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  • vanatosvanatos Member Posts: 876
    edited December 2017
    No.

    C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-to-aid-in-steering-arms-to-syrian-rebels.html

    Reported as early as 2012, not 2 years after the conflict began.

    The C.I.A. is an arm of the administration.

    Kosovo is one of the worse examples of intervention.

    "NATO stepped up its claims about Serb ‘killing fields’” when it “saw a fatigued press corps drifting toward the contrarian story: civilians killed by NATO’s bombs."
    -WSJ

    Most of the justifications of NATO's actions were literally proven to be propaganda.
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    @vanatos: The article specifically says that the CIA was gathering information so it could advise other countries on which rebel groups to fund. Those weapons did not come from the U.S.; the CIA was vetting rebel groups to make sure that other people weren't sending weapons to Islamists.
    ThacoBell
  • vanatosvanatos Member Posts: 876
    edited December 2017

    @vanatos: The article specifically says that the CIA was gathering information so it could advise other countries on which rebel groups to fund. Those weapons did not come from the U.S.; the CIA was vetting rebel groups to make sure that other people weren't sending weapons to Islamists.

    CIA aiding and developing weapon channels for rebel groups is literally how you arm rebel groups through backdoor market channels, the very definition of how you fight proxy wars.

    Ask yourself who sells weapons to sovereign nations, America, then funnels them to rebel groups for Proxy wars through these countries as intermediaries, America.

    Its not something to defend, though its ironic to see it.
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    Bill Clinton doesn't get nearly enough credit for Bosnia. He was mercilessly attacked by Republicans at the time, who claimed it was nothing but an attempt to distract from his scandals. In the end, no US troops died, a genocide was stopped, and a murdering bastard was brought to justice. It was the one damn good thing we've done with our military since the '50s.
    BelleSorcieresemiticgoddessThacoBellsmeagolheart
  • vanatosvanatos Member Posts: 876
    edited December 2017
    Generally speaking, bombings is the way to fight foreign wars now to limit US troop death, though it greatly increases civilian death.
    It's one of the rationale for droning under Obama.

    Balrog99
  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,305
    vanatos said:

    CIA aiding and developing weapon channels for rebel groups is literally how you arm rebel groups through backdoor market channels, the very definition of how you fight proxy wars.

    That's a reasonable point and I agree that intervention by proxy is unlikely to be helpful. That though just illustrates the difficulty of the situation. The US could have chosen to intervene much more actively much earlier and potentially helped quickly end the conflict, but you wouldn't have supported that. Instead they've effectively chosen to counter-balance the Russian involvement, which has helped prolong the conflict. Whatever was done (including choosing to do nothing) would have been open to criticism though, so I don't see this as a situation where there's any clear culpability.
  • vanatosvanatos Member Posts: 876
    edited December 2017
    All thing's being equal, and if we take the results wouldn't be clear either way, then respect the sovereignty of nations or at least run it through congress and allow proper checks and balances to have a chance to moderate any action.

    The Libyan intervention bypassing congress is also an eyesore, if that had been done i'd be slightly less critical of the decision.
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    edited December 2017
    Obama is open for criticism on both Libya and Syria, but what he can't be faulted for is the Bin Laden raid. I have said many times before, his Presidency was on the line that night. If the raid was botched, his Presidency was over. If he doesn't go through with it, and it leaks to the press, his Presidency is over. The dice were in the air that night about whether he would be someone consequential or a historical footnote. And after the entire Bush Administration, after the bill of goods that was Iraq, Obama just unexpectedly, calmly walks to the podium one night and delivers the actual justice for 9/11.

    Some on the far-left think Bin Laden should have been captured. I say bull. He got a bullet in the head, respectful Muslim burial rights, and we dumped him in the ocean. Exactly the right move.
    semiticgoddessBalrog99
  • vanatosvanatos Member Posts: 876
    I agree, Pakistan was being totally unreasonable in not aiding us ferreting him out given how much aid we give them.

    I think America would have been sympathetic even if the raid was botched, and we find out Osama loved porn, not exactly the devout Muslim he made himself out to be.
    semiticgoddess
  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,305
    edited December 2017
    vanatos said:

    Kosovo is one of the worse examples of intervention.

    "NATO stepped up its claims about Serb ‘killing fields’” when it “saw a fatigued press corps drifting toward the contrarian story: civilians killed by NATO’s bombs."
    -WSJ

    Most of the justifications of NATO's actions were literally proven to be propaganda.

