The U.S. on Wednesday ordered all nonessential government staff to leave Iraq, and Germany and the Netherlands both suspended their military assistance programs in the country in the latest sign of tensions sweeping the Persian Gulf region over still-unspecified threats that the Trump administration says are linked to Iran.Pompeo, of course, is lying like a senior Trump official:
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The U.S. on Wednesday ordered all nonessential government staff to leave Iraq, and Germany and the Netherlands both suspended their military assistance programs in the country in the latest sign of tensions sweeping the Persian Gulf region over still-unspecified threats that the Trump administration says are linked to Iran.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said the United States does not seek a war with Iran, amid rapidly growing tensions between the two countries.The Iran nuclear deal was not perfect. But Trump blew it up because of his childish opposition to anything and everything that President Obama did. That is the bottom line for Trump: He's opposed to everything Obama did. It is a level of childish vindictiveness that normal people outgrow by the time their age reaches double digits.
If a war ensues, the U.S. is likely going to be largely going it alone. The rest of the Western world is blaming Trump for ratcheting up tensions with Iran. Bolton, in particular, is trying to engineer a war. It has apparently been Bolton's lifelong dream to mastermind a war, and now he seems to be achieving his goal.
In a just world, Bolton would be in a jail cell in The Hague for war mongering.
Trump, who has criticized other presidents for getting into wars in the Middle East, is on the verge of making the mother of all foreign policy fuckups.
The truly depressing part of this fiasco is that the average Iranian is pretty much neutral to mildly pro-U.S. The Government has so repressed and suppressed their population, that the younger generation are yearning to be free of the mullahs and religion. All this war will do is more than quadruple the terrorist recruitment base against the U.S.
ReplyDeleteJesus.
ReplyDeleteAnd I get accused of reading Propaganda sites.
Wow.
No, B, your problem is that you don't engage in critical thinking when you do read them.
ReplyDeleteHey B. If not for war, why are we sending 120k troops to the Gulf? The hilarious thing is, that is not enough troops to actually do anything.
ReplyDelete@Steve J - You're absolutely right. Also, where are they going to put 120,000 troops? In Saudi Arabia? Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar is not an American base. We use it by permission from the Qataris. It surely doesn't have room for an extra 120,000 troops.If that is their plan their plan is bullshit. The good news is the Joint Chiefs and the separate service chiefs are not going to take orders from the National Security Agency or the State Department. The bad news is that Shanahan was at that meeting and Trump has nominated him to be the new Secretary of Defense. If he gives an order to one of the service chiefs, will that officer ask if the President knows about it? Actually, I don't think Shanahan is a lunatic like Bolton or an evangelistic Zionist like Pompeo, but I don't know anything about him except he worked at Boeing for 30 years. Also, if they send 120,000 troops it's going to be very visible and it's going to take several months, so at least we'll know if it becomes true.
ReplyDeleteI was sent there when Shrub had his adventure. My unit was supposed to be at the tip of the spear going in. Due to a little high level diplomatic 'whoopsie', we were relocated to a location a bit further West and North of our planned deployment. If the organizing now is anything like the planning then (and I think it would be worse), the forces will end up somewhere in Greenland.
ReplyDeleteAssociated Press, BBC, Reuters, and the NY Times? Propaganda sites? Time to pull out the aluminum foil and start making hats.
ReplyDeleteDale
120,000 troops into the Middle East, that’s another 120,000 recruitment incentives. The terrorists have been using Western troops in the Middle East as a recruitment tool since the late days of Russia in Afghanistan. We are falling into another bottomless hole.
ReplyDeleteBolton and Pompeo have a pro-war agenda. They are going to do the best they can to "catapult the propaganda". Nothing that comes from those guys is going to be anything other than a drumbeat for a war.
ReplyDeleteThere are 80+ million people in Iran. 120,000 troops is a popcorn fart as for an occupying force.
Have we learned nothing from the Iraq War?
On the plus side, Ted Cruz has come out in favor of a Space Force in order to defend the US against Space Pirates. I will sleep better now.
ReplyDeleteIf nothing else, those 120,000 will offer that many more opportunities for one of them to get killed and provide the excuse for launching another monumental mistake.
ReplyDeleteIran is twice the size and has three times the population Iraq had when we invaded them, and we aren't all het up about being recently attacked like we were then.
My question is this: Does Fergus believe, or are his chickenhawk advisors telling him that invading Iran is his best shot at getting reelected and running out the clock on the statute of limitations on obstruction of justice?
This is why presidential conflicts of interest matter.
-Doug in Oakland