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good riddance.
The time of his life?
Where were you in '77?
Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo — Page 218
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Bill O’Reilly was the worst. Except maybe Hannity. If Hannity and Maddow could get caught up in some scandal together and both get fired, the world would truly be a better place.
Wouldn’t that be like mixing matter and anti matter? Hell, if they were even in the same room, that could rip the very fabric of space and time!
Bad enough we’re living in the alternate 1985 timeline as it is. 😉
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good riddance.
The time of his life?
?
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I don’t think it’s accurate to say that because Bush had negotiated for an Iraq pullout in 2011, that Obama was bound by that. He could have done whatever he wanted, as he often did. So I think that’s kind of a dubious claim.
Yes, he could have kept our forces there against the will of the Iraqi government simply by re-invading, or knocking over that government and installing yet another government that agreed to our continued presence. That was definitely an option available to him.
The US is not magically released from agreements and treaties it makes with other governments simply because the presidency changes hands. Nobody would bother signing a treaty with us if that were the case.
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Treaties are pieces of paper. They get ignored all the time.
When Obama wanted to take credit for leaving Iraq, he did so. He actually campaigned on it. When the political winds shifted and he wanted to distance himself from leaving Iraq early, he said it was already arranged by Bush before him.
It’s all political fudging.
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Treaties are pieces of paper. They get ignored all the time.
Sure, they get ignored. And ignoring that particular piece of paper would have been an act of war (huge presence of foreign troops in a country against the expressed wishes of that government–pretty much dictionary definition of act of war). Yes, an option available to Obama. A shitty, irresponsible choice that would have needlessly endangered the lives of our soldiers and made conditions in Iraq even worse, but a choice he nevertheless had the option to make. Strangely enough, he didn’t seem to consider it.
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good riddance.
The time of his life?
?
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So are you saying Obama didn’t campaign on ending the Iraq War? And didn’t take credit for ending the Iraq War? But then a few years later when Islamic State is a big deal, and people are saying U.S. troops left too early, he didn’t try and make the case that the pullout was all on Bush anyway?
It can’t be his accolade part of the time and another administration’s fault the rest of the time.
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The intelligence community was allegedly directed to provide cover for President Donald Trump’s baseless claim that Trump Tower was wiretapped by his predecessor, the New Yorker reported Tuesday.
An anonymous intelligence source told the magazine’s Ryan Lizza that “the White House said, ‘We are going to mobilize to find something to justify the President’s tweet that he was being surveilled.’”
Asking for an “all-points bulletin,” or a request to look through intelligence reports, White House officials said, “We need to find something that justifies the President’s crazy tweet about surveillance at Trump Tower,” according to Lizza’s source.
The alleged effort to justify the President’s outlandish wiretapping claim sparked a month-long goose chase that culminated with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) temporarily recusing himself from the panel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the U.S. election.
The White House did not respond to the New Yorker’s request for comment.
JEDIT: Original reporting here…
http://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-lizza/the-continuing-fallout-from-trump-and-nuness-fake-scandal
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[SilverWook said:](post/id/1067750]
Wouldn’t that be like mixing matter and anti matter? Hell, if they were even in the same room, that could rip the very fabric of space and time!
Bad enough we’re living in the alternate 1985 timeline as it is. 😉
It would be more salacious if they got caught doing something together.
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So are you saying Obama didn’t campaign on ending the Iraq War?
Nope. Wonder where that came from.
And didn’t take credit for ending the Iraq War?
I don’t think he ever took credit for the agreement with the Iraqi government, but he did take credit for being one of the earliest voices of reason in the Senate, an opinion which eventually won over most Americans and led to Bush ending the Iraq War. That all seems fair to me.
But then a few years later when Islamic State is a big deal, and people are saying U.S. troops left too early, he didn’t try and make the case that the pullout was all on Bush anyway?
The pullout was all on the Bush administration (and the Iraqi government, who also demanded that timetable), and anyone who said so was simply being truthful. I’m not in any way denying that the truth can serve to advance certain political positions, and in his case it absolutely lined up to support Obama. Whether the withdrawal was really the direct cause of the success of ISIS in those years he never addressed AFAIK, focusing instead on the fact that the RW pundits were getting the facts wrong, which they were. In many ways, I feel that was always a red herring with other factors such as high oil prices and the increasingly sectarian division within Iraq being closer to the root causes. IMO, the US troops were just a lid on the Iraqi pressure cooker. The longer they stayed, the more pressure would be released when they left. And if they tried to stay forever, it would just explode.
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good riddance.
The time of his life?
?
Gotcha
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The executive branch ordering its intelligence services to find support for an outlandish and unsupported claim that everyone with any knowledge in the matter immediately knew was BS from the very beginning, but they just can’t let it go? It’s like I’ve heard that somewhere before.
