Obama does not support war with Iran. This is silly. He has said that he will not categorically rule out military action against Iran for every logically possible hypothetical situation. The only reason he even has to make these kinds of statements is because he is asked stupid questions about vaguely ominous but non-specific hypotheticals.

He does support increased action in Afghanistan.

But this logic is bad: "If candidate supports military action in scenario X than it is unreasonable to believe that he truly opposes military action in scenario Y"

he's been against it from the begining - i won't argue that.

also, remind me to discuss The Church Committee, George H. W. Bush, and how that ties into the Kennedy assasination.

a lot of people who are voting obama are doing it because they dont want our troops dying. Many of these people dont understand or care about the issues there, they just dont think American lives should be lost to fight wars in the middle east that have "nothing to do with us"

dustin's point might have been that Obama is in no way anti-war or anti-military, contrary to popular belief

LBJ had Kennedy killed, but i think this is a discussion for another thread

No, sorry.

Once again I'll delete a big long rant. Suffice it to say that I'm fairly moderate on Iraq withdrawal (in that I believe we need to have safe withdrawal as a primary goal, but I'm not nearly so rigid on IT MUST BE IN 18 MONTHS are the far-left is), but that this kind of hyper-nationalistic sentiment that conflates opposition to a war with not supporting the troops or country is precisely the kind of thing that I find disgusting about the Republican party.

And I'll also say that in my anecdotal evidence, comparing today's anti-war sentiment with the troop disrespect that surrounded Vietnam is just ridiculous. I went to school and live in Madison, one of the more historically liberal colleges/cities in the US, and not once have I ever caught even the slightest hint that those who were anti-war were anything but fully supportive of the troops.

this is wrong and why wouldn't we discuss it here?

LBJ did not have the power to have Kennedy killed.

are we making progress in iraq?
is us being there helping those people?
Are you supporting the troops by saying, "Thank you for fighting in a war that we shouldnt be in, our lives are being lost for no reason, the iraqi people's freedom was not worth the lives we are losing, but thanks, we appreciate you?"

stop painting this as the Republican party point of view. We are having a discussion here

also, that reminds me of something that ties into Russia-Georgia

Why would the CIA send a spy plane over Russia during the cuban missile crisis that could have easily been mistaken for a bomber?

earlier Amp and I were discussing the motivations for the demonizing of Russia thats taking place and I suggested that these people could be insane and actually want war with Russia. The fact that they were crazy enough to send a spy plane over Russia during that period goes to support that.

It didn't help these people.

so that means war is never good, because innocent people die

got it

Um, the sole thing on that list that I can see being reducible to "campaign promises" is his tax plan. That is also why I explicitly listed health care reform as something I left off. The rest are positions, process, or things that he has a previous record of involvement in.

Then don't watch the sound bite media?

Treating television news and light-weight news magazines as nothing more than the sideshow entertainment they are makes it much easier to find legitimate journalism, or to find highly partisan journalism and then research the claims being made by each side.

LBJ was definitely against everything Kennedy stood for. Of course I am only speculating, i have no hard evidence that it was LBJ, but i think it makes sense

Sure, to make an omelet you have to break a few eggs. Or kill a hundred thousand civilians.

Mets,

Do you really believe that LBJ was the man behind the Kennedy assassination?

Because if you do then I'm very surprised at a lot of your views.

I think Jagger pretty clearly stated that it was you and me.

I missed your cross-post

check out this video

its 88 minutes long
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...31689287456187

i do, but i admit that i am not that well versed on it. I remember doing research in high school and that was the opinion that i came up with, but i honestly don't remember exactly what my exact argument was besides the fact that he didnt like kennedy

so, like i said, it is just a theory, id have to reresearch it again to think if that's how i really feel

actually, if we are going to start getting into some conspiracy stuff then watch this one on JFK Junior

I actually like this one better because a lot of people are unaware of JFK Jr and there isn't nearly as much murkiness

(not that the Zapruder film is murky but you get what im saying)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...62717908405974

I wasn't going to post again in here and just skim, but this is pretty much a layup.

You have defined a situation where it would take MUCH longer than listed to conquer the countries military. I am defining conquer as removing any credible threat, and assume surrender is not an option. Any smart military will go gorilla when face overwhelming forces, or when the situation becomes untenable from a conventional standpoint. Gorilla warfare is an extremely asymmetric threat, and always leads to the larger force losing far more resources than the smaller force.

Asymmetric threats are one of the reason why armed conflict is so unattractive. They are just brutally effective. Even if you are not facing suicide bombers or terrorists (say like you invade Germany, and they do not want to hurt any German nationals and are not suicidal) you are just in a tough spot. You can kill everyone and raze everything, but other than that if the gorilla movement has popular support you are just corn holed. You are in for a very long fight where the enemy is spending a tiny fraction of the amount you are. And some place like Chile would be far worse than someplace like Germany because of the myriad areas of dense cover and sparsely populated regions that Germany does not have.

Can we keep this thread on politics, and away from ridiculous conspiracy theories of all stripes?

Note I did put italics around that word. Also I was responding to you, and you used the word also.

I'll cop to not paying attention enough, so for the record, I have no idea if the US is failing in Iraq or not. But I am aware that the definition of "failing" is malleable enough to support either argument.

Zurvan,

Perhaps you should go into politics and find one of those tin-foil hat cat pictures and post that in here?

"But I am aware that the definition of "failing" is malleable enough to support either argument."

disagree

Also Zurvan,

This thread started because I was posting about how the entire MSM and American Political establishment is lying to us about Russia-Georgia

is that not a conspiracy theory?