I said BBC and you say tabloids. Nice. Folks are gonna opine on stories when the topic outweighs their own competencies. You are relentlessly trying to get people to justify their opinions with facts but then someone throws up facts and you go and dismiss the credibility of the source with...opinion... along with the opinion of others! Other than opinions, I have yet to see anyone actually dispute his work with facts to the contrary. Dude wrote a kick ass book, went best seller and no one has challenged that work. Sure he reads like some private dick with a fedora but shit man, dude is trying to sell an interesting read. So what if he panders for donations to support investigations, it ain't like he is selling the answers. His curriculum vitae speaks for itself and his resume certainly fits his pedigree. Dude wasn't always a writer, just sayin.
Don't get me wrong, I didn't say he was a hack. But he is controversial, he does get a lot of information from "secret" sources, there are people who challenge his work, and his style is far more entertaining than authoritative. Why do you suppose that his election scandal theories have not been picked up by other media? Why no traction in the bigger news? I suspect it is because his sources cannot always pass the smell test by editors and fact checkers at the major news outlets. It doesn't mean that he is wrong, it just means that he could be wrong and he may be jumping to conclusions. Big News can become dogmatic, of course. There is a place for gonzo journalists in our world. I'm a big fan of Hunter Thompson, too. I just do not give them Walter Cronkite credibility.
It was not about Winston's point of view. You said, "Syria wasn't even mentioned". You later used McGurk's testimony to make a point because it was linked to the article. Syria was mentioned in McGurks testimony so, according to you, Syria was mentioned. I don't smoke. You quoted the man to support your own argument so you must believe that he is a credible source. Obama backed him for ambassador to Iraq so he has the President's support. He can't discuss returning because Obama has made it clear that it isn't an option. What he said was to give them shit....but when we give them shit, the eff it up.
Awesome. He's a CNN commentator giving his expert analysis and he's useless. Tell me why his opinion is useless compared to yours? Obama disagrees and so do his advisors. His mistake was to drawdown to such a low number at such an advanced time frame. What's happening now is no surprise. Where we stand today is that ISIS is threatening the entire region, screwing up our goals in that region, and making advances in identifying Western passports and routes out of the country to bring terrorism to us. It seems the President wants to defeat ISIS with 300, now 800 folks. So I say get the right 800 and wipe them out.
And it wasn't. You are now splitting the hairs that you have already split. Yes, but I made it clear that he was not the only source of information that Obama has access to. You hear only what you want to.
You miss the point entirely, perhaps deliberately. There were two people there, a commentator (useless) who only asked questions and an analyst that had been saying the same thing you had been saying. This was in answer to your question about why I didn't respond to the video. Then why didn't he take us back to war? You don't know what Obama thinks about it. But none of that is relevant to my opinion, which I have stated and gave reasons for many times. Iraq asked us to leave. We offered to leave a force and they denied it. Did you forget that? Nonsense. ISIS controls some desert regions of Syria and Iraq, who is all that they threaten and both of which they have failed to overthrow. Are you actually believing their propaganda? Your grasp of military reality is way off base. We had 100,000 soldiers there and couldn't contain the insurgents. Now you thin we can "wipe them out" by snapping our fingers. IT'S A CIVIL WAR. We can't win it, one of the participants has to. These people have been killing each other for centuries. They only time they stop is when they band together to fight an invader. Then they go back to fighting each other. It is clear that you advocate a return to endless war in Iraq. I ask you again . . . make a case for it.
Ok guys, Obama has authorized bomb strikes in Iraq. I was leaning on the fence when I started the thread. Maybe no one knew what the appropriate response was but now there is a military response. Good? Bad? I leaned toward a military response but USA was supposed to pull out and let the Iraqi Govt. handle their issues. That was the way it was supposed to be. However, this ISIS are a bunch of fucks who don't need a country to establish a Caliphate, or what ever the fuck, and they are on their way to doing such a thing. I really am for snuffing that shit out. Nothing about the Iraqi State is good for the free world. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/07/obama-iraq-strikes_n_5660313.html
Well the one thing you can count on is that ISIS will claim we dropped bombs on schools, mosques, the women's 80 and over bingo auxiliary and the crippled kids playground.
Guys, dropping bombs will not change a thing, except enable the US to say "we tried." Bombs are great for blowing things up, but that is about it.
You know, I'm going to defer to Shane being our resident veteran. The thread said title says what was done, undone. Please tell me, what exactly was done? What did we leave? Did we leave some stable regime?
