Paris attacks

[Phi for All]

... a left leaner might suggest that the U.S. military used an experimental dirty bomb, where a reasonable person might...

 

!

Moderator Note

But it's been reported that the right leaner is suggesting all lefties aren't reasonable. Please, no more slurs against whole groups.

[dimreepr]

dimreeper,

 

Sandy Hook was evil..

 

9/11 was evil.

 

Sandy Hook was a guy with baggage, but he did a very evil act. There is a reaction in our country against guns, and bullies, but the guy was evil...pure evil. We can't kill him,or put him in jail, so we strike out at guns and bullies so that people like him can not easily kill innocents. We fight against bullies so that we don't create another evil guy that is mad at his 2nd grade classmates.

 

9/11 was a guy with baggage, but he did a very evil act. There is a reaction in our county against terrorists, and greedy oil barons, so that we don't get blown up in the café. But we know this evil doer is still alive. We can go after his command and control, chase him down, and put him out of business. He has been waiting to get us since Israel appeared on the Map.

 

We cannot become communists or Muslim, inorder to placate them. Capitalists and Zionists are only bullies to communists and Muslims. To Capitalists and Zionists, capitalists and Zionists are just fine.

 

 

 

So, ‘Them’ are those that disagree with you? You might find ‘them’ a little overwhelming.

[tar]

I am not sure world opinion is easy to agree with, or to isolate.

 

for instance the war on terror is a global thing

 

anti guns is a global movement, yet every country's government has them

 

the world bank is counted on to pull the world out of recession yet world opinion is against the greedy banker

 

reasonable people understand there is not an anthropomorphic god or any evidence of souls carrying on after death yet world opinion says our souls matter a lot and whether we are good or evil in this life matters, even after we die

 

So which do you figure is real life for me, an American, with a bank account, living in a free society, in comfort and safety, with the support of my countrymen around me? That I am evil and a transgressor and a person in error...the great Satan, or that the evil that brought down the World Trade Center, is the force that is evil?

I don't mind people disagreeing with me. I mind them killing me, and destroying my way of life.

[dimreepr]

When you understand why forgiveness ameliorates the notion of revenge, you may understand.

[DimaMazin]

 

 

 

So, ‘Them’ are those that disagree with you? You might find ‘them’ a little overwhelming.

We should use science then. Interactions of forces for example.

[tar]

It is neither star wars or Cinderella but we each have an area of our thoughts with the bad stuff, the evil stuff that we should avoid and fight and destroy, because it is damaging or painful, and an area that houses the good stuff that is constructive and pleasant that we attempt to foster and protect and make manifest.

 

The proper way to be, in my estimation is to search for those things that will give yourself pleasure, while allowing others to have pleasure. Pursuit of happiness.

 

If there is somebody who gets pleasure out of your pain, they go in my evil bucket.

the silliest thing about suicide bombers to me is the fact that they get NO pleasure from seeing me suffer, because they are dead

and the silliest thing about pleasing people that have no interest in pleasing you, is that you are trying to please someone who has no interest in pleasing you

[DimaMazin]

When you understand why forgiveness ameliorates the notion of revenge, you may understand.

Our forgiveness has no sense for people which don't need it.

[tar]

I prefer to choose sides. Use my judgement to determine who cares about me and my way of life, and who does not give a damn and would steal it from me. And make it sort of a star wars, Cinderella thing. The evil gets to be defeated, the good gets to stay around.

[dimreepr]

My point was that such a binary system doesn’t exist in ‘REAL’ life; a barking dog doesn’t always intend harm;

 

Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.

[tar]

in a big world, trying to isolate the them from the we is difficult

I don't think it hard though to put Daesh in the bad category.

 

What is wrong with expecting every good person should be automatically on my team, also calling Daesh, them and not us.

It is the criminals and the anti-Zionists, the Baathist ringleaders, and the backward Caliph I am against.

 

And I and feel the distinction between good and evil is clear. I think "we" should capture "them" and put them in jail or kill them if they resist.

