Trump II

[Otto Phocus]

Not that the US is overly concerned with such technicalities, but it would be interesting to find out the legalities (both US and International law) of this missile attack.

Generally speaking launching weapons against the sovereign government's military facilities is considered most rude..

[Alan Klein]

Not that the US is overly concerned with such technicalities, but it would be interesting to find out the legalities (both US and International law) of this missile attack.

Generally speaking launching weapons against the sovereign government's military facilities is considered most rude..

800 pound gorillas make the rules and winners decide who was wrong.   

[Farmer]

800 pound gorillas make the rules and winners decide who was wrong.   

Ah, "might makes right".  How medieval.

[Peter McLennan]

800 pound gorillas make the rules and winners decide who was wrong.   

"Why do they hate us so much?"

[Alan Klein]

Ah, "might makes right".  How medieval.

Who else would have or could have attacked Syrian airfield?   Was it wrong?

[LesPalenik]

Who else would have or could have attacked Syrian airfield?   Was it wrong?

Well, blowing $59 millions just to test the Tomahawks on a questionable mission is not exactly smart.
They could have kept the Tomahawks for some real emergency, and for the saved money build a few hospitals in Syria (or in USA).

[Alan Klein]

Well, blowing $59 millions just to test the Tomahawks on a questionable mission is not exactly smart.
They could have kept the Tomahawks for some real emergency, and for the saved money build a few hospitals in Syria (or in USA).

No one agrees with you except the Syrians, Russians,  Iranians,  and the North Koreans.

[LesPalenik]

I hope you are wrong, 'cause I wouldn't want to be in such a company.
But how it does it help in fighting ISIS?

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Well, blowing $59 millions just to test the Tomahawks on a questionable mission is not exactly smart.
They could have kept the Tomahawks for some real emergency, and for the saved money build a few hospitals in Syria (or in USA).

No, no, no, Les, you really don't seem to get how these things work. You see it as $59 million "blown," spent or waisted, some see it as a $59 million new purchase order

[LesPalenik]

I see. Well, in that spirit, we'll have to include also purchase orders for the busted airplanes.
In one fell swoop, Trump just made the Rusian aerospace industry great again, they can now replace all destroyed MIGs and Sukhois with a new contingent of fighter jets.
Although Trump said he approved the attack because of the beautiful babies, it could be that in reality this whole event was actually Putin's idea. 

Trump claimed a right to administer global punishment by stating that America had a “vital national security interest” to oppose chemical weapons and suppress terrorism. The first is nonsense and the other futile and hypocritical.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/07/syria-bombs-emotion-babies

Back to the Syrian children. The reports of children killed by the gas in Khan Sheikhun vary from 10 to 30. The question where the gas came from still remains unanswered (or more precisely, answered in different ways). Assad's thugs have been killing and torturing many more children for many years before this attack, and the rebels and ISIS are not better. The attack won't do anything to prevent death of more children, due to shooting, bombing, hunger, cold, destroyed hospitals, lack of medications, etc. 
Janine di Giovanni, a war reporter living now in Paris, traveled extensively to Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria to do field work and research. She was embedded at times with Assad’s army, as well as with the Free Army, and she also entered Syria several times illegally from Lebanon.  She knows Syria well and revealed real and horrible human stories behind the news in her book "The Morning They Came For Us:  Dispatches From Syria".

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/26/the-morning-they-came-for-us-janine-di-giovanni-syria

The atrocities are committed there every day by all parties in this conflict. Removal of Assad doesn't guarantee peaceful Syria. Fixing the situation by removal of the bad hombre didn't improve the living conditions in Iraq, Tunisia and Libya. But it helped to sell more arms.

[Peter McLennan]

No, no, no, Les, you really don't seem to get how these things work. You see it as $59 million "blown," spent or waisted, some see it as a $59 million new purchase order

Yeh. Raytheon stock got a nice bump.

[Schewe]

This is at least a little bit funny except for the implications of Russian gays...(wasting time waiting for the Cubs game to end)



Putin thinks it should be illegal to depict him as gay – so Colbert did exactly that

Putin is angry about being put in makeup – so Stephen Colbert did just that. (see screenshot above)

The Kremlin leader is so annoyed with the concept that earlier this week, his government added an image of him in drag to the country’s registry of prohibited “extremist” content.


prohibited “extremist” content

The much-distributed picture has circulated widely on the internet and at LGBT rights protests, seeking to resist the country’s ‘gay propaganda’ law by lampooning Putin’s macho image.

So how will he feel about images of him in cut off jean shorts, makeup and little else, while sitting on a purple unicorn and being fondled by a happy Donald Trump?

“I like boys,” Putin tells the camera, leaving nothing to interpretation before instructing viewers to “wet your lips and make love to camera.”
The video ends on an ominous note, though, with Putin facing the camera down and telling the audience, straight-faced: “Seriously, you must work, or I will have you killed.”

