Posted on 10/26/2016 9:43:11 AM PDT by Lorianne
: In the last debate, Hillary Clinton vowed to follow up the defeat of ISIS in Iraq’s Mosul with a march on ISIS’ capital in Raqqa, except that’s in Syria, a suggestion of a wider war ___ Attentive viewers may have noticed something curious about last week’s presidential debate. Asked if she would send troops to help stabilize Iraq once ISIS has been expelled from of the northern city of Mosul, Hillary Clinton replied that U.S. intervention would only make matters worse by providing Islamic State with a rallying point.
But then she said: “The goal here is to take back Mosul. It’s going to be a hard fight. I’ve got no illusions about that. And then [we should] continue to press into Syria to begin to take back and move on Raqqa, which is the ISIS headquarters. I am hopeful that the hard work that American military advisers have done will pay off and that we will see a really successful military operation.”
Move on Raqqah? What did that mean – that Clinton wants to follow up victory in Mosul with a push into Syria? That she envisions a coordinated military thrust into Syria from Iraq? The answer is not quite, although the results could hardly be more dangerous than if she did.
While the press focuses on the latest Donald Trump groping scandal, few reporters have noticed the explosion of violence from Mosul all the way to Afrin, a Syrian Kurdish stronghold some 380 miles to the west. What Clinton sees as a simple two-pronged assault – first the U.S. and its allies wrest back Mosul, then they take Raqqah, and then they mop up whatever remains of ISIS in between – is already turning into something far messier, i.e., a multi-sided power struggle among Kurds, Turks, Shi‘ites, and Sunni Salafists. All are terrified that they will be shut out of the new post-ISIS order, and all are scrambling to gain an edge on their rivals.
Ironically, the winner could well turn out to be Islamic State, as ISIS is also known. The group is hyper-alert when it comes to divisions among its enemies and skilled at using them to its advantage. The greater the turmoil, the more likely that ISIS will be able to regain its footing once the battle of Mosul is over.
SNIP (there's more)
Our middle eastern policy is backwards and incoherent. We’re arming and training al queda, and dropping the occasional bomb a few hundred meters from ISIS units to pretend we care.
Time to get out of the theatre and reset philosopically. Which I doubt we will do.
Hillary is the endless war candidate.
Orwell was right; the only detail he didn't predict was the endless war's location--the Middle East instead of East Asia.
Just bomb Raqqa to rubble, and make that rubble bounce two more times for good measure.
The enemy has a capital city. Destroy it. B-52s and iron bombs can do the trick in 24 hours.
Who was the last Republican President to start a war? Lincoln or who?
A field study in 2014 documented corn and soybean biomass and nutrient responses between conventional-till and no-till tillage systems at Beresford, SD during cooler than normal weather conditions with adequate soil moisture. The overall study was established in 1992. Each treatment plot was monitored weekly from June to August for soil moisture, temperature, and plant growth stages. Biomass was harvested during and at the end of the growing season for yield and nutrient content. Soil moisture measured throughout the early and middle part of the growing season was determined to be sufficient for crop growth, since precipitation was much greater than normal in June (33.2 cm). However, air temperature was below normal early in the growing season and lowered Growing Degree Days (939°C) compared to the 30-year average (139°C). Soil temperatures (5 cm depth) were not significant between tillage treatments in the corn plots during the growing season for 12 observation dates (range 16.3°C - 28.0°C). Plant growth was not significantly different between tillage treatments, reflecting the lack of soil temperature differences (5 cm depth) between tillage treatments. The mid-season plant tissue and crop residue at harvest nutrient content (P, K, and Zn) were not significant between tillage treatments. Corn grain yields were 10.3 T·ha-1 and 10.1 T·ha-1 for conventional tillage and no-till, respectively. Soybean grain yields were 3.9 T·ha-1 and 3.3 T·ha-1 for conventional tillage and no-till, respectively. These results would more than likely have been much different in a warmer growing season, when soil temperature and moisture differences between tillage treatments would likely stimulate crop growth in the conventional-tilled soil. This would have also increased nutrient uptake and grain yield levels to greater degree than observed in this study.
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