Can you offer a figure as to how many lives they saved? How many civilians would have died in Syria if the USA hadn't supported the rebels or was not providing overwatch upon Russian Airstrikes and Syrian army aggression? I know of one particular figure of about 40,000 Yazidi saved from massacre by Obama's command .. and that is only one instance...
I can point to Libya which was once a stable country before we intervened. Now people can't get out fast enough. Also, some would suggest our participation in Syria has created more war than it has resolved. The numbers of those killed by drone are in dispute, but not all those killed were combatants. But, hey, Trump is the bad guy, right?
Hillary and Obama were responsible for the all the deaths in the middle east. Obama has a soft spot for the Muslims, and in typical liberal fashion lumped the good and evil Muslims into one group. Liberals do not differentiate Muslim extremists from peace loving Muslims, but lump all as Muslim. To them if you say Muslim extreme this does not differentiate good and bad, but insults all Muslims. They do not make a distinction between legal and illegal immigrants, but lump all as immigrants. It is part of a con game or legal confusion. The problem with this merger game, was the Muslim Brotherhood, which they backed against two main dictators, Kadafi in Libya and Assad in Syria, did not represent all Muslims, but mostly the bad Muslims. They could make the distinction, in advance, since this would be PC taboo. The result was a lot of instability for peaceful Muslims, millions of which have been killed, wounded and displaced. This was not their war. The left does the same thing with illegal immigrants where sanctuary cities support criminal aliens due to lumping all immigrants, together. The result is even honest immigrants are mistaken for criminals, by the PC lumping. Their biggest Obama and Hillary blunder was not giving Kadafi the rights of a national leader, when he allowed himself to be overthrown, without too much resistance. The US should have protected him from the mob, since the mob was not composed of good Muslims, but the bad Muslims lumped, by the left, as representing all Muslims. Once Assad saw what America would allow, due to its irrationality; mob will kill Assad, Assad was a cornered rat, which is very dangerous; life or death. All Assad did was in self defense, taken to the nth degree, since his foes were both the bad Muslims and the USA. If the Obama had protected Kadafi from the bad Muslims, and also offered Assad a diplomatic escape route, they could have had a peaceful transition, until the bad Muslims, lumped as all Muslims, showed their true colors. Trump is not afraid to make the distinction between peaceful and criminal Muslims. This is how you protect the innocent and target criminals. The honest Muslims are still under the liberal spell of a Religious merger, trying to make this distinction. Trump has to double down so the two groups can separate, with the peaceful Muslims, protected and accepted, while the criminal Muslims, who appeal to the liberals, are made to pay for their crimes.
Wasn't it some of the Syrian people themselves who decided to rebel against the Assad regime, spurred on by the "Arab spring" taking place in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere? The US didn't become involved until later, IIRC.
Did you hear about the latest News of Trump accusing Obama of a Watergate Wire tapping of Trump tower during the campaign? This behavior is not unique, since a similar pattern has happened before; IRS targeting of Conservative groups, and the wiring tapping of journalists. There is also all the leaking classified and misinformation. This time it may stick to Obama, since there is less corrupt administration and Attorney General, who will not look the other way and assist in a cover up. This is why the left targeted the Attorney General, before this was released. Their prepared a defense to wiretapping, which did happen, was not connected to the campaign. Rather, it was due to the Russian connection. Attorney General Sessions was taken out of that investigation loop in advance of the crap hitting the fan. The scam artists are well prepared, since they know what they did, and what is now needed to cover up. This is good for Trump, who has a few extra cards he is not showing. As the swamp drains, the swamp critters can't stay hidden in the mud much longer. Start looking for another preemptive defense by the Democrats and media, which will reveal the cards they think Trump has.
Of course some of the people rebelled. However, Obama outlined his long term plans to the enemy, so they could prepare, since the enemy of the Muslim people, was not the enemy, but represented all Muslims, even the innocent ones who end up killed and displaced. It is sort of like a Liberal riot/protest, where most people seek peaceful change. But agitators are paid to come from outside; Iranian and ISIS, who attract the local young male criminals, who use this as cover for crime as they pillage. Innocent people do not want their neighborhoods burned down and their corner store destroyed. The know they need to this to live here, and don't want a violent fight that will make their life harder. Innocent protest is about a better life, not a life on the run in refuge camps.
So you are not prepared to work out how many lives the previous administration saved and aided in improving their quality of life? Why do you think Obama ordered the 40,000+ Yazidi to be saved, rescued from certain death? Not Christian, not Muslim ... Why go to the trouble if he was the ogre you make him and his administration out to be...? Fact is he ordered the rescue of 40000 + Yazidi with out any concern for oil or material benefit or anything... why do that? Why put USA soldiers in harms way for what Republicans may consider as not worthy of the risk or effort?
only because Assad's military used chemical weapons on their own people and started what appeared to be a sectarian slaughter... The use of chemical weapons was pivotal in what happened after...If I recall correctly. Obama would not have been involved if it were not to save millions of people from annihilation by Assad's rogue military.
