Posted on 01/06/2020 8:22:14 PM PST by Zhang Fei
The Trump administration escalated its threats Sunday to hit Iran’s top leaders with military strikes if Tehran or its proxies carry out any attacks against American personnel or interests in retaliation for the U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani last week.
“We’re going to respond against the actual decision-makers, the people who are causing this threat from the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a televised interview, expounding on a flurry of tweets a day earlier by President Trump, who warned that U.S. officials have already identified 52 possible Iranian targets, a highly symbolic number in the history of U.S.-Iran hostility.
Asked about Iran retaliating, Mr. Trump told reporters on Sunday night, “If it happens, it happens. If they do anything, there will be major retaliation.”
The messaging came amid mounting unsease in Washington and across the Middle East, where Iran’s supreme leader vowed to inflict “severe revenge” for Soleimani’s death and other Iranian officials said Sunday that Tehran will now no longer abide by any limits to its nuclear enrichment activities.
While any violent retaliation from Iran is unlikely before the regime in Tehran finishes a third day of official mourning for Soleimani — a period that runs through Monday — the escalating rhetoric coincides a flurry of unnerving developments since the Iranian commander was killed early Friday in Iraq by a U.S. Hellfire missile.
The Iraqi parliament, which American officials say has been increasingly undermined by influence from neighboring Iran in recent years, passed a bill Sunday calling for the expulsion of all U.S. troops from Iraq.
The bill remains subject to approval by Iraq’s top leaders and, even then, would allow at least a year for the some 5,200 U.S. troops in the country to withdraw.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
The fool Bush Junior intended to try nation building from the start.
That was a stated goal of that PNAC outfit, the Project for a New American Century crowd that he brought in to staff his administration.
They had even tried to get Slick Willy to invade Iraq and oust Saddam back in 1998. They seized on 9-11 as the big opportunity to put their plan into action by confusing the public- I think half the country figured Saddam and the hijackers were the same thing.
LOL what’s that from?
“[You know, I was listening to Tucker tonight on FOX claiming that our invasion of Iraq had weakened us]”
It was a huge waste and predictable from the start. It’s one reason that Bush’s wiser father didn’t go to Baghdad and hang Saddam- you end up being responsible for rebuilding and running the damned country.
Even the Romans had that figured out 2,000 years ago, but not the Bush geniuses. The Romans would install a local leader and let him run the show for them, but they at least farmed it for taxes.
With Iraq anybody paying average attention knew that it was forcibly created out of several tribes that don’t like each other, and being Muslim it would invite even bigger trouble. But the Bush junior neocons said “religion doesn’t matter” so the Shia-Sunni-Kurd split would be no big deal. Idiots.
“* WWII cost 50% of production a year, and lasted 4 years, meaning that we flushed 2 years of economic output paying for that war.”
I don’t know that it flushed it- it resulted in full employment and kick-started the still stagnating Depression economy. Before war spending ramped up America had a whole lot of idle men and plants. I don’t think I’d recommend a massive war as a solution but there’s no denying that the War marked the end of the Depression.
Meh, the real targets should be any and all Iran’s nuclear facilities or anything associated with them or Iran’s nuclear program, be it on the surface or underground.
Comparing the cost of Iraq against WWII is a good way to bring perspective, but calling the cost of WWII “flushed” is a little silly considering the alternative. The Iraq/Afghan wars on the other hand could certainly be considered a waste.
She looks like a great......Lib Whacker!!!
[The Iraq/Afghan wars on the other hand could certainly be considered a waste.]
Lol
That’s the concern. They could easily get a team into Tokyo through a proxy
In grade school I was taught that FDR was our hero and ended the Great Depression. (I could never understand why my dad hated FDR so much.)
Around college I came to learn more about FDR and the New Deal - it prolonged the Depression. And WW II got us out of it.
Probably on FreeRepublic I have heard other arguments that the war didn’t end the Depression either. I can’t find any of those off the top of my head (except perhaps that building something just to have it destroyed isn’t the greatest economic system), but I did find the following Forbes article that links to another paper on the subject.
Although it would sure seem like ramping up industry for the war made lots of companies wealthy, and trained workers that could be shifted over to other ventures. I imagine the ideas of Peace and Prosperity are more than just a slogan - they go hand in hand with each other. Much like the roaring 20’s as the “war to end all wars” was finished.
Excerpt:
It’s worth reading it in full: there are no complex equations or concepts that the average person cannot get. But what it does point out is that there are certain problems with the idea that we actually had economic growth during those war years. And if we didn’t have economic growth then we cannot really say that we exited from the Depression.
For example, GDP is measuring final output at market prices: but if we have rationing and price controls then how can we really measure output at market prices? And what is the market price of a tank or shell?
Further, if the economy is growing then the lifestyle of the populace should be getting better: that is what we want from economic growth after all. But clearly lifestyles got worse during the war: so was it an absence of economic growth?
They (Al Qods and Hezbollah) are getting ready - all the Command and Control bases have been vacated and dispersed or redeployed to Iran - Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.
Look for the flag to go up on Feb 11 when Iran celebrates the Shiite Revolution in Iran - there are about 366,000 surrogate troops located in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon (100,000 on Israel’s border) and Iraq, in addition to whatever forces Iran deploys directly
[Hopefully, the lesson we learned is to know when to declare victory and walk away, leaving your enemy bloody, vanquished, and terrified of you, rather than long term occupation and nation building. ]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Praying_Mantis
I expect we’d have a blocking force in case the Iranians decide to move against the gulf states. But otherwise, it would be airstrikes and missile attacks all the way.
The Iranian economy is on its knees. The destruction of sufficient military equipment and stores will give internal malcontents a fighting chance. Who knows - we might even supply them.
You have to wonder if Trump was a big Clancy fan, this is right out of Executive Orders.
I think that it’s far more accurate to say that we got out of the Depression AFTER WWII officially because we were the last industrial power with manufacturing capacity that could be used to re-build us and the world. The stats might show it happened during WWII but that was heavily influenced by deficit spending during the war. Real growth happened afterwards.
I believe the crack about cultural sites was more a reminder that it’s the Muzzies who have gone around destroying the sites of others...much like the Nazis did during the war - destroyed many works of art in churches and such...
I wonder...
Just WHERE does Iran’s supreme leader Live??
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