Democrats now bring us WWIII, just like they brought us WWII and WWI
POSTED BY: dreamtrove
UPDATED: Tuesday, November 26, 2024 19:15
VIEWED: 3702
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Obama has decided to take military action against Iran. Right now, it's just moving our nukes around, only were cleverly calling them "anti-missile systems" now, which has as much truth as "the clean air act." I guess that means that Frank Luntz still has a job.
Meanwhile, has anyone noticed that Bill Clinton is everywhere setting policy like it was his third term or something? Not recommening the .50 calibre solution, but can someone get him, them, out of here.
If I were Obama at this point, Damn, if I couldn't get out of this mess, I'd resign. He could be the first president to bring us a depression *and* a world war.
I'm just speculating here. I recall someone on Jon Stewart a couple years ago saying "in years to come you will look back fondly on George W. Bush" and Stewart said something to the effect of "How do you figure?" only is some more Jersey way, and the guest, who was some foreign dignitary IIRC said "As the only US president in the 21st c. who didn't *nuke* anyone."
Sadly, it's looking like that may be the case.
And okay, I earned some friendly fire on this one, but don't assume this is a kneejerk reaction, I'm trying real hard to remain objective on Obama, and personally, that's pretty easy, I like the guy, but my total lack of a god his govt. is full of rats.
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links?
confusion?
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Use the google. Iran Obama. This is all over the news, impossible to miss.
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Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Use the google. Iran Obama. This is all over the news, impossible to miss.
Not seeing anything to go to the same conclusions you have....
Missile defense co-operation with Russia is not a new idea, hell Putin once suggested it to Bush as an alternative to putting them in eastern europe.
As for the US Navy in the Gulf, Aegis ships have been routinely deployed there since the 1980's.
Hardly a prelude to war as " Obama has decided to take military action against Iran. " would suggest,
if anything I think it is merely a soundbite to accomplish two things...
1) deflate republican accusations about his being soft on defense, or not taking Iran seriously
2) indirectly attempt to prevent Israel from taking a pre-emtive action that would start a war, by publicly saying those ship could intercept ballistic missiles it counters whatever story Israel is likely to concoct.
" Right now, it's just moving our nukes around, only were cleverly calling them "anti-missile systems"
Moving Nukes around ? not necessary at all. While they would never admit it, ALL their carriers in Persian Gulf or the Arabian sea would be carrying, and I am sure many others have nuke Tomahawks on board. Also the USAF at Diego Garcia would likely have both weapons and probably a few aircraft rotated in to carry them.
Not saying its the perfect solution, but if he did nothing, Israel would be starting a war the US would get sucked into...
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g9DDGIUcpNOK9eEn8fpm
73W_rG7wD9AQ00280
failing this explanation, they might be hyping things to sell some hardware
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090918/ap_on_re_eu/eu_turkey_missile_defe
nse
" I don't believe in hypothetical situations - it's kinda like lying to your brain "
" They don't hate America, they hate Americans " Homer Simpson
Lets party like its 1939
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Hey Dream,
I've been wanting to start a thread on Obama for a while now, but it would require a lot of research and sites and such and I don't really have the time for all that. The premise, my premise, about Obama is that every last one of the spin-doctors and the pundits, right AND left, keep getting him wrong, wrong, wrong. He is a new kinda animal, a new kinda cool as you'd say, and just doesn't fit into the tired cliches of political double-speak.
If you skip the analysis and just listen to as much of his actual words as you can get ahold of, read him as you would a book, as if you're trying to suss out the authors message, you will have a much better idea of where he's headed and what policies he'll be pushing. He's an artist, really, and artists are simultaneously more honest and more artful--flaky comes to mind, not quite deceptive, but nuanced, always nuanced--than your typical politician. He's a writer as much as he is a politician which means his leadership is gonna be pretty spotty, like a novelist's works--some good books, one or two masterworks, the rest, kinda inferior stuff. When he strikes a chord, he can move mountains, but a lot of the time he's just kinda working on his craft.