Yes, unfortunately I think, on sober reflection, you are right. These people close to the borderline are problematic. Think, perhaps, of Stalin or Hitler. Some people still argue about whether or not they were really "sane", because of the enormity of things they did. At the moment The Chump is just at the stage of saying preposterous things. I think the US Constitution will stop it going further than that - but, as I said somewhere else, the US Constitution is going to undergo a real stress test over the next few years. It may fall to The Chump's successor to amend it, to deal with any weaknesses thereby revealed.
Yeah Trump is good with throwing accusations out there with out any support what so ever....that's for sure...
You don't say..imagine that. Ah, I see. You are playing the right wing paranoia meme again. Except, all those right wing accusations were investigated by a right wing congress and found to be baseless. You know, I recall when Obama was first sworn into office and inherited the greatest recession since the Great Depression. Right wingers like you derided him for pointing out the fact that he inherited a horrendous economy. Trump didn't inherit a nation in collapse. He inherited a nation in pretty good shape. But 6 weeks into his administration he's blaming Obama for his transgressions and incompetence. Trump's not going to magically morph into a competent leader. So he does what Republicans do best: blame democrats. And the evidence for your assertion is where? You guys can invent this crap all you want, and it works in brain dead right wing echo chambers. But, thank God, it doesn't work elsewhere. For starters, the FBI has operated autonomously without political interference. That's one of the things that differentiate the US judicial system from banana republics. Additionally, Obama has no authority to order wire taps. Obama's not going to personally tap anyone's phones. The American POTUS travels with a security battalion making kinda difficult to covertly tap anyone's phone. In order for Obama to tap anyone's phone he needs someone else to do it; and he needs a court order; and in order to get a court order he needs probable cause. So if Trump's phones were tapped, the Obama administration had to have probable cause. Obama would have had to show the courts evidence. So let's see the evidence. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! If what Trump asserts is true, there would be evidence and that evidence would not reflect well on Trump. So where is it? Ironically, Trump has stepped in his poop again. By coming up with this outrageous assertion, Trump has just strengthened the case for an independent investigation of his Russian connections: the very thing he has been vehemently opposed to. Please explain how Trump has done anything to drain the swamp. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! The fact is he has done nothing to "drain the swamp" and he has no plans to do so. The only scam artists here are Trump and folks like you who make excuses for him. This could be another Trump attempt to distract the media from unwanted attention. That has been the pattern with Trump. When he begins to receive bad press, he does something even more outrageous. That has worked for Trump in the past. But people are onto Trump. That card has an expired expiration date. There are two possibilities here: A) Trump is insane and cannot differentiate reality from fiction or B) Trump is grossly incompetent and a pathological liar and completely devoid of a moral compass. Neither is a good option for the state or the world for that matter; either one should disqualify him from the office of POTUS.
I find this Obama allegation very disturbing. It seems now it is White House policy to assert it, not just Trump sounding off with silly tweets. Spicer has repeated it, with demands it be included in the Russia probe(!). I begin, now, to doubt that silly Conway woman invented the phrase "alternative facts". I wonder if Bannon actually coined it, in the context of a deliberately strategy to feed nonsense to their supporters, of a kind that would serve to confirm their prejudices, e.g. the "Bowling Green Massacre", which I gather quite a lot of Trump supporters now believe was real......because they would like it to be real! Bannon has, after all, been in the business of doing just this sort of thing with Breitbart news. Seen from this viewpoint, the Obama wiretapping slur is quite clever. It introduces a bogus counter-accusation that can be used to trick Congress into feeling they have to make the investigation of Russian interference "even-handed", by addressing this unevidenced rubbish at the same time. And then everyone will take sides, on a tribal partisan basis, and engage in a huge he-said/she-said slanging match, which will devalue the eventual findings about Russian influence onUS democracy. Worthy of Joseph Goebbels himself!
I think not. Trump seems to think that "killing is stupid" (his words) and that our regime change "wars" both overt and covert are a waste of money ......... Crazy is repeating the same mistakes--------Iraq, Libya, Syria over and over and expecting a different result.(not my words) (seeming)Insanity has been the norm for our government for far too long.
It is worthy of Goebbels, and it is very deeply disturbing. Unfortunately, right wing "alternative facts" have been around since the demise of the "Fairness Doctrine" in 1987 which gave rise to right wing echo chambers where right wingers need never be confronted with an inconvenient fact and are constantly showered with lies and half truths. Unfortunately, right wing alternative facts have only gotten worse in intensity and in breadth. That's a larger problem, and it didn't begin with Conway, nor will it end with Conway. If the Obama administration did get a wire tap on Trump's campaign lines, which I doubt, but if they did, they would need to prove to a court they had evidence of some criminal wrong doing on the part of Trump's campaign. Ironically, Trump's assertion says there is evidence of something incriminating him and his campaign, enough so that a federal judge ordered the wire tapping of his campaign phones. However, that said, I think it more likely that either Trump is insane or this is just another case of right wing fake news making stuff up. If Trump believes this crap, as appears to be the case, that in and of itself is deeply disturbing. If his mind is that feeble, if he is that deluded, then he shouldn't be POTUS. That's analogous to believing in the stories one finds in grocery story tabloids about giving birth to extraterrestrial babies.
