Meanwhile in Iraq & Syria

[Smitty-48]

The Russians are posting various videos of the base in the wake of the strikes, and It seems like pretty legit video, appears to be quite a lot of totally intact and still operational Sukhoi Su-22's, which are all Syrian, the Russians don't use those anymore, while all the hardened shelters which were struck apear to be empty as if the Syrians moved their jets out of there beforehand, so doesn't seem to have been targeting even the Syrian Air force assets, never mind the Russians.

This seems to be supporting my theory of political point scoring without intent to aggravate either the Russians or the Syrians...
The only hitch in the plan might be the obviousness of this...
We'll see how it plays out.

The partisan camps are utterly entrenched, you either wit Trump or you agin him, and that needle is not moving, so scoring isn't really relevant, doesn't need the points to hold his base, his opponents won't give him a single point no matter what he does, so it ain't points, because there is no functioning points system in play at this time and for the foreseeable future as well.

[Speaker to Animals]

It's a war for our nation's destiny. That's what it is. Really, a defensive war against our annihilation at the hands of the democrats if they succeed in destroying our demographics.

Trump is an asshole, but he's all we had to oppose this fate.

[Smitty-48]

And there's no movement in those lines, so keeping score is pointless, I would say its more ye olde Monica Lewinski Drill wag the dog distraction to change up the news cycle, while trying to differentiate himself from Obama, but not to score points, its seems more like they just don't have much to show for their first hundred days in office, and so its more of a hail mary to try to shore up his Presidential Bona Fides so they have something, anything, that they can spin as "getting shit done".

In terms of the strikes being shambolic, as in just for show but not actually doing any damage, that I suspect would be McMaster and Mattis telling him "if you actually do damage, that will demand retaliation from the Russians, and we will not be in control of where that goes, the Russians will have the initiative, we will be totally reactive to whatever the Russians decide to do, and quite frankly, you don't need that shit right now, Mr. President, so dog and pony show is the only way to go here".

[DBTrek]

Flip is right about sound and fury, but he's wrong about it being the government.

It's the media.
It's the internet denizens who can't put down their political microphones because dogma is their religion.
It's the irrelevant pundits who are constantly scrambling to say something even when there's nothing to say.

You know what happened here?
Assad went rogue, and dumped chemical weapons on enemy Syrians, again, like he has so many times before.
You know what we did?
We called the Russians and said "Enough of this bullshit. We told you we were gonna do something, and now you're just spitting in our face. Vacate the airbase because hell is raining down soon."
BOOM!
We cratered a mostly vacated airbase. Mostly vacated because we weren't kicking off WW3, and also because we weren't sitting on our hands anymore while Assad gasses countless enemies to death.

That's it. That's all that has happened here. We haven't stepped up engagement. We haven't moved to deploy troops. We haven't put any new rules, dictates, or sanctions on anyone or anything. We've said our piece on the matter and the Russians and Syrians know what's up. Drop that WMD and you're inviting us in. They probed. Now they now.

The way the internet carries on you'd think the apocalypse was right around the corner.
Ridiculous.

[kybkh]

FIRSTS!! #BenedictDonald

[Smitty-48]

Shayrat is not vacated, it's packed with SyAA and the Russians have actually expanded their operations there, it's the primary SyAA front line Su-22 fighter bomber base, and it has become the main forward operating base for the Russian's attack helicopters, so to fire 59 Tomahawks in there, and quite deliberately hit exactly jack shit, is taking things to the point where you shouldn't have bothered, you're not scaring anybody, the Syrians are not more scared of America than they are of the rebels, and the Russians know that America is not going to shoot cruise missiles at Russian forces, period, end of story, not going to happen, act of war against Russian forces is not on the table and won't ever be, intentionally at least, the only way you ever start actually trading fire with the Russians, will be by accident; missaprehension, miscalculation and/or mistake.

To try to front like you could significantly degrade Assad's forces to punish them for their actions, surgically removed from the Russians, is an empty threat, because if you start doing any significant damage to the Syrians, the Russians will put themselves in the way to protect their proxy, and then you won't be able to do it, Assad knows it, the Russians know it, and the Pentagon knows it, so trying to pretend otherwise just makes America look delusional.

Fronting like you're going to do something which everybody knows you're not really going to do, does not make America look less impotent in the face of the Russians and their proxies doing whatever they are going to do regardless, quite the opposite, so this is entirely counterproductive. Do, or do not, but there is no dog and pony show, that just outs your impotence all the more.

Essentially, if you don't actually have the military leverage, the worst thing you could do is to truck out the military, yes, I know that America does this all the time, but it is a critical flaw in American military application, thinking that employing the military makes you look tough and decisive, in situations where the opposite is actually the case.

[Okeefenokee]

Y'all been busy. I gotta catch up from page 14.

[Okeefenokee]

Have you ever heard of Vietnam?

What's more likely, this is merely saber rattling, or this is the next Vietnam?

oops.

[Okeefenokee]

I literally can't stop sucking dicks

That's 1800 tomahawks that fly at tree top level and destroy everything they are sent at. Parkers off the coast of Syria.

Saber rattling, nuke has never heard of it.

oops

[Okeefenokee]

Who would have thought back in the 70s that a white-bread kid from boondocks west Tennessee would be talking with urban eastern Canucks in a thread about WORLD WAR III and the Tennessee NHL team against the yankeeassed NHL teams all in one thread in an internet forum hosted by a pointy-head from the PNW that is a remnant of a forum from another pointy-head from the PNW who used to at least talk a little game against World War III?'

Go Preds.

whoa.

is this me john wayne? is that you?