How Isis grew into a monster

[InRareForm]

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/how-us-helped-isis-grow-monster-iraq-syria-assad

[boutons_deux]

Thanks, Obama The Negro!

[spurraider21]

http://static.ijreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/10487348_10204688032669414_3285938031292245794_n.j pg?b480ba

:lol

[SnakeBoy]

Thanks, Obama The Negro!

You finally got something right. Congrats!

[boutons_deux]

[QUOTE=SnakeBoy;7564788]You finally got something right. Congrats![/QUOTE

you always get it wrong. Isis, and all the M/E instability, is a direct result of your Repug/BigOil heroes dubya and dickhead invading/destroying Iraq for oil.

[InRareForm]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bv2xSA-IIAIJF9S.jpg

[RandomGuy]

It was a good article that brought up some decent points about how complex the situation is.

I just don't see this situation as getting any "better".

The only real solution, barring us getting boots on the ground again, is to have the shia-dominated Iran beat the holy fuck out of the "caliphate", but the sunnis in the region won't stand for that.

Ick.

Anybody for a game of "what would Romney do?" Heh.

[boutons_deux]

How the War on Terror Created the World’s Most Powerful Terror Grouphttp://www.thenation.com/article/181339/how-war-terror-created-worlds-most-powerful-terror-group

Thanks, Repugs! Your shitty 8 years in misgoverning, incompetent power will blight the US and planet for decades.

[cantthinkofanything]

Thanks, Obama The Negro!

http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/690/543/a14.gif

[RandomGuy]

http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/690/543/a14.gif

http://i.imgur.com/3Dhp5HQ.gif

[cantthinkofanything]

http://i.imgur.com/3Dhp5HQ.gif

lol. well done.

[101A]

How the War on Terror Created the World’s Most Powerful Terror Group

http://www.thenation.com/article/181339/how-war-terror-created-worlds-most-powerful-terror-group

Thanks, Repugs! Your shitty 8 years in misgoverning, incompetent power will blight the US and planet for decades.






Yeah, let's make like it's either a blue or red responsibility, and ignore the fact that it is, in fact, quite purple, with a WHOLE lot of green....

We should stop pointing fingers at each other lest we don't notice the bad guys ACTUALLY have guns pointed at us.

[boutons_deux]

Yeah, let's make like it's either a blue or red responsibility, and ignore the fact that it is, in fact, quite purple, with a WHOLE lot of green....

We should stop pointing fingers at each other lest we don't notice the bad guys ACTUALLY have guns pointed at us.

I will keep pointing fingers at Repugs/BigOil who permitted OBL to hit USA and who fucked up the Middle East to grab oil, as taxpayers pay several $Ts to cover the external costs.

Terrorists don't have guns that can reach USA. They are fighting each other now and long before they point their guns, if ever, at the West.

I don't see any of you red staters enlisting to go fight.

fuck your "Red = Blue = equally guilty" false equivalence to hell.

[101A]

I will keep pointing fingers at Repugs/BigOil who permitted OBL to hit USA and who fucked up the Middle East to grab oil, as taxpayers pay several $Ts to cover the external costs.

Terrorists don't have guns that can reach USA. They are fighting each other now and long before they point their guns, if ever, at the West.

I don't see any of you red staters enlisting to go fight.

fuck your "Red = Blue = equally guilty" false equivalence to hell.


My son completed boot camp in June - and is currently stationed at Navy Nuclear Power Training Command in S.C., FWIW.

Regarding equivalency: did you read the article?

[boutons_deux]

My son completed boot camp in June - and is currently stationed at Navy Nuclear Power Training Command in S.C., FWIW.

Regarding equivalency: did you read the article?

safe job, non-combat

Repugs fucked up the M/E, Repugs lied USA into Iraq invasion.

[boutons_deux]

Syrian Rebels Seize Border Crossing Into Israel-Held Golan Heights

TEL AVIV, Israel — Fighting in Syria’s civil war reached Israel’s doorstep on Wednesday, with rebels seizing the Syrian side of a crossing into the Israeli-held portion of the Golan Heights and the Israeli army reporting that stray gunfire wounded one of its officers.

The spillover of the Syrian conflict, though limited, rattled nerves, coming just a day after Israel and the Palestinian militant faction Hamas agreed to a truce after a 50-day battle in the Gaza Strip. That cease-fire held throughout the day on Wednesday.

The rebel group that overran the Quneitra crossing includes small elements of al-Qaida-linked groups such as the Nusra Front, which would place Israeli army positions within firing range of some of the more radical Islamists battling Syrian President Bashar Assad.

An Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, confirmed that the crossing was no longer controlled by Syrian government forces.

Lerner said the Israeli army had declared a closed military zone in the border area and had “substantial forces” in the area holding defensive positions. However, he and other officials signaled Israel’s determination to avoid being drawn into Syria fighting.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/syrian-rebels-seize-border-crossing-israel-held-golan-heights/

If ISIL attacks Israel to draw Israel into the war, all hell will break loose.