Was this before or after he questioned 'why not respond with a nuke'? TRUMP: Let me explain. Let me explain. Somebody hits us within ISIS — you wouldn't fight back with a nuke?… MATTHEWS: OK. The trouble is, when you said that, the whole world heard it. David Cameron in Britain heard it. The Japanese, where we bombed them in 45, heard it. They're hearing a guy running for president of the United States talking of maybe using nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to hear that about an American president. TRUMP: Then why are we making them? Why do we make them? Correction. He just whined that you didn't steal all of their oil. You're just getting started..
But my point is that it may NOT be insane: it looks rather like a very sane, though very cynical, exercise by clever people.
Libya was invented in 1934 by the Italian colonial regime, as a bureaucratic unification of two or three regions treated as separate "provinces" of the Ottoman Empire up until about WWI. Under Khaddaffi, it has frequently attempted to support the spread of sharia law and Islamic governance to other places, including by military and paramilitary and terroristic means. The US contribution to its recent troubles was - in my opinion - ill advised and ethically as well as morally wrong, but motivated more reasonably than (say) the interventions and eventual military invasions in Iraq or Afghanistan, or the abuse of Iran. Whether or not Trump is insane, trying to argue that Trump holds some kind of philosophical position based on quoting anything he says is a bit crazy. You don't have to think he's insane to realize that the connection between what he says and what he will do is not a direct one ascertainable via analyzing the logical bearing of the content of his speech. He's cutting the EPA budget and cutting the State Department budget and shifting the NASA budget and in general moving Federal money and focus away from earth science and diplomacy, in two directions: 1) tax cuts for the wealthy 2) military buildup. Now what does your good common sense tell you is going to happen after a fascist demagogue has gathered a posse of tax-exempt international industrialists and financiers, built up his military, and removed the demands or obstacles of science and reason and diplomacy?
I was reading somewhere that he is also gutting NOAA's funding, which will directly affect satellite data management.. The Trump administration is planning to make drastic cuts to the weather satellite budget of the National Weather Service’s parent organization, NOAA, the Washington Post reports. Weather experts interviewed by the post stated that these proposed cuts would impair the Weather Service’s forecasting ability in a number of critical ways that would endanger Americans including hurricane and tornado forecasts. The apparent motivation for these cuts is the elimination of climate science satellites. The people proposing these cuts don't seem to understand that climate science is the integration and analysis of weather data over time. Satellites provide critical instantaneous data on weather, sea ice and crop conditions that are used commercially by public and private organizations to make decisions that are critical to protecting life, transporting goods, growing food and managing water supplies, etc. The Weather Service’s capabilities to forecast and monitor storms like Sandy that ravaged trillions of dollars of infrastructure up and down the east coast will be damaged by Trump’s planned cuts. Trump also plans massive cuts to NOAA’s coastal programs. They assert they want to transfer the money to defense, apparently not aware that the Norfolk naval base is under attack by rapid sea level rise related to climate change. The Navy Times reported that sea level rise threatens to inundate 128 military bases. Navy base Norfolk is the world’s largest naval base, critical to our national security, built at a cost of many billions of dollars. Cuts to coastal programs and climate studies will have devastating impacts on navy bases world wide, with Norfolk being among the most heavily impacted. Some more info on what would be affected by these cuts: He said that weather warnings for tornadoes and hurricanes could be compromised and that navigational capacity used to help guide commercial ships and other mariners would suffer, leaving them without the “improved forecasts they need to safely maneuver coastal waters.” It could become harder to warn of tsunamis and forecast weather that will cause power outages. David Titley, a professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University who served as NOAA’s chief operating officer in the Obama administration, said that “oddly” the White House budget office, despite the president’s commitment to building infrastructure, would cut NOAA’s budget for ships and satellites. “These cuts will impact good private-sector jobs in the U.S.,” Titley said. “The loss of capability will make America weaker both in space and on the sea — a strange place to be for an administration that campaigned to ‘make America great again.’ ” The irony of course, is that it will be his mouth breathing yokel voters who will suffer the most from this. The heartland of America where tornadoes are a problem.. when NOAA are prevented from accessing satellite data, which can track storms, forecast storms and provide warnings to potential deadly storms in said heartland and places like Florida who get smashed by hurricanes regularly enough, everyone can just shrug and tell them that at least the 'Gubment be savin' money'..
