Another Middle East War

[KeithE]

[Dave Roberts]

The BBC has pretty good reporting on this.

[KeithE]

[Haruo]

Bear in mind, though, that the BBC is in Her Majesty's service, and may be subject to some constraints similar to those found in the US, but centered on things the UK government doesn't want announced rather than the US.

[Tim Bonney]

[KeithE]

[Tim Bonney]

Right Keith. There is no such thing as an unbiased person so there is no such thing as unbiased reporting. The best way to come close would be to have multiple perspectives under one roof. That doesn't seem to happen.

[KeithE]

[Jim]

If Trump were to announce now and emphasize in the last debate his intention to sign a command on his first day in office to extract every U.S. operative in the Middle East immediately so the Muslims can kill each other until the caliphate is just a dream and the Twelfth Imam a complete hoax, he could well be elected. We have no business protecting nations like Turkey and Saudi Arabia (both with huge military forces) or putting the arm on the have-nots like Syria and Iraq. It's Putin's war now and he's welcome to it. In time, he'll leave, too, though perhaps keeping at least a Syrian port. Hillary is so bought-out by the special interests (money to be made in the Middle East) that she'll probably keep parroting that old line about what the moderator-gal kept screaming the other night, “What about Aleppo, what about Aleppo.” The lesson once more for the learning is that insurrectionists had better be sure they have the will and strength for success before they attempt a coup (think Turkey of recent days), else risking life, limb, family, property, etc.

[Tim Bonney]

Jim,

I sympathize with the idea of totally staying out of the Middle East, particularly in situations where what we do really does not help anything or anyone. If only we'd not gone into Iraq after 9/11 I think we'd have been better off. It was the wrong thing to do.

What I don't know about is what do we do in situations were hundreds of innocent lives are being lost? Sometimes there is nothing we can do. But if there is something we can do that makes a difference, can we just stand by?

[KeithE]

[KeithE]

[Jim]

The best example of the foolish and illegal meddling in the Middle East (and most anywhere else) was seen in 2011 when Obama, completely bypassing Congress in violating both the U.S. Constitution and War Powers Act, attacked a sovereign state, Libya (with a total military strength of 76,000 boots as compared to the U.S. number of 1.5 million), that comprised no threat of any kind to any nation in the world, with the hedge that NATO would get in on the act while he led from behind...millions more EU troops in the deal. Libya's population was 2,000,000 less than that of NYC alone. Though we constantly hear of the 250,000 killed in Syria, essentially not by the U.S. (although no one has the slightest notion of that hear-say death-rate), we've never been told how many Libyans died in Obama's seven-month war, though he said it would be over in days, not weeks. Then-Defense Secretary Gates and -JCC Mullen advised against the “war” (actually shooting fish in a barrel) before Congress, and Gates called it “on the fly” while visiting Russia when Obama gave the order. In other words, there was no actual planning for it, either waging it or cleaning up after the fact. Hillary Clinton and the other two Amazons, Powers and Rice, got “permission” from the UN Security Council. Putin abstained; otherwise, the bloodletting would not have happened. Look at Libya now, a total wreck and training ground for mindless Muslim butchers. At least Bush had the assurance from the best international intelligence agencies, as well as the CIA, that Saddam had WMD before the attack on Iraq. I believe the WMD was moved at night probably to Syria between September 2002 and March 2003. Regarding Libya, the air-action (no-fly zone), the actual stated objective, was achieved in four days. Clinton and Obama were so devoid of knowledge of how the Muslim mind works (or most anything else) that neither should have wandered around unchaperoned, even to the bathroom.

[KeithE]

[Jim]

With respect to the links, there's no argument with the fact that people in high places disagreed (including Rumsfeld if he did) and I believe that was obvious then to all of us, so it was left up to the appropriate officials to make decisions and to the rest of us to form our own opinions on the basis of the info in the media, including the disagreements. This is what I did, so we disagree. Saddam had kicked the UN investigators out of the country years before, had used WMD on his own people as well as the Iranians and had a nuclear facility ready for production in the early 1980s, when the Israelis knocked it out one day before its turn-on. I paid little attention to the third link because it was purely political, just like folks wanting Bush impeached or Trump to drop-out. I don't think the war was folly and I don't merely discriminate against democrats. Attempting to nation-build was FOLLY then and now. I think Obama was right in intending to get all troops out of Afghanistan before now and wish he'd had the guts to tell the generals to just shut up and join him on the golf course. I'm not at all sure that leaving 10,000 in Iraq in 2011 would have militated against ISIS. It would merely have delayed the inevitable war which Muslims are hellbent on waging against each other while costing the U.S. more blood and treasure. Hindsight is always better than current-sight, so we'll never know what might have been. I was interested enough to look into this period and so wrote the novel The Biggest Con, admittedly not the great American novel, as I did so and connect it with the Muslim's take on the hereafter and how to bring it on.

