Meanwhile in Iraq & Syria

[Okeefenokee]

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.

except we are seeing the media cosying up to him. and we are seeing anti-trump posters here praising him. yeah, except for that.

[Martin Hash]

"When something doesn't make sense, it's probably nonsense." - me

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones." - Donald Rumsfeld.

There's something to be said about brevity in a quote.

[Okeefenokee]

It's definitely not "Vietnam", America got dragged into Vietnam by an American proxy, namely the French, Syria has been a Soviet/Russian proxy since 1946, there's no oil in Syria, there's nothing of any consequence to the United States in Syria, the only reason the United States needed to have any concerns about Syria was while the United States had large numbers of troops occupying Iraq, but now that they are out, there's absolutely nothing tying the United States to Syria, not even the "Zionists", because in the end, the Israelis don't even want the United States in Syria, when it comes to dealing with Hezbollah, the Israelis don't even want a "partner", because the Israelis want carte blanche to be able to do whatever they think they need to do, whether the United States agrees or not.

There's absolutely no American strategic interest in Syria, the Russians being in there dealing with their own shit, the Turks having to do deal with it rather than having America dealing with it for them, this is all in America's interests, it's actually one of the few countries, which even as the "preeminent superpower", the United States could really afford to completely ignore.

you just explained why we didn't want anymore foreign intervention.

[apeman]

It's funny to see Zoolander Trudeau falling over himself to lick Trump's balls all of a sudden, heaping praise on him for his TLAMma-bamma-ding-dong

Turns out the ultimate virtue signaling involves death by gas. Other death doesn't have the same accessory value.

The lowest thing on the oppression ladder is gas victims. Actually more reasonable than everything else on the oppression ladder, as far as I can tell.

[Smitty-48]

It's definitely not "Vietnam", America got dragged into Vietnam by an American proxy, namely the French, Syria has been a Soviet/Russian proxy since 1946, there's no oil in Syria, there's nothing of any consequence to the United States in Syria, the only reason the United States needed to have any concerns about Syria was while the United States had large numbers of troops occupying Iraq, but now that they are out, there's absolutely nothing tying the United States to Syria, not even the "Zionists", because in the end, the Israelis don't even want the United States in Syria, when it comes to dealing with Hezbollah, the Israelis don't even want a "partner", because the Israelis want carte blanche to be able to do whatever they think they need to do, whether the United States agrees or not.

There's absolutely no American strategic interest in Syria, the Russians being in there dealing with their own shit, the Turks having to do deal with it rather than having America dealing with it for them, this is all in America's interests, it's actually one of the few countries, which even as the "preeminent superpower", the United States could really afford to completely ignore.

you just explained why we didn't want anymore foreign intervention.

There are countries which it would be in the United States interests to intervene on behalf of, there are countries where the United States has massive investments, and/or which are strategically located and vital to US freedom of navigation, what have you, but Syria, I mean, literally, at the absolute bottom of the list of countries which the United States has any interest, it's just not in your wheelhouse, they really don't rate, that you would actually be dicing and dancing around the Russians, over Syria, is kind of stunning, even from a Hawkish Interventionist point of view, doesn't even rate, on the uber Interventionist Hawk spectrum of interest.

[Speaker to Animals]

It's funny to see Zoolander Trudeau falling over himself to lick Trump's balls all of a sudden, heaping praise on him for his TLAMma-bamma-ding-dong

Turns out the ultimate virtue signaling involves death by gas. Other death doesn't have the same accessory value.

The lowest thing on the oppression ladder is gas victims. Actually more reasonable than everything else on the oppression ladder, as far as I can tell.

You'd think death by lost cruise missile would rank in there somewhere.

[Smitty-48]

It's funny to see Zoolander Trudeau falling over himself to lick Trump's balls all of a sudden, heaping praise on him for his TLAMma-bamma-ding-dong

Turns out the ultimate virtue signaling involves death by gas. Other death doesn't have the same accessory value.

The lowest thing on the oppression ladder is gas victims. Actually more reasonable than everything else on the oppression ladder, as far as I can tell.

I can't actually say it's not a sound strategy, because the Liberals here are not going to up the defence budget, never mind "meeting the NATO goal of 2%", they're going to cut defence spending to well below 1%, but they've clearly sussed out that they can avoid getting any heat from Trump over that, so long as they are prepared to render obseqious praise unrestrained unto Ceasar, Trump is after all, a sucker for sychophants.

[Okeefenokee]

It's definitely not "Vietnam", America got dragged into Vietnam by an American proxy, namely the French, Syria has been a Soviet/Russian proxy since 1946, there's no oil in Syria, there's nothing of any consequence to the United States in Syria, the only reason the United States needed to have any concerns about Syria was while the United States had large numbers of troops occupying Iraq, but now that they are out, there's absolutely nothing tying the United States to Syria, not even the "Zionists", because in the end, the Israelis don't even want the United States in Syria, when it comes to dealing with Hezbollah, the Israelis don't even want a "partner", because the Israelis want carte blanche to be able to do whatever they think they need to do, whether the United States agrees or not.

There's absolutely no American strategic interest in Syria, the Russians being in there dealing with their own shit, the Turks having to do deal with it rather than having America dealing with it for them, this is all in America's interests, it's actually one of the few countries, which even as the "preeminent superpower", the United States could really afford to completely ignore.

you just explained why we didn't want anymore foreign intervention.

There are countries which it would be in the United States interests to intervene on behalf of, there are countries where the United States has massive investments, and/or which are strategically located and vital to US freedom of navigation, what have you, but Syria, I mean, literally, at the absolute bottom of the list of countries which the United States has any interest, it's just not in your wheelhouse, they really don't rate, that you would actually be dicing and dancing around the Russians, over Syria, is kind of stunning, even from a Hawkish Interventionist point of view, doesn't even rate, on the uber Interventionist Hawk spectrum of interest.

A weapon sold is a weapon sold. Strategic importance does not factor into that math.

[StCapps]

I can't actually say it's not a sound strategy, because the Liberals here are not going to up the defence budget, never mind "meeting the NATO goal of 2%", they're going to cut defence spending to well below 1%, but they've clearly sussed out that they can avoid getting any heat from Trump over that, so long as they are prepared to render obseqious praise unrestrained unto Ceasar, Trump is after all, a sucker for sychophants.

I had a sneaking suspicion Trudeau was just waiting for a moment to heap praise on Trump that he could sell to his base. Didn't take very long for that instinct to be proven correct.

[Smitty-48]

you just explained why we didn't want anymore foreign intervention.

There are countries which it would be in the United States interests to intervene on behalf of, there are countries where the United States has massive investments, and/or which are strategically located and vital to US freedom of navigation, what have you, but Syria, I mean, literally, at the absolute bottom of the list of countries which the United States has any interest, it's just not in your wheelhouse, they really don't rate, that you would actually be dicing and dancing around the Russians, over Syria, is kind of stunning, even from a Hawkish Interventionist point of view, doesn't even rate, on the uber Interventionist Hawk spectrum of interest.

A weapon sold is a weapon sold. Strategic importance does not factor into that math.

You're buying 2200 more TLAM's either way, don't scapegoat the MIC, MIC doesn't actually want kinetic operations, because operations cut into the capital budget, the MIC gets more money if you don't fight, they want you to buy the weapons, but then just line them up on the parade square all pretty and worship at them like an altar.

What the MIC wants, is Ronald Reagan; the biggest military spending buildup in the history of the world, but nary a shot fired, except for Grenada.

This ain't the MIC, this is all about the MSM and the Humanitarian Pixie Dust.