It's weird. I always knew perfectly well that he was gonna escalate the war in Afghanistan and that he was gonna move on the mountain border with Pakistan, 'cause he said so, that's the story that he told, and though he would emphasise different themes or subplots for different audiences, the spine of the narrative always stayed the same. I hoped that he was gonna bring Cheney & Rummy & co. to justice, but really I knew he wouldn't--that's not part of the story he's telling. I was not shocked at all when I found out that the troops were gonna be in Iraq through 2010 and beyond, because he always left that door open when he spoke of troop withdrawal. And now, when folk have been prognosticating all summer long that he was gonna throw the public option under the bus, that he was deeply embroiled in secret meetings selling us all out to Big Pharma and the insurance companies, so much so that I half believed them--even though I knew the prognosticators' methods were all wrong--we see that he continues to promote the public option because that's what he's always said he was gonna do. If he can strike a chord with the American people on this one, he will sail to victory on a wave of approval. But if he can't find the spine of his story, as it were, he'll lose his audience and reform will fail.
What I'm saying is that I think the guy is ultimately pretty transparent if you stop trying to second guess him. He's not perfect, I wish he were doing a lot of things he ain't, but I think history will bear me out that the man is pretty much who he says he is.
So. War with Iran? Not gonna happen. He's not interested in that. He's modelling this part of the story on Reagan. He's using the nukes diplomatically, 'cause at the moment, Iran is run by some pretty bad characters and that's the level of rhetoric they'll understand. Obama knows his audience and most of the time his audience is not the pundits and the spin-doctors, and like a lot of art critics, that makes 'em pretty cranky and jealous--and renders their reviews much less reliable.
HKCavalier
Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.
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HK
Good analysis, and I mostly agree.
Quote:
It's weird. I always knew perfectly well that he was gonna escalate the war in Afghanistan and that he was gonna move on the mountain border with Pakistan, 'cause he said so
Yes, I knew he would too, I believed him, but I actually listened to him, that's why I didn't vote for him. I think this was a unique election, in which all 4 people running in the final showdown were telling us the truth. Many people who did vote for Obama did so because they weren't listening: Obama said so himself: "I say what I'm going to do, and then people hear what they want to here." This is why I called him a magic man. But that's not people, Barack, that's you, you've got a skill, you couch your policies in the middle of triumphant political talks. Yes, he's the politically perfect globalist: They believe the Orwellian war is peace, and many presidents have tried, but Obama can actually say it.
People would be appalled to go back and listen word for word to political statements and realize if they wanted peace, who they really should have wanted in office: Join the early birthers, vote for mccain, and get president Sarah Palin. Ouch? Sad but true.
But people don't vote for peace. They try, but they keep voting for war. It's like a crackhead trying to use an ATM. (Oh, I hit balance again, if I could just get this money I could buy some more crack, better give the card to my dealer and tell him my number
)But seriously, sure, but a couple problems:
1. Reagan didn't have Nixon bopping pretending to be president. WTF is up with these clintonistas?
2. The manager of McDonalds doesn't determine what kind of food you get. Obama is president, but how much power does he actually have? Bush had none at all. Not so sure about Reagan either. Some presidents are in control, but it's not a dictatorship, and more than congress, it's the advisors and lobbyists setting policy. The president can tell us those policies, and then we can parse them out, as I just did at the beginning of this thread.
Okay, let me parse what Obama just said:
1. "New intelligence on Iran" Okay, that's a little white lie. We always have new intelligence on everything because we have an international spy agency, so we have new intelligence on Papua New Guinea, but no, we have nothing groundbreaking on Iran.
2. Yes, he's mostly on the level, but we know he does lie, because he got caught out in a lie twice on the campaign trail and quickly admitted it, but this isn't his main tool of deception. His principle rhetorical weapon is, as I said in an earlier post "We're going to respect our veterans, give them what they need to do the job, Better care at home, increase the troop levels in afghanistan and We will bring peace to the middle east!" Or something like that, but the little phrases are snug in the middle of the uplifting lines, to loud applause... by the very audience who opposes the policy.
2. The media has changed it's spin to be hyperactive against Iran again. They were mellow for a while. The media is the voice of power, the voice of the men behind the lobbyists and advisors. This means *someone* wants us to hate Iran.
