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Ukraine accuses Russia of Occupation calls for help from US/UK

Weird because Demokrats use votes to send troops to war and then turn their backs on them... both for political expediency, and I think it's below scum?

Obviously you seem to be OK with sending troops to war for political expediency, and then turning on them for political expediency.

Fine. We know where you stand.

Obviously, I just think you're a weirdo.
 
You are, of course, correct. I suppose I feel more strongly about this because it was a very brave, single individual who was betrayed during the long search for OBL.

Good!
 
LOL... Lybia and Chad were at it before Gadafi was in power
And we were at it with Libya since the beginning of the 19th century. Your point?
and Egypt was planning to attack Libya. have you seen this:

http://www.sadat.umd.edu/archives/Egyptian_Israel Negotiations\4.pdf
Yes, they were mutually hostile, but that was mainly due to Gaddafi reaching out to the Soviet Union against Egyptian wishes and Libya's adamant opposition to any peace talks with Israel. Gaddafi was undermining Arab unity when