Edited December 10, 2015 by tar

[dimreepr]

Them and we is just us; and every good person is in favour of ‘us’; so I think we should try to understand “them” not jail ‘them’ or kill ‘them’ because them and we are us.

[tar]

dimreeper,

 

I don't disagree. Being right, is not important if being right makes you wrong. Like when a wife and husband both know they are right and the other is wrong. If proving yourself right, hurts the other person in that the one is sleeping on the couch and all pissed off and spiteful, what is the point of being right?

 

I am all for burying the hatchet. But if you extend a hand, and say "ok you are right" lets not fight, and the other points out how you were also wrong in the crusades and bombing Berlin, and defeating Saddam and killing Bin Laden...then the other has no interest in making up.

 

Regards, TAR

 

Two problems with forgiveness is when you give an inch and a mile is taken, and when you run out of cheeks to turn.

 

Take Chicago. The mayor fires the police chief, but that is not enough.

[dimreepr]

dimreeper,

 

I don't disagree. Being right, is not important if being right makes you wrong. Like when a wife and husband both know they are right and the other is wrong. If proving yourself right, hurts the other person in that the one is sleeping on the couch and all pissed off and spiteful, what is the point of being right?

 

I am all for burying the hatchet. But if you extend a hand, and say "ok you are right" lets not fight, and the other points out how you were also wrong in the crusades and bombing Berlin, and defeating Saddam and killing Bin Laden...then the other has no interest in making up.

 

Regards, TAR

 

Two problems with forgiveness is when you give an inch and a mile is taken, and when you run out of cheeks to turn.

 

 

 

 

No, the point of forgiveness is, you don’t care how much is taken (when you can’t change the quantity) and you only turn the other cheek when you run out of answers.

[tar]

Dimreeper,

 

Maybe before 9/11 I felt the same way. Now I realize that we have made enemies, and they are not interested in forgiving us.

 

I quit my job and stormed out of a meeting with my boss and slammed the door behind me, got my stuff together, took it to the car and turned in my computer and security badge to my boss, thanking him for giving me a job. I can't work for him again. Even though I called the next morning and offered to stay around for 2 weeks and close out open business. I can't work for that company again. I burned my bridges by slamming the door. Even though I am still friends with all my workmates, I can't even go back and visit. My boss does not want me in the building.

 

I have written him, he does not write back.

 

Forgiveness is not a possibility. The thing is already fixed.

 

How exactly do we forgive or expect forgiveness from a dead guy?

Why exactly should we expect forgiveness from a sworn enemy who wants to kill us? We can just give the mile, but that would be doing what they want us to do, and we don't want to do what they want us to do, or we would have done it.

[overtone]

Like Overtone's account of the peaceful parents coming down to reopen their school.

What I actually posted -

 

you have made visible and nonfactual alterations to my account ("peaceful", "parents", and "reopen their school", were not in my account, which was factual) -

 

was the description of a Marine Corps historian which was otherwise seriously biased in favor of the US (he counted only 70 civilian casualties in all of the Fallujah conflict) , three accounts from two separate sources that agree with each other, and so forth. It is the standard version accepted by everyone and agreeing with the physical facts of the case.

 

There is no other version in agreement with the physical evidence. So what you are calling "lies fabricated by terrorists" are to begin with alterations fabricated by you, and continuing are simply factual accounts agreed with by everyone who has investigated the matter.

 

Let's take a look at some of the rest of your posting:

 

 

As for uranium being a possible cause of cancer in children in Fallujah, a left leaner might suggest that the U.S. military used an experimental dirty bomb, where a reasonable person might surmise Saddam had something going there, that got shelled or somehow else released into the environment.

Not a single "left leaner" here or anywhere I know of has ever suggested the US used an experimental dirty bomb anywhere in Iraq. In the first place the US has no such weaponry - we have no need, what with tactical nukes and the like in our arsenal, we have the real thing. In the second we were occupying the place - we would have been dirty bombing ourselves. So you claiming a "left leaner" might "suggest" that is nonsense, and your fantasy world of "left leaners" has thrown up yet another bizarre symptom.

