What's really going on in Syria?

  On 9/4/2013 at 12:27 AM, very honest said:

DADT is over. 1 trillion of the debt was the stimulus that stemmed the world economy's collapse. he transferred almost half of guantanamo's detainees until congress amended a resolution not to allow him to in 2009.

 

 

 

it's such crap though that he can get any props at all for what he did to Gitmo, how about just announcing that we now follow the international law and geneva conventions in terms of POWs? It was his choice to put that up to a vote in front of congress, to give him an excuse for taking no important action whatsoever. It is absolutely inexcusable that we've had Gitmo going (as is, with a small tweak for a '3 track' legal process, where now only some people get charged but many are still held indefinitely) 5 years under his presidency.

 

DADT being over at least to me seems minuscule in comparison to continuing the NSA spying program and keeping a gulag that violates international law open for business.

Edited September 4, 2013 by John Ehrlichman

Don't want to stir the mood here, but how in the world Obama got to win the Nobel peace prize?

Ever since that event, my trust in the integrity of the Nobel committee is put on question.

 

But it really isn't so hard to see that middle east is being systematically "democratized" in order to secure strategic oil reserves and a strategic base against any future conflicts in Asia.

 

John Ehrlichman:

You're correct. Let me just add that funding rebels is one last step before full-on occupation force being sent, and is a solid sign that things are going to the plan.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/05/obama-kill-list-doj-memo

 

 

Some evil dictator shit, innit.

i think the reason Obama got the prize is because the entire world is intimidated by the united states and to some degree suffers from a mass delusion or a mild form of stockholm syndrome. When Bush basically held the world hostage for 8 years and acted like a fucking insane person, I think the Oslo nobel committee was experiencing almost a come-down effect, the excitement they felt towards Obama was only because they were playing the role of battered wife for almost a decade, and felt that Obama was going to usher in a new era for the United States. They couldn't have been more wrong however, but remember they also gave Henry Kissinger a nobel peace prize, who is widely unanimously among historians considered one of the most prolific war criminals in the united states government.

Edited September 4, 2013 by John Ehrlichman

dude, the European Union received the Nobel prize. the institution that's in charge of ruining european countries economies and does a pretty good job at it.

Edited September 4, 2013 by Brian Tregaskin

To some degree I can understand the relief after Obama got elected; I myself was sincerely positive and optimistic about it, but at the same time something didn't smell right. From some standpoints it seemed to me only as a good PR move. That Kissinger got the prize, that I didn't know. But it makes a lot of sense now; some institution's standard can serve to label a person in power and give him an aura of "goodness". Sick stuff. I mean to be in a company of true altruists - I don't know what is worse.

 

edit: a thought just occured me - the Nobel committee being named after the inventor of dynamite... we should've know better... maybe it's a hint... Maybe even Mother Theresa was a secret agent... Well...she works for the Church... I think I have to stop going down this path

Edited September 4, 2013 by Godwin Austen

  On 9/4/2013 at 12:27 AM, very honest said:

 

  On 9/3/2013 at 9:23 PM, Araungzeb said:

 

  On 9/3/2013 at 6:12 PM, very honest said:

 

  On 9/3/2013 at 6:04 PM, MisterE said:

 

  On 9/3/2013 at 6:00 PM, xox said:

lol Yes, they're known as 'very honest people' when comes to foreign politics. One thing is OFFICIAL politics and totally another is CIA-under-the-hood politics. Have you forget the last 50 yrs of the game?a

 

 

  On 9/3/2013 at 5:53 PM, very honest said:

^

Libya wasn't a US operation, it was a NATO operation led by France, because the Obama administration insisted on not leading it.

 

Here's the unclassified intelligence report on the August 21 chemical attack released by the US this past Friday. Although it's not definitive about the blame, it makes it seem very likely that Assad carried it out.

 

The lady in that video appears to be mistaken about the United States arming the rebels, as this Wall Street Journal article from today says that to date the rebels have not received arms from the US yet.

 

ha rite. we're talking about the guy who campaigned with promises of 'transparency' that will make us shit our pants and who's white house recently went to court to resist having to make public its visitation logs. our president doesn't want the public to know who comes to see him. seriously. and some people are still drinking his hope and change kool-aid.

the united states will never be some hippy pascifist state. with great power comes great responsibility, like spiderman. obama ended the iraq war and began the transition out of afghanistan. it's disturbing how minor things about Obama are griped over so vitriolically when, if you can see the big picture, he is shaping up to be one of the best US presidents in history. *destroys thread, sorry skib*

The big picture:

 

Unconstitutional warrant-less droning of American citizens, largest and most efficient domestic spying program in US history, Guantanamo Bay still open, $6 Trillion increase in debt, failed to overturn Don't Ask Don't Tell even though 78% of the country wanted him to...