[Sandy]

Jim's purely extremist right wing slanted perspective aside, Libya comes nowhere near Iraq in terms of "foolish and illegal meddling" in the Middle East. There was a civil war going on that was causing problems for the Tunisia, which is the Arab world's only true democracy, and one of its most stable nations, and also Egypt, both US allies. There were calls from other Arab states for the US or UN to establish a no-fly zone over Libya, to stop some of the abuses being inflicted on its own citizens by the Gaddafi government. The US Senate passed a resolution favoring the no-fly zone, and was putting pressure on the Obama administration to do something to shut down the bombing raids. Then of course there are the French, who were really the force pushing for things to happen, since this is much more in their backyard, and the British, who are always interested in any US assistance in the Mediterranean. And there were even kudos from Netanyahu. Most of the Libyan casualties came from their own government's bombing raids.

Going in wasn't a good idea for the US, and even if we hadn't, the French and British probably would have anyway. But it doesn't rank anywhere near the level of foolish or illegal that Iraq does. That whole charade was exposed as a pre-planned package by Cheney and Haliburton executives long before there was any talk of invented WMD's. That only came up because Cheney wasn't really certain that blaming the Iraqis for 9-11 would stick.

[KeithE]

[KeithE]

While the election churns on:

[Jim]

The Saudis have 227,000 active boots, with a defense budget of $80.76 billion. Below is a partial list of armaments, with naval forces not listed. By contrast, Yemen has 66,700 active troops and a defense budget of $1.89 billion. The U.S. has no business in fighting the Saudis' war. They can do it themselves. Obama has caused enough death and destruction in helpless Libya, let alone now killing Yemenis. As for world courts, the U.S. can just say no, and what country can force anything against U.S. military strength. That said, Obama could easily be a war criminal for ordering an illegal attack on Libya, a sovereign nation that never threatened the U.S., and proceeded to murder its people.

MBT 600: 200 M1A2/A2S Abrams; 400 M60A3
RECCE 300 AML-60/AML-90
AIFV 780: 380 AMX-10P; 400 M2A2 Bradley
APC (T) 1200 M113A1/A2/A3
APC (W) 150 M3 Panhard;
PPV 73 Aravis
ARTY 771 • SP 155mm 224: 60 AU-F-1; 110 M109A1B/A2; 54 PLZ-45 • TOWED 50: 155mm 50 M114.
MOR 437 • SP 220: 81mm 70; 107mm 150 M3 • TOWED 217:  81mm/107mm 70 incl M30 120mm 147: 110 Brandt; 37 M12-1535.
AT – MSL 2,240 • SP 290+: 90+ AMX-10P (HOT); 200 VCC-1 ITOW • MANPATS 1,950: 1,000 M47 Dragon; 950 TOW-2A.
AD – SAM 1,100+ • SP Crotale • MANPAD 1,000: 500 FIM-43 Redeye; 500 FIM-92A Stinger.
RADAR – LAND AN/TPQ-36 Firefinder/AN/TPQ-37.
Helicopters: ATK 12 AH-64 Apache • MRH 21: 6 AS365N Dauphin 2; 15 Bell 406CS Combat Scout • TPT Medium 58: 12 S-70A-1 Desert Hawk; 22 UH-60A Black Hawk; 24 UH-60L Black Hawk.
Fighter: 1 squadron with F-15S Eagle • 4 sqn with F-15C/D Eagle
Fighter/Ground Attack: 2 squadrons with F-15S Eagle • 3 squadrons with Tornado IDS/Tornado GR1A • 2 sqn with Typhoon
Airborne early warning and control: 1 squadron with E-3A Sentry
ELINT: 1 squadron with RE-3A/B Beech 350ER King Air
Tanker: 1 squadron with KE-3A
Transport: 3 squadrons with C-130H Hercules; C-130H-30 Hercules; CN-235; L-100-30HS • 2 squadrons with Beech 350 King Air
Transport Helicopter: 4 squadrons with AS532 Cougar (CSAR); Bell 212 (AB-212); Bell 412 (AB-412) Twin Huey (SAR)
Training: 3 squadrons with Hawk Mk65; Hawk Mk65A • 1 squadron with Jetstream Mk31 • 1 sqn with Cessna 172; MFI-17 Mushshak • 2 squadrons with PC-9
Saudi’s Air Force has around 300 combat capable aircrafts.

[Haruo]

[KeithE]

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

[KeithE]