[Plantagenet]

Salon article, if you can stomach the adds.

https://www.salon.com/2019/01/09/god-he ... something/

Salon is right on this one. Even Trump does something right once in a while.

Meanwhile the Ds, in their haste to oppose and resist everything Trump does, have transmogrified themselves back into NeoCons who think the solution to every problem in the world is sending in the troops.

Cheers!

[ROCKMAN]

P - I have to chuckle at both sides of the debate over our "massive" deployment in Syria. From a purely practical standpoint I don't consider the US to have a military presence in the country The US has more then 3X the number of troops deployed at Fort Wainwright as in Syria. How many here have any idea what country where Fort Wainwright is located without searching google? LOL. BTW Russia has 30X as many combat troops on the ground in Syria not counting logistical support, mercenaries or the naval base.

Not so funny is the reason for the troops being their: bait. Same reason the US put small base camps in "Indian country" in Viet Nam: to draw in the VC/NVA to concentrate them for US air power. Our military was useless against them when they were disbursed around the country side. From the NYT last Oct:

WASHINGTON — The artillery barrage was so intense that the American commandos dived into foxholes for protection, emerging covered in flying dirt and debris to fire back at a column of tanks advancing under the heavy shelling. It was the opening salvo in a nearly four-hour assault in February by around 500 pro-Syrian government forces — including Russian mercenaries — that threatened to inflame already-simmering tensions between Washington and Moscow.

In the end, 200 to 300 of the attacking fighters were killed. The others retreated under merciless airstrikes from the United States, returning later to retrieve their battlefield dead. None of the Americans at the small outpost in eastern Syria — about 40 by the end of the firefight — were harmed.

The details of the Feb. 7 firefight were gleaned from interviews and documents newly obtained by The New York Times. They provide the Pentagon’s first public on-the-ground accounting of one of the single bloodiest battles the American military has faced in Syria since deploying to fight the Islamic State.

The firefight was described by the Pentagon as an act of self-defense against a unit of pro-Syrian government forces. In interviews, United States military officials said they had watched — with dread — hundreds of approaching rival troops, vehicles and artillery pieces in the week leading up to the attack.

[Newfie]

Rock,

That’s a tactical answer as to why we are there. What is the STRATEGIC answer? How does it unambiguously answer our presence? Even if not troops, why are we taking sides in this cluster? (As if one could define with any certainty which side is what.).

People are all in a tizzy because we don’t have 100% access to, transcripts and video of, discussions between Trump and Putin. What access does the American public have to our logic to being in Syria or about [email protected] other countries.

[Cog]

I know where Fort Wainwright is since I spent the coldest month in my life there once learning the many ways the Arctic can kill you. When we left sunny Fort Ord California is was 70 F. We arrived in Fort Wainwright for our cold weather training it was -30F. Delightful time was had by all.

[Plantagenet]

P - I have to chuckle at both sides of the debate over our "massive" deployment in Syria. From a purely practical standpoint I don't consider the US to have a military presence in the country

???????

Cleary the US has troops in Syria, along with CIA agents, contractors, etc. ISIS just targeted the Americans in Syria for a martyrdom operation, killing four Americans.

The Neocon Ds reaction to the ISIS attack is to call for even greater US involvement in Syria. Senator Duckworth said we need to INCREASE our troop numbers there and begin to build democratic institutions in Syria.

Gosh...where have I heard that before?? AND How well has that strategy worked in Afghanistan? Or in Iraq? And now the Ds want to do it all over again in Syria??
'
SHEESH!

[Newfie]

April 15, 2018

PALATINE, Ill. ― Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) challenged President Donald Trump to state his administration’s “endgame” for military involvement in Syria following the U.S. military’s missile strike on a Syrian air field last week.

Speaking to a full house of constituents at a town hall in the Chicago suburb of Palatine on Tuesday night, Duckworth was asked what was accomplished with the first direct assault on the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and what the long-term strategy would be.

Duckworth said that she wants to know, too ― and that Trump needs to provide those answers quickly.

“The Trump administration needs to come forward and [state] its goal. Come forward and tell us the truth,” Duckworth responded.

Which is all pretty interesting since it was Obama who got us in there.

Jan18, 2019. http://www.wjbc.com/2018/04/15/durbin-s ... -approval/

Bottom line, I was appalled," she tells Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson of the attack. "[Trump's] unilateral decision against his military commanders and his then-secretary of defense, Secretary [James Mattis] to decide to withdraw, pull U.S. troops without any type of a plan out of Syria contributed to ISIS' increased boldness."