    There was no doubt some exaggeration, but to say that NATO's actions were proven to be propaganda is itself a wild exaggeration. The United Nations concluded in 2001 that there had been "a systematic campaign of terror, including murders, rapes, arsons and severe maltreatments". The number of deaths in the conflict was relatively low at around 14,000, and the UN concluded that was because Yugoslav troops had mainly tried to remove rather than eradicate the Albanian population - so I agree the situation was not as bad as in Rwanda. Nevertheless, the ethnic cleansing by Serb and Yugoslav troops displaced well over 1 million Kosovans and to me the intervention was clearly justified on humanitarian grounds.
    jjstraka34ThacoBellsemiticgoddess
  • vanatosvanatos Member Posts: 876
    Most of my justification for any intervention depends on the end results though im basically against it, humanitarian aid i support, military action not so much, regime destruction definitely not.
  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,305
    Time for my bed, but in Catalonia with 94% of votes counted the separatist parties have just claimed victory with an expected total of 70 seats (needing 68 for a majority). The largest individual party will be unionist (Citizens), but the governing party of Spain (the Popular Party) has not lived up to its name and is predicted to get only 4 seats.

    Given those results are in line with previous ones that the Spanish government said were not representative of the will of Catalonia it will be interesting to see if they still push ahead with the legal cases against the separatist parties.
    deltagoThacoBellBalrog99
  • Mantis37Mantis37 Member Posts: 1,173
    Artona said:

    @Mantis37

    Mantis37 said:

    This has now just turned into some twisted game, and I would say me and @BelleSorciere and @smeagolheart should just go to bed at this point, or literally do ANYTHING else but continue to feed whatever the hell is going on here.

    Yeah, I'm going to bed shortly.
    I wanted to post "Leave it, it's not worth it" about 2 hours ago when I looked in. I'm craving another post about Polish politics about now.
    Polish president yesterday decided to sign bill about Supreme Court and National Judiciary Council, so collapse of independent judiciary system *officialy* happened. I guess that after EU decided to trigger article 7 it makes no sense for our government to back away now. I think that they feel relatively confident about situation, because - speaking broadly - you need unanimity among member countries, and Hungary claim that they are not going to support sanctions against Poland.
    The there is devil in details, however - because this is what art. 7 point 2 says: "The European Council, acting by unanimity on a proposal by one third of the Member States or by the European Commission and after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament, may determine the existence of a serious and persistent breach by a Member State of the values referred to in Article 2 after inviting the Member State in question to submit its observations.".
    So you only need unanimity to announce "existence of breach", not to use measures like sanctions - for that you "only" need qualified majority.
    So Victor Orban may pull Game of Thrones kind of stunt here - vote *against* sanctions, but *for* announcing said breach. There are speculations here in Poland that there may be some kind of agreement between Comission and Orban already in place - it's easy to forget that Hungary is also critisied within European Parliament for violating EU values. It's possible that Comission may grant him some kind of "immunity" if he'll make it possible to punish Poland.
    After all, Timmermans already said that situation in Hungary is much better than in Poland.

    In other news: our Minister of Justice continues to remove presidents of polish district courts. That was made possible with new bill about courts; to add insult to injury, those removals are done via fax. Basically stuff from Erdogan's Turkey.
    There is also matter with arrest of general secretary of polish biggest opposition party, PO (Platforma Obywatelska, that is Civic Platform). There is already motion in Parliament to repeal his immunity as member of Parliament and I have little doubt that it will happen. I'm not sure where I stand about it, to be frank. On one hand it looks like direct attack on political opposition, but there again, PO *was* really corrupt, when it was in power.
    There is british Prime Minister Theresa May in Warsaw and she made comment about polish constitutional crisis. She said that "matter of constitutionality of particular legal solutions should be considered within country and not be topic of interest on international stage". I feel disappointed with that comment. It ignores the issue that our internal "legal solutions" are violating values we agreed to uphold - and that way of thinking basically gives free roam for every crazy dictator out there. Would she say the same if, for an instance, Erdogan decided homosexuality should be punished with death?
    Of course I am aware that this Big Politics and there is little place of ethics, but still.
    Meanwhile propaganda in polish national tv is so blatant it made it to reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/7l7wa3/this_is_how_polish_television_looks_like/?st=jbgn5jz4&sh=d69b9983.

    You're welcome, you lovely people. :)
    Ahhh, that's better.

    It's unsurprising that Theresa May does not wish to antagonise Poland, as any kind of break in the unanimity of the EU's negotiating position is good for the UK.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/21/poland-offers-theresa-may-backing-brexit-deal-rift-with-eu

    Meanwhile May's deputy Damien Green has been sacked due to lying about the investigation which found 'extreme pornography' on his office computer.
    ThacoBellArtonaGrond0
  • vanatosvanatos Member Posts: 876
    edited December 2017
    I am pretty impressed the voters defied the Spanish Government literally trying to stop them from voting through police action.