 

Yeah, really puts him up there with TJ and Abe.

DADT is over.

No thanks to him. It took CONGRESS to repeal the policy years after he was elected even though as Commander-in-Chief he could have repealed it the first day he took office via executive order. I agree that it's a minor point compared to atrocities of justice like summary executions of American citizens using drones and having a domestic spy program called fucking PRISM, but considering that Truman had the balls to desegregate the military against the wishes of half his own party in an era when lynchings were still common shows that Obama has absolutely no political courage whatsoever. Or genuinely didn't care. Or both.

Look, let's be rational here. Rationally, the rational reason for intervention in Syria is perfectly rational, specifically that people are dying in Syria. It's only rational that we stop other rational people from dying. Why would you rationally oppose this? Would you irrationally propose that we do nothing? Such a course of action would be completely irrational. What we need to do is stop and rationally think for a second. Any rational human being knows that those in positions of intelligence have access to the important facts; irrationally you believe that you do as well. Maybe you should be rational for one rational second and consider that our governments are acting in our best, rational interests, and that we as common citizens are acting irrationally on information we do not rationally have.

 

 

The only rational perspective of this conflict is to do something.

 

 

  On 9/4/2013 at 2:30 AM, Redruth said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

the world is gone

 

 

it figures that by the time i would be able to afford to get some decent headphones and ok monitors, that the world would gone.

  On 9/4/2013 at 2:45 AM, skibby said:

 

  On 9/4/2013 at 2:30 AM, Redruth said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

the world is gone

 

 

it figures that by the time i would be able to afford to get some decent headphones and ok monitors, that the world would gone.

 

 

 

it already is gone friend. children have become parents; void of the fundamental knowledge which is pivotal in the education of their young persons. children r now walking around and they r literally mutated due to the irresponsibility of generation upon generation before them. we r all mutants now; wanting at things that don't really matter, distracted by the material experience of our lives, spinning out of control into the deep, dark emptiness ..forever

 

 

 

Here's video of Obama's big national defense speech he gave earlier this year, there's a lot of important stuff in it.

 

21:39 - 28:42 Drones, how they're used against imminent threats that can't be neutralized any other way. He says they only do it with a certainty of no civilian casualties, I interpret it as him saying his people suck at knowing when to be certain, since he acknowledges civilian casualties at another point. How alternatives incur worse civilian casualties and mission creep. How there is oversight of all lethal action, including congressional.

 

28:42 Al Awliki, the first US citizen killed by a US drone strike. He doesn't mention his son, but I found this article which cites a book as saying they didn't intend to kill him, it was accidental, which suggests that after his father was killed by America for anti-American terrorism he sought out some anti-American terrorists.

 

 

About DADT, republicans in congress had been notoriously obstructing literally anything Obama wanted to do, and they were opposed to repealing DADT. Executive Orders are vulnerable to legal objections, so he would have been setting it up for resistance, but he most likely knew that democrats in congress would be pushing it and could get it through. He's done a lot of other things for GLBT rights.

Edited September 4, 2013 by very honest

  On 9/4/2013 at 3:05 AM, very honest said:

Here's video of Obama's big national defense speech he gave earlier this year, there's a lot of important stuff in it.

 

Drones, how they're used against imminent threats that can't be neutralized any other way. He says they only do it with a certainty of no civilian casualties

 

 

yeah that's a lol

 

c'mon now

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/22/leaked_report_shows_high_civilian_death_toll_from_cia_drone_strikes/

  On 9/4/2013 at 3:23 AM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 9/4/2013 at 3:05 AM, very honest said:

Here's video of Obama's big national defense speech he gave earlier this year, there's a lot of important stuff in it.

 

Drones, how they're used against imminent threats that can't be neutralized any other way. He says they only do it with a certainty of no civilian casualties

 

 

yeah that's a lol

 

c'mon now

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/22/leaked_report_shows_high_civilian_death_toll_from_cia_drone_strikes/

 

 

syriaously

  On 9/4/2013 at 3:05 AM, very honest said:

About DADT, republicans in congress had been notoriously obstructing literally anything Obama wanted to do, and they were opposed to repealing DADT. Executive Orders are vulnerable to legal objections, so he would have been setting it up for resistance, but he most likely knew that democrats in congress would be pushing it and could get it through. He's done a lot of other things for GLBT rights.

If he cared about legal obstructions from Republicans then how in the world do you explain his health care law? 689 people were discharged because of DADT under Obama, if he had political courage and actually cared about GLBT rights he could have fixed that on day one. I know that people had absurdly high expectations for President Obama and that there's really only so much a president can do, but that's one thing that was a no-brainer and could have sent a message that he really was serious about an agenda of "change."

quote name="very honest" post="2058108" timestamp="1378256715"]

21:39 - 28:42 Drones, how they're used against imminent threats that can't be neutralized any other way. He says they only do it with a certainty of no civilian casualties, I interpret it as him saying his people suck at knowing when to be certain, since he acknowledges civilian casualties at another point. How alternatives incur worse civilian casualties and mission creep. How there is oversight of all lethal action, including congressional.