 

On the other hand, no reasonable person thinks Saddam had anything nuclear "going on" in Fallujah. Wrong place, far too easily discovered, the evidence would still be there, a desperate search by the Americans for any evidence at all they could use to back up their silly claims of nuke danger would hardly have missed the central battle region of the insurgency, and so forth.

 

So the standard accusation - from the critics of W's Folly you choose to call "left leaners" without knowing their politics - is that the US was using white phosphorus and other toxics in combination with depleted uranium ammunition, and Fallujah got a heavy dose. That is the actual accusation visible in the article, so you had no need to invent nonsense about accusations of dirty bombs even for yourself. It also fits the physical facts - the US did in fact use WP munitions on cities in Iraq with many civilians in them, as was admitted even by the liars on your team after much denial when photographs and the like came out, and the US did in fact use depleted uranium munitions in Iraq, including use by the forces attacking Fallujah, which has never been denied (although it's amount has been lowballed). So the "left leaners" are once again dealing in physical facts, saying things based in reality, while you are dealing in fabrication and saying things based in fantasy.

 

But you threw me off because you were talking about the peaceful hamlet being invaded by the child molesting 82nd and that there was no looting going on and such.

Once again your fantasy world alters my posting to fit your notion of "left leaning". No accusations of child molesting by the 82nd in Fallujah came from me (I only mention child molesting in the context of Abu Ghraib, where multiple investigators have mentioned the abuse of children and other family members by US "interrogators" and US counterinsurgency operatives). As far as the looting in Fallujah, it was minimal prior to the 82nd - my term was "little". Nothing like Baghdad's free-for-all. That agrees with all accounts. If you read your Wiki article carefully, for example, you will discover that its clever and biased and obviously corrupted wording does not go so far as to claim Fallujah itself was subjected to much looting, or was the scene of much violence prior to the 82nd making camp in the city proper. It does try to suggest that, to the gullible, by juxtaposing accounts of heavy prior looting in nearby places with accounts of fighting in Fallujah subsequent, and wording things so that a person could easily come away with the impression of a violent and looted Fallujah itself prior to the soldiers's arrival, but these Wiki accounts are public - it's not easy to get an outright lie on a topic like this into them.

 

Continuing with your interesting post:

 

 

The crowd was out past curfew, hardly the time to take your kids to school, or petition for its reopening, and the place your account (from a slightly left leaning publication) said the crowd was marching "past" to get to, was the school they were coming to besiege. Had they been on their way to a PTA meeting, they might have taken a different route, and they might have done it in daylight.

After typing the alteration of "opening the school" you seem to have fooled yourself that I posted it, and now expand on your fantasy of my posting to include "take kids to school" and so forth. That's a symptom. I don't have to alter your posts like that to find grounds for reply.

 

You have also made another error of fact: the accounts I posted - all of the several - have the unarmed civilians "marching past" not the school but another building occupied by the 82nd, the Baathist Party headquarters. Notice that they did not stop there, or "besiege" the soldiers in that building, but continued on to the school building. That is consistent with political protest, and inconsistent with your imagined besieging of frightened and violently threatened soldiers. Notice also that at this time of the year it was still pretty much daylight - the curfew was an early one - and that in Iraq it is customary to do business and conduct life in the cooler hours of the evening in general.

 

So you are once again setting up a fantasy, and denying physical reality as well as historical event.

 

 

I have lost the citing, but in one of the Wiki articles I was reading this morning about Iraq it talked of a larger plan, that Iraq was just the start of, that included Syria, Lebanon, Libya and Somalia and Iran, as places were terrorists that wanted to hurt us, were.

You don't need the cite - lots of people are familiar with the New American Century plans of that unbelievably fuckwitted administration your team stuck our country with. The grandiose stupidity of W&Cheney setting out to conquer the Middle East and rid it of anyone who admitted to having a violent dislike of the US is common knowledge, although one doesn't often find it admitted so casually by the wingnut crowd. It's kind of embarrassing, as well as evil, and those guys are only comfortable with the evil.

