Mattis: US National Security No Longer Terrorism

Purely out of curiosity, why are so so obsessive about Russia, Witchy?

 

I understand you're trying to paint me as obsessive however I'll answer your question anyway.

I find world news interesting, you may or may not be aware I'm South African, we grow up discussing politics around the dinner table. The areas of interest to me is Iran (Syria, Saudi, Lebanon, Israel, Turkey, the Hezbollah South America and organised crime connection), also Russia, Ukraine, Crimea, China, South China Seas, their belt road also some economic issues. I also keep an eye on Africa although I do that privately as there are few threads on this forum on Africa. You'll find those are the threads I post in.

The part I enjoy most is how it all links together like a big board of chess, trying to untangle the threads and solve the puzzles, watching the players try to out manoeuvre one another...

 

Good answer!

 

Sorry, it's an English joke, at least for those who know their Monty Python:

 

History and truth is on my side. Russian attacked the groups who were opposed to Assad they fir the most ignored USIS.

 

Never said they pushed into russia. Just gave you the inconvenient facts. Ignore them, no skin off my back.

 

Well ya see, the neocons were always in lock step with a certain faction within the military industrial complex and it seems to me Trump has got two of them as his closest advisors. His chief of staff and his NSA. He had to find military men, because he couldn't find a civilian he could trust of any caliber. He can order military men to do his bidding, OTOH. I think they welcomed the opportunity to be puppet masters.

 

I suspect that Trump required support from the Pentagon top brass to survive his first year in office. Could be wrong, though. But that would be my guess and, as you say, they're in lockstep with the neocons as well as the military-intelligence-industrial complex.

To survive he became a neocon facilitator.

 

puppet more like

 

You know, all empires are sure that they bring to provinces aqueducts medicine and education. But all provinces are sure that metropoles just rob them. It seems you live in a metropole, not in a province

 

LOL .. you are the one that is whining. Did you have any material to contribute or is sitting in the peanut gallery throwing out insults the extent of your capability.

 

I'm not saying that certain members of the administration thought that there were WMDs, although it's worth pointing out that it would be important PR for them to make a show of looking for WMDs. WMDs were not the reason Americans invaded Iraq in 2003, the real reason was much more straightforward: The Americans saw an opportunity to increase their influence in the region dramatically and leapt at it. It backfired. Quite horrendously, in fact.

 

No, it's not. The Americans, Kurds, Iraqis, Syrians, and Russians all spent significant resources in the fight against ISIS. The Syrians and the Kurds spilled the most blood.

 

The initial claim of WMD's came from Saddam himself... We took him at his word, and did something about it. Guess what we found...

 

So Russia is having Trump focus the military and intelligence agencies to hinder Russia's dominance because...........I am lost I thought Trump worked for the Russians.

 

The fact that Saddam might have WMD's is a great reason one could give to invade the country. It's an unlikely scenario in which that possibility is what pushes the US over the edge.

It wasn't that scenario at all. The fact that planning for invasion came so soon after 9/11 is not coincidence. Some influential people overestimated America's ability to shape the world. The consequences have been dire, on a number of levels.

 

I think the UK must be different to Russia. Here you are robbed whether you live in a village or a City. Don't forget that it's a very small country compared to Russia and nowhere is very far away from a City anyway.

But no, I've never lived in a Metropolitan area. I detest cities and stay away from them as much as possible.

 

Mustard gas and sarin gas. Both are considered WMD by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps. Really nasty sh!t.

 

I agree. He also had VX.

But are you aware of who provided him with the materiel to build and develop his chemical and biological weapons arsenal?

He was America's friend once (HERE).

 

Are you interested in a really good read that the vast majority have never read ?

Saddam ****ed up big time. Saddam thought President G.W. Bush was a pantywaist like President Clinton and thought Bush was bluffing.

Ends up Bush wasn't a pantywaist and wasn't bluffing.

But Saddam blamed British intelligence for feeding Bush with fake intelligence.

Really good read.

Saddam Hussein Talks to the FBI:
Twenty Interviews and Five Conversations with "High Value Detainee # 1" in 2004

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 279

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB279/

 

Really? I was sure the Queen of United Kingdom reigns over many countries from Canada to Australia... I have to study geography again, sir!
But what I meant in my post. The Russian humor differs a bit from British one. We adore an absurd of a situation. And the situation is following. You gave to them a higher level of living. They say you robbed them. It seems as an absurd. But I could intensify the absurdism. All empires always lived better than their colonies. All empires, excluding Russia. Russia lived worse than Ukraine, Baltic and other parts of the Soviet Union. The main reason that we live better than Portuguese now is we stopped to feed our former republics.
...But though we left them, they are dissatisfied again. All Ukraine is dissatisfied that we didn't occupy them with Crimea together... After this, I think that people really are divided as white men and Papuans. (We name in this manner Ukrainians, Balts and other former peoples of the USSR). But "Papuans" means not a skin color, but the contents of a skull. Very often white people, black people, yellow people have the same intellect. The intellect of a hen. I'm sorry if the hen got offended.

Now I know about you everything. You are an bankir of the little village bank HSBC.

 

The Queen rules over Russia? I must send her my congratulations on her new acquisition.

One of those Hen's for you:

Long retired from banking, thank goodness.

Interestingly, HSBC was quite well known as being a "spooky" bank, but then you'd know that, being in the business so to speak.

I remember well the story told in the Financial Times of a British banker "falling" from a high rise building in Moscow back in the mid 1980's. Curiously, the FT story on this was set to be a 3 part exclusive but was cancelled after part 1 only. Strange that. He was reputed to have been an MI6 man, and the bank in question had more than a few MI6 officers working in it at that time. Oddly enough, I knew another young British banker who replicated that fall from a high rise in NY City in the late 1980's. That was also said to be suicide.

As Mark Twain said: truth is stranger than fiction.

 

Nothing strange. In Russia suicide of top persons is a normal situation. Especially during investigations. When problems appear then some suicides or accidents are happened. For example, they arrest Khodorkovsky, and Robert Curtis dies. In England for some reason

But Russian top persons aren't so interesting as Ukrainian top persons. I'd say they are just mystic persons!
I remember one strange case. Ukrainian journalist with Georgian name Gongadze was beheaded. It is not strange, Gongadze wasn't a first or last person who was behead in Ukraine. And one Ukrainian general was blamed in it. After it he had shooted in his head. Twice in a row. It's a usual Ukrainian suicide of a top person.

It isn't strange that the British banker fell from a high rise building. If he fell twice in a row then I'd been interested

 

Yes, I remember the story of Stephen Curtis. It seemed to be the political version of the butterfly effect.

I've not known people falling from high rise buildings twice. That would not only be different, it would be miraculous.