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Brown Moses posted:After today's chlorine attack in Douma, the third in 2018, I've been getting calls from US journalists telling me they were briefed by the Trump admin who were claiming Assad is developing new chemical weapons and there's an open source report of Sarin being used after their bombing of Shayrat airbase. Sounds like their building a case to bomb Syria for chemical weapon use again. Sounds pretty convenient for Turkey
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Feb 1, 2018 21:21
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The Turkish backed rebels really seem like uptstanding guys. https://twitter.com/jenanmoussa/status/959151218680631297 The kicker is that the guys singing the jihadist song were US-backed rebels at one point. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Feb 1, 2018 |
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Feb 1, 2018 21:42
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Geopolitics, it's a wild ride
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Feb 1, 2018 21:48
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Sinteres posted:The Turkish backed rebels really seem like uptstanding guys. that's a mistranslation. The video is awful though, the woman is blown up (missing a lot more than that tweet implies) a guy kicks her and someone else off screen tells him to stop.
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Feb 1, 2018 21:51
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HorrificExistence posted:that's a mistranslation. It does look more like a horrific battlefield injury than how people have been describing it on Twitter (soldiers stripping her body and mutilating it). [edit] This is doing the rounds now https://twitter.com/AlSuraEnglish/status/959186474993422338 Seeing Trump is probably going to bomb Syria over it, I've done a write up on today's chlorine attack in Douma https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2018/02/01/third-time-year-chlorine-used-chemical-weapon-douma-damascus/ We've been working on the Jan 22 attack with another group for the last 7, and we've loads of images of the munitions used, so we'll be publishing a big report on that soon, with extra info on the Feb 1 attack too. Brown Moses fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Feb 1, 2018 |
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Feb 1, 2018 22:54
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Brown Moses posted:Seeing Trump is probably going to bomb Syria over it, I've done a write up on today's chlorine attack in Douma Stupid wonky question: is there a nose cone on the other side of the rocket? The cylinder doesn't seem...ballistically efficiency. V thanks. at least someone has a sense of humor about it guidoanselmi fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Feb 2, 2018 |
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Feb 1, 2018 23:39
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guidoanselmi posted:Stupid wonky question: is there a nose cone on the other side of the rocket? The cylinder doesn't seem...ballistically efficiency. There's a curved front end with a pressure valve in the middle, used to fill it: 
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Feb 1, 2018 23:45
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What's the thread consensus on the UK Parliament's report on the Libyan Civil War? I understand the country's pretty well gone to poo poo since then, but this reads like a pro-Gaddafi screed in some places.
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Feb 2, 2018 03:52
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Gen. Ripper posted:What's the thread consensus on the UK Parliament's report on the Libyan Civil War? I understand the country's pretty well gone to poo poo since then, but this reads like a pro-Gaddafi screed in some places. Looking at Libya now vs then it is almost indefensible with hindsight not to wish that the rebellion was quickly crushed. If NATO was willing to put the country back together then maybe it would have been for the better. That said, they didn’t. It was textbook knocking out an unfriendly dictator and not letting a good crisis go to waste.
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Feb 2, 2018 04:04
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Gen. Ripper posted:What's the thread consensus on the UK Parliament's report on the Libyan Civil War? I understand the country's pretty well gone to poo poo since then, but this reads like a pro-Gaddafi screed in some places. Looks interesting; is there a summary or an abstract somewhere? I don't feel like delving into a 53 page report right this second.
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Feb 2, 2018 04:07
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Coldwar timewarp posted:Looking at Libya now vs then it is almost indefensible with hindsight not to wish that the rebellion was quickly crushed. That seems to be the recurring theme in these topplings. There are times that, yes, a dictator needs to be destroyed, as in the example of WW2. But imagine if after invading Germany, we just put Himmler and the SS in charge (as they thought we would do), and instead of rebuilding the country, we offered them loans and arms contracts instead. We lack follow-through or honestly good intentions.
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Feb 2, 2018 05:04
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TheBalor posted:That seems to be the recurring theme in these topplings. There are times that, yes, a dictator needs to be destroyed, as in the example of WW2. But imagine if after invading Germany, we just put Himmler and the SS in charge (as they thought we would do), and instead of rebuilding the country, we offered them loans and arms contracts instead. You're basically asking us to imagine literally what happened with Austria after WWII lol.
