: 21056
Quote:
Originally Posted by DSNY...DirtyStayOut View Post
Trump reluctantly saying "yea, I guess so" is about as lukewarm as it gets, which you stated. I don't see that as a true endorsement at all. I remember myself at the time being the same way, not thrilled about it but if we are going in you have to support our boys, period. But in my mind the entire time was, as bad as Saddam was he held sh*t down for 30+ years over there and what kind of hell would come after him? And like Trump, since we are there we better get something out of it...TAKE THE DAMN OIL to pay for the operation and then some.

If we believe the lie that we were giving these people freedom at great cost of our own blood and finances, we damn well should get paid for it. And Trump has been consistent with that throughout. He has my vote...
That was before we went in, so I don't really see the support our troops angle. I am in favor of supporting our troops, but not in favor of sending them through an obviously really stupid thing. I don't understand how the administration of that period somehow made opposition to engaging in that war as somehow NOT supporting our troops as I think sending people to potential harm for no good reason is probably the worst kind of support possible. Like I said, one of the good points is that Trump did change his mind.

I think we stay the course as now. We can't really do much else. We try to take the oil, then we definitely no longer have an ability to get a coalition together because we are now war profiteers. We disentangle ourselves as much as possible and make ourselves one of several players in the region. We also radically ramp up our renewable and nuclear energy research so we no longer have a pocketbook interest in the region aside from safe passage on the Suez for our ships. Iran and our not so great allies in the region won't be able to do a damn thing about regime change internally (without us doing a damn thing either) if demand for their oil plummets.

Basically, concentrate on ourselves and less volatile regions. Let the Middle East be a larger multinational affair without us having to be a main arbiter. Concentrate on science and technology expenditures and make sure the kids are technically skilled since the mathematics and analysis skill of the usual American born in the 70s and beyond, as far as I can tell, is horrendously atrocious and that seems to go hand in hand with an inability to discern things logically and procedurally.

Last edited by OyCrumbler; 05-10-2016 at 04:19 PM..
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Old 05-10-2016, 04:15 PM
 
Location: BROOKLYN NYC
1,356 posts, read 1,219,741 times
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Originally Posted by NyWriterdude View Post
He has recently said he will no longer spend his money to campaign and that he needs 1.5 billion for the general election. Are you going to contribute to his campaign?
You understand there are down ticket campaigns correct? The general election requires up to 2 billion to run, the fact that you want a house and senate in your favor is part of that.Hillary has a full war chest and fire must be met with fire. He can raise it now anyway he sees fit, this election is way too important. It is really sad that it has come to this but such is the game now.

Contribute? Of course, just as I always do to candidates i favor. My family has done so for years. Skin in the game correct?
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Old 05-10-2016, 04:18 PM
 
Location: In the heights
37,022 posts, read 39,094,778 times
Reputation: 21056
Quote:
Originally Posted by DSNY...DirtyStayOut View Post
You understand there are down ticket campaigns correct? The general election requires up to 2 billion to run, the fact that you want a house and senate in your favor is part of that.Hillary has a full war chest and fire must be met with fire. He can raise it now anyway he sees fit, this election is way too important. It is really sad that it has come to this but such is the game now.
Yea, and it really shouldn't be this way. Campaign finance reform needs to be a top ticket item because this is ridiculous.
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