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Lots of reports of attacks in various parts of Iraq https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1213530956965064704 https://twitter.com/ELINTNews/status/1213531053534699520
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Jan 4, 2020 19:43
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One thing I'm not quite getting is the justification for the assassination being the fact that Soleimani has "blood on his hands"... What is the US body count in the Middle East these days? Many magnitudes higher than Iran and an enormous number of those civilian. So by this logic, shouldn't the US leadership, past and present, also be a-okay for assassination?
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Jan 4, 2020 19:48
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Dog Friday posted:One thing I'm not quite getting is the justification for the assassination being the fact that Soleimani has "blood on his hands"... What is the US body count in the Middle East these days? Many magnitudes higher than Iran and an enormous number of those civilian. So by this logic, shouldn't the US leadership, past and present, also be a-okay for assassination? Yes. That's an inevitable conclusion and why people who aren't trump don't loving do this
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Jan 4, 2020 19:53
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https://twitter.com/ELINTNews/status/1213533465007861760 idk if that means just ranged attacks or more.
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Jan 4, 2020 19:55
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Dapper_Swindler posted:https://twitter.com/ELINTNews/status/1213533465007861760 Probably mortars and improvised rockets. They all get called 'missiles' by the media so its anybody's guess unless you're there
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Jan 4, 2020 20:05
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If Iran decided to “Shut down the Strait of Hormuz”, what would that actually look like. I know what it looks like geographically and that ~20% of the world’s oil flows through there and economists say shutting it down would be catastrophic for the world’s economy, but how would it physically work? Like, does Iran put missiles on the coast and threaten to blow up ships? Do they have a means to physically stop ships without weapons? Is it geographically advantageous enough that US carriers could not approach the Strait?
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Jan 4, 2020 20:10
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Dog Friday posted:One thing I'm not quite getting is the justification for the assassination being the fact that Soleimani has "blood on his hands"... What is the US body count in the Middle East these days? Many magnitudes higher than Iran and an enormous number of those civilian. So by this logic, shouldn't the US leadership, past and present, also be a-okay for assassination? I can't decide which is more wild: i) That Iraqi sovereignty isn't even a pretend thing and the US can just kill whoever, whenever, however in Iraq without apparently even notifying the Iraqi government; or ii) That a guy who wears a uniform and is a member of a defined, organized military, who commands troops in uniform, and who receives a salary and title from a sovereign nation, is a "terrorist" because he engages in irregular and not well-defined conflict against military targets in multiple countries as a way of exerting influence for his country. By that definition, isn't basically every American officer a terrorist? In how many countries is the American military just randomly setting people on fire from the air?
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Jan 4, 2020 20:14
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I think it’s more likely Iran will work with the international community to show America up with softer means than something as isolationist as closing the strait. America done hosed up here and will see it’s power wane massively across the board because of this decision
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Jan 4, 2020 20:14
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terrorist ambulance posted:I can't decide which is more wild: You're getting pretty close to what regular people outside of America think of American foreign policy.
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Jan 4, 2020 20:18
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Throatwarbler posted:You're getting pretty close to what regular people outside of America think of American foreign policy. I know, but I feel like Western media at least felt a bit of shame about it before and the administration would at least try to cloak it in a bit of PR or some baffles about the UN or international consensus or whatever. Now it's just mask off
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Jan 4, 2020 20:20
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terrorist ambulance posted:I can't decide which is more wild: Yeah this is correct, the US is a gangster state by any definition.
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Jan 4, 2020 20:21
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Dante80 posted:Well, they rolled out the flag.. Gonna hazzard a guess that this is not the first time in history the flag of Imam Hussain has been raised over a mosque in Iran...
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Jan 4, 2020 20:21
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kustomkarkommando posted:Gonna hazzard a guess that this is not the first time in history the flag of Imam Hussain has been raised over a mosque in Iran... It's the second time in all Irans' history. Take a guess what happened last time.
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Jan 4, 2020 20:23
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Slowpoke! posted:If Iran decided to “Shut down the Strait of Hormuz”, what would that actually look like. I know what it looks like geographically and that ~20% of the world’s oil flows through there and economists say shutting it down would be catastrophic for the world’s economy, but how would it physically work? At its narrowest point the strait has a shipping lane 2km wide. Iran fills that lane with sea mines and tells everyone, the shipping stops.
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Jan 4, 2020 20:24
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It's probably a good time to fill up your gas tank. A better time would have been January 1st.
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Jan 4, 2020 20:28
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Btw...what is the average price of unleaded gas in the US?
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Jan 4, 2020 20:31
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Dante80 posted:Btw...what is the average price of unleaded gas in the US? In my area it was 2.37-2.50 last week on Dec. 31
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Jan 4, 2020 20:33
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Phi230 posted:In my area it was 2.37-2.50 last week on Dec. 31 Is that per gallon? drat! that's cheap. I'd be content if we simply paid twice that here in Greece..O_o
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Jan 4, 2020 20:34
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Slowpoke! posted:If Iran decided to “Shut down the Strait of Hormuz”, what would that actually look like. I know what it looks like geographically and that ~20% of the world’s oil flows through there and economists say shutting it down would be catastrophic for the world’s economy, but how would it physically work?
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Jan 4, 2020 20:35
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terrorist ambulance posted:I know, but I feel like Western media at least felt a bit of shame about it before and the administration would at least try to cloak it in a bit of PR or some baffles about the UN or international consensus or whatever. Now it's just mask off The US has so intensely normalised this kind of violence over the last 20 years that they can do something like this and if you question it you're the one who is naive, or childish, or a terrorist sympathiser, or <insert other dumb poo poo here> It also doesn't matter that a literal decade long drone-bombing campaign in dozens of countries has managed to solve exactly jack and poo poo. There are people out there who want to do bad things to us. So we must do something. Extra-judicially killing them is something. So we must do this. Do not ever question this line of thinking.
