ISIS

[VtaGeezer]

Just curious, what missile system(s) were the Iranian officers here to learn?  All the missilers I worked with were ICBM guys, but the RIAF had no ICBMs.   The USAF also had ground launched, tactical missiles through the late 60s, but I doubt we sold any Matadors to the Shah.  Are you talking aircraft launched missiles, either air-to-air or air-to-ground?

We all went through Air Force E-school, then on to air-launched missiles; AIM-4, -7, -9, AGM-12, -45 at Lowry AFB.  The Matador was retired by the time I was in but some, not RIAF, were sent to Mace school.  We still had them deployed in Okinawa and Korea in the late 60s.  ICBM school was at Chanute in IL.

[Uncle Duke]

We all went through Air Force School, then on to air-launched missiles; AIM-4, -7, -9, AGM-12, -45 at Lowry AFB.  The Matador was retired by the time I was in but some, not RIAF, were sent to Mace school.  We still had them deployed in Okinawa and Korea in the late 60s.  ICBM school was at Chanute in IL.

Oh, you're talking maintainers, not launch officers?  That makes sense.  I had two classmates who went to flight school (Columbus, and I think Sheppard) with Iranians, neither was impressed.  Said they spent more time whoring and drinking than anything else, described them as arrogant, rich assholes who couldn't fly for shit.  Somehow, however, the Iranians never busted a check ride.

[FightTheFuture]

Not trying to be confrontational, but you're here talking about this, so I take that as an invite to join in. 

As long as we are asking for evidence, where is your evidence that it's in the interest of the United States to spend further trillions of dollars to (hopefully) kill off a bunch of backward thinking jihadi animals on the other side of the planet through a very perpetual and costly military adventure we can't afford?  The USA is broke.  I can't comprehend how people fail to consider that.  An individual with a comparable financial status wouldn't be allowed a simple credit card.  Whatever you think the benefit of such a campaign would be, it has to be weighed against the cost of trillions of dollars and American lives lost in the process.  Other than a few supposed beheading videos and the hope of keeping oil markets stable, your position really brings nothing to the table in terms of illustrating an immediate threat that can't be controlled through border investment and more selective visa approval... both of which are far less expensive and exponentially more effective options.  Again, we're talking trillions of dollars.  Trillions.  To justify that expense, you really need to have something unambiguous to go on, but you don't, and neither do the Fox News talking heads I listen to.  It's just a bunch of "finish what we started" face saving talking points.  If this is of such importance, let the Saudis finance this operation in its entirety.  Their regime has the most to lose, and it's their back yard.

In tandem with the abysmal financial implications of this latest potential fireworks show, we also face the historically questionable effectiveness of military involvement in this ideologically driven confrontation.

There will be no end... repeat, NO END to the turmoil facing the Middle East.  Our involvement will absolutely not change that, and I'm perplexed by our inability to glean this from history.

First of all, it's not going to cost trillions of dollars. The entire 10-year campaign prior to Obama pulling out barely reached a total of a trillion dollars, and that's operating in a full occupation mode, with 200,000+ troops in country, engaging in constant combat operations. With that said, nobody's talking about that kind of occupation again.

Second, it's no longer prudent to become fortress America. We can no longer stick our heads in the sand and close our borders in hope that the evils of the world do not find their way to our shores. I can promise you, if we are not active in a geopolitical way, our adversaries, namely the Chinese and Russians, will be only too  obliged to fill the void. And, trust me, that is NOT a world that you, your children, nor grandchildren, want to live in.

Third, and most importantly, we swore a blood oath to the people of iraq that we would not abandon them under any circumstances. We went out and talked to the people of Iraq, in the villages and towns and hamlets, and convinced them that we were here for them and they could completely and totally rely on us.

Then Obama was elected. And, once again, after gaining the trust and loyalty of so many Iraqis, we reneged on our promises and abandoned the same people that pledged their loyalty to us. The same people, that risked their lives and, in some cases, the lives of an entire village, to help us make a better place for them. many of those same people, are today, being slaughtered by ISIS. Perhaps you can sleep at night with that knowledge, perhaps it doesn't bother you at all, but I'm not like that. I CAN'T sleep at night knowing that we abandoned our friends and now we sit idly by as they are being slaughtered, beheaded, buried alive, crucified, their women raped and mutilated, and children murdered in the most hideous manner imaginable.

[PB the Deplorable]

...  And how Duncan, who went for treatment and admitted he'd come from Monrovia, got nothing beyond SOP from a boneheaded admitting nurse in the Dallas Hospital...

