The Trump Presidency 14

Status
Not open for further replies.
Sobering how quickly people are buying into this. And scary. To my ears the whole thing sounds like madness. One thing I learned in the military. Wars are real easy to start. Not so easy to end.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Was Cole in a combat zone and at alert?
Click to expand...

IIRC they were on alert as there had been a series of terrorist attacks at the time, know as "the Millennium Attacks". This included a similar attempt to bomb USS Sullivan earlier in the year at the same refuelling port (Aden)

Captain_Swoop said:
I think he's talking bollocks to be honest and I am a veteran of an actual naval war.
Click to expand...

So is he

Nance served in the U.S. Navy for 20 years, from 1981 to 2001, receiving several military decorations. As a U.S. Navy specialist in Naval Cryptology, Nance was involved in numerous counter-terrorism, intelligence, and combat operations. He garnered expertise within the fields of intelligence and counterterrorism. He was also an instructor in wartime and peacetime Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, training Navy and Marine Corps pilots and aircrew how to survive as a prisoner of war. There Nance helped to initiate the Advanced Terrorism, Abduction and Hostage Survival course of instruction.

Nance took part in combat operations that occurred after the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings, was peripherally involved with the 1986 United States bombing of Libya, served on USS Wainwright during Operation Praying Mantis and was aboard during the sinking of the Iranian missile boat Joshan, served on USS Tripoli during the Gulf War, and assisted during a Banja Luka, Bosnia air strike.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Nance#Military_career
 
Trebuchet said:
Yup. Remember "Fire and Fury", before he went and became BFF's with "Little Rocket Boy"?
The Iraq war, 2003 version, should have resulted in Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bolton in prison.
Click to expand...

Remember giving criminal orders or following them is totally OK in the US. No one wants politicians held accountable for their crimes.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
It was never about winning for Trump. It's just a stall tactic. Trump's attorneys will try to keep this mired in court for as long as possible.

I would suggest that bad faith court action by the president to subvert the due power of the legislature is an impeachable offense, but Republicans aren't interested in such things.
Click to expand...

Principls are for losers, amirite?
 
Stacko said:
Winning the war isn't the issue. Making sure there's a functioning country in the aftermath is the problem. Otherwise all that America will accomplish again is destabilizing another country and creating more terrorists with the added bonus of Iran's nuclear material enrichment program material going missing in the process.
Click to expand...


The recent season finale of one of the TV shows I watch had an ISIS remnant trying to make it look like Iran had launched missiles at Israel and Saudi Arabia, with the goal of initiating a multi-nation conflict in the area so they could re-establish themselves during the chaos.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
It was never about winning for Trump. It's just a stall tactic. Trump's attorneys will try to keep this mired in court for as long as possible.
Click to expand...

Exactly. The only big winners in this are the lawyers - the billable hours must me astronomical - assuming they get paid, of course.

The silver lining is that the judicial seems to be aware of these meritless lawsuits as a delaying tactic and so are expediting things as much as possible. It seems unlikely that a very clear cut case such as this one will get reviewed by the Supreme Court, so there’s that. There will hopefully come a point in the foreseeable future where no further appeal is possible.
 
Upchurch said:
Sorry if this a repeat, but Trump lost his appeal:

Judge rules against Trump in fight over president’s financial records
Click to expand...

This highlights one of the biggest damages Trump has inflicted on the US. The Supreme court was already politicized, but now all judges are valued by which party's president appointed him or her. This means justice is completely partisan, and the system is broken.

I'm truly sorry this has happened to the US, and I hope you guys can catch a break. As it is, I see no end to it, and it's going to get worse.
 
uke2se said:
This highlights one of the biggest damages Trump has inflicted on the US. The Supreme court was already politicized, but now all judges are valued by which party's president appointed him or her. This means justice is completely partisan, and the system is broken.
Click to expand...

To be fair, it's been going on for a while. However, Trump has nominated two, and while I can't comment about Gorsuch or whatever his name is, Kavanaugh doesn't strike me as someone I'd like on SCOTUS.
 