 

Just to point to the most obvious problem: Iraq, Syria, and Iran did not harbor "terrorists who wanted to hurt us" until after W's Folly, Lebanon is not a place a sane person would want to destroy in search of their scattered and generally harmless terrorist populations, Libya and Somalia are very large and decentralized tribal places in which rooting out all the "terrorists" would be a project involving decades of ugly tyranny, the largest populations of "terrorists who want to hurt us" were in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, and similar countries we would have been fools to invade militarily, and so forth. And "us" appears to include Israel, which is a foreign country (no other reason to include Lebanon in the hit list). So the plan was to invade all the wrong countries, not just Iraq, and kill millions, not just hundreds of thousands. Beautiful. And you voted for that crowd - twice.

 

It's not the terrorist lies that are making you look bad. Other people can see those lies, and allow for them. The terrorists look bad in Paris, for example. Your problem is that they can also see yours - and you can't, apparently.

Edited December 10, 2015 by overtone

[dimreepr]

What they want us to do is ‘hate’ them; so forgiving them is, exactly, what they ‘don’t’ want us to do; BTW forgiveness is ‘always’ possible.

[DimaMazin]

so I think we should try to understand “them” not jail ‘them’ or kill ‘them’ because them and we are us.

They want to subordinate us.

[tar]

Ok, except I do hate Baghdadi and whoever his Baathist friends might be. I read ISIS started out al-queda and split ,because they were too evil even for al-queda. If I already had pigeon holed al-queda as evil, Daesh has no redeeming social value at all, in my book.

 

So lets put Putin, Hollande, Obama, Rouhani, Masum, Assad, Erdogan and Baghdadi in a room with a cartographer and see how big the ISIS state is going to be.

by guess would be that Baghdadi's territory would be limited to the area between his right ear and his left ear

[overtone]

And I and feel the distinction between good and evil is clear. I think "we" should capture "them" and put them in jail or kill them if they resist

So: Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, for sure. Maybe W, depending on what the interrogation discovers about what he knew and how much he understood about what was happening.

 

Who else? I mean, the invasion of Iraq was clearly and distinctly evil, right, and it led to this Paris terrorism and much else in the realm of horribleness, and its perps are still walking around influencing policy and working their evil schemes, so - - -

Edited December 10, 2015 by overtone

[tar]

overtone,

 

the former Baathist headquarters, the school, and the building the 82nd were on was one building

 

your link used the word "past" to make it sound like they were peacefully on the way to do some noble community thing

 

you characterized the whole situation differently than I would

 

using the exact same facts you chose to read motivations into it, that were not consistent with the facts

 

and the speculation that the U.S. used an experimental bomb, was in your article, to explain the existence of injuries of Fallujah residents consistent with those that Uranium would cause

 

I didn't make it up. I just read your links. If you want to talk facts, lets talk facts. Your characterizations are getting annoying.

 

And why do you not answer my question as to why you did not mention the fact that we were looking for Saddam at the time, and the Guard had blended into the population...the "crowd" of Fallujah. Taking this into account, one might not think that the 82nd was a major factor in causing ISIS. They were there to fight Saddam's guard. And may have well thought the guard has come to take back their headquarters. In fact there very well could have been fire coming from a former guard member in the crowd, using unarmed civilians as human shields. It is not like something like that wasn't done every gosh darn day we were in Iraq.

 

Regards, TAR

So: Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, for sure. Maybe W, depending on what the interrogation discovers about what he knew and how much he understood about what was happening.

 

Who else? I mean, the invasion of Iraq was clearly and distinctly evil, right, and it led to this Paris terrorism and much else in the realm of horribleness, and its perps are still walking around influencing policy and working their evil schemes, so - - -

No, not OK. You don't fire the police chief because a cop shoots a perp.

I would rather have the police than the perps.

 

The police are on my team, the perps are off the team.

 

The perps are not people who want to take care of me, they are people that want to hurt me.

 

The 82nd is on my team.

 

Bush and Cheney were on my team.

 

Obama and Hilary are on my team.