Aug 20, 2012. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authori ... al_Weapons

In his speech, Obama also said that, "while I believe I have the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization, I know that the country will be stronger if we take this course, and our actions will be even more effective."[35] Introduction of S.J. Res. 21 in the Senate soon followed.

April 27, 2015. https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2015 ... ng-islami/

U.S. forces have now surpassed 2,800 strikes against targets in Iraq and Syria under President Obama’s war against the Islamic State, all as part of a conflict Congress has yet to specifically authorize — and amid worries lawmakers won’t ever act.

Under intense pressure from Capitol Hill, Mr. Obama finally submitted a draft authorization for the use of military force against the Islamic State in February, but it’s since languished, caught in the stalemate between those who want tighter restrictions and those who want the president to have as free a hand as possible.

[Cog]

Its seems one's support for one issue or the other depends on what party is in power.

[Zarquon]

Let's see.

"National Security Advisor John Bolton has in effect overruled President Donald Trump’s troop withdrawal decision. This will have fateful consequences for America’s national interests, and none of them are good. Speaking in Israel, Bolton stated that two conditions must be met before a withdrawal of U.S. troops, and the conditions amount to a recipe for indefinitely prolonging the deployment. One is that the United States must “make sure ISIS is defeated and is not able to revive itself and become a threat again”—an objective that is impossible for the two thousand U.S. troops in Syria to achieve. With the mini-state of ISIS largely gone, whatever threat the group poses is a matter not of military control of a patch of Syria—a patch of “sand and death”, as Trump put it —but instead of ideology, politics, fear, and hatred that cannot be described on a battle map.
[...]
Bolton’s other condition is to obtain some sort of guarantee from Turkey not to attack the Kurdish forces in northeast Syria that have functioned as clients of the United States but that Ankara sees as auxiliaries of an anti-Turkish terrorist group. Again, this is not a box likely to be checked no matter how long U.S. troops stay in Syria. A U.S. withdrawal would give the Kurds incentive to move in the direction least damaging to their interests: striking a deal with the Assad regime in which the Kurds give up any hope for independence in return for some form of limited autonomy. But as long as the United States keeps promising protection to the Kurds and offers its own troops as a tripwire to guarantee such protection, that incentive is missing.
[...]
Bolton in effect added a third condition when, speaking at a joint press conference with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he stated that any withdrawal would have to “ensure the security of Israel and other friends in the region.” So any complaining by Netanyahu’s government will be grounds for not proceeding with the withdrawal.
[...]
The episode involving withdrawal and non-withdrawal of U.S. troops in Syria should be a lesson for those who mistakenly placed hopes in Trump for a more restrained and less militaristic U.S. foreign policy. Applause lines on the campaign trail have been mistaken for deeper thought. Behind the candidate’s rhetoric there never was enough strategic sense, necessary knowledge, or even caring about foreign affairs to ward off the maneuvers of a determined hawk like Bolton once he was in position to do damage."

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul- ... rump-41017

[Zarquon]

And while we're at it:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/worl ... e=Homepage

"As Afghanistan Frays, Blackwater Founder Erik Prince Is Everywhere
Oct. 4, 2018
A new crop of senior American officials in Afghanistan has been racing to contain a dual crisis on the battlefield and in a potentially explosive election dispute. But it is a different American figure — the mercenary executive Erik D. Prince — who has been the talk of Kabul these days.

More than a year after first laying out his plan to President Trump to privatize the American war in Afghanistan with a cadre of contractors — and a private air force — Mr. Prince, the founder of the Blackwater security firm that became infamous for killing civilians in Iraq, has seemingly been everywhere.

And as he has made his sales pitch directly to a host of influential Afghans, he has frequently been introduced as an adviser to Mr. Trump himself.
[...]
He contends that his proposal can achieve what more than 140,000 American and NATO troops at the heart of the troop surge in 2009 and 2010 could not. He compares the current mission, which is reduced to about 15,000 American troops supported on their bases by more than 20,000 private contractors, to the failures of the Soviet Union.

In the interview, Mr. Prince laid out what he called a “rationalization” of private contracting already happening: a leaner mission of 6,000 private contractors providing “skeletal structure support” and training for Afghan forces. Small teams of Special Forces veterans embedded with Afghan battalions for about three years, he said, would ensure the continuity lacking now with American soldiers rotating out every year.