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Feb 2, 2018 05:38
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Coldwar timewarp posted:Looking at Libya now vs then it is almost indefensible with hindsight not to wish that the rebellion was quickly crushed. Policy isn't made with the benefit of hindsight. With hindsight of course we know exactly how things turned out, but that will be of little use to ourselves in the next crisis when yet again we will find ourselves sadly lacking in precognition. Useful judgments of decision making are based on what was or should have been known at the time. I've been critical of the narrative that if Gaddaffi had just been given a free hand he would have crushed all opposition within months and returned Libya to peace. This is not because I think such a thing was impossible, but because this argument is often presented uncritically and with little supporting evidence. How do we even come to such conclusions? Libya in 2011 was in a much worse state than Egypt ever got, and even Egypt has been plagued ever since by violence. What was stopping Libyan rebels from going underground, funded and armed as they surely would have been by Qatar and the Gulf? What were the odds Libya turned into another Syria? I don't know. Nor do I know how badly everyone had to screw up to produce the present state of disorder.
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Feb 2, 2018 06:16
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Squalid posted:Policy isn't made with the benefit of hindsight. With hindsight of course we know exactly how things turned out, but that will be of little use to ourselves in the next crisis when yet again we will find ourselves sadly lacking in precognition. Useful judgments of decision making are based on what was or should have been known at the time. What was known at the time? The report goes into detail what was known and what wasn’t. The civilian casualties in retaken areas were light, as war goes. So the reason for the intervention was false. Sure, we don’t know what would have happened had NATO not started acting as the air force for the Rebels. We do know that the government was making progress, to the point where Benghazi was threatened, and that was the supposed reason for the intervention. Logically we can expect that NATO thought this was going in the governments favour, or they wouldn’t have intervened. That would why I think that. All supposition. Libyan terrorists/rebels going underground would be a government victory. If Assad has nominal control of the country, that’s a victory. Iraq still has a terrorism problem, yet IS is defeated. We can look at what happened and call it a mistake. A Libya under Ghadaffi was better off than it is today.
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Feb 2, 2018 07:55
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Coldwar timewarp posted:Looking at Libya now vs then it is almost indefensible with hindsight not to wish that the rebellion was quickly crushed. Dictatorships monopolize control in a way that necessitates their own existence. They don't want the state to be able to function without them. It's by design. That's an argument against dictatorship, not for it. And you're forgetting the inspiring moment of unity after the Benghazi attacks, in which left and right joined hands to tell us Libyans were terrorists and we needed to put Americans first, leading to sizable cuts in assistance to the democratically elected Libyan government. There was 0 appetite for providing help to the Libyan government. Everyone was extremely determined that Libya be made into an example of the negative consequences of intervention against dictators threatening to commit mass acts of genocide in the middle of civil wars, and so they opposed any support for Libyan democratic aims. Self fulfilling prophecy. It's too bad none of the people who have poo poo on the cause of Libyan freedom since the get go will get to experience the fruits of their labors firsthand.
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Feb 2, 2018 07:55
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Volkerball posted:Dictatorships monopolize control in a way that necessitates their own existence. They don't want the state to be able to function without them. It's by design. That's an argument against dictatorship, not for it. And you're forgetting the inspiring moment of unity after the Benghazi attacks, in which left and right joined hands to tell us Libyans were terrorists and we needed to put Americans first, leading to sizable cuts in assistance to the democratically elected Libyan government. There was 0 appetite for providing help to the Libyan government. Everyone was extremely determined that Libya be made into an example of the negative consequences of intervention against dictators threatening to commit mass acts of genocide in the middle of civil wars, and so they opposed any support for Libyan democratic aims. Self fulfilling prophecy. It's too bad none of the people who have poo poo on the cause of Libyan freedom since the get go will get to experience the fruits of their labors firsthand. I don’t think the support being pulled was a good idea. Supporting them in the first place to stick a finger in the eye of a historic enemy was a bad idea, after intervention support or not. Once again, NATO and the US don’t intervene everywhere, they purposely target some countries, this was an example of that. If the intervention for “freedom” argument isn’t pursued broadly, it’s horseshit. An excuse to do what you already wanted to do. The reason there wasn’t an appetite for “support” (which needed to be an occupation or stability ops) afterwards was the loving Iraq war which was another example of taking advantage of a crisis. Libya might have fallen into a Syrian civil war style conflict, that’s possible I’ll admit. But freedom they got was qualitatively worse than the dictatorship they had. How would “support” manage to pry the guns out of the hands of the jihadists and other militias once the pin was pulled and the state destroyed. This happening was predictable. If NATO didn’t plan on following through with ground troops, they shouldn’t have done the intervention in the first place. We do get to look back and say it was wrong.