 

You are on my team. Shunning those that embarrass us and pointing out injustice and correcting it. But for me it is a family type thing, were everybody in the family is by default on my side, and only fall out of favor if they act against the team. Or break faith with me, or the 82nd, or my commander in chief, or the laws of the land, or the constitution. The abu graib prison guards broke faith with America and embarrassed me and you. If you let a thing like that put 29 percent of the population of your country off your team, I have to question your desire to support me and care about those 29 percent in the first place. I think you have some other agenda. Some agenda that you have not been able to push on the American people for 50 years.

Overtone,

 

So if America has shown she can't help, which you say is true and I say is false, and you are American, why do you think you can help the situation and the rest of the country is inept?

 

What is the power you hold, or the intellect you hold, or the answer you hold that the rest of us are missing?

 

If you have the answer for the Syria situation, sure would have been nice of you to let us know 240,000 lives ago. I doubt that hanging the President for assassinating Bin Laden would have saved those lives.

 

Regards, TAR

Edited December 10, 2015 by tar

[overtone]

the former Baathist headquarters, the school, and the building the 82nd were on was one building

The protests and demonstrations agains American soldiers being quartered in the school went to three separate buildings that day: the City Hall, the Ba'ath Party headquarters building, and the school building at issue.

 

Here's a picture of the school, where soldiers fired from the roof into the crowd:

http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2024179,00.html

 

Two days later there was a shooting at the Ba'ath Party headquarters building as well - not the school: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Fallujah

 

And here's from the Wiki account, already linked and read by you, of the 3rd Cavalry choosing not to occupy the school building, but to stay in the Ba'ath Party Headquarters building only instead:

"The 3rd Cavalry was significantly smaller in number and chose not to occupy the same schoolhouse where the shooting had occurred two days earlier. On the same day soldiers shot three protesters in front of U.S. Forward Operating Base "Laurie," established in the former Ba'ath party headquarters,^[8] and next to the Mayor's office. - - - - - -

During the summer, the US Army decided to close down its last remaining base inside the city (the Ba'ath party headquarters; FOB Laurie)"

 

No, not OK. You don't fire the police chief because a cop shoots a perp

Sure you do - if he was at fault.

 

using the exact same facts you chose to read motivations into it, that were not consistent with the facts

I read no motives into anything. You did. And your motive reading required you to deny factual accounts, and declare them to be "biased", because they contradicted your preselected motives.

 

The abu graib prison guards broke faith with America and embarrassed me and you.

So did the people who advocated, mandated, and set up the torture facilities and practices at Abu Ghraib, and Bagram, and Gitmo, and Diego Garcia, and a half dozen others. So did the people who voted those perps back into office after being informed of what they'd been up to.

 

And why do you not answer my question as to why you did not mention the fact that we were looking for Saddam at the time, and the Guard had blended into the population...the "crowd" of Fallujah.

Because it doesn't matter. Almost certainly Sunni Baathists from the military had gone home to Fallujah - they lived there, their families lived there, the war was over, most of them had never liked Saddam anyway (they were religious, he was secular and oppressive). One would assume that. That may have explained the calm, the lack of looting and violence, in Fallujah.

 

Taking this into account, one might not think that the 82nd was a major factor in causing ISIS.

No, one would not be silly like that. The collapse of Fallujah from a calm and civilian run city without a significant military presence into the major center of Sunni insurgency in Iraq and the source of what has become ISIL is still traced directly from the 82nd Airborne's encampment in that city.

 

They were there to fight Saddam's guard. And may have well thought the guard has come to take back their headquarters. In fact there very well could have been fire coming from a former guard member in the crowd, using unarmed civilians as human shields.

None of that agrees with the facts, except maybe - maybe - your hypothesis of deluded and bigoted thinking among poorly prepared and badly commanded Americans. The crowd was not in front of the Ba'ath Headquarters, there was no evidence of firing from the crowd (it was checked carefully, because war crimes were an issue), and the American forces should not have fired into an unarmed crowd regardless.

 

If you let a thing like that put 29 percent of the population of your country off your team, I have to question your desire to support me and care about those 29 percent in the first place.