Oddly, I’ve never heard an instance of one of these “investigations” starting in one administration and continuing on through a party transition. It’s like the intelligence agencies know the difference between a BS politically motivated investigation and one based on real evidence. They immediately drop the BS investigations like a hot potato, but keep soldiering on with the real ones.
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Yeah I see it completely differently. He campaigned on ending the Iraq War, which was a good thing. He ended the Iraq War at the beginning of his presidency, which was a good thing. He took credit for ending the Iraq war during most of his presidency, and that could have been a good thing.
But then something bad happened along the way…
His administration spent considerable resources, if not starting, then at least continuing another war in Syria. He armed, trained, and funded Syrian militants, most of whom are terrorists. He ignored the rise of Islamic State in the beginning because they were of potential use in overthrowing the Syrian regime. Then later when Islamic State became an international problem, he did not fight them aggressively, instead choosing a quarantine approach. It’s OK if they kill tens of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis…just don’t come kill anyone in Europe or the U.S., right?
Now, over time and towards the end of his presidency, the U.S. has become more embroiled in both Iraq and Syria, and Obama has faced criticism for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq too early. After campaigning on doing just that, and spending most of his presidency patting himself on the back for doing that, his supporters suddenly argue that he had no choice, it was all Bush’s idea.
It’s a terrible argument.
The fact is that the Obama administration was right to end the Iraq War, and wrong to essentially bring 6 years of civil war to Syria. This blame game we are discussing all comes back to his atrocious policy record on Syria, where if he had not gotten involved, there would be no Islamic State, no deterioration in Iraq, and no hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees fleeing the two countries.
Although I think Barack Obama has more integrity and character and better judgement than most men who get into his position, I think his presidency will ultimately be remembered for one thing and one thing only: Syria. It was another oligarchic proxy war that brought incredibly tragic death and destruction, once again to people in the Middle East.
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The fact is that the Obama administration was right to end the Iraq War, and wrong to essentially bring 6 years of civil war to Syria.
I think it’s pretty clear we see things differently on a lot of matters, but there’s something salient here I think we can maybe agree on. I think a lot of people who supported Obama saw his anti-Iraq War stance and then were surprised by his later positions in various conflicts. The thing is, Obama is no pacifist, and never was. Nor is he a saber-rattling human-rights-defending pro-democracy militant. His opposition to Iraq was practical, not ideological: it simply didn’t make any g****mn sense to support a war that pretty much exclusively benefitted Iran and was also a terrible drag on the US. It was, in many ways, coldly calculating and utilitarian–what purpose did this war serve? If we don’t benefit, who does? If the accounts don’t add up–fuck it, he’s out.
This same cool, detached analysis led to, well, nothing much in Syria, as you said. Who would benefit from various degrees of intervention? It was hard for him to come up with a formulation where it benefitted the US. The most he could muster was attempting to order a cruise missile attack on Syrian military facilities, but because he sought permission from Congress, that also led to nothing. The only thing of consequence he really did was provide fairly meager support for refugees trying to escape that war, which only looks generous in contrast with today. But he did it only because there’s no real downside for the US to resettle Syrian refugees.
Obama “cool” wasn’t all about sunglasses, or keeping an even tone of voice. It was also cool as in calculating, both in good and bad ways.
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Obama “cool” wasn’t all about sunglasses, or keeping an even tone of voice. It was also cool as in Instagramming pictures of his wife on a yacht.
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Obama “cool” wasn’t all about sunglasses, or keeping an even tone of voice. It was also cool as in Instagramming pictures of his wife on a yacht.
TFFTFM.
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Obama “cool” wasn’t all about sunglasses, or keeping an even tone of voice. It was also cool as in Instagramming pictures of his wife on a yacht.
TFFTFM.
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CatBus said:
The most he could muster was attempting to order a cruise missile attack on Syrian military facilities, but because he sought permission from Congress, that also led to nothing. The only thing he really did was provide fairly meager support for refugees trying to escape that war, which only looks generous in contrast with today. But he did it only because there’s no real downside for the US to resettle Syrian refugees.
There was no reason to be at war with Syria at all. If Obama had not been arming, funding, and training terrorists in an attempt to overthrow the Syrian regime for God knows what purpose, there would be no civil war. There would be no Islamic State.
CatBus said:But he did it only because there’s no real downside for the US to resettle Syrian refugees.
There is downside, obviously. Look at how the Trumpkins treat foreigners. This is not a phenomenon that is unique to our time, as there have been similar political movements like the American Party in the generation before the U.S. Civil War. I’m all for resettling Syrian refugees here or any country where they can find peace and live safe and productive lives, but this idea that the United States or the U.K. or anywhere has an endless tolerance for accepting people with open arms is not only misguided, but in the long run it is destructive. Populist forces will now attempt to disrupt our lives and snuff out the lives of many of these immigrants and refugees. It’s simply not enough to blame the populists and call them evil xenophobes, when the moderates created the mess by means of their poor policies in the first place.