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Feb 2, 2018 08:26
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I think you can oppose the Libyan intervention while also arguing that said intervention was horribly botched. I don't think NATO should have gotten involved in the first place, but refusing to help clean up their mess after they did is just as shameful. The doctrine of "easy" regime change should have stayed dead.
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Feb 2, 2018 08:54
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The issue I had was when it became readily apparent what was suppose to be a no-fly zone to minimize civilian causalities immediately became regime change and then very clearly NATO/US had no plan afterwards. We didn't care about the civilian causalities or Qaddafi being a dictator, we cared about the geopolitical leverage we could gain from getting rid of him, and once that was successful, we could care less what happened to the population.
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Feb 2, 2018 09:49
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What leverage? There was no real advantage to be gained, anywhere. There was a sense that something should be done, so they did a thing.
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Feb 2, 2018 09:56
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:What leverage? There was no real advantage to be gained, anywhere. There was a sense that something should be done, so they did a thing. Gadaffi even after he ended his WMD program was still largely anti-American and anti-Israeli in his rhetoric, and was making pretty significant inroads in gaining influence in the rest of Africa. He was still very unpopular in DC foreign policy circles, and there was an opening to get rid of him, and so he was gone. Also to be clear, I am not sure regime change would actually have been possible without the intervention of the US specifically. If it was simply up to the Europeans there intervention would have likely petered out to a lack of munitions and the civil war would have eventually boiled down to a stalemate. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 10:27 on Feb 2, 2018 |
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Feb 2, 2018 10:14
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:What leverage? There was no real advantage to be gained, anywhere. There was a sense that something should be done, so they did a thing. that report posted:According to these individuals Sarkozy’s plans are driven by the following issues: It further indicates that the British followed Frances lead. So leverage might not be the right term, but to whose advantage was toppling Saddam? To replace a hostile government with a friendly one and to gain lucrative oil contracts where you previously had none. Realize it isn’t much more complex, and it was that short sighted.
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Feb 2, 2018 10:22
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Lol Ross Kemp, but still I liked it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTgQ9dt9KUE No one in Europe gives enough of a poo poo about it turning into a literal slave market. If they did, maybe they'd hold NATO to account of turning it into such and actually do something about it. And the simple fact of most of the economy there now being based on human trafficking and enslavement would, in a better world, not even give any rise to theorycrafting objections of: "But at least that mean dictator I didn't like got owned, so that was cool!" What happened made the lives of the people there worse than before. End of. If tomorrow all the factions in it somehow united, and became a democracy free from the tyranny of dictators rah rah rah, it wouldn't matter one iota. It'd still be the same poo poo and its borders would still leak like a sieve (and organized crime would remain rampant), because the economy there now remains reliant on enslaving those that want to pass through to get to Europe and no other alternative is viable right now so long as this poo poo keeps going. CrazyLoon fucked around with this message at 11:02 on Feb 2, 2018 |
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Feb 2, 2018 10:52
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A big part of the entire issue is that the Libyan economy slowly but surely collapsed as both factions ran out of its Graffiti-era reserves and with it went the dinar. That opened the door for opportunism like literally slavery. Libya is a pretty text-book example letting a failed state happen due to a complete lack of interest. The war ended in 2011, and Libyan society has only slowly slid down the tubes.
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Feb 2, 2018 11:08
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Coldwar timewarp posted:I don’t think the support being pulled was a good idea. Supporting them in the first place to stick a finger in the eye of a historic enemy was a bad idea, after intervention support or not. Once again, NATO and the US don’t intervene everywhere, they purposely target some countries, this was an example of that. If the intervention for “freedom” argument isn’t pursued broadly, it’s horseshit. An excuse to do what you already wanted to do. The reason there wasn’t an appetite for “support” (which needed to be an occupation or stability ops) afterwards was the loving Iraq war which was another example of taking advantage of a crisis. The US did have ground troops gathering weapons there. Some of the men killed in Benghazi were in Libya attached to that mission. But after Benghazi, we as a nation came together to make the statement to the world that we value American lives far more than we do anyone else's. There were a bunch of protests and poo poo. In the face of that, Obama, who'd only agreed to Libya in the first place after being lobbied by a British/French coalition, caved, and Congress passed legislation shrinking our role in Libya. Nobody gave a gently caress about that, despite large Libyan protests standing against ansar al-sharia. Just get the US out. Over the course of the next year or two, the Libyan government started to find itself increasingly interrupted by militias, and it would ask for help. I remember one instance in particular where I think it was the parliament building was overrun, and mp's were being kidnapped. It was surreal. Everyone had just up and left. Of course the country fragmented in that environment. But that's not to say that it's a country that's inherently hosed forever. Libya has a lot of bright young activists in its corner that don't have our privilege to be cynical.