Dude, it ain't just one thing. The torture prison complex that included Abu Ghraib was pretty bad, I grant you, but in isolation it could be overcome - just apologize for the temporary insanity, plead special circumstances, prosecute the central figures responsible, promise never to do that again, and we'd be good. But that is just the tip of the iceberg here - You guys ran your string of betrayals and atrocities and incompetence and bigotry and dumbass violence all the way out with W. All the way. You trashed your country. The only people still supporting your team without being on it are the ones who still can't believe your team really exists, and really is doing what it's been doing, even when it's right in front of them dressed up as a candidate for President. Seriously - the biggest challenge in reining your team in and sitting them in the time out corner for a generation is convincing regular TV watching Americans that you guys actually did what you did, and will do it some more.

But it's important to keep trying, because if nobody stops you we'll be seeing another Iraq War launched on our credit cards against the terrorists wherever they may be this time - and that's kind of scary. Paris? Syria? Special ID cards for Muslims in the US? Universal phone and computer taps? You guys are capable of almost anything.

Edited December 10, 2015 by overtone

[tar]

Overtone,

 

I read several accounts of the school thing and one had the word "past" in it referring to where the crowd was marching. I read another account that said the school was a "former" Baathist headquarters. All the accounts say the crowd was in front of the building that the 82nd was in as shots rang out. The last account you posted said the Fallujians swear to this day that the Americans shot first. That wording implies the American fire might have been returned even if the Americans shot first. I had suggested your account from the Revolution site, with the Marxist propaganda and anti capitalist papers and such on it might have been bias because it said "past" the building. Whatever the situation, whether the residents of Fallujah loved Americans or Hated Americans prior the incident, or what the mix of pro to anti Americans there were, or whether the building was a school or a headquarter and whether it had ever been a Baathist headquarters or not, all the accounts put together put the crowd AT the building, not marching past. And the 82nd was on high alert in an occupied city DURING an invasion. You cannot put constitutional rights to peacefully protest and proscriptions against billeting soldiers without payment and such into the picture, to make the 82nd look bad. We already established in this thread that the U.S. thought that people would throw flowers at their feet, for liberating them from Saddam. And that that was not the reception the Iraqis turned out giving us. Not because of peaceful pro American Shia and Kurds and moderate pro western Sunni, but because of rabble-rousers that used any means to make the U.S. look bad.

 

Regards, TAR

 

years of reprisal between shia and sunni and years of insurgence against the occupying forces

Everybody knows its OK to get defeated by the U.S. because we are good guys and will help you rebuild. The tribal leader in Falujah said this when he told us we were giving rebuilding contracts to the wrong guys, the guys that had American blood on their hands were getting our contracts. We were helping our enemy, doing all the forgiving that we could, yet there were still people that would kill us, and find ways to make us look bad in the process.

 

Against this Daesh thing, one of our options is not to treat them like potential friends.

and by them, I mean the guys with the black flag

I don't care if they were my friends before the 82nd and turned into my enemies because of it. They are still my enemies and there is not a chance that they care about my safety and pleasure. Zero chance.

We still have a problem in Syria, in that Daesh is in there and we have nobody to send in after them.

The Turks won't support past Turkmen territory and the Kurds find it inappropriate to proceed past ethnic Kurdish areas. Our secular friends in the area are too weak to do it, even with our support from the air and weapons and food and training.

 

We have, two choices, I think, as the U.S. Send in special forces, or send in troops. The troops should not be there, unless it is OK with Assad. Probably the special forces should not be there, unless its OK with Assad. So the question I think we are up against as the U.S. is not whether to send in help to defeat Daesh, but to possibly suspend our wishes for regime change in Syria and actually assist Assad on the promise that there will be no reprisals against the people we supported to kill his troops, and that everybody fight Daesh together. And not each other.

put the Arab Spring on hold and fight Daesh

There are curretly 12,000 families in Ramadi held as human shields, against the advance of the Iraqi army. 300 to 500 fighters, holding a city hostage. We starve them and we starve the city. If civilians die it will be on our hands. But it is ISIS that is killing them, not the Iraqi army.

