Tankers burn in Gulf of Oman off Iran after 'reported attack'

redleghunter said:

Who is advocating war. More sanctions.

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The neocons who own President Trump, for starters.

Iran could never win a full-scale war against the U.S., so it uses hybrid warfare, attacking through proxies or with plausible deniability.

redleghunter said:

So no evidence.

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Not even a chuckle? Tough crowd.
tulc(will fetch more coffee and look to the future)

thecolorsblend said:

I believe avoiding war when our national security isn't at stake is objectively a foreign policy win.

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Many people fail to see that.


War is one of the most expensive things in which nations can engage in terms of financing, loss of life, loss of property, destabilization, and unpredictable outcomes. Of course, it's always easy for people to jump to the conclusion of "go to war" when they know they won't bear any of those costs.

redleghunter said:

Good wisdom there. By sending a Carrier Strike Group (CSG) to the area to project power and publicize the tanker attacks, Trump is employing this maxim. The vehicle will be more sanctions cutting off the money flow to the Quds Guard Obama-Kerry opened for Iran.

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I'm pretty sure the CSG was already scheduled to deploy to the Gulf and was already in 6th Fleet when they were told to transit to 5th Fleet a few days early. So while I agree that a CSG's forward presence is a good deterrent in line with Sun Tzu's strategy of avoiding conflict, I don't know that such wisdom could be attributed to the current President (or any particular President at all) so much as it could be attributed to military schedulers, planners, and DoD CSG deployment polices and schedules that have been in place for years.

USS Abraham Lincoln Operating in Middle East After 'Expedited' Transit

thecolorsblend said:

I'm no admirer of Barack, as you know.

He chose to make a crummy, lousy, third-rate, amateur night, hackjob, joke of a deal. But it was still a deal, it avoided war with Iran and (if Iraq is prologue) it was cheaper than a war with Iran would've been anyway.

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Did you know the Obama administration was so desperate to conclude this deal that it blocked a probe into Hezbollah’s illicit drug smuggling activities ?

The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook

Project Cassandra managed to collect a huge amount of evidence implicating Hezbollah and its state sponsor—Iran. The drug and weapons smuggling campaign was “the largest material support scheme for terrorism operations” ever.

Estimated that Hezbollah was collecting $1 billion a year from drug trafficking, arms smuggling and money laundering. Multi-ton loads of cocaine entering the United States, and hundreds of millions of dollars going to a U.S.-designated terrorist organization with vast reach.

Hezbollah used a lot of the money to buy ieds,
the kind used against U.S. troops in Iraq by Shiite militias

"The derailment of Project Cassandra also has undermined U.S. efforts to determine how much cocaine from the various Hezbollah-affiliated networks is coming into the United States, especially from Venezuela, where dozens of top civilian and military officials have been under investigation for more than a decade. Recently, the Trump administration designated the country’s vice president, a close ally of Hezbollah and of Lebanese-Syrian descent, as a global narcotics kingpin.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah — in league with Iran — continues to undermine U.S. interests in Iraq, Syria and throughout wide swaths of Latin America and Africa, including providing weapons and training to anti-American Shiite militias. And Safieddine, the Ghost and other associates continue to play central roles in the trafficking of drugs and weapons, current and former U.S. officials believe."

Semper-Fi said:

Did you know the Obama administration was so desperate to conclude this deal that it blocked a probe into Hezbollah’s illicit drug smuggling activities

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I did not know nor do I care.

The lousy deal Barack made avoided a war with Iran. That means it was objectively a foreign policy win for Barack.

President Trump is rattling the saber against Iran even though America's national security is not at stake. War under these circumstances would objectively be a foreign policy loss for President Trump.

thecolorsblend said:

I did not know nor do I care.

The lousy deal Barack made avoided a war with Iran. That means it was objectively a foreign policy win for Barack.

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Not sure where you get Obama avoided a war,
all Obama had to do was nothing.

Semper-Fi said:

Not sure where you get Obama avoided a war,
all Obama had to do was nothing.

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...you mean the exact opposite of the saber rattling President Trump is doing right now?
tulc(is just wondering)

redleghunter said:

What did we get out of such a one-sided 'deal?'

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Nothing of any consequence except for some folks to falsely claim we managed to stay out of a war.

Giving all that money to the Mullahs allowed them to continue acting like children instead of them being forced out of power or at a minimum forced to act like adults.

Iran has literally nothing to gain from this. Why attack Japanese ships when the PM of Japan is present in the country?

The shipping company discounted the claims made by the U.S. and other countries have also discredited the claims.

In times like that it says more about the person jumping up and down pointing the finger than the person they're pointing at.

Can we please not go to war again for stupid reasons? Thanks.

redleghunter said:

Please link the actual reports

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You ever notice how the intelligence agency analysts (same people holding those jobs for decades) are always "wrong" when a certain political party is in power and always right when the other is in charge?