We're not exactly used to diagnosing ebola.  And at the time the Obama Administration was insisting it couldn't get here

[PB the Deplorable]

... The scrapped plan targeted avian flu, not Ebola...and the plan was pandering to rightwing hysteria too.  My guess is that it would have made big money for someone on the Bush Team.

In addition to bird flu, the plan targeted smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria, pandemic flu, infectious tuberculosis, cholera â€" and viral fevers such as Ebola.  Keeping that out of the US is "pandering to 'right-wing' hysteria"?  Thank you for the reminder of why Liberals and the Left need to be defeated politically and removed from all positions of power - as if further examples were needed.

In addition to the airlines, the so-called civil liberties groups - including the ACLU - opposed the regulations.  Like Obama, they are now also more concerned about foreigners than Americans


Is there any atrocity this horrible President has done through commission or omission that won't be defended?  Sheesh, and you think I'm the gullible ideologue

[paladin1991]

Well, call me Pollyanna, but I have interacted with, worked with, and befriended many Iranians. they want what we want. They want freedom to live their lives. They are young, vibrant, educated and on the move. I'm telling you, it's only a matter of time before Iran blows up into a colossal Green Revolution that not even Barack Obama can impede. However, We better be in position to help it along when it happens.

What?  They are gonna start recycling?

[FightTheFuture]

What?  They are gonna start recycling?

Yeah, recycling mullahs.

[DigitalPigSnuggler]

Third, and most importantly, we swore a blood oath to the people of iraq that we would not abandon them under any circumstances. We went out and talked to the people of Iraq, in the villages and towns and hamlets, and convinced them that we were here for them and they could completely and totally rely on us.

When Santa asks me what I want for Christmas this year, the first item on my list will be world peace.

The second will be that you stop posting these kind of fantasies that exist only in your swiss-cheese mind as actual facts.  It really doesn't matter to me anymore that you believe in this nonsense.  You've gone over the hill.  But you distract normal people who don't know about your mental illness and who, in all sincerity, try to correct you.  Just stop.  Or at least present it as YOUR opinion, rather than as fact, so that even the newbies can recognize it for what it is and move on.

[VtaGeezer]

Oh, you're talking maintainers, not launch officers?  That makes sense.  I had two classmates who went to flight school (Columbus, and I think Sheppard) with Iranians, neither was impressed.  Said they spent more time whoring and drinking than anything else, described them as arrogant, rich assholes who couldn't fly for shit.  Somehow, however, the Iranians never busted a check ride.

Correct, we were learning check-out and maintenance (though any bad units were shipped to the mfrs for repair). The Iranians were all from wealthy, probably well-connected families. They had hot cars and went skiing in Aspen on weekends.  We got along OK and used to make fun of all the flashy badges and devices on their uniforms.

[VtaGeezer]

In addition to bird flu, the plan targeted smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria, pandemic flu, infectious tuberculosis, cholera â€" and viral fevers such as Ebola.  Keeping that out of the US is "pandering to 'right-wing' hysteria"?  Thank you for the reminder of why Liberals and the Left need to be defeated politically and removed from all positions of power - as if further examples were needed.

In addition to the airlines, the so-called civil liberties groups - including the ACLU - opposed the regulations.  Like Obama, they are now also more concerned about foreigners than Americans


Is there any atrocity this horrible President has done through commission or omission that won't be defended?  Sheesh, and you think I'm the gullible ideologue

Is that you, Steve?  Hearing Steve Quayle's over-the-top rantings on C2C last night reminded me of your posts. 

[MV/Liberace!]

First of all, it's not going to cost trillions of dollars. The entire 10-year campaign prior to Obama pulling out barely reached a total of a trillion dollars, and that's operating in a full occupation mode, with 200,000+ troops in country, engaging in constant combat operations. With that said, nobody's talking about that kind of occupation again.

Iraq/Afghanistan campaigns to cost 4-6 trillion:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/study-iraq-afghan-war-costs-to-top-4-trillion/2013/03/28/b82a5dce-97ed-11e2-814b-063623d80a60_story.html

The fact that "nobody's talking about that kind of occupation" is supposed to allay my concerns? Please. I'm sure you've observed the government does nothing efficiently and never spends what it promises, so I don't know why you expect otherwise with the defense department.

Frankly, I think our global intrusion in the affairs of other countries is a drag on our foreign policy, our credibility, and our economy. The fact that the Chinese exist and would "fill a vacuum" could be used to justify any amount foreign meddling.

Regarding the Iraqi people, I think they burned their meal ticket by 1) tacitly and in many cases directly supporting an insurgency against us and 2) failing to organize an army to defend themselves, despite the advantage of the best training and equipment in the world (from us). At this point, I'm being asked to care more about the welfare of the Iraqi people than they themselves seem to.

