All things Middle East related

Pentagon chief: ISIS 'beyond anything we have seen' - CNN.com (http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/21/world/meast/iraq-crisis/index.html?hpt=hp_t1)

this is why ive grown to hate this administration. Hagel is trying to sell me on something Ive known about for about a year. And now instead of doing something about Isis initially, we've let them now come into Iraq and embed themselves in the region, gain iraqi support, more international support and prepare themselves for a fight. Hagel and Obama negligence will cost more civilian causalities and american soliders lives.

We can agree on this. I also hated that they came out and said the special forces failed on the rescue attempt. I can't see any reason, other than covering political a** that you would put that in the world press.

We can agree on this. I also hated that they came out and said the special forces failed on the rescue attempt. I can't see any reason, other than covering political a** that you would put that in the world press.

Seriously. Hagel trys to cover his ass with the headline grabbing "nothing we've ever seen".

So Mr. Hagel, why havent you seen this coming and effectively prepared for it? Another failure

Pentagon chief: ISIS 'beyond anything we have seen' - CNN.com (http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/21/world/meast/iraq-crisis/index.html?hpt=hp_t1)

this is why ive grown to hate this administration. Hagel is trying to sell me on something Ive known about for about a year. And now instead of doing something about Isis initially, we've let them now come into Iraq and embed themselves in the region, gain iraqi support, more international support and prepare themselves for a fight. Hagel and Obama negligence will cost more civilian causalities and american soliders lives.

Yup.

Key leaders on the left (Hagel, Obama, Kerry, Clinton, Feinstein) are all saying how caught-off-guard they were about this, meanwhile anyone who has been paying attention has seen republicans lambaste the policies for withdrawal for YEARS for exactly this reason. They didn't say which organization would do it, but many of them, along with higher-ups in the military, said this is exactly what would happen with a time-tabled withdrawal.

We keep half-assing the whole thing. We need to decide if we want to continue to intervene in the ongoings of the middle east or not, and behave accordingly. This path we've been on for at least the last 50 years of funding/equiping one side to fight someone to only have power structures develop that are anti-US, or worse have the people we directly gave the money/weapons to turn around and uset hem against us, is not working.

It's. not. working.

i wouldn't be lambasting libs while exonerating republicans over this. 10 years of unfunded war isn't sustainable either, and sanctioning torture isn't exactly a high water mark. plenty of blame to go around based on short term thinking and short sighted goals.

also, the spec ops team didn't fail, the intelligence did. the biggest failure we've had over there is the inability to create a good human intelligence network to provide accurate information.

i wouldn't be lambasting libs while exonerating republicans over this. 10 years of unfunded war isn't sustainable either, and sanctioning torture isn't exactly a high water mark. plenty of blame to go around based on short term thinking and short sighted goals.

also, the spec ops team didn't fail, the intelligence did. the biggest failure we've had over there is the inability to create a good human intelligence network to provide accurate information.

I'm not giving the republicans across the board credit here.

I'm just saying there's a whole lot of people in very important/high positions telling us they didn't see this coming when anyone who's been paying attention has watched certain people scream for years that this would happen. We also have a lot of normal people on a certain side of the aisle pretending this was unforeseeable.

Those same people pretending to be so surprised were the ones years ago lambasting the republicans for their concerns. So I find it ridiculous they now shrug and pretend this was not foreseeable.

Look, I wrote off those republican concerns at the time. I now fully admit they were right and I was naive/ignorant. But you wont catch me pretending people were not warning about this. They were. They were loud about it and they were chastised for it. Today it's clear they were correct all along.

then why aren't you in africa right now? or syria? or the ukraine? or dealing with the hidden protests in saudi arabia?

if we want to stop all the bad situations and genocides in the world, we need to adds millions of soldiers and trillions to the budget. there's already enough people talking a big game, what's your magic plan for achieving it? reinstating the draft? 80% tax rates? where's your outrage about the world's failure to contain ebola or aids or the genocide in sudan? we could stop that too, but i guess when it's happening in africa it doesn't count. you're lack of outrage makes me sick.You have no idea what my views are on any of these subjects, so don't state my positions for me.

For those isolationists who like to use extreme hyperbole, this is directly from my post:
"however what needs to be done is for the POTUS to go to Congress and obtain a declaration of war on any groups which openly have declared war/jihad on the U.S. or are involved in genocide. Once obtained, use Spec Ops and drone strikes to wipe these animals out whenever they raise their f-ing murderous heads.

