[Discussion] US-Iran

Any developments in the potential conflict between the United States and Iran go here, as well as discussion and reasonable good faith debate.

Sadly, that is a great Depeche Mode song... (Told you So)

depeche mode wrote:

There's one more dead
With a hole in his head
He shouldn't have said
All the things he said
Many tears were shed
For all the blood he bled
Something went wrong
Along the way
Everyone's waiting for judgement day
So they can go
Told you so

https://www.google.com/search?q=told...

Reaper81 wrote:

Iraqi parliment votes to expel US forces.

Checkmate, Iran!

I was watching the talking heads this morning and a conservative Trump head stated that there was no way Iraq would vote out Americans. No way, you guys!

I wanna say "No way" but never admitting you've made a mistake is a core tenet of Trumpism, so i'm sure you're right.

Prederick wrote:
Reaper81 wrote:

Iraqi parliment votes to expel US forces.

Checkmate, Iran!

I was watching the talking heads this morning and a conservative Trump head stated that there was no way Iraq would vote out Americans. No way, you guys!

I wanna say "No way" but never admitting you've made a mistake is a core tenet of Trumpism, so i'm sure you're right.

One thing I learned this morning from various military type message boards is that we're going to win because there's no way we can lose.

Reaper81 wrote:
Prederick wrote:
Reaper81 wrote:

Iraqi parliment votes to expel US forces.

Checkmate, Iran!

I was watching the talking heads this morning and a conservative Trump head stated that there was no way Iraq would vote out Americans. No way, you guys!

I wanna say "No way" but never admitting you've made a mistake is a core tenet of Trumpism, so i'm sure you're right.

One thing I learned this morning from various military type message boards is that we're going to win because there's no way we can lose.

Can't lose if they won't let you fight on the battlefield!

I mean, of course in a direct conflict we'd win, so the gameplan for Iran would be the same as it has been for any intelligent opponent of the U.S. since Vietnam. Drag us into a quagmire, make us bleed, break the public's will to continue the fight.

So now Iran's officially saying it's not abiding by the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal. So in one week, Trump's undone things that both Obama and George W. Bush did during their presidencies. Maybe he ought to let Iraq take Kuwait while he's at it.

Rat Boy wrote:

So now Iran's officially saying it's not abiding by the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal. So in one week, Trump's undone things that both Obama and George W. Bush did during their presidencies. Maybe he ought to let Iraq take Kuwait while he's at it.

Isn't this kind of how a Tom Clancy novel began? A united Iran / Iraq going to war in the mideast?

Reaper81 wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:

So now Iran's officially saying it's not abiding by the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal. So in one week, Trump's undone things that both Obama and George W. Bush did during their presidencies. Maybe he ought to let Iraq take Kuwait while he's at it.

Isn't this kind of how a Tom Clancy novel began? A united Iran / Iraq going to war in the mideast?

Executive Orders, yes, although in the book the assassination was Iran killing Iraq's leader. Then Iran invades Iraq in the ensuing confusion, unites the two countries, and proceeds to attack us using a variety of terrorist methods.

Very plausable, except in that book we actually had a competent president. The one where we didn't was Sum of All Fears...

FTFY

Keldar wrote:

Very plausible, except in that book we actually had a competent president. The one where we didn't was the 45th president.

I'm just sort of cry laughing at this:
IMAGE(https://scontent-ort2-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/82061017_10103014523412725_764016330532716544_n.jpg?_nc_cat=102&_nc_ohc=OhD1PBeHTc0AQlJA9r1cDdTQKs0LgI9rEwdAsKpuo1rIio62z6tkUfEhQ&_nc_ht=scontent-ort2-2.xx&oh=f50388dbf2d8a73e9e9ccc9a8cbdfe71&oe=5E94647A)

That's... in English, right?

Why is “Media Posts” capitalized?

gewy wrote:

Why is “Media Posts” capitalized?

To make them Guaranteed Super Legal™©®, just in case people miss that this is, in fact, "legal notice".

Omfg these are like the "legal notices" your aunt used to post on Facebook saying that Facebook didn't own their stuff.

So... openly and unrepentantly threatening to commit a LITERAL war crime in retaliation for any future attacks by deliberately targeting cultural sites (and thus deliberately targeting civilians) throughout Iran.

Sure. Why not! *grimace*

What're we gonna do? Impeach him?

pyxistyx wrote:

So... openly and unrepentantly threatening to commit a LITERAL war crime in retaliation for any future attacks by deliberately targeting cultural sites (and thus deliberately targeting civilians) throughout Iran.

Responding to an attack in a disproportionate manner is also a violation of the Geneva Convention. But we already know how Trump feels about treaties...

It's long been an article of faith among the military and Republican people in my life that the War on Terror would have been won decisively in 2002 if the United States had not been inhibited by the Geneva Convention and any laws of war. If every time one of "our boys" was killed, we leveled a village or city, no one anywhere in the world would dare harm an American soldier.