3. The brinksmanship argument would make sense if there was any reason at all to do it. Iran is a self sufficient state, and the globalists hate that. You can look back to Germany's drive to become a self sufficient state, and how the allies forced the situation. Sure, the allies didn't invade Germany, and I'm not saying we're going to invade Iran, but this is not the same situation as Russia, it's really much more like Germany. I've personally become suspicious of the motives behind Hitler. I suspect that there may have been international advisors there pushing for bad policy. But germany was cornered. If someone's cornered, and then you feed the idea that there's a way out of this corner, you can head down the path to the 1938-on Nazi Germany. Now sure, you could argue that Germany was already meddling in spain, but then the US was already meddling in china. In
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Quote:
2. The media has changed it's spin to be hyperactive against Iran again. They were mellow for a while. The media is the voice of power, the voice of the men behind the lobbyists and advisors. This means *someone* wants us to hate Iran.
Haven't read and digested your entire post, DT, but I wanted to say "Hell YES" to this point, at least.
I've noticed it, too. There's a pattern, and it's not pretty right now. There's a distinct uptick in the anti-Iran hate speech that's being put out by the media. It's NOT the stuff that's being said by the policy wonks, but rather the stuff that's being put out, often in tiny ways, by the media itself. Often as not, you'll see the White House start REFLECTING this mindset, not initiating it. Where the President is supposed to lead, he often ends up following the media and talking about what the talking heads WANT him to talk about.
Mike
Old friend charity
Cruel twisted smile
And the smile signals emptiness
For me
Starless and Bible black
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Dreamtrove, The military industrial complex is none political. The so called right winger Reagan held them at bay. A couple of months ago I watched John Lehman former Sec. of the Navy under Reagan on CSPAN. He is Great. Talked about the old days and handling the MIC from rippen off the tax payers. Now he grasped todays issues and the current problems. Very smart man. Not living in the past. Understood what he could not do today because of a modern world. The Joint Chiefs of Staff advise the President on Military actions. These are not just educated men but warriors and understand the geopolitics of the areas in which they are to engage in. So the "O" can go on ESPN or the food channel what ever he is doing this weekend. But the JCS have a handle on it. I do think are Navy has declined alittle in fleet size. We should increase it from at least 60 to 100 more ships of the line. Now I have an idea the Royal Navy is looking to build their new aircraft carriers. But the recession has put that on hold. America puts an order in for 2 with options for 3 more. This gets the tooling up for the Brits when their ready to lay down the keels. Now this stimulates their economy. Now they have the money. We have smaller line ships to support without a strain on getting the manpower. Then these new ships could handle the pirate infested waters. Where as the supercarriers could remain in the Gulf. Now that is what I think we should do. Why we are in Iraq is because of Iran. It is what the think tank people came up with under the Reagan years.
"Battle of Serenity, Mal. Besides Zoe here, how many-" "I'm talkin at you! How many men in your platoon came out of their alive".
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Heya Dream,
You ever think of writing political thrillers? You got a knack for a kind of narrative a certain audience would absolutely eat with a spoon. You got a very detailed mind, sir. I mean no snark at all, just see a muscularity to the plots you envision.
Your book's exciting and scary and not at all implausible, but I still see it as alternative history. I'm really not seeing this Clinton take-over that you are.
I'm wondering why you never mention Biden in all this discussion of who's writing policy.
Obama schooled Bubba and his wife during the campaign--made 'em look like fricken amateurs! Nobody had done that to them before. The Clintonistas are staying close to the President, not 'cause they're running his White House, they know better than to try that, but because they want in on his mojo--their cut, as it were. And he's no dummy, he knows their power and he ain't afraid to use it.
And I'll agree that the "globalists," the Pax Americana types have desperately wanted to destabilize the Middle East as much as they possibly can, but I don't see Obama as a globalist. Read his Cairo speech again. If he were a globalist, that speech would be a straight up lie, in spirit as well as in the letter. Sure, he wants to make the power structure in Iran look bad, he wants to make them look like aggressors and fanatics, not so we can role in and "establish democracy" but so the Middle Eastern world will put pressure on the Iranian government to lighten up, as it were. Obama wants a stable Middle East--I see that as one of his central ambitions. It's a pretty tall order to pull off, but that's the prize his eye is on.