Right now we have 5-4 Conservative majority on the Supreme Court. The only reason that up until... like the last few months that hasn't mattered is traditionally SCOTUS has been the least partisan of all the major branches of government so often one of the Justices would break ranks.

But Kavanaugh and Gorsuch are hard line party android.And he's nominated young folks. Kavanaugh and Gorsuch are in their early to mid 50s. Trump puts one more person on the Supreme Court and that's it, we're basically Conservative controlled as a country for a long, long time.
 
newyorkguy said:
I have a feeling a military action in Iran will be a massively unpopular war here at home, especially when the first American casualties are reported. Remember, Trump's history is, good starts are followed by disastrous finishes. He calls his own shots, rejects advice -- the football league, the airline, the casinos, the university -- and then it always turns out-

He really didn't know what he was talking about. And that's not Fake News! :(
Click to expand...

Never underestimate the ability of the Republican base to cheer for loss of life or waste of taxpayer money.
 
smartcooky said:
Oh for heavens sake prestige wake the **** up!!

Bolton is a war monger - he has been trying to get the US into a war with Iraq for decades. He was part of the Big WMD Lie that got your country involved in an ill-advised shooting war in 2003. 4½ thousand dead soldiers, almost 32,000 wounded soldiers and fifteen years later, he's trying to get you involved in another one, only this time, it won't be the cakewalk that Iraq was.

Iraq is about the size and population of California, and it had 50,000 well equipped professional soldiers, the rest were poorly equipped, poorly trained and unmotivated soldiers. Iran is a way different prospect. More than twice the population of Iraq, more than four times the area, and most important of all, it has a fully trained, very well equipped army of over a million soldiers, and can put another two million on the ground on short notice. They also have a Air Force that is well quipped (Mig 29, Su 30s). In Iraq, the USA had total air superiority... you will not have that in Iran)

If Bolton manages to get you into a shooting war with Iran, it is highly likely you will get an arse whooping; your body-bag manufacturers will be working over time to make enough of them to bring your dead sons and daughters back home - expect casualties in the order of many tens of thousands. It would be this generation's "Vietnam"!

ETA: In Iraq, you also had the "Coalition of the Willing", the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland provided troops, and another 37 countries provided support for military operations after the invasion was complete. In Iran, you WILL be on your own.
Click to expand...

The war would likely go well, but the ensuing occupation would be a catastrophe.


The US military is neither conceived nor designed to be an occupation force against a hostile population, and rightly so. If you put it in that role it will fail, and probably fail in spectacular fashion. The strategic consideration for invasion needs to be that the initial invasion is so important that the success or failure of the ensuing occupation doesn’t really matter.

Right wing nut-bars live in this fantasy world where if you invade a country, kill countless civilians and drive around pointing rifles and machine guns at everyone they are going to learn to love and support you. The real world just doesn’t work that way.
 
lomiller said:
The war would likely go well, but the ensuing occupation would be a catastrophe.


The US military is neither conceived nor designed to be an occupation force against a hostile population, and rightly so. If you put it in that role it will fail, and probably fail in spectacular fashion. The strategic consideration for invasion needs to be that the initial invasion is so important that the success or failure of the ensuing occupation doesn’t really matter.

Right wing nut-bars live in this fantasy world where if you invade a country, kill countless civilians and drive around pointing rifles and machine guns at everyone they are going to learn to love and support you. The real world just doesn’t work that way.
Click to expand...

Hence the arguments to just reduce it to glass.

https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2019/05/17/Tomi-Lahren-If-the-plan-were-to-send-a-huge-surge-of-land-and-war-power-to-wipe-out-Iran-a/223730
 
lomiller said:
Right wing nut-bars live in this fantasy world where if you invade a country, kill countless civilians and drive around pointing rifles and machine guns at everyone they are going to learn to love and support you. The real world just doesn’t work that way.
Click to expand...

You'd think they'd have learned their lesson from Iraq and Afghanistan.
 
Belz... said:
You'd think they'd have learned their lesson from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Click to expand...

I have no such illusion about the government and military leaders of the USA. They spend trillions on their military so they have to use it somehow. Attacking Muslims is a convenient use.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom