[Potemkin]

@Potemkin

Fancy going for a drink?

Sure, why not? Make mine a stiff scotch, neat. Lol.

[Potemkin]

Nonsense-

My face when I read your link....

[Stormsmith]

Sure, why not? Make mine a stiff scotch, neat. Lol.

We' going to get on vacation well.

[BigSteve]

<sigh> Do you really think chickens understand things people tell them about justice? REALLY?? Have you ever actually had any sort of interaction with an actual living chicken?

Thank you for letting the world know that the concept of sarcasm is completely lost on you...

[jimjam]

Not only does Obese Donald approve of his new Saudi Arabian BFF, Mr. Bone Saw, killing one of his opponents and cutting him up into little pieces, he now wants to sell him $8,000,000,000 of weapons of death, destruction and misery to improve his efficiency. God Bless America …

On the Friday before Memorial Day, when few Americans were paying attention, the Trump administration announced that it would circumvent Congress and sell $8bn in new weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It was Donald Trump’s latest attempt to give a blank check to two US allies leading a disastrous war in Yemen.

[Stormsmith]

We're going to get on very well.

Stupid stupid autocheck

[Hindsite]

On the Friday before Memorial Day, when few Americans were paying attention, the Trump administration announced that it would circumvent Congress and sell $8bn in new weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It was Donald Trump’s latest attempt to give a blank check to two US allies leading a disastrous war in Yemen.

This action is necessary in the fight against Islamic terrorism in Yemen.

Meet the Proxies: How Iran Spreads Its Empire through Terrorist Militias

David Daoud
Arabic-language research analyst, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

In Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere, Tehran has perfected the art of gradually conquering a country without replacing its flag.

Yemen’s Ansarullah, better known as the Houthis, are now acting at the behest of Iran – causing panic in neighboring Saudi Arabia – and their banner carries the same “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” slogans regularly chanted by the Tehran regime’s loyalists in Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, the group’s founder, spent considerable time in Iran. There he was influenced by the Khomeinist theology, believing that the Iranian model could be applied in Yemen as well. Iranian officials have confirmed these ties, which includes financial and military support for the Houthis, with a senior Iranian official saying that the Quds Force even placed “a few hundred” members in Yemen to train the Houthis. When the Houthis overran Sana’a, Iranian officials boasted that Yemen’s capital was now in Iran’s possession.

http://www.thetower.org/article/meet-th ... -militias/

[Godstud]

While Condemning Iran, the U.S. Contributes to Terrorism in the Middle East, Too
When President Donald Trump announced the restoration of sanctions on Iran on Monday, hammering another nail in the coffin of the the 2015 nuclear agreement, he said he hoped to reach a more comprehensive deal addressing “the regime’s malign activities, including its ballistic missile program and its support for terrorism.”

Hard checks on these activities would be difficult to enforce; moreover, Iran would never agree to them, which is why they were not included in the deal struck by the Obama administration. While not ideal, these omissions were seen as an acceptable price to pay in order to put the brakes on Iran’s nuclear-weapons activity for years to come and open up some breathing room for a more permanent diplomatic solution. (Trump’s closest advisers, of course, have a different kind of permanent solution in mind for Iran.)

Arms proliferation, terrorism, and meddling in the affairs of other countries are all rightly described as “malign activities,” but at the same time, it is hard to see why Iran would agree to give up practices that its rivals and enemies routinely employ.
The Trump administration’s concern over Iran’s support for terrorist organizations throughout the Middle East is entirely legitimate. Iran projects regional power through a variety of non-state proxies: Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, Hamas in Gaza, various Shi’ite militias in Iraq, and Yemen’s Houthi rebels. All of these organizations have engaged in terrorist activity, while the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, an Iranian client, has committed countless atrocities over more than eight years of civil war there.

Yet the United States has little in the way of moral high ground from which to berate Iran for supporting terrorism and destabilizing fragile states in its backyard. Over the past few decades, the U.S. has often found itself doing the same thing in the course of projecting our own power and defending the hegemony of our problematic allies in the Middle East.

The latest example of this comes from Yemen, where an Associated Press investigation published Monday found that the U.S.-backed military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates has on numerous occasions paid off members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to abandon their strongholds or even to join up with coalition forces.
While ostensibly at war with both AQAP and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia see the latter as the more pressing threat by far. Accordingly, the AP found, local militias supported by the coalition frequently recruit seasoned Al Qaeda fighters into their ranks to fight the Houthis, in deals allegedly brokered by Emirati agents and greased with Saudi money.