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Feb 2, 2018 11:28
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The guys that got killed were either protecting the Ambassador or state department, we weren't national building in Libya and militias had decided not to disarm well almost a year earlier. We got surprised by the mess we made (partly due to the fact we didn't want to send the money to even secure our own assets and staff). Benghazi was an embarrassment, it just wasn't some bizarre conspiracy that the GOP invented for themselves.
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Feb 2, 2018 11:37
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fishmech posted:You're basically asking us to imagine literally what happened with Austria after WWII lol. I mean to be fair Austria is a nazi-infested shithole in TYOOL 2018.
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Feb 2, 2018 11:40
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Ardennes posted:Gadaffi even after he ended his WMD program was still largely anti-American and anti-Israeli in his rhetoric, and was making pretty significant inroads in gaining influence in the rest of Africa. He was still very unpopular in DC foreign policy circles, and there was an opening to get rid of him, and so he was gone. I mean he also kicked things off by bombing peaceful protesters with jets and firing at them with Shilkas. Assad, for all his terribleness, took a lot longer to publicly get to that point. Granted that was largely because Assad was more western media savvy and knew that going on TV and openly declaring your plan to exterminate the rats (who are high on western drugged nescafe!) would look completely batshit to foreign audiences. That intervention kicked off because there was a major military force moving from Tripoli to Benghazi with the stated intention of exterminating a rebellious city. TBH if Ghaddaffi hadn't gone on TV and yelled about his plans to exterminate Benghazi the pressure to intervene wouldn't have been nearly as strong.
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Feb 2, 2018 12:27
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Sinteres posted:The Turkish backed rebels really seem like uptstanding guys.  i dont usually have the stomach for this at all and its apparently even worse when im sympathetic to the faction thats at the receiving ende: by "this" i meant anything on the ground about scw cargo cult fucked around with this message at 13:43 on Feb 2, 2018 |
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Feb 2, 2018 13:08
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Herstory Begins Now posted:I mean he also kicked things off by bombing peaceful protesters with jets and firing at them with Shilkas. Assad, for all his terribleness, took a lot longer to publicly get to that point. Granted that was largely because Assad was more western media savvy and knew that going on TV and openly declaring your plan to exterminate the rats (who are high on western drugged nescafe!) would look completely batshit to foreign audiences. That intervention kicked off because there was a major military force moving from Tripoli to Benghazi with the stated intention of exterminating a rebellious city. TBH if Ghaddaffi hadn't gone on TV and yelled about his plans to exterminate Benghazi the pressure to intervene wouldn't have been nearly as strong. The UK report makes it clear that our leaders believed it to be an exaggerated rant about destroying the rebellion, not an actual promise of genocide, but they used it as an excuse to intervene because it was an enormous gift to those who already wanted to do so. He was an unbelievable moron/unhinged idiot for saying it either way of course, but there's definitely some truth to the idea that if he'd otherwise been a more Western-friendly ruler he'd still probably be in charge (or replaced by an ostensibly better alternative from within the regime, like what eventually happened in Egypt).
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Feb 2, 2018 13:29
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Herstory Begins Now posted:I mean he also kicked things off by bombing peaceful protesters with jets and firing at them with Shilkas. Assad, for all his terribleness, took a lot longer to publicly get to that point. Granted that was largely because Assad was more western media savvy and knew that going on TV and openly declaring your plan to exterminate the rats (who are high on western drugged nescafe!) would look completely batshit to foreign audiences. That intervention kicked off because there was a major military force moving from Tripoli to Benghazi with the stated intention of exterminating a rebellious city. TBH if Ghaddaffi hadn't gone on TV and yelled about his plans to exterminate Benghazi the pressure to intervene wouldn't have been nearly as strong. As Sinteres said, the likelihood he would follow it through or hell could have (the Libyan army could have easily stalled on its own accord) wasn't especially high with the evidence we know of. Even if it was likely, limited strikes were possible, but instead we went for regime change using a unhinged rant as evidence. ......then we had zero plan afterward and let the country fall apart over the course of years. To have said in power, I think he would have had to shift his rhetoric pretty strong and became much more measured about US interventionism and the Israel-Palestine issue. He would have to do a near 180.