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@Frink:
Also:
Two forks feel tingly flipping meat.
Twin foxes fart twice for months.
Thanks for fixing that for me.
@Alderaan:
Nevermind, I failed to find common ground. The idea that IS sprang forth from a quarter-assed arms campaign and not from the long-term blistering resentment of Arab populations to their own foreign-backed oppressive regimes is just something that’s too far out there for me, as is the idea that we should think twice about accepting refugees simply because 15% or so of our population is comprised of congenital bigots who might behave badly (and still not as badly as the people the refugees are fleeing, nor much more badly than the bigots were behaving before the refugees arrived).
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Similarly there was a common refrain that Obama created ISIS, which was equally impossible given that it happened before Obama. Does that absolve him of any blame for ISIS-related failures? Not at all, just the creation of it.
If I’m not mistaken, this reference was about the ISIL state created inside Syria. Obama waited til Damascus was obliterated before doing anything. American tax payers forked out billions of dollars to weaponize resistance fighters, those resistance fighters turned against us and took all those toys with them to Syria. That is why the claim that Obama created ISIS was used by Trump.
No. The reason why Trump claimed that Obama created ISIS is because Trump just makes up lots of random accusations, be they valid or not. You are retconning Trump’s intent by assigning reasoning that Trump was likely never even aware of at the time he said it.
Trump questioned the validity (and existence) of Obama’s birth certificate for ages. Trump had no interest in whether the claim was actually valid.
chyron just put a big Ric pic in your sig and be done with it.
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Another example of that: Obama put a WIRE TAPP on me!
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There would be no Islamic State [if not for Obama].
You can’t possibly be that naive. Islamic extremism has existed for well over a thousand years.
ISIS is just the latest iteration of it.
chyron just put a big Ric pic in your sig and be done with it.
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CatBus said:
The idea that IS sprang forth from a quarter-assed arms campaign and not from the long-term blistering resentment of Arab populations to their own foreign-backed oppressive regimes is just something that’s too far out there for me.
Islamic State and other terrorist organizations thrive in the region because of the long-term political instability sowed by the United States and other foreign countries in the region. The United States has a long history of backing some dictators, and getting rid of other dictators. The idea that peace will ever come to the middle east through military means is horrifically misguided. Barack Obama said it himself many times, and he was correct, but then he proceeded to escalate war and death and destruction in those countries far beyond what George Bush ever did.
I don’t think there’s any doubt about the link between the Obama administration arming and funding and training rebels, and the rise of Islamic State. He decried meddling in the internal politics of other nations, and rightfully so, but then he proceeded to do just that.
I just want to know on what basis anyone could argue that it’s OK to be involved in Syria, but you know we never should have gone to war in Iraq! Or the even more dubious: “we’re not at war in Syria”…because you know, it’s ok if our troops aren’t there, and we only use drones and pay other people to do the killing.
CatBus said:
as is the idea that we should think twice about accepting refugees simply because 15% or so of our population is comprised of congenital bigots who might behave badly (and still not as badly as the people the refugees are fleeing, nor much more badly than the bigots were behaving before the refugees arrived).
If you have a house, and some poor unfortunate soul seeks refuge, and you take them in, it’s a good thing. You should be prudent, and take caution, so that you don’t wind up like Orgon and invite Tartuffe into your home, but all things being equal it’s a good and noble gesture to help out those in need. I’m all for it.
But then if you have a few more that ask to stay in your house, suddenly your resources are constrained. Can you afford to buy food for all of these people? Do you have enough beds?
Then what happens if suddenly twenty more show up and start breaking down your doors and trying to crawl through the windows. Would you be OK with letting all of these people live in your home as well? How will you care for them, how will you be able to keep the peace when they inevitably don’t get along and tempers flare among people who are stressed out and living like sardines?
It’s not as simple as just opening your border and telling everyone to come at will. Especially for the following reason: you ventured a number of 15% xenophobes as though it is a static number. I think instead, that number will vary according to many different social and economic factors. Certainly it will increase much higher, when failed policies are doubled down on, and more and more people decry the state of the nation and look to assign blame towards people who are not like them.
This is venturing a little off topic from refugees to illegal immigration now, but certainly the lax immigration stance of the U.S. government in the last generation or so has been one of the big factors in driving down U.S. wages and decreasing the average standard of living.
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There would be no Islamic State [if not for Obama].
You can’t possibly be that naive. Islamic extremism has existed for well over a thousand years.
ISIS is just the latest iteration of it.
That’s why I said there would be no Islamic State, and I did not say there would be no Islamic extremism.
Clearly there is a difference between terrorist groups who are not quasi-nation states, and Islamic State, which has their own sovereign territory and economy, and the perception of legitimacy that those things confer.