If different factions of Islam want to fight amongst themselves, fine. But when groups like IS are flat our murdering/beheading innocents time to step in with extreme deadly force to deter the pieces of $hit from doing this stuff. No massive 100K of troops sitting in the sand as targets, change the rules of engagement and let the military serve its purpose....to kill bad guys and destroy stuff."

To do what I stated would not require an increase in current DoD funding, we have the weapons systems and manpower, our C in C needs to take off the kids gloves and fight the war we're in (whether liberals/isolationists want to admit it). And I obviously need to clearly state; the war is with violent fundamental Islamist groups who are hell bent on the destruction of the U.S/western civilization and the establishment of an Islamic caliphate.

All that being said, for the record:
Ukraine - Obama created this mess with his pulling back of the missle shield in Poland, open mike slip with the Russian President, "after I'm re-elected I'll have a lot more flexibility", and general foreign policy ineptitude/weakness. Putin sees this weakness as an opening to regain parts of lost USSR territory with no one to stop him.
With a strong POTUS this never would've happened. When Putin amassed troops on the border, prior to taking Crimea we should've let him know to either pull back or lose every piece of military hardware and troop near the Ukraine border. He would've never moved forward on Crimea.

Protests by moderates in Iran - Everything short of direct military action should be done to help these folks. The Saudis are a more delicate situation, I don't know enough detail about these protests to state a strategy, but non-military/diplomatic/economic pressure should be applied to the Saudis to become better on Human Rights and crack down on jihadis within their borders.

Syria - Assad is a murderous PoS, but do we step in a replace him with more murderous PoS people? I'd prefer to let them fight that out amongst themselves and if a new regime comes in that aligns with Muslim Brotherhood/violent Muslim types then we need to deal with that.

Darfur/Sudan - Would've definitely stepped in to stop the genocide by the Arab Muslim based government against non-Arabs (many Christians)....hmmm do we see a common theme of violent Muslim actions???? I wonder if it was a Christian or Jewish gov't attacking a Muslim subculture what the world reaction would've been?

and the next time ISIS is rampaging down K street, please be sure to let me know.They don't need to "rampage down K St." to do serious damage here. Just sayin...
Islamic State sympathizers under intense scrutiny in US | Fox News (http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/08/22/islamic-state-sympathizers-under-intense-scrutiny-in-us/)

sanctioning torture isn't exactly a high water mark.waterboarding isn't torture, our Spec Ops go through it in their training....and that waterboarding of three high level terrorists directly attributed to stopping planned terrorist attacks and saved American lives.

also, the spec ops team didn't fail, the intelligence did. the biggest failure we've had over there is the inability to create a good human intelligence network to provide accurate information.We had good intel networks in the ME until.....Clinton weakened the military and tore them down, then if you remember it was Bush's CIA Director (Clinton appointee) who assured him and Congress there were WMDs in Iraq, now Obama has done nothing but defund and weaken the military and Intel agencies further. This POTUS can't even get a decorated Marine with PTSD out of a Mexican jail...but there's "plenty of blame" for the Republicans? It wasn't Republicans who elected Obama twice.

...
They don't need to "rampage down K St." to do serious damage here. Just sayin...
Islamic State sympathizers under intense scrutiny in US | Fox News (http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/08/22/islamic-state-sympathizers-under-intense-scrutiny-in-us/)

as long as they call our cellphones first to tell us they are gonna bomb us it's ok though right?

no reply needed, purely snark for snark's sake

Why should they accept Israels right to exist? I ask in all seriousness. Did it exist before the UN decreed it? Yes it did.

Was there a referendum of the local councils where all parties had an even stake and state and national borders were agreed to in advance?No, Israel was mandated by the UN in 1947.

Or has the Palestinian land slowly been shrunk as Israeli control grew?

Would Israel exist as a natural state if the us withdrew its support and allowed boundaries to be re-established based on pre 1947 history?Invalid question, but based on its military strength probably yes.
In 1995 Israel and the PLO reached the Oslo II agreements and resolved a majority of past issues of conflict. Enter Hamas in 1996 and things begin to devolve.

My issue (and Israel's and many of the Palestinian people's) is with Hamas, an Islamist terrorist group. The blood of innocent civilians in Gaza is on Hamas' hands, not Israel's

as long as they call our cellphones first to tell us they are gonna bomb us it's ok though right?

no reply needed, purely snark for snark's sake
:food-smil good one