Was it then-candidate Trump or President Trump who said that we should kill the families of terrorists in order to deter them? Threatening cultural sites ("what culture?" my family members would say) and disproportionate response is what a not-insignificant number of people in the US have been wanting to see happen for a long, long time.

farley3k wrote:

Boris Johnson warns Trump that targeting Iranian cultural sites would break international law

*even his semi-loony friends are telling him he is crazy.

FTFY

Trump is just flat out inept.

Attacking cultural sites probably without thinking of the repercussions. At least someone has some sense.

So the US military sent this letter to the Iraqi military today which seemed to confirm that US troops are respecting Iraq's recent parliament resolution calling for foreign troops to leave.

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ENn7iHxVUAAdeZ4?format=jpg&name=medium)

Hours after the letter was released Defense Secretary Mark Esper said that the US hasn't made any decision to pull out of Iraq and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, said that the letter incorrectly implies withdrawal and “was a draft, it was a mistake, it was unsigned, it should not have been released.

Washington Post's Beirut bureau chief noted on Twitter that the letter was leaked to Iraqi media by the prime minister's office. However, the letter was first made public on the TV station of Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq (AAH), an Iraqi Shi'a paramilitary group that took credit for over 6,000 attacks on American and Coalition forces. AAH was funded and trained by Iran's Quds Force that, until three days ago, was commanded by Major General Qasem Soleimani.

So while Trump is on Twitter claiming he'll eagerly commit war crimes and slap crippling sanctions on Iraq unless they pay us for invading and occupying them, Iran is leaking US military documents that make us look like incompetent, bumbling idiots.

Is there a line in The Art of War about publicly leaking examples of your opponent's incompetence?

There is a lot of ink being spilled characterizing Soleimani as a "terrorist" and the whole business of it honestly puzzles me. The very idea that an invited state actor executing the will and orders of a sovereign nation in accordance with their stated foreign policy interests is a "terrorist", particularly when attacking targets of military significance, honestly makes the entire term linguistically meaningless.

By that definition, George Stillwell, A Peter Dewey, E Michael Burke, and Edward Lansdale would all be "terrorists".

Paleocon wrote:

There is a lot of ink being spilled characterizing Soleimani as a "terrorist" and the whole business of it honestly puzzles me. The very idea that an invited state actor executing the will and orders of a sovereign nation in accordance with their stated foreign policy interests is a "terrorist", particularly when attacking targets of military significance, honestly makes the entire term linguistically meaningless.

By that definition, George Stillwell, A Peter Dewey, E Michael Burke, and Edward Lansdale would all be "terrorists".

Since Terror is the only nation we've declared war on since WW II, declaring someone you don't like a Terrorist is a convenient shortcut to justify any military action.

Bonus feature: Once declared a Terrorist they are immediately implicated in the 9/11 attacks

They assassinated someone that most Americans didn't know existed until America made him cease to exist via assassination. Of course they're going to say he is/was the next Bin Laden.

There are three reasons for all the "terrorist" ink.

First, the US had officially designated Iran's Qud forces as a "terrorist organization", so technically, in the eyes of US law, Soleimani was a "terrorist".

Second, the entire legal justification for the assassination is based on the 2001 authorization of force to pursue terrorism globally. Soleimani needs to be a terrorist in order for the strike to be legal. That post-9/11 authorization of force is absurdly open-ended and has been used to justify all kinds of things, but it requires that the military action in question have been done in the name of combating terrorism. Declaring a state leader to be a "terrorist" lets that happen.

Third, public support is still high for hunting and killing terrorists. As long as this keeps getting pitched as killing a terrorist leader and not as assassinating a high-level government official, it's easier to keep the public happy about it. (Although frankly, Iran has been so demonized that I don't think public support would wane all that much even if Soleimani weren't designated as a terrorist.)

But Paleocon is basically right that the word is effectively meaningless now, if it ever had much meaning before. As a matter of fact, the Iraqi parliament has taken a page from our book and has just voted to designate the Pentagon and all US forces as terrorists.

The world needs another country like the US probably for checks and balances.. China should probably start designating random American's as Terrorists and droning them as well.. maybe that way we'll finally stop being Terrorists ourselves.

'We're going to war, bro': Fort Bragg's 82nd Airborne deploys to the Middle East

I think it's safe to say that even Trump isn't crazy enough to want a real war in the Middle East, so I'm going to assume -- hope -- this deployment of troops is just sabre-rattling.

Djinn wrote:

'We're going to war, bro': Fort Bragg's 82nd Airborne deploys to the Middle East

I think it's safe to say that even Trump isn't crazy enough to want a real war in the Middle East, so I'm going to assume -- hope -- this deployment of troops is just sabre-rattling.

Trump has said over and over he doesn't want war, and campaigned on ending the wars Obama couldn't. He probably thinks he can continue to do targeted strikes/assassinations forever and not get into a real war.