Syria.

I thought that war was over already. I had heard you killed that Obama terrorist and were at peace now. What happened to that?
 
He's Dead said:
I've had several professors who work in intelligence because I live in DC and do international relations stuff, and trust me: there has been an enormous institutional and professional shift in how they qualify their assessments.
Click to expand...
Sure, and here you are sharing all the secrets on a public forum?
 
JHA said:
Sure, and here you are sharing all the secrets on a public forum?
Click to expand...

None of the things I said are secrets. We covered that material in the courses, and you can read about it if you do a basic Google search. Plenty of people wrote post-mortems after Iraq, and major changes were implemented in the way in which analysts and individual agencies write and convey their assessments. Maybe the phrase "trust me" threw you off.

Here's an article that describes exactly what I'm talking about: http://www.navytimes.com/article/20...-Iraq-analysis-changes-mean-better-Syria-info
 
He's Dead said:
The reason I said that was because I was reading a piece last week on forecasts of Russian oil output until 2050 and it showed Russia with a fairly sizeable trade surplus for the foreseeable future, and it even assumed Iran would be hampered by sanctions. But forecasts obviously differ quite a bit and I may very well have read it too quickly or not read enough. Thanks for correcting me. :)
Click to expand...

He's Dead said:
I do take issue with this. From everything I know and have read, this isn't accurate, but if you find a source that explains this I'd be interested to read it.
Click to expand...

You're right that forecasts vary depending on who's giving them. The reason Russia is currently the biggest oil producer and exporter is because they're not part of OPEC.

Even though Russia and Iran are two very different countries ideologically, culturally, politically etc, they keep a strong economic relationship, with gas/oil extraction, refinement, and transportation playing a part.
In the past Russia and Iran have been sort of competitors at times into who sells more crude oil to China (and other Asian countries) for refinement. Nowadays both Russia and China have very important petroleum development deals with Iran. Because Iran has traditionally had small refining capacities, China and Russia both have gotten to refine their oil (which is a much more profitable business that crude oil extraction), although Iran has been investing in late years to become more able to increase their processed petroleum-based exports.

He's Dead said:
Before we invaded Iraq, Saddam Hussein thought we were clearly getting the signal that his bluffing about CW/WMD was directed at Iran, not us, and that our intelligence apparatus must have been so sophisticated that we were playing mind games with him by threatening to invade. He was being rational; we were being rational (broadly speaking), and yet we were both horribly wrong. People do stupid things and make mistakes. States and actors aren't black boxes.

You also have to remember that Assad has, smartly (for plausible deniability purposes), put his CW stocks under the control of local commanders, and U.S. intelligence thinks that his brother may have been the one who used the sarin. Google "Assad brother chemical weapons" and at least a couple of reports will come up. We've done everything possible to stay out of the Syrian civil war for 2 years now, so I think he probably said to himself, "What's the worst thing that could happen? They send a few missiles over here?" And technically, he's correct about that.
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The reason any country with oil gets invaded is simple; their leaders suddenly decide it's time to start trading oil in currencies other than the dollar. It happened in Irak with Hussein, and in Libya with Gaddafi. It's called the petrodollar.
Since 2008, Iran stopped dealing with their oil in dollars.

He's Dead said:
In the same way you're arguing it makes no sense for him to use CW given Obama's "red line" statements, I challenge you to find any conceivable reason at all why we would wait 2 years, do absolutely nothing, and then have Obama submit this to Congress instead of using his authority under the War Powers Act to attack the regime.
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The reason why he's waited 4 (not two) years may be that opportunity has presented itself just now.

The reason for his hesitation is political. He pushes the decision over to the Republican congress for the vote, so if they vote yes, any repercussions will fall back to Republicans going into the next election. If they vote no, Obama is off the hook.
 
He's Dead said:
None of the things I said are secrets. We covered that material in the courses, and you can read about it if you do a basic Google search. Plenty of people wrote post-mortems after Iraq, and major changes were implemented in the way in which analysts and individual agencies write and convey their assessments. Maybe the phrase "trust me" threw you off.

Here's an article that describes exactly what I'm talking about: http://www.navytimes.com/article/20...-Iraq-analysis-changes-mean-better-Syria-info
Click to expand...
I'm sure the central intelligence agents are fine telling all the information to students. It's np. I'm sure we could all just Google or Bing it. Do you use codenames? What's yours?
 
monoxide_child said:
not america's problem
i hate to be so blunt, but there's really no possible "endgame" over there
there's definately going to be lots of violence going on over there every single fucking day for the rest of eternity no matter what the fuck america or any other country does
the way i see it, america just needs to quickly pull out completely and get to a point where the violence over there doesn't affect america anymore
does anyone remember all of those "african genocides" that they kept talking about on law and order??? none of those involved the deaths of any americans, and you know why not??? because they all happened durring clinton's administration and clinton flat-out-said "it's not america's problem"
we need to do that again
we need to find a way to make a situation where the violence over there doesn't affect us and then just fucking leave already
Click to expand...

.
 
Mutant said:
And the final score of the match:

Obama 0 : 1 Putin

Thats based on what happened today.
Click to expand...
obama-facebook.jpg
 
Mutant said:
And the final score of the match:

Obama 0 : 1 Putin

Thats based on what happened today.
Click to expand...

I'm actually super happy about this. Putin is kind of being a d-bag, but if it really gets rid of Assad's CW (which I don't think it will; I think he's lying, but we'll see) then it's the best possible outcome short of a negotiated peace.
 
He's Dead said:
Whereas GWB, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Nixon, Johnson, et. al. were the quintessence of humility :p
Click to expand...

That goes without saying and I get your point; these are politicians we're talking about lol.. Just my opinion that our current pres has more of an ego than any one of them. :) Well, Clinton is the closest, but that's another topic lol.
 
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