[b_dubb]

Is that you, Steve?  Hearing Steve Quayle's over-the-top rantings on C2C last night reminded me of your posts. 

I think you're on to something.

[Yorkshire pud]

In what parallel universe did that happen?  The Shah was a CIA/MI6 puppet installed after they engineered a coup to oust the democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953.  In 1979 there was a lot of support for the Shah, especially on the right, and there wasn't a whole lot Carter could have done.  And even if there had been, events moved so quickly after the Shah was deposed that there was no way to exert any influence short of a war.  Would you have wanted that?

If you really want to know who screwed up in Iran and a lot of other places in the world, read Stephen Kinzer's, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War and Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq.  That's documented history, not opinion, and it explains very well why so many countries hate or mistrust the U.S. and why they have some very good reasons for doing so.  The Dulles Brothers did more damage to foreign relations with their heavy-handed meddling in the affairs of other countries than just about anyone else in the latter half of the twentieth century.

But apart from the above, it was all Carter's fault, agree?

You're right, though, that Iran should be a friend and ally of ours.  Most of the Iranian people would like that to happen.

They should be a major trading partner with all the West, truth be told. It's where most of Western civilisation did trade with in the past.

[VtaGeezer]

Third, and most importantly, we swore a blood oath to the people of iraq that we would not abandon them under any circumstances. We went out and talked to the people of Iraq, in the villages and towns and hamlets, and convinced them that we were here for them and they could completely and totally rely on us.

Hamlets?? Verily?? Wilst this involve smiting the Mohammedan heathen? 

Anyway, what you, QK and PB may have done while lost in ecstasy is of no concern to the rest of us.

[paladin1991]

But apart from the above, it was all Carter's fault, agree?

You know, Pud, we need a 'Blame Wheel.'  A wheel that we spin that has all the names of the past politicians so that we can just spin the wheel whenever something comes up that needs to asses blame.
I can't wait to spin and see Nero's name come up.  Neo-con or Liberal or Fascist?  Maybe we need a second wheel to assign positional blame.

[Robert Ghostwolf's Ghost]

You know, Pud, we need a 'Blame Wheel.'  A wheel that we spin that has all the names of the past politicians so that we can just spin the wheel whenever something comes up that needs to asses blame.
I can't wait to spin and see Nero's name come up.  Neo-con or Liberal or Fascist?  Maybe we need a second wheel to assign positional blame.

I don't know about Nero, because some historians think he might have gotten a bad rap, but I'd say Caligula was the Kim Jong Un of his time.

[Eddie Coyle]

we need a 'Blame Wheel.'  A wheel that we spin that has all the names of the past politicians so that we can just spin the wheel whenever something comes up that needs to asses blame.

      I blame everybody for our current predicament,  except for our 9th President William Henry Harrison, who had the decency to die 31 days into his term. He gets a round of applause and praise from this corner.

[Robert Ghostwolf's Ghost]

      I blame everybody for our current predicament,  except for our 9th President William Henry Harrison, who had the decency to die 31 days into his term. He gets a round of applause and praise from this corner.

I will second that!  Old Tippecanoe didn't have a chance to rock the boat.  And as incredible as it sounds, his vice-president, John Tyler, who was born in 1790, has a grandson who is still alive. 

http://www.stategazette.com/story/2022587.html

[VtaGeezer]

We're not exactly used to diagnosing ebola.  And at the time the Obama Administration was insisting it couldn't get here

The hospital claimed it had appropriate protocols.  Alarms would go off with most laymen if someone said "I have a fever and stomach pain."  and "I arrived here from Monrovia Liberia a couple days ago."  Most would say "Don't move, I'm calling for someone to take care of you" and get him to an MD pronto.  The person in question is a nurse, a medical professional, and she blew it.

The President said that he was confident the chance of an outbreak in the US was small; "small" isn't zero.  The death in the US of one person infected in Africa isn't an outbreak.  The only outbreak so far has been hysterics and wild distortions by the right.  I watched Fox News last night and Steve Quayle's loony rantings would have fit right in.

[VtaGeezer]

You know, Pud, we need a 'Blame Wheel.'  A wheel that we spin that has all the names of the past politicians so that we can just spin the wheel whenever something comes up that needs to asses blame.
I can't wait to spin and see Nero's name come up.  Neo-con or Liberal or Fascist?  Maybe we need a second wheel to assign positional blame.

That is funny, but our problem is that about half of the country is in deep denial about their complicity and gullibility in several years of catastrophic Bush/Cheney, and now Tea Party-driven policies that we're going to be dealing with for generations. 

[MV/Liberace!]