On the one hand you acknowledge the whole "magic man" thing about Obama, but you turn around and assume he has to play the same manipulative games the less magically endowed have always had to play. Obama is the best politician this country has seen on the national stage in a very long time. I mean, dang man, he's a one term senator and he's black with a crazy name and a ne'er-do-well Muslim father from Kenya and now he's President of the fricken United States of America!!! lol
One thing I don't see him getting involved in is a disaster. He's had plenty of opportunity in the past. So, any truly disastrous plans you see him getting close to, he ain't gonna go there. It would have been a disaster, in terms of his personal political ambitions, to hand the healthcare bill to the Insurance companies the way everyone said he would. So he didn't do it. It would have been a disaster for him to have played the Clintons' game (and later the McCain game) during the election but he made 'em all look like chumps without even seeming to try. It would be a disaster to get into a shooting war with Iran. So, anything that you and I can recognize as a disaster, Obama's gonna recognize as a disaster and steer clear. WW III? Not if he can help it.
I think he wants to get the Middle East to love him and I think he might just do it. But he knows the current regime in Iran ain't gonna come around, as in ever. So, he wants to make them look bad. He wants to give them the rope to hang themselves. It's no mere coincidence that we've seen so much unrest in Tehran from practically the next day following Obama's Cairo speech. As I said, Obama has a stunning grasp of who is audience is.
We'll see which one of us is right soon enough, won't we? 
HKCavalier
Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.
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Okay, I haven't read all of this, time is a constraint, so I may be repeating someone else.
What I heard is that the old system Bush tried to build didn't work, wouldn't work, and that the Defense Department itself has been against it for a long time and is more in favor of what Obama proposes; that the newly-proposed system WOULD work, or at least have a better chance of working, and made sense.Quote:
What I heard was that the old system was too costly and ineffective. Rachel Maddow used the wonderful clip from West Wing where they repeatedly tested long-range missle defense system unsuccessfully, and it missed by 135 miles; the joke was that they kept trying to convince the President that it would work, and every time it didn't, he likened it to Lucy pulling the football out from under Charlie Brown.
Installing a nuclear warhead on a long-range missile is a difficult task, and intelligence officials have determined that Iran is making quicker progress with its short and medium range missiles.
Since the ground-based interceptors are fixed, some military experts argue they are more vulnerable to attack. Marine Gen. James Cartwright, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argued that the new system will be more flexible, easily adapted as the threat from Iran or other nations changes.
"One of the realities of life is the enemy gets a vote," Cartwright said. "If you can't adapt, you're left disadvantaged. This system gives us a much more significant and robust capability to adapt to the threat as it actually emerges versus what we would like it to emerge as."Quote:
http://www.islandpacket.com/politics/story/969939.html report on NPR's Morning Edition noted that the missile defense system "has been plagued with technical problems" and has never been thoroughly tested, citing Government Accountability Office reports that indicate the system has no proven ability to shoot down a hostile missile
While he was canceling the system of interceptor missiles and tracking radars slated for Eastern Europe, Obama said he had signed off on a new missile defense strategy that would be based on proven technologies and aimed more at the short- and medium-range missiles that Iran is thought to be developing.
That, he said, would result in "stronger, smarter and swifter defenses of American forces and America's allies."
http://mediamatters.org/research/200607070008Quote:
After 24 years and more than $100 billion spent to develop a U.S. missile defense, an American-operated system proposed for Europe would cost billions more to deploy and still may fail, a series of independent reports concludes.
The type of ground-based interceptors that would be deployed in Europe failed to hit targets in five of 13 tests, according to the Pentagon. They have not demonstrated an ability to detect decoys, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says.
Independent technical analysis has shown that Iran and North Korea, which has a nuclear program, could fool the system using simple countermeasures such as balloons, says critic David Wright of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
"Do I believe with any confidence that this system would be able to stop a nuclear attack? The answer is no," he said.
The successful tests "have all been scripted for success," said former Pentagon testing chief Philip Coyle, another skeptic. "It's a little bit like comparing the results of students doing open book exams."
The GAO told Congress last month that missile defense testing has been plagued by delays and "performance challenges." The type of system proposed for Europe, which is already partly in place in the United States, "continues to experience testing problems and delays," the GAO said.
A January report by the Congressional Research Service noted that "some observers continue to question how much confidence there should be in the system's potential operational or combat effectiveness based on the types of tests conducted and the test results to da
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