[mingus]

US military needs to bomb the living shit out of their strongholds (hopefully our intelligence has located them) and drone every last one of them. Give them no hope. These idiots' actions can only be explained by ignorance, particularly ignorance as it relates to U.S. military capability. They legitametly believe they can stand toe to toe with our military.

[DD]

US military needs to bomb the living shit out of their strongholds (hopefully our intelligence has located them) and drone every last one of them. Give them no hope. These idiots' actions can only be explained by ignorance, particularly ignorance as it relates to U.S. military capability. They legitametly believe they can stand toe to toe with our military.
:tu

[boutons_deux]

Military Skill and Terrorist Technique Fuel Success of ISIS

As fighters for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria continue to seize territory, the group has quietly built an effective management structure of mostly middle-aged Iraqis overseeing departments of finance, arms, local governance, military operations and recruitment.

At the top the organization is the self-declared leader of all Muslims, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/11/world/middleeast/us-actions-in-iraq-fueled-rise-of-a-rebel.html), a radical chief executive officer of sorts, who handpicked many of his deputies from among the men he met while a prisoner in American custody at the Camp Bucca detention center a decade ago.

He had a preference for military men, and so his leadership team includes many officers from Saddam Hussein’s long-disbanded army.

They include former Iraqi officers like Fadel al-Hayali, the top deputy for Iraq, who once served Mr. Hussein as a lieutenant colonel, and Adnan al-Sweidawi, a former lieutenant colonel who now heads the group’s military council.

(http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/03/world/middleeast/100000002979184.mobile.html)The pedigree of its leadership, outlined by an Iraqi who has seen documents seized by the Iraqi military, as well as by American intelligence officials, helps explain its battlefield successes: Its leaders augmented traditional military skill with terrorist techniques refined through years of fighting American troops, while also having deep local knowledge and contacts. ISIS is in effect a hybrid of terrorists and an army.

“These are the academies that these men graduated from to become what they are today,” said the Iraqi, a researcher named Hisham Alhashimi.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/world/middleeast/army-know-how-seen-as-factor-in-isis-successes.html?_r=0

Hey, Paul Bremer, how is your stock exchange in Baghdad working out? :lol

[boutons_deux]

The Iraq War Was a Smashing (Business) Success


Make no mistake about it: by any vaguely human measure, the situation in Iraq is a US-made disaster of historic proportions. Millions dead or wounded, millions more displaced, and all overseen by a kleptocratic government more interested in grinding old enemies into the dust than governing...and of course, yes, a seemingly endless cycle of violence that claims new victims every day.

Yet consider this: the news site Vox ran a story at the beginning of August under the headline, "The US Bombing Its Own Guns Perfectly Sums Up America's Total Failure in Iraq. (http://www.vox.com/2014/8/8/5982501/the-us-is-now-bombing-its-own-military-equipment-in-iraq)" The article refers to the US air campaign against ISIS, which is flush with US weapons of war obtained from the collapsed Iraqi military. The article reads:

The absurdity runs deep: America is using American military equipment to bomb other pieces of American military equipment halfway around the world. The reason the American military equipment got there in the first place was because, in 2003, the US had to use its military to rebuild the Iraqi army, which it just finished destroying with the American military.

The American weapons the US gave the Iraqi army totally failed at making Iraq secure and have become tools of terror used by an offshoot of al-Qaeda to terrorize the Iraqis that the US supposedly liberated a decade ago. And so now the US has to use American weaponry to destroy the American weaponry it gave Iraqis to make Iraqis safer, in order to make Iraqis safer.

It keeps going: the US is intervening on behalf of Iraqi Kurds, our ally, because their military has old Russian-made weapons, whereas ISIS, which is America's enemy, has higher-quality American weapons. "[Kurdish forces] are literally outgunned by an ISIS that is fighting with hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. military equipment seized from the Iraqi Army who abandoned it," Ali Khedery, a former American official in Iraq, told the New York Times.

So now we're bombing the guns that we didn't mean to give ISIS because we didn't give guns to their enemies because then ISIS might get guns.



In the same fashion that most people think the Iraq war was a disaster, the same majority now see George W. Bush as the worst president in modern American history. By the metrics of those who delivered him to the Oval Office, however, George W. Bush was the most successful president in the history of the country.

Everything he was sent to do by those who paid his freight - gut the Treasury, break the government, establish permanent war, and make his friends rich - he accomplished to perfection.

So it is with Iraq. You think it's a disaster, I think it's a disaster, and by any vaguely human measure, it is a disaster...but for a few people, the ones who pay that political freight and count coins according to how many bombs and bullets get used, the specter of ongoing war and fear and death and weaponized mayhem makes what is happening in Iraq the equivalent of Christmas in August, a smashing success, and a fantastic return on their investment.


http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/25858-the-iraq-war-was-a-smashing-success

Thanks, Repugs and all you Repug voters!

[hater]

let Israel nuke them motherfuckers and be done with

fucking simple and easy. shit don't know what the fuss is all about

[m>s]

And then nuke Austin while they're at it