    Be interesting how the EU, Spanish Government and the U.N. react to this.

    Rajoy's gambit seems to have failed.
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    More than 200,000 Puerto Ricans have arrived in Florida since the hurricane. Barring a massive amount of them going back, Trump has basically already lost Florida in 2020. He just doesn't know it yet.
  • vanatosvanatos Member Posts: 876
    Trump handled the dual Hurrican disasters quite well, one of the better things that was done, furthermore more aid just got voted.




  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    Sell that to the people of Puerto Rico. Good luck. I know where I'm placing my chips in that bet.
    ThacoBellsmeagolheartBelleSorciere
  • deltagodeltago Member Posts: 7,811
    vanatos said:

    Trump handled the dual Hurrican disasters quite well, one of the better things that was done, furthermore more aid just got voted.




    Florida and Texas hurricanes, sure. PRs hurricane not so much.
    jjstraka34ThacoBellsmeagolheart
  • vanatosvanatos Member Posts: 876
    edited December 2017
    Handling Hurricane Harvey, Irma and Maria in quick succession was very well done, to be frank we were very lucky about it considering FEMA would have been stretched across 3 separate natural disasters.

    Better then past administrations by far.
  • smeagolheartsmeagolheart Member Posts: 7,963
    edited December 2017
    vanatos said:

    Handling Hurricane Harvey, Irma and Maria in quick succession was very well done, to be frank we were very lucky about it considering FEMA would have been stretched across 3 separate natural disasters.

    Better then past administrations by far.

    deltago said:

    vanatos said:

    Trump handled the dual Hurrican disasters quite well, one of the better things that was done, furthermore more aid just got voted.




    Florida and Texas hurricanes, sure. PRs hurricane not so much.
    Could have been worse (Hurricane Katrina). Response to Puerto Rico is a disaster though. Sad!
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    edited December 2017
    Well yeah, two of them were given attention (because Trump won those States) and Puerto Rico still won't be back to a normal power situation until February. We don't even have any idea how many people died in Puerto Rico, and never will, since they were literally burning bodies. His handling of Harvey and Irma was fine. His handling of Maria was WORSE than Katrina, which doesn't even seem humanly possible:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/12/18/hurricane-maria-killed-64-puerto-ricans-another-1000-died-because-the-disaster-response-was-inadequate/?utm_term=.6d097f96a518
    ThacoBell
  • deltagodeltago Member Posts: 7,811
    vanatos said:

    Handling Hurricane Harvey, Irma and Maria in quick succession was very well done, to be frank we were very lucky about it considering FEMA would have been stretched across 3 separate natural disasters.

    Better then past administrations by far.

    We've talked about how response to Maria was blundered from the get go in this thread. It goes past FEMA response.

    We also looked at how Whitewater was being used as a huge cash grab to restore power back to the island.

    As I said. Florida and Texas hurricanes were handled admirably. PRs was a disaster that I believe is still unfolding.
    jjstraka34
  • vanatosvanatos Member Posts: 876
    edited December 2017
    deltago said:



    We've talked about how response to Maria was blundered from the get go in this thread. It goes past FEMA response.

    Actually it has alot to do with FEMA and the unique nature of PR's geography, which FEMA officials themselves explained.

    The recovery of PR is much much harder then the hurricanes before it.

    Why PR can't get electricity back





  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    edited December 2017
    Let's not even get into the fact that this tax bill is basically PUNISHING Puerto Rico at a time when they absolutely can least afford it. The fact that the provision treating them as a foreign jurisdiction made it into the final bill at all is unconscionable, and it's (in my mind) entirely up to debate as to whether it was done on purpose. But that's fine. Every one of those people who moves to the mainland can vote. And you can bet your ass they are gonna vote. Mark my words.

    That video just underscores the fact that what was needed was a massive mobilization effort that never occurred. Maybe we would have even had to put the tax cut for billionaires on hold to help our fellow citizens. But no, that didn't happen.
    BelleSorciereThacoBell
  • vanatosvanatos Member Posts: 876
    The bill is twice the amount of aid that was originally planned, given that PR is in desperate need of relief, this bill needs to be done quickly with strong bipartisan support.
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    edited December 2017
    vanatos said:

    The bill is twice the amount of aid that was originally planned, given that PR is in desperate need of relief, this bill needs to be done quickly with strong bipartisan support.