I forgot, if a US President gives a speech about it, it must be true! Just like how Reagan did NOT sell arms to hostages, George H.W.B would NOT raise taxes, Bill Clinton did NOT have sex with Monica Lewinsky, and G.W.B. definitely DID have evidence of WMDs in Iraq.

 

Seriously, is this some sort of elaborate trolling scheme? Because if so you've done a pretty amazing job parodying a naive robot.

  On 9/4/2013 at 2:11 AM, SR4 said:

Look, let's be rational here. Rationally, the rational reason for intervention in Syria is perfectly rational, specifically that people are dying in Syria. It's only rational that we stop other rational people from dying. Why would you rationally oppose this? Would you irrationally propose that we do nothing? Such a course of action would be completely irrational. What we need to do is stop and rationally think for a second. Any rational human being knows that those in positions of intelligence have access to the important facts; irrationally you believe that you do as well. Maybe you should be rational for one rational second and consider that our governments are acting in our best, rational interests, and that we as common citizens are acting irrationally on information we do not rationally have.

 

 

The only rational perspective of this conflict is to do something.

Hey man, thanks for the trivial remark,

 

* starts doing nothing and hopes everything will turn out right again*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XunOXRiOv0E#t=478

is it wrong that I saw the lady's haggard face and immediately knew which way her speech was going to go?

From the mouth of an actual US Senator:

 

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/09/05/grahams-hawkish-posture-confronts-war-weary-voters-in-south-carolina

  Quote

 

Facing that strain of skepticism, Graham wound up his case on Syria intervention by raising the stakes considerably. He painted a frightening picture of cascading world events that would reverberate far beyond the borders of a civil war in one Middle Eastern country.

 

If the United States doesn't deal with Syria, Graham promised Iran would acquire a nuclear weapon by 2014, the King of Jordan would be deposed and Israel would start preparing to protect itself.

 

"I believe that if we get Syria wrong, within six months -- and you can quote me on this," Graham said, pausing for dramatic effect. "There will be a war between Iran and Israel over their nuclear program."

 

But it wouldn't even end there, Graham surmised. Undoubtedly, he said ominously, the Iranians would share its nuclear technology with U.S. enemies.

 

"My fear is that it won't come to America on top of a missile, it'll come in the belly of a ship in the Charleston or New York harbor," he said.

 

If he doesn't get re-elected in 2014 at least he can keep busy by writing Jason Bourne fanfiction.

it looks far too SCIENCE to let sit it on the runway. those bombs only kill bad guys tho.

if only "cremating care" would work for the corrupt officials' bank statements... cremating care only works when it comes to killing strangers tho.

 

  On 9/8/2013 at 7:25 PM, SR4 said:

is it wrong that I saw the lady's haggard face and immediately knew which way her speech was going to go?

 

of course not. just shows that you know what's going on right now

  On 9/8/2013 at 7:37 PM, Araungzeb said:

From the mouth of an actual US Senator:

 

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/09/05/grahams-hawkish-posture-confronts-war-weary-voters-in-south-carolina

 

  Quote

 

Facing that strain of skepticism, Graham wound up his case on Syria intervention by raising the stakes considerably. He painted a frightening picture of cascading world events that would reverberate far beyond the borders of a civil war in one Middle Eastern country.

 

If the United States doesn't deal with Syria, Graham promised Iran would acquire a nuclear weapon by 2014, the King of Jordan would be deposed and Israel would start preparing to protect itself.

 

"I believe that if we get Syria wrong, within six months -- and you can quote me on this," Graham said, pausing for dramatic effect. "There will be a war between Iran and Israel over their nuclear program."

 

But it wouldn't even end there, Graham surmised. Undoubtedly, he said ominously, the Iranians would share its nuclear technology with U.S. enemies.

 

"My fear is that it won't come to America on top of a missile, it'll come in the belly of a ship in the Charleston or New York harbor," he said.

 

If he doesn't get re-elected in 2014 at least he can keep busy by writing Jason Bourne fanfiction.

 

Lindsay Graham is a prime example of one of those politicians that should be tried for treason. This guy has been a pain in the ass for decades.

  On 9/8/2013 at 7:37 PM, Araungzeb said:

 

 

If he doesn't get re-elected in 2014 at least he can keep busy by writing Jason Bourne fanfiction.

i guess im an idiot. i worry about smuggled nukes a lot. is it an irrational fear? i worry about aids too. Hey, im a child of the 80's

Edited September 9, 2013 by marf