Pentagon spokesman confirms explosion outside Kabul airport, no word on casualties

I have not claimed a justification.

 

The gains accruing from Saddam's demise were, as I said, mostly thrown away by Obama. Those included, among others, a chance to forge a lasting Middle East peace.
It took a world war to get rid of Hitler.

 

Is anyone really interested in considering rational strategies that could conceivable cost less than $Trillions and involve massive invasions, conquest, extended occupation and decades, if not endless warfare?

If so, here are few ideas I am sure our current high command would not even consider:

1. Task a large pool of officers to engage in an extensive study of Islamic texts to craft a challenge to radical Islamic movements supported by the oldest sources that are considered to be the most credible by all Muslims.
2. Wherever there is a significant resistance to hostile aggressive Islamic regime use Special Forces teams to train and equip them. You know - exactly what those units were created to do.
3. Do not try to impose post modern US military doctrine or rules of engagement on our Muslim allies.
4. Do not assume a command role over our Muslim allies.
5. Whenever a resistance movement succeeds in taking territory and establishing a base for "over the horizon" support train officers to operate the aircraft and other advanced weapons systems.

 

Then we agree on that point.

 

Do not over-infer from my reticence.

 

In fact, terrorist groups flourished after Saddam was killed. Saddam was not a Jihadist.
Is there any doubt that Saddam would have happily liquidated as many Islamic fanatics he could get his hands on for half the loot we airlifted to Iran?

Saddam was an ally of the US throughout most of his rule.

 

So how far off was Paul's calculation of average compensation for feds?

Would focusing on the higher paid feds, like Fauci, have resulted in a lower and less offensive number?

 

A World War as opposed to a commando strike in 1933.
Or simply a decision to approve of and support Czechoslovak border fortifications.

 

What specifically did I "over-infer"?

 

Fauci is in a special category at the very high end.
Basically, if you eliminate private sector employment below $40K/year, you'll be pretty close.

 

Well no one said it would COMPLETELY eliminate terrorism around the world........................
No one said Saddam himself was a Jihadist................................

And no he was not an "ally" there was no pledge of mutual defense. The first attack on him was under Bush41, even the Clinton administration was quite clear and unequivocal about the fact that Saddam as long as he was in power would be a threat, including a WMD threat, and nothing would change that except his removal.

 

As we were doing in Afghanistan but have since surrender and ran. I would add #1 that is what the State Department and CIA do and advise the military. 3. Our military doctrine works and the Afghan forces were defeating the Taliban. 4. The frontline was being fought by Afghan military forces, that being said our Command and Control abilities FAR OUTSEED anything Afghanistan or Iraq had and that should be used until those native forces have the capability, we can't just fly in some equipment and tell them go get 'em boys. And even when we do turn over those frontline duties it would be folly NOT to use our abilities to assist those efforts against our enemies. 5. The "over the horizon" moniker is a false story by the Biden WH. "Over the horizon" is based on what we know boots on the ground.

We were not occupying Afghanistan, we did not conquer Afghanistan we defeated the Taliban and an elected Afghan government was controlling their own country. The war is NOT over.

 

It was an easy weapon to use and Saddam had no qualms about using them then and would do so in the future.

 

Yes, agreed.

 

IMO, no one should ever support a pay increase for the minions of Big Bad Governments.
Even Obama seemed to agree with that.

 

In fact, the USG was allied with Saddam's Iraq during the Iraq/Iran War.

“In the documents, the CIA said that Iran might not discover persuasive evidence of the weapons’ use — even though the agency possessed it. Also, the agency noted that the Soviet Union had previously used chemical agents in Afghanistan and suffered few repercussions.

It has been previously reported that the United States provided tactical intelligence to Iraq at the same time that officials suspected Hussein would use chemical weapons.”
FOREIGN POLICY, Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran,
The U.S. knew Hussein was launching some of the worst chemical attacks in history -- and still gave him a hand., By Shane Harris and Matthew M. Aid, AUGUST 26, 2013.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/2...rove-america-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-iran/

Of course the USG did eventually stab Saddam in the back, but by now everyone should know that this is just USG SOP.

 

Yes, the frontline was being fought by Afghan forces. They also suffered most of the casualties. Beyond that I disagree with your description of the conduct of the war in Afghanistan.
The USG had 19 years to create an Afghan military that could function independently. Instead the USG chose to spend $6T+ pursuing its strategy of endless warfare that had failed for over 75 years.
Anyone who wants to know why should ask the people who collected all that loot.

This is not the USG strategy:

"1. Task a large pool of officers to engage in an extensive study of Islamic texts to craft a challenge to radical Islamic movements supported by the oldest sources that are considered to be the most credible by all Muslims.
2. Wherever there is a significant resistance to hostile aggressive Islamic regime use Special Forces teams to train and equip them. You know - exactly what those units were created to do.
3. Do not try to impose post modern US military doctrine or rules of engagement on our Muslim allies.
4. Do not assume a command role over our Muslim allies.
5. Whenever a resistance movement succeeds in taking territory and establishing a base for "over the horizon" support train officers to operate the aircraft and other advanced weapons systems." Dd

The USG will never consider anything like the suggestions I shared with you.

 

And who says 19 years is it? What is the rationale other than it is 19 years? It that is not military doctrine then why are we still in South Korea, Japan, Germany and a host of other countries. Did our enemy agree that 19 years is enough so they have called off their war?

And again actually that IS what we do. Except for number three where I would disagree it would be better we train them to use horses and sticks and engage in massive frontal attacks instead of our military doctrine and equipment and tactics we know work.

 

Biden, apparently armed the Taliban, and failed to specify that the Afghan Army alone would have rights to the equipment.

What a dementia mistake.

 

And those old debunked stories, we were NEUTRAL in the outcome we sought, we did not want Iran to win, we did not wanted Iraq to win. Our strategy was to get them to a standstill, and impasse and they would both give up. Did we show public great support for Iran not losing, of course not with our public relations with them. But bottom line we didn't want Saddam to gain power in the region anymore than we wanted the Ayatollah's to do so and in fact Iran/Contra was about trying to get the more moderate groups in Iran to gain the power and take over and we would shift more support to Iran.

 

Then you aren't thinking clearly. Unreasonably low salaries in government lead inevitably to corruption.

 

I assume the personal attack was a slip.

Please paste up a quote from my posts calling for "Unreasonably low salaries in government".

 

Post #1365:
"IMO, no one should ever support a pay increase for the minions of Big Bad Governments. . . . "

 

The latest narrative is, the Taliban is now the Afghan government and so the weaponry is in the correct hands.

 

IOW, not a word about "Unreasonably low salaries in government".

I suppose union officials have to claim that salaries are unreasonably low whenever they are demanding a pay hike. The rest of us should oppose raising the pay of the government officials running a Big Bad Government.
Their pay is obviously unreasonably high.
Especially given what the taxpayers get for their work.