The U.S. does not directly fund the coalition, and the investigation found no evidence of American money making its way to AQAP militants. Nonetheless, the U.S. has supported the coalition with billions of dollars in weaponry, while providing intelligence and air support, chiefly in the form of drone strikes. Money is fungible, and every dollar the U.S. spends on weapons for the coalition is a dollar Saudi Arabia or the U.A.E. saves to spend on bribing or recruiting AQAP jihadists. When our drones hold off on bombing AQAP convoys while the coalition grants them safe passage into their mountain hideaways, we are still complicit in a dirty deal.

This doesn’t make us any worse than Iran, but it underscores the reality that in messy wars over failed states, nobody comes out with clean hands. Not one participant in the humanitarian catastrophe that is the Yemeni civil war has in mind the best interests of Yemen as a country or the Yemeni people. As the regional powers play their grand strategy game and attempt to muscle the country into their respective spheres of influence, everyone on the ground is just scrambling to survive and to expand their piece of a very small pie.

The attitude of local militia commanders was described to the AP thusly: “We will unite with the devil in the face of Houthis.” In this context, the notion that we could intervene in Yemen and not end up doing business with people who ought to be our enemies is almost ridiculous.

The same is true of Syria, where the U.S. has consistently had a hell of a time sorting out the “good” rebel factions we can conscientiously support from the jihadists we’d rather not. Despite our best efforts to only arm the good guys, some of the weapons we dumped into Syria inevitably fell into the hands of radical terror groups, including ISIS.

In Iraq, too, militias once supported by Iran have become partners of the U.S. in our efforts to help that country beat back ISIS and restore some vestige of stability. Alliances with paramilitary groups were also a key component of the U.S. counterinsurgency operations during the most violent years of our occupation of Iraq. Needless to say, that occupation was itself among the most destabilizing events to befall the Middle East in its modern history and has led to tens of thousands of deaths from terrorism.

It’s hard for the U.S. to credibly condemn Iran for supporting terrorism when every time we involve ourselves in a Middle Eastern conflict, we find ourselves contributing — directly or indirectly, wittingly or unwittingly — to instability, violence, and yes, terrorism. The means of our foreign policy in the Middle East are at odds with its supposed ends. Our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, our attempts to tip the scales of the conflicts in Libya and Syria, and our intervention in Yemen have only exacerbated the region’s ills.

Our close relationship with Saudi Arabia, which easily rivals Iran as an inspiration, sponsor, and financier of terrorism, is a big part of the problem. By supporting Saudi hegemony in the greater Middle East, we have abetted the proliferation of a radical Islamist ideology no less toxic than that of the Iranian mullahs. Moreover, by keeping Iran in a constant state of threat, we justify its leaders’ paranoia and motivate them to counter the Saudis with weapons proliferation and terrorist activities of their own.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/08/ ... -east.html

[jimjam]

Stupid stupid autocheck

I typed once "Thanks Pal" and it came back "Thanks Palestinian"

Back, sort of, on topic:

Sean Hannity, the Fox News demagogue who spends hours on the phone with Trump each day, calls him “totally fucking crazy”; Nick Ayers, after briefly rehearsing to replace John Kelly as his chief of staff, flees in horror from a man he allegorises as “Mr Fucking-totally-out-of-his-mind-crazy”. Professional fraudulence makes Trump shameless and in a way blameless: it’s hardly his fault that his followers gobble up the whoppers he feeds them. He really might be a genius.

[Hindsite]

He really might be a genius.

Yes, We are lucky to have Trump, a genius, instead of Obama or Hillary Clinton as President.

[Godstud]

Being a genius doesn't mean anything when you constantly lie and do dumb things.

If Trump's a genius, he's only using about 80 points of his IQ.

@Hindsite, I found a quote you can use as your signature. It's from Einstein, too:

The real purpose of Socialism is precisely to advance beyond the predatory phase of human development
- Albert Einstein.