...and now Tea Party-driven policies that we're going to be dealing with for generations.

what tea party driven policies are you referring to?  the true tea party movement is a libertarian movement (which a lot of neo-conservatives have strategically decided to associate themselves with), and the libertarian inclinations of the tea party movement are absolutely not in control of the republican party, so i'm not clear.

[VtaGeezer]

what tea party driven policies are you referring to?  the true tea party movement is a libertarian movement (which a lot of neo-conservatives have strategically decided to associate themselves with), and the libertarian inclinations of the tea party movement are absolutely not in control of the republican party, so i'm not clear.

Sequestration was a Tea Party orgasm, and a shotgun taken to the budget.  Its having devastating effects on defense and more specifically defense planning and new systems.  As we now see, indiscriminant slashing of the NIH and CDC has hobbled agencies we thought were low priority until two weeks ago.  They've cut training and personnel now needed for ebola screening and tracking the enterovirus, not to mention assisting in W Africa to keep the spread from exploding.  I have little doubt that a major natural disaster will show similar weakness in FEMA and other responders.  That's just the top of a long list.  MOre broadly, the current paralysis in Congress is the product of hardcore Tea Party ideologues who've intimidated the worst hack who's ever been made Speaker. 

Libertarians are naive souls protected from themselves by responsible grown ups who keep them away from the stove and keep predators who'd eat them alive at bay. In their dreamy world that never existed, libertarians always win.  They imagine themselves as winning in a free market against the corporate establishment with American pluck and fairness Their world history excludes the good ol unregulated days of tainted food, dangerous workplaces and products, contagious disease, and no middle class.

[PB the Deplorable]

Is that you, Steve?  Hearing Steve Quayle's over-the-top rantings on C2C last night reminded me of your posts.

I used to wonder how on earth someone like Hitler could come to power and be so blindly supported in a country with fair elections.  I don't wonder that anymore.

[Robert Ghostwolf's Ghost]

I used to wonder how on earth someone like Hitler could come to power and be so blindly supported in a country with fair elections.  I don't wonder that anymore.

What made you change your mind?

[PB the Deplorable]

What made you change your mind?

Seeing for myself otherwise intelligent voters - not to mention the Media - swoon for this cult of personality

[Robert Ghostwolf's Ghost]

Seeing for myself otherwise intelligent voters - not to mention the Media - swoon for this cult of personality

I wasn't a big fan of Ronald Reagan, but it really gripes me when people compare him to Hitler. 

[Eddie Coyle]

        Vote for Gerry Ford on Nov 2, 1976 and one really great thing could have occurred.

        Not getting Zbiggy and his Afghanistan stategy.

[Robert Ghostwolf's Ghost]

        Vote for Gerry Ford on Nov 2, 1976 and one really great thing could have occurred.

        Not getting Zbiggy and his Afghanistan stategy.

Whip Inflation Now!

[attachimg=1]

[FightTheFuture]

Iraq/Afghanistan campaigns to cost 4-6 trillion:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/study-iraq-afghan-war-costs-to-top-4-trillion/2013/03/28/b82a5dce-97ed-11e2-814b-063623d80a60_story.html

The fact that "nobody's talking about that kind of occupation" is supposed to allay my concerns? Please. I'm sure you've observed the government does nothing efficiently and never spends what it promises, so I don't know why you expect otherwise with the defense department.

Frankly, I think our global intrusion in the affairs of other countries is a drag on our foreign policy, our credibility, and our economy. The fact that the Chinese exist and would "fill a vacuum" could be used to justify any amount foreign meddling.

Regarding the Iraqi people, I think they burned their meal ticket by 1) tacitly and in many cases directly supporting an insurgency against us and 2) failing to organize an army to defend themselves, despite the advantage of the best training and equipment in the world (from us). At this point, I'm being asked to care more about the welfare of the Iraqi people than they themselves seem to.

To be clear, I was strictly referring to our campaign in Iraq, which as we all know, consisted of occupation, combat, and  nation building over the span of about a decade. That figure is somewhere south of two trillion dollars. A lot of money, to be sure, but any future deployment to Iraq will only consist of our operating as one significant element of a larger coalition of forces with one mission in mind, and that is to seek and destroy ISIS.

You may not see the logic in that type of operation, but I can assure you, it will take place. There is absolutely no question what-so-ever, that we will continue to engage ISIS. AND, at some juncture, this administration will relent to the inevitable : we must use ground forces in order to get the job done.

I can tell you, sometimes in life, there are only bad choices, and worse choices. I state flatly, every single time, I will opt for the bad choice, over the worse choice.

[WOTR]

      I blame everybody for our current predicament,  except for our 9th President William Henry Harrison, who had the decency to die 31 days into his term. He gets a round of applause and praise from this corner.

I had missed your posts... This has to be the best comment on this thread.