They would be supported by air through a fleet of contracted aircraft flown by joint teams of Afghans and contractors. About 2,500 American Special Operations forces would remain in the country for counterterrorism missions. All of this, Mr. Prince said, would bring down the annual cost of the war to roughly a fifth of the current amount.
[...]
His business has since gone through several reincarnations. His latest venture, the Hong Kong-based Frontier Services Group, has contracts in Africa and Asia, and is backed by Citic Group, a large state-owned Chinese investment company.

Mr. Prince’s initial push last year to privatize the Afghan war was quashed by two of the most senior members of Mr. Trump’s national security team: H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser at the time, and Jim Mattis, the defense secretary. They persuaded Mr. Trump to increase the number of troops and resources in Afghanistan.

Mr. Prince now gauges the winds in Washington as shifting in his favor, with Mr. McMaster gone and Mr. Mattis often at odds with Mr. Trump.
[...]
In the letter Mr. Prince sent to Mr. Ghani in spring 2017 seeking a meeting, he mentioned that his sister, Betsy Devos, was a member of Mr. Trump’s cabinet, one Afghan official said."

That was in October. Any bets when the US war in Afghanistan will be privatized now?

[Newfie]

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist."

[Zarquon]

The fun thing is that if they go through with this, they'll put the one guy in charge of the war who has the least interest in ever winning it.

[lpetrich]

Trump gets along with Putin much better than he does with fellow leaders of democratic nations. By contrast, Barack Obama and Angela Merkel are good friends.

(Image snipped for brevity. It showed an anguished Captain Picard, and it stated "Just. Stop. Your stupid is making my brain cry.")

I can't help it if the truth hurts.

[lpetrich]

Not long ago the left loved Russia and all things Russia. Said America should adopt their communist ways.

Like who? There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in groves of birch trees.

But where did the love go? LOL

Putin-era Russia has been much more sympathetic to the Right than to the Left.

You have went full retard with the Trump hate Ipetrich. Never go full retard. Have you overdosed on CNN or something?

CNN? The Capitalist News Network?

[Cog]

The Mueller report found no Russian collusion or conspiracy by any American. I guess the premise of this thread didn't age well.

[lpetrich]

The Mueller report found no Russian collusion or conspiracy by any American. I guess the premise of this thread didn't age well.

The whole report or Trump lackey Barr's summary of it?

[Plantagenet]

The Mueller report found no Russian collusion or conspiracy by any American. I guess the premise of this thread didn't age well.

The whole report or .... Barr's summary of it?

Both of them.

Mueller found there was no collusion or conspiracy between Trump or his Campaign with the Russians.

The bottom line is you've been fooled into believing a conspiracy theory with no basis in fact.

Cheers!

[lpetrich]

Mueller found there was no collusion or conspiracy between Trump or his Campaign with the Russians.

Mueller Found Evidence of Collusion - The Moscow Project -- which goes to show that there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in Fox News.

Trump’s Russia Cover-Up By the Numbers – 251 contacts with Russia-linked operatives - The Moscow Project -- with that many, one has to ask what they are up to.

On April 18, 2019, a redacted copy of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election” (Mueller Report) was released to the public. The Mueller report builds on the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that there were two campaigns to elect Donald Trump— one run by Trump and one run by the Russian government. The Mueller report clearly identified collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, despite repeated denials from Trump and many of his senior advisers and close associates that there were any connections between the two campaigns.

About these contacts,

None of these contacts were ever reported to the proper authorities. Instead, the Trump team tried to cover up every single one of them.

Beyond the many lies the Trump team told to the American people, Mueller himself repeatedly remarked on how far the Trump team was willing to go to hide their Russian contacts, stating, “the investigation established that several individuals affiliated with the Trump Campaign lied to the Office, and to Congress, about their interactions with Russian-affiliated individuals and related matters. Those lies materially impaired the investigation of Russian election interference.”

Links between Trump associates and Russian officials - Wikipedia has plenty on this subject.

[Cog]

If Mueller had a chargeable offense he should have charged someone. He charged no one with conspiracy or collusion. I know this bums you out. Go march in a May Day parade comrade. You will feel better.

[Cog]

You really should read the Mueller report so you can discuss it. From Page 5 of the report

The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.

So two years later here we are. A political investigation of a candidate and then a president that had no underlying crime. Now the Attorney General and OIG are investigating how we got here and what elements of the intelligence and law enforcement community conspired to unseat a duly elected president.

The Dems should have never gone down this road since its going to blow back on them. Something I warned about a year ago.

[lpetrich]

The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.

"We couldn't prove that they were guilty" != "We proved that they were innocent"