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Jan 4, 2020 20:36
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Dante80 posted:Is that per gallon? drat! that's cheap. I'd be content if we simply paid twice that here in Greece..O_o Yeah but we drive a lot more. Just going to and from work everyday is a tank of gas a week to 1.5 weeks.
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Jan 4, 2020 20:36
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Dante80 posted:It's the second time in all Irans' history. Take a guess what happened last time. I am they are pretty common during Ashura and Muharram and iconic at Karbala, pitching it as the Red Flag Of War pretty much indicates the whole religious significance is whooshing violently over people's heads
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Jan 4, 2020 20:36
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Gobbeldygook posted:They would threaten to shoot passing ships but they also have underwater mines. If Iran announced that they mined the strait, nobody would risk passing through until the US demined the area. A task that would be suicidal with the range of Iranian ASMs barring an outright occupation without Iran's consent and de-escalation.
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Jan 4, 2020 20:38
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Of course deliberately drawing parallels between the martyrdom of soleimani and that of Hussain is p much screaming we are loving furious
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Jan 4, 2020 20:39
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Phi230 posted:Yeah but we drive a lot more. Just going to and from work everyday is a tank of gas a week to 1.5 weeks. lol what? Just driving to and from my last place of work was a tank of gas every 7 workdays and I paid ~1.65 euros per liter.
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Jan 4, 2020 20:39
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Dante80 posted:It's the second time in all Irans' history. Take a guess what happened last time. Iraq-Iran War? I actually don't know.
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Jan 4, 2020 20:40
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atelier morgan posted:Yes. That's an inevitable conclusion and why people who aren't trump don't loving do this Yeah, Trump decided this on a whim and there was nobody left who'd stand up and tell him that it was a bad idea. Killing someone like Suleimani only makes sense as the beginning of a serious, expensive and ferocious commitment to removing Iranian influence from Iraq and there's zero sign of that. Doing it in isolation is spectacularly dumb, as it just starts a fight that the Iranians are far better placed to win.
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Jan 4, 2020 20:45
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Gobbeldygook posted:They would threaten to shoot passing ships but they also have underwater mines. If Iran announced that they mined the strait, nobody would risk passing through until the US demined the area. Isn't the navy minesweeper fleet kind of in bad shape?
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Jan 4, 2020 20:46
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OhFunny posted:Iraq-Iran War? Yep. The important thing to take in though is that this symbolic gesture shows that Iran is not eager - like, at all - to leave the assassination unanswered. The best case scenario would be a series of small proxy attacks in Iraq. I don't think that will suffice though for them.
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Jan 4, 2020 20:53
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Zotix posted:Isn't the navy minesweeper fleet kind of in bad shape? In dire shape. Wasted all the maintenance on those LCS ships that didn't work and got cancelled. https://news.yahoo.com/more-mines-iran-ready-harass-112500802.html quote:Four of the Navy’s 11 1980s-vintage Avenger-class minesweepers sail from Bahrain and, if war broke out, would be responsible for clearing the strategic Strait of Hormuz and other important waterways of mines.
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Jan 4, 2020 20:57
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terrorist ambulance posted:I know, but I feel like Western media at least felt a bit of shame about it before and the administration would at least try to cloak it in a bit of PR or some baffles about the UN or international consensus or whatever. Now it's just mask off I sure can't remember this ever being the case.
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Jan 4, 2020 21:25
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OhFunny posted:In dire shape. Wasted all the maintenance on those LCS ships that didn't work and got cancelled. It's irrelevant, Iran can and would just say "we will shoot rockets at any fleet you send in to clean them up, suck my dick"
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Jan 4, 2020 21:29
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IRAN WILL SINK A CARRIER
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Jan 4, 2020 21:39
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WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:IRAN WILL SINK A CARRIER inshallah
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Jan 4, 2020 21:40
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My brother is deployed to Iraq and I am not feelin great about it.
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Jan 4, 2020 22:26
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People forget how hyped up the Republican Guard was before 2003 lol
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Jan 4, 2020 22:33
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Rival Shi'ite leaders and Iraq call for U.S. troop expulsion in rare show of unity I'm not going to quote anything since there's not much new. But it's looking like Sadr is is going to join with the Badr aligned parties to vote to expel US forces. If they succeed it will make this assassination possibly the greatest strategic blunders of the Trump administration thus far. Though I wonder if Trump even gives a poo poo about being kicked out of Iraq, and country I think he'd prefer to leave anyway CherryCola posted:My brother is deployed to Iraq and I am not feelin great about it. good news: he may be coming home soon!
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Jan 4, 2020 22:35
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Zotix posted:Isn't the navy minesweeper fleet kind of in bad shape? It doesn't help that within NATO minehunting (sweeping is mostly outdated) is one of the few things where the focus is on the European side of the alliance. As it's a lot more feasible capability to maintain for smaller navies than the big open water stuff the US is better suited to provide.
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Jan 4, 2020 22:36
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Frank Sidebottom posted:People forget how hyped up the Republican Guard was before 2003 lol https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f_whePVoqOY&t=290s
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Jan 4, 2020 22:38
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Flip Yr Wig posted:I sure can't remember this ever being the case. It wasn't hugely a thing in terms of shaping overall policy goals, but there absolutely was a long-standing tradition of at least providing some sort of charitably optimistic interpretation domestically of US FP goals that made us out to look like the good guys. It did occasionally influence policy in that if things were too entirely unspinnable they'd be avoided or done completely covertly. While it doesn't seem like much, not being openly the worst actor that you possibly can is a substantial and important bit of restraint.
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Jan 4, 2020 22:39
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