Two oil tankers struck in suspected attacks in Gulf of Oman

It's not amusing when we need to believe our leadership about a tough international situation.

Not surprising a Trumpite would believe the Orange Oaf, he of the 10,000 documented lies.

Would the Liar-in-Chief start a war to save his dying Presidency?

 

And I've got a bridge to sell you

 

One cannot shiver and shake, full of vague fears while waiting for a democrat government to surrender is , thankfully, not for me.

 

Yeah, an old guy who has been working with computers since the 1960s. Get a clue.

Oh, yeah--I wrote software that added fifty commands to Applesoft BASIC and rewrote part of their OS that was too slow.

They're creating their own CPUs. We're not stupid, either, and we're organizing our rare earth sources.

What has he accomplished? International relations? Health care? The environment? Zip.

The real GDP is growing about as fast as it was in 2014.



Real wages have gone up 1% in the last two years.



Trump bought a little extra growth by adding $500b to the budget deficit.

 

Easily faked evidence and why wouldn't they continue shooting down our drones?

Don't know. I do know he has lied about a lot of things. Why would I believe him about Iran?

About his many lies? Sure. Why would I follow you or anyone else down that rabbit hole?

Are you okay?

I don't think Trump can take effective, popular action to deal with Iran. What if we need to take out a big chunk of their navy? Do you trust the Orange Oaf to make the call?

 

Germany has its own semiconductor companies.

That said, if **** hits the fan, we could simply copy the american designs.

 

Yakov Kedmi is not an Israeli ex Intel. He's a businessman, a former bureaucrat in the Jewish Agency. Russians are getting desperate.

Are you calling for violent actions against the US?

 

And this is exactly why I believe that Iran exploited this opportunity to show muscles.

 

Sure
There were plenty of WMDs in Iraq, come on, no one believes otherwise any more.

Saddam had about 5000 nerve agent bombs and shells from his 1990s stockpile, he could easily have provided it to any number of the terrorist groups he supported and they could have smuggled it into the US.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive...t/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html

Saddam continued to develop (but not manufacture) chemical weapons whose sophistication shocked inspectors and were still lethal enough to poison the troops who found them a decade later.

https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004/chap5.html#sect3

Saddam maintained his vast Uranium stockpile and never lost his desire to attain WMDs, despite the fact he could have sold it on the civil nuclear market for tens of millions of dollars (as the post liberation Iraq's democratic government later did).

www.nbcnews.com/id/25546334/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/secret-us-mission-hauls-uranium-iraq/#.XKMfuPZFzIU

Saddam did have connections with AQ, meeting up with them to see if he should sponsor them but turning them down as too wild for him. No one EVER claimed Saddam was behind 9/11, that was a link people made in their minds but not by the administration. The worse you can accuse the administration of is believing what they wanted to hear from the Iraqi exiles, just like in the first Gulf War? Remember the Kuwaiti nurse who gave heartrending testimony of the babies who died because the Iraqi soldiers stole their incubators? Turned out all to be baloney and she was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador? But who wouldn't tell a few white lies to be liberated from a tyrant?

Also ISIS never arose in Iraq, it arose in Syria as part of the Arab spring.

 

All of it's true and your desperate attempts to nitpick are pathetic. Saddam was not manufacturing chemical weapons, he'd suspended his programme but was still developing them and still had his stash of them and uranium. Come on, give it up.

Yes, the US backed Iraq in the war, of course it did, it was the devil they knew, realpolitik, no one has ever denied that.

 

Yes, the US backed Iraq...... to the point of providing targeting info on Iranian troops knowing Saddam would use chemical weapons on them.

That is both disgusting and hypocritical considering what we wound up doing to Saddam.

 

At a deeper level Iran wants all to understand that it can act again in response to the economic war against it.
Trump might have tightened the grip on Iran's neck, but he had forgotten that when the victim is fluttering it still has enough strength to kick the crotch ..

 

They must be pretty good given than the British PM was intending on using them regardless of the US position. The US is stepping back - allowing longer for people to move........... and then.

 

The Far Right Tories of the UK looking for something to cover up the NO Deal Brexit mess they are about to put on the UK and given their solidarity for Trump are well up for this.

 

Perhaps, but I have to wonder why we have low light video of terrorists removing a dud mine from a tanker but no dead terrorists or prisoners.

 

Because, despite their religious zeal, they are civilized? Because, unlike the US government, they prefer peace to war?

 

Yeah... staged very differently like back during Obama's regime when the Iranians took our U. S. Navy personnel as hostages and forced them to their knees with their hands behind their heads.

The question (THE question) remains -- who caused these ships to be attacked in international waters? Why did the Iranians rush to cover up the presence of an undetonated mine on the side of one of the ships? Why did they fire on our drones for watching them do this? What are they hiding?

I sincerely hope every Iran-loving bastard in the United States is still heaping sh!t on Donald Trump the NEXT time ships are attacked in the international waters of the Persian Gulf or the Gulf of Oman. What's it going to take to convince them? 4K videos, streaming in real-time of the next attacks? Not even Hitler had American defenders as rabidly stupid as today's radical Democrat Leftists!