    Puerto Rico has been in desperate need of relief for the last 4 months straight, and likely at least 4 more. And when I say 4 more I'm talking YEARS. Any other state would have been given a massive, unprecedented military effort. But Puerto Rico isn't viewed as important by many Americans, the President among them. Out of sight, out of mind.
    BelleSorciereThacoBell
  • vanatosvanatos Member Posts: 876
    edited December 2017


    Puerto Rico has been in desperate need of relief for the last 4 months straight, and likely at least 4 more. And when I say 4 more I'm talking YEARS. Any other state would have been given a massive, unprecedented military effort. But Puerto Rico isn't viewed as important by many Americans, the President among them. Out of sight, out of mind.

    PR has been in need of help for a long time, its bad infrastructure and government finance directly contributed to the difficulty in the recovery effort.

    In this time the best thing to do is do everything we can to help, not fall back to some ridiculous partisanship over this thing.

    Not even sure why Democrats and Republicans voted so much in the No.


    That video just underscores the fact that what was needed was a massive mobilization effort that never occurred. Maybe we would have even had to put the tax cut for billionaires on hold to help our fellow citizens. But no, that didn't happen.

    Do you know the setup of PR, they are an island, where their electricity infrastructure is outdated, it is all above-ground.

    If you listen to FEMA, they will explain to you the sheer hardship of restoring the power, they have to clear the rubble, try to build an above-ground replacement since thats how it was set up, and watch it be destroyed by the winds, and rebuild it time and again, all the while taking an enormous amount of time getting materials there because it is an island with mountainous regions, and they are under-staffed because of still handling the prior 2 hurricanes.

    It was nothing like this for the previous hurricanes.
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    edited December 2017
    vanatos said:


    Puerto Rico has been in desperate need of relief for the last 4 months straight, and likely at least 4 more. And when I say 4 more I'm talking YEARS. Any other state would have been given a massive, unprecedented military effort. But Puerto Rico isn't viewed as important by many Americans, the President among them. Out of sight, out of mind.

    PR has been in need of help for a long time, its bad infrastructure and government finance directly contributed to the difficulty in the recovery effort.

    In this time the best thing to do is do everything we can to help, not fall back to some ridiculous partisanship over this thing.

    Not even sure why Democrats and Republicans voted so much in the No.
    Because it was a short-term spending gap measure, NOT a straight disaster relief bill, which even I fell for initially thanks to the picture you posted, which, I admit, was clever. They voted no because this bill is totally all-encompassing in regards to a multitude of issues, which are explained in detail below in a newspaper article. And, like I said before, this is a straight up and down REPUBLICAN government. They can either run it or not. It's up to them.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/after-passing-tax-overhaul-gop-returns-to-infighting-as-shutdown-deadline-looms/2017/12/21/dfad1890-e659-11e7-ab50-621fe0588340_story.html?utm_term=.9ab39006618d
  • vanatosvanatos Member Posts: 876
    edited December 2017
    If Schumer wants to say as he puts it "“We’re not going to allow things like disaster relief to go forward without discussing some of these other issues we care about,”. Then he is juggling the emergency needs of PR with his other political agenda's.

    Ironic considering from your post your implying PR is in desperate need and we need to do everything we can quickly.

    Btw part of the bill is aid to CHIP, which if you recall from the past discussion it was revealed that the democrats voted AGAINST when the Republicans introduced it, far cry from the propaganda that suggested Republicans let it die which you thought was true.
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    edited December 2017
    vanatos said:

    If Schumer wants to say as he puts it "“We’re not going to allow things like disaster relief to go forward without discussing some of these other issues we care about,”. Then he is juggling the emergency needs of PR with his other political agenda's.

    Ironic considering from your post your implying PR is in desperate need and we need to do everything we can quickly.

    Republicans can pass ANY-THING they want without a single Democratic vote in either chamber. ANYTHING. Schumer can't bring this to a vote, only Mitch McConnell can. ONLY Mitch McConnell can. This is their government. It runs on their clock, and their demands. Schumer can't stop McConnell from doing a thing. There is NOTHING he can do. Republicans can either get their votes in order and vote as a caucus, or they can kick sand. That's how this shit works. Democrats (ESPECIALLY House Democrats under Pelosi after 2010) have come to the rescue of a Republican caucus that can't get their shit together on necessary bills more times than I can count. No more. YOU wanted them in charge, they are in charge. Deal with it.

    And I wonder why they would vote against what is (essentially) a meaningless 3 week stopgap when it includes shit like this:

    Another controversial provision was also added to the House stopgap Wednesday: a measure waiving mandatory cuts to entitlement programs forced by the passage of the tax bill.

    The tax bill slashed revenue by nearly $1.5 trillion, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, adding to the federal deficit. That impact triggers a 2010 law that makes automatic spending cuts to Medicare and other programs if lawmakers increase the deficit.
    ThacoBell
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