Homophobia has surged in Russia since the passage of 2013’s so-called ‘gay propaganda’ law, which has been exploited by anti-LGBT forces in law enforcement and government in order to clamp down on the LGBT community.

The video is HERE


CUBS WIN!!!

Edited to add Cubs win :~)

[pegelli]

No one agrees with you except the Syrians, Russians,  Iranians,  and the North Koreans.

It's fine to talk for yourself, you're free to spout any nonsence you like (it's called freedom of speech)
However talking for others, especially when you misrepresent them, is rude.

[Farmer]

Who else would have or could have attacked Syrian airfield?   Was it wrong?

Which has nothing to do with your assertion that might makes right.

[Otto Phocus]

I get worried when my country adopts a consequentialist attitude to foreign policy.

"As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy." -- Christopher Dawson

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

[LesPalenik]

"As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy." -- Christopher Dawson

It worked in defeating The Nazi Germany and reconstructing it to peaceful nation. And I'm eternally thankful to USA for entering and winning WW2II. Also to USSR for their help and sacrifices in winning the war.
 
The same method worked also in Japan, but not in Iraq and Afghanistan. The recent regime changes in Libya and Tunisia, although initially low in casualties created much worse situation than before, and so far the US strategy under both administrations in Syria has been misguided and totally ineffective.

[LesPalenik]

Putin has claimed he has information the United States is planning a missile attack on Syria - and will also blame Bashar al-Assad for more chemical attacks on his own people. "We have information that a similar provocation is being prepared in other parts of Syria including in the southern Damascus suburbs where they are planning to again plant some substance and accuse the Syrian authorities of using chemical weapons."

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/790569/Vladimir-Putin-Russia-support-Syria-Bashar-al-Assad-G7-summit

[Robert Roaldi]

It worked in defeating The Nazi Germany and reconstructing it to peaceful nation. And I'm eternally thankful to USA for entering and winning WW2II. Also to USSR for their help and sacrifices in winning the war.
 
The same method worked also in Japan, but not in Iraq and Afghanistan. The recent regime changes in Libya and Tunisia, although initially low in casualties created much worse situation than before, and so far the US strategy under both administrations in Syria has been misguided and totally ineffective.

WW2 represented an existential threat to the Allied countries. I don't think that most people would regard anything since (Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the various escapades in the Middle East and the political interference in South America) as being in the same category as WW2. It's difficult for me to see a persistent rationale for these other involvements. The places themselves are not better off, mostly, although South America seems to be better off than it used to be. It's not clear that's mainly because of US influence, but I could be wrong about that.

What was trying to be accomplished in all those places? Peace? Democracy? Economic domination? Whether viewed idealistically or cynically, it's not clear to me that things are working out very well in the long run. (I used "long run" somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as I personally don't really think that 2-3 generations is a very long time.) Is the world safer? Is the USA safer? Some argue that it is, based on worldwide deaths due to war and crime, but you'd never know it reading some of the above. I find that many americans feel themselves threatened to an extent that I find difficult to justify based on actual events.

Some previous writers are not happy about the USA spending money to be the world's "policeman", and others accuse the rest of the world of free-loading on the USA. But did the rest of the world REALLY ask the USA to install 700+ military bases in over 120 countries? It's hard to believe that the USA would do that just because some cheapskate allies asked for it, without wanting to do it for their own purposes, whatever those are/were.

I find it hard to make general statements on whether use of force is bad or good, it never happens without context. But I do find that the notion that someone can come in, fire a few rounds and suddenly everything is ok again, a little simple-minded.

[LesPalenik]

Dumb and Dumber

CBC News, Apr 11
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday that Adolf Hitler didn't use chemical weapons — a comment at odds with Hitler's extermination of Jews during the Holocaust using gas chambers.

He later tried to weasel out by saying:
"He was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing. He brought them into the Holocaust centers, I understand that. But (not) in the way that Bashar al-Assad used them where he went into towns, dropped them down, into the middle of towns."

[JoeKitchen]

Dumb and Dumber

CBC News, Apr 11
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday that Adolf Hitler didn't use chemical weapons — a comment at odds with Hitler's extermination of Jews during the Holocaust using gas chambers.

He later tried to weasel out by saying:
"He was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing. He brought them into the Holocaust centers, I understand that. But (not) in the way that Bashar al-Assad used them where he went into towns, dropped them down, into the middle of towns."

Spicer is great ... for a little humor. 

I think he needs to get the hell out of the white house, just like we need to get the hell of out the Middle East.  I say let the whole region self destruct if it wants to, and after the dust settles, make new alliances. 

I find it quite disturbing that all of a sudden other avid Trump voters are justifying this bombing.  I don't care if Assad was responsible; it's 1000s of miles away from anything USA.