. "We thank you for your support!"

 

Here's something of interest from a US Navy international affairs and security analyst and former nuclear reactor operator.

We know that the US has reconnaissance and spy aircraft flying directly over the area as well as combat-capable drones, with CNN even sketchily reporting that a US MQ-9 Reaper drone supposedly came under attack by a missile launched from Iranian naval vessels in the hours before the incident, at least according to the usual anonymous "US official", but without word of whether this alleged attack took place in international or Iranian territorial waters.

The US has also recently deployed B-52 nuclear-capable bombers and another 1,500 US troops to the Persian Gulf theatre in a sabre rattling move guaranteed to increase tensions in the region. And of course the US Fifth Fleet is based right in nearby Bahrain and the US Central Command, responsible for US hegemonic control over the Middle East, has a large forward operating base in Qatar.

It is clear from this that US military forces were already present in the area and likely involved in the incident to at least some degree. The key question, of course, is to what degree.

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201906161075897666-iran-us-gulf-oman/​

 

Do the Iranians want peace, because they're continuously threatening Israel? Iran wanted to retake the Golan Heights so to maintain peace Russia will not allow any Iranians or Hezbollah within a certain distance from the Heights. Putin also placed Chechnyan Sunni guards in Russian uniforms and with back up forces in posts along the border and within 15 miles of each other.

The problem here is that Iran has helped Syria immensely in freeing itself from the terrorists, so Assad can't tell them to leave, while Netanyahu insists they leave. So what does Iran want? They keep saying a regime change in Israel, but the regime change they want would change it from a Jewish state to a Islamic state.

Israel in the meantime keeps taking advantage of the situation without any regard for human lives. So what do you do? From the little I read of Trump's solution, I like it, but it seems to have been rejected outright by the Palestinians. I'm not sure in this. Hopefully I'm wrong.

 

The point that was being made is the answer to the above question is difficult when you can't trust what is coming out of the Pentagon, Defense Dep't, and our intelligence agencies - at which point the poster went into a "you are anti American" - for speaking this inconvenient truth.

 

Right - and you lost by starting the slander - claiming I was "anti American" - for speaking truths that you found inconvenient.

Then when I responded to your slander you accused me of slander. Lame - and Lamer.

 

Your insinuation has been proven false 6 ways to Sunday - including by the congressional committee that investigated after the fact.

Building some strawman "there were WMD's" does not change this fact. The admin was claiming things like Nuclear threat and numerous other things that were proven false - such as "active WMD programs". Finding some old chemical weapons that were buried and unusable - stuff have known about since we were supporting Saddam while he was using Chemical weapons during the 80's - is not an "active WMD program" and it certainly does not raise the threat of a "Mushroom cloud".

The Bush admin "faked" a whole bunch of things - lied, put out false narratives and propaganda, ignored and hid evidence to the contrary, muzzled those who would say anything contrary to the false narrative - and so on.

 

Anybody remember this item from 2 years ago?

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has launched a new mission dedicated to collecting and analyzing intelligence related to Iran, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The mission illustrates that the Trump administration considers the country to be a high priority for the intelligence agency, the Journal noted.

The CIA has not publicly acknowledged the existence of the organization.

The organization, dubbed the Iran Mission Center, will include CIA analysts, personnel and specialists to support the CIA's abilities on the matter, including covert action.

Does anyone really think these guys are sitting on the sidelines while Trump is ratcheting things up with Iran? Not saying they did this, but they certainly could have. How about MEK? Islamic State?

The point is that there are simply too many possibilities to know who did this. Facts are sketchy, as is evidence.

 

I don't get the impression Trump seeks any international coalition, never heard him touting international support for anything he does. With Iran there was international support for the 'wonderful deal' Obama made, the Euers want to maintain that deal. Trump didn't like the Obama deal and withdrew. There are people who think Trump's withdrawal from the deal with Iran is awful. If this because you like Obama or hate Trump, I won't discuss it with you. It would be interesting to discuss the benefits of nuclear non-proliferation and Iranian reliability/trustworthiness, in my view theocratic regimes are ideal justifications for strict enforcement of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

However, this thread is devoted to the Iranian attacks on oil tankers, you've got to relate your view (that Trump lacks the credibility to lead an international coalition) to a purported effort by Trump to build an international coalition against Iran. I think international military coalitions are a great idea when one seeks to justify questionable foreign intervention, as was done in Iraq. International military coalitions aren't necessary or required in this case; if it is known Iran has attacked the tanker, using military force to prevent further attacks is completely justifiable. The US should encourage regional allies, especially Saudi Arabia and Oman, to have their own speedboats chase down and destroy Iran's. The difficulty for the US is deploying its own speedboats, I expect they can get a boatload of them there in due course, between now and then the locals need to step up. There should be no difficulty getting local support, everyone in the region hates Iran.

 

That has not been determined. The Germans are not convinced, nor some high ranking members of the EU. The Saudis, while holding fast in blaming Iran, have softened the rhetoric. The owner of one of the ships has flatly contradicted the US version that it was mined at all.

So, no, this thread is not about "Iranian attacks on oil tankers".