Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:

When Hannity takes a stand

https://twitter.com/seanhannity/status/894999476661886977

Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:

When Hannity takes a stand

https://twitter.com/seanhannity/status/894999476661886977

quote:

Fox News host Sean Hannity is so adamant that waterboarding is not torture that he once offered to be waterboarded at a charity event and donate the proceeds to soldiers’ families. Four years later, a yet-to-be-waterboarded Hannity did not take kindly to being called out about it on his own radio show.

Trabisnikof posted:

How dare a country threaten to strike a military to stop an attack. Only thing worse would be if a country threatened "fire and fury like the world has never seen" over a potential threat.

Spiritus Nox posted:

The rhetoric, sure. Their actual intentions, I would say quite a bit less so.

Paradoxish posted:

I don't know, dude, it's about as close as you're going to get short of actually being inside of Kim Jong-un's head. There's not going to be anything on state media that isn't approved by the regime and the people authorizing this messaging know that it's going to be seen by other governments as well. "We're considering a pre-emptive strike if we think you're going to attack us" seems like it's very possibly true. They have nothing to lose if they honestly believe that an attack is imminent.

BetterToRuleInHell posted:

North Korea, the plucky little hero in this tale

Spiritus Nox posted:

...And this is different from yesterday, or hell a year ago, how?

SulphagneSocialist posted:

Yeah, I edited in a mention of the Soviet officers (I think there were more than Petrov), probably after you already quoted me. There was that false alarm from a Norwegian weather rocket in the 1990s, and one other false positive that wasn't Petrov during the Soviet era.

There was also the collective ABLE ARCHER freakout the USSR had in 1983.

Majorian posted:

While this is usually true, I think it can be overstated. Generals and Admirals can, and often do, develop minds of their own, in spite of their training; see Mike Flynn's behavior under Obama, or William Fallon's under Dubya. Or, for an example of a senior officer disobeying protocol in refusing to launch a nuclear strike, see Stanislav Petrov. The point is, at some juncture, the drive for self-preservation and avoiding world-ending conflicts will usually override an officer's respect for the chain of command.

Party Plane Jones posted:

(ew greenwald but still)

BetterToRuleInHell posted:

North Korea, the plucky little hero in this tale

aware of dog posted:

https://twitter.com/yashar/status/895043109519855617

Tim Whatley posted:

https://twitter.com/passantino/status/895043437367410688

Air Pirates of Guam is a dope fuckin name

OddObserver posted:

Sadly our way of electing the President was designed to balance power between various late 18th century elites, not based on modern democratic values.

Edit:

There is also 1824 which needs an asterisk, but that one was... a little more complicated.

Bishounen Bonanza posted:

This is true, but what scares some people is that N Korea is not a real threat like the Soviet Union was. Some in the military may think that this is a nuclear war we can "win", as opposed to nuking the soviets which would have been suicide.

Ague Proof posted:

Rigel posted:

The scary thing is that if we were serious, actually, legit serious about being willing to use the military to stop NK from developing nuclear ICBM's and we weren't just bluffing (all presidents have had to say the military option is available if you want diplomacy to succeed) then we're probably less than a year away from walking away from diplomacy and attacking NK. If a smart, rational, sane president wanted to explain that we're out of options and must go to war, I'm willing to hear him out, but we've got the loving insane cheeto nazi making that call.

Boon posted:

Can't wait for the increasingly likely future that NK will use nuclear deterrence to essentially do whatever the gently caress they want to on the Korean peninsula.

Boon posted:

Can't wait for the increasingly likely future that NK will use nuclear deterrence to essentially do whatever the gently caress they want to on the Korean peninsula.

Trabisnikof posted:

I mean, that doesn't even work for the other nuclear powers, why would it work for them?

Trabisnikof posted:

I mean, that doesn't even work for the other nuclear powers, why would it work for them?

evilweasel posted:

that works for russia, they would not have been able to conquer eastern ukraine if not for their nuclear deterrent

Low Desert Punk posted:

Is there any way South Korea makes it out fine even in a relatively minimal altercation? I feel like they're getting hosed no matter what happens.

evilweasel posted:

knowing how to spreadsheet well is a useful skill. word...well, that's just basic competence.

at one job i made a spreadsheet for my own use that someone saw, thought was useful, and instructed other teams to start using it. right up until a few weeks before i left I was still getting calls about how it worked, and there were many people (smart people, in other areas) whose idea of a spreadsheet was you typed the numbers in, pulled out a calculator, and then typed in the result. formulas were like a dark magic (lawyers are real bad at math).

on a related note, excel formulas are the tool of the devil because there's always something slightly wrong in any complex spreadsheet you make for the first time but the error will be subtle because it just generates the wrong number instead of crashing (like a good program does) and due to variable names being A1, B6, etc and your formula being every bit of code mashed into a single complex line of code, it's fantastically irritating to hunt down the error because the code is utterly unreadable

evilweasel posted:

the reality is there are two choices:

1) accept MAD with north korea, where they have the capability to threaten american cities
2) go to war with north korea

everyone keeps hoping for option 3, but there really isn't one at this point short of some massive diplomatic breakthrough that is not possible with someone in control of the united states whose word cannot be trusted

Boon posted:

To which nuclear power do you refer that has territorial disputes with it's neighbor, isn't already in control of that territory, and who isn't also armed with nuclear weapons?

Russia has had no problems annexing Crimea, that's for sure.

Office Pig posted:

The problem with what North Korea is considering or not considering as a course of action in sincerity is that Donald Trump acts on headlines.

Low Desert Punk posted:

Is there any way South Korea makes it out fine even in a relatively minimal altercation? I feel like they're getting hosed no matter what happens.

evilweasel posted:

that works for russia, they would not have been able to conquer eastern ukraine if not for their nuclear deterrent

Boon posted:

No country wants a war on it's territory, so you're going to have to define 'fine'.

Open war on the peninsula will see at a minimum:
a) an exodus of both North and South Korean refuges straining infrastructure in and around the region
b) an exodus of capital from markets

Likely:
a) civilian causalities
b) increased destabilization and escalation

botany posted:

that's very questionable. what do you think would have happened without a nuclear deterrent?

Blorange posted:

Ukraine itself is a perfect example of what happens to states that surrender their nuclear capabilities. Any promise the US could make would be taken in light of the one Ukraine got in 1994, and how well that worked out.

Trabisnikof posted:

Israel?

Also Pakistan and India aren't exactly best buddies. China doesn't get whatever it wants from its neighbors. Even the US can't get whatever we want from countries.

Your point that SK and Japan don't possess nuclear weapons is moot unless you're also assuming the US will abandoned their defense. Possessing nuclear weapons doesn't gain NK any guarantees except maybe survival.