[BigSteve]

Not only does Obese Donald approve of his new Saudi Arabian BFF, Mr. Bone Saw, killing one of his opponents and cutting him up into little pieces, he now wants to sell him $8,000,000,000 of weapons of death, destruction and misery to improve his efficiency. God Bless America …

On the Friday before Memorial Day, when few Americans were paying attention, the Trump administration announced that it would circumvent Congress and sell $8bn in new weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It was Donald Trump’s latest attempt to give a blank check to two US allies leading a disastrous war in Yemen.

Barack Obama signed off on giving $150,000,000,000 to the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism.

What Trump has done is miniscule in comparison...

[Godstud]

Barack Obama signed off on giving $150,000,000,000 to the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism.

You mean Israel?

USA??



Or...

do you mean Saudi Arabia?


We're not discussing Obama, but what Trump is doing currently. This isn't a "whataboutism" contest.

Maybe, a nice source for this $150,000,000,000 claim could clear this up?

[BigSteve]

Maybe, a nice source for this $150,000,000,000 claim could clear this up?

See, when conversations like this take place, it's perfectly appropriate to mention precedent. I know the idiot left hates that, but that's just because it usually dismantles their silly arguments.

Barack Obama raised the bar on making shitty deals. Why are you so surprised that his successor is following Obama's lead?

[Godstud]

I do not see a source for your claim. Is that because you are making this figure up? Please present your source for your outlandish, and likely false, claim.

You cannot make the claim that Trump is better if he does the same thing you hated Obama for.

So far, you don't HAVE an argument. You are only flinging poo.

[Drlee]

See, when conversations like this take place, it's perfectly appropriate to mention precedent. I know the idiot left hates that, but that's just because it usually dismantles their silly arguments.

You can mention it but it is actually meaningless. I can name any number of situations where any number of presidents have been wrong. For example both Obama and Trump have failed to enforce immigration in the marketplace and therefor failed. Go figure.

Trump, earlier this year, claimed he had made a $115 Billion deal with Saudi Arabia, which was not true, and I suspect this is just a continuation of this.

The notion that our selling weapons to Saudi Arabia in any way affects their ability to get them is just false. They have ready cash and we are selling them nothing they can't get elsewhere. One could assert that our equipment is more sophisticated than Russia's and China's but in the context of the region that hardly matters. The EU may well sell them stuff too. They have said they won't but the Saudi's have a very big carrot. (If you will forgive the expression.)

So I would like to see some evidence that our refusal to sell arms to Saudi Arabia will, in any way, halt the brushfire war everyone is so pissed about. My thought is that a well armed Saudi Arabia will be a stabilizing factor in the ME. Not having fancy fighters and ships does not deter Saudi Arabia from sponsoring terror as we have already seen. What might deter them from sponsoring it against the US is a cordial and mutually beneficial relationship. Indeed they may even help us in the fight against it. They have in the past.

[jimjam]

I do not see a source for your claim

I would like to see some evidence

You are both members of the idiot left and your silly arguments have been dismantled. You idiot lefties wouldn't know an alternative fact if it came up and bit you on the ass. Now please move on …..

[Drlee]

You are both members of the idiot left and your silly arguments have been dismantled. You idiot lefties wouldn't know an alternative fact if it came up and bit you on the ass. Now please move on …..

One thing has taken me by surprise. I never thought that being a life-long republican from a red state, who favors limited central government, states rights, fiscal responsibility and social libertarianism would qualify me as left of anyone except the most determined fools. Certainly not anyone who would vote republican.

[Truth To Power]

Thank you for letting the world know that the concept of sarcasm is completely lost on you...

Once, long ago, I had a sense of sarcasm and irony. But dealing with socialist and capitalist Internet loonies for 25 years has stretched, out of all recognition, my apprehension of what I have to assume someone might be saying seriously. I'm sure there is someone here who thinks chickens have rights. If it's not you, fine. I can't keep track of everyone's absurd beliefs.

[Patrickov]

Once, long ago, I had a sense of sarcasm and irony. But dealing with socialist and capitalist Internet loonies for 25 years has stretched, out of all recognition, my apprehension of what I have to assume someone might be saying seriously. I'm sure there is someone here who thinks chickens have rights. If it's not you, fine. I can't keep track of everyone's absurd beliefs.

Seriously, a few days ago an island dweller in Hong Kong was arrested for slaughtering a snake / python inhumanely...

Therefore "justice" can go much farther than chickens, although I agree that such concepts do not need to be told to the animal directly ...