 

If recruits flood to ISIS because the Iraqi army takes the city back and hundreds of civilians, or 1000s of civilians die...well then shame on the recruits. They have no idea about proper human behavior.

they should be calling their fighter buddies on cell phone and urging them to let the innocents go

if glory and honor is what they are after, let the human shields go, and get killed fighting Jihad

Edited December 10, 2015 by tar

[overtone]

I read another account that said the school was a "former" Baathist headquarters. All the accounts say the crowd was in front of the building that the 82nd was in as shots rang out - - -all the accounts put together put the crowd AT the building, not marching past.

The 82nd Airborne was in more than one building. They were in the former Baath Party headquarters, and in the school building, and in a couple of other places.

 

When the protest demonstration began, it visited first the City Hall - where there were some Americans - and then marched past the Baath Party headquarters (full of American soldiers), and then marched to and gathered at the school building that was the major cause of friction.

 

 

When the 3rd Cavalry took over, they were a smaller force - they only occupied the Baath Headquarters building, and did not occupy the school.

 

This is all explicit in the links.

 

Everybody knows its OK to get defeated by the U.S. because we are good guys and will help you rebuild.

It's been quite a while since that happened. Of course, maybe it's been quite a while since anyone was defeated by the US?

 

We already established in this thread that the U.S. thought that people would throw flowers at their feet, for liberating them from Saddam.

No, the "US" did not think that. Only some people in the US believed that bs. A lot of people in the US knew better, and said so.

 

And that that was not the reception the Iraqis turned out giving us.

It was pretty close to the reception the Iraqis in Fallujah did provide. Until they got to know the Americans better.

 

 

I don't care if they were my friends before the 82nd and turned into my enemies because of it.

Yet another reason nobody with any sense wants to allow your team to start yet another war in the region.

 

We still have a problem in Syria, in that Daesh is in there and we have nobody to send in after them.

There are millions of soldiers in all the neighboring States who are better armed and better trained than Daesh. They can handle the situation.

 

We have, two choices, I think, as the U.S. Send in special forces, or send in troops

Or just provide satellite info to the huge armies on all sides of Daesh, and stay out of it otherwise.

 

Haven't you guys done enough damage, with all of Europe now dealing with yet another wave of refugees launched by the Iraq War?

Edited December 11, 2015 by overtone

[tar]

You guys? I thought you were a U.S. citizen Overtone.

 

If our desires for regime change have resulting in refugees, then our desire for regime change in Syria is just as pertinent as our desire for regime change in Iraq.

 

You can't split the American personality and take just the half you want. Well you can, but it is not workable, or consistent.

 

Our state department and our president and the majority of our population was in spirit on the side of the Arab Spring. We wanted to see Assad out of power, and said as much. There were other ways to address grievances against Assad, than to back the rebels fighting him. I do not know all the reasons why the President is for regime change in Syria. But if we as a country are to stick our nose into other people's affairs, it is probably because we have reason to do so. There are interests we have. Friends we want to protect and enemies we want to weaken and destroy. Some of these concerns are physical, some are ideological, some are based on human agreements, rule of law, human rights concerns and justice.

 

I heard an Arab cited in some article talk about how they would welcome U.S. support, if it didn't mean that the Israelis would be involved, in terms of bases and intelligence. So we are involved. Deeply involved already. We win one way we move, and lose in another way. You can't just take the wins. You have to take the loses as well. That is, if you wish to make the situation work and be consistent in your approach.

 

Regards, TAR

[MigL]

Possible sources of uranium...

The 'gatling' gun mounted in the nose of the A-10, the GAU-8, is capable of firing 30 mm, depleted uranium rounds ( at 4200 rounds/min ). The mass of the depleted uranium giving the round extra kinetic energy to enable penetration of tank armour.

I know A-10s were used in the first Gulf war attacking retreating Iraqi armour, but wasn't aware that they are in theater now ( not sure if they are capable of using PGMs ).