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Feb 2, 2018 13:47
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Does anyone have a link to that American (?) PDF about the IDF's mistakes in the 2006 Lebanon war?
Radio Prune fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Feb 2, 2018 |
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Feb 2, 2018 15:28
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cargo cult posted:
I'm already mentally steeling myself for the moment when all these shitbag mercenaries (or rebels too, I guess locals can be just as ugly) wind up doing something like this, tape it and Turkey defends it as 'fake news' or whatever (and most western media likely too, since NATO allies can do no wrong if they're needed badly I guess). CrazyLoon fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Feb 2, 2018 |
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Feb 2, 2018 17:19
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Radio Prune posted:Does anyone have a link to that American (?) PDF about the IDF's mistakes in the 2006 Lebanon war? http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/cgsc/carl/download/csipubs/matthewsOP26.pdf It was a simple google search, but I'm glad you reminded me this exists. e: quote:In the tactical arena, Hezbollah proved a worthy adversary for IDF ground forces. Its use of swarming ATGMs and RPGs against Israeli tanks was both shrewd and inventive. Of the 114 IDF personnel killed during the war, 30 were tank crewmen. Out of the 400 tanks involved in the fighting in southern Lebanon, 48 were hit, 40 were damaged, and 20 penetrated. It is believed that five Merkavas were completely destroyed. This reads differently now, after seeing countless ATGM videos out of Syria. Count Roland fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Feb 2, 2018 |
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Feb 2, 2018 23:02
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Awww the widdle rear end in a top hat billionaire is free to gently caress over Arab media again with his lovely children while actual normal good people are completely disappeared  https://twitter.com/alwaleed_talal/status/959485775187496960
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Feb 2, 2018 23:33
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Count Roland posted:http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/cgsc/carl/download/csipubs/matthewsOP26.pdf Working with local partners/cannon fodder seems to be the way other casualty averse countries are dealing with this, but Israel obviously doesn't have that option, and really really can't afford high casualties on their side, so it'll be interesting to see how they fight when the next war in Lebanon everyone on all sides assume is coming happens. You can bet on saturation bombing of course, but while air power has been decisive in Syria, the often slow pace at which forces backed by air power have had to advance against determined opponents still shows its limits, and Hezbollah's been preparing for this war ever since the last one. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Feb 2, 2018 |
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Feb 2, 2018 23:53
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Sinteres posted:Working with local partners/cannon fodder seems to be the way other casualty averse countries are dealing with this, but Israel obviously doesn't have that option, and really really can't afford high casualties on their side, so it'll be interesting to see how they fight when the next war in Lebanon everyone on all sides assume is coming happens. You can bet on saturation bombing of course, but while air power has been decisive in Syria, the often slow pace at which forces backed by air power have had to advance against determined opponents still shows its limits, and Hezbollah's been preparing for this war ever since the last one. I wonder how Hezbollah will behave in the next war. They're practically a conventional army at this point, and have gained a great deal of combat experience in Syria. But will this experience help them? Hezbollah's operation in Syria was basically counter-insurgency. It didn't have to worry about IAF jets overhead, the constant surveillance, the precision munitions etc. Perhaps the tools they used so well in 2006 have atrophied in this new environment. Plus given how messy the region is right now, a new war between these two could easily bring in other entities.
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Feb 3, 2018 00:08
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Sinteres posted:The UK report makes it clear that our leaders believed it to be an exaggerated rant about destroying the rebellion, not an actual promise of genocide, but they used it as an excuse to intervene because it was an enormous gift to those who already wanted to do so. He was an unbelievable moron/unhinged idiot for saying it either way of course, but there's definitely some truth to the idea that if he'd otherwise been a more Western-friendly ruler he'd still probably be in charge (or replaced by an ostensibly better alternative from within the regime, like what eventually happened in Egypt). I mean I agree with you that institutionally the US was excited af to finally gently caress over Ghadaffi. Still, yeah I don't think he was going to literally exterminate every man woman and child, but that military convoy was not going to Benghazi to peacefully enforce order. Dude was conducting bombing runs on protesters, pretty much all evidence is that he was planning to use a lot more military force on entirely civilian targets. I'm not even speaking to the later stages of the intervention, which are a whole other clusterfuck, just the initial attack where the convoy headed to Benghazi was bombed. You two are mentioning his unhinged rant in the sense that it should discredit him. He was still in control, he was just obviously going progressively farther down a batshit rabbithole. It seemed like he probably hadn't been sleeping since the protests kicked off and tbh I don't think anyone can really say what he was or wasn't capable of ordering at that point. Given how skillfully he had used divisions and rivalries between the major Libyan cities previously, it's hard to believe they were suddenly going to find a bunch of sympathy for the people of Benghazi. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Feb 3, 2018 |
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Feb 3, 2018 01:30
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Herstory Begins Now posted:I mean I agree with you that institutionally the US was excited af to finally gently caress over Ghadaffi. Still, yeah I don't think he was going to literally exterminate every man woman and child, but that military convoy was not going to Benghazi to peacefully enforce order. Dude was conducting bombing runs on protesters, pretty much all evidence is that he was planning to use a lot more military force on entirely civilian targets. He wasn't a nice guy, and deserved what happened to him. I don't think he was going to show up to Benghazi with candy and flowers to win them over or anything, but where he actually had captured cities, the carnage seemed to be relatively contained once the fighting ended. Urban warfare isn't pretty even in the best of circumstances, so I'm sure the city's capture would have been messy, but it's not like the last few years have been all sunshine and happiness either. The question is really if his crimes rose to the level of an open US effort to overthrow his regime under the flimsy pretext of a no fly zone rushed through the UN on the basis of the exaggerated fear of massacres in Benghazi, and that's where I think we went overboard. To be fair, even Russia abstained from that resolution, so it pased and was legitimate, and I think using that to actually enforce the no fly zone and even to bomb troops that approached Benghazi would have been a proportionate response to his words and actions, and that could perhaps have reasonably led to a partition, de facto or otherwise, but I still think what we actually did was too much. Count Roland posted:I wonder how Hezbollah will behave in the next war. On the plus side for Hezbollah, despite Israeli bombings I'm sure they actually have managed to smuggle weapons back to Lebanon with them, and if nothing else the experience of fighting against rebels using new tactics to avoid air power has to have taught them something about what they might want to try next time. On the minus side, they obviously still can't beat Israel in an open conflict, and Trump and the Saudis seem more likely than ever to give Israel a blank check to do whatever they want in Lebanon for longer than they'd usually get away with, so they might have more time to show strategic patience and soften targets from the air before sending in the troops. If I were an Israeli planner, I might be hoping to find a casus belli in the near future, before Hezbollah catches its breath with the end of the Syrian civil war, and maybe even hope for the chance to strike Iranian forces nearby/drag the US in to do that if they show signs of helping Hezbollah in the conflict. The problem with that though is that another embarrassing stalemate (which essentially counts as a defeat) would be really really bad for Israel. Plus Putin might not be thrilled to see Hezbollah forced home to defend themselves in Lebanon while fighting continues in Syria. I think the real concern for Israel is probably trying to figure out what exactly they hope to accomplish though, because it's not like they can occupy southern Lebanon again. Do they just extend the mowing the grass strategy to Lebanon and plan on periodic conflict to degrade Hezbollah's capabilities forever? Peace would be better of course, but if they feel that war is inevitable it creates incentives to act even if doing so doesn't lead to great outcomes. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Feb 3, 2018 |
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Feb 3, 2018 02:28
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I thought Hezbollah had largely withdrawn from Syria? e: actually I think I just heard some announcement from Nasrallah, which amounts to a big Mission Accomplished banner that may mean nothing for troop levels.
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Feb 3, 2018 04:30
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Some pretty interesting poll results following the protests in Iran. The headline is reductive. There's a lot of information in the article. https://twitter.com/Nussaibah/status/959537114827370497?ref_src=twcamp%5Ecopy%7Ctwsrc%5Eandroid%7Ctwgr%5Ecopy%7Ctwcon%5E7090%7Ctwterm%5E1
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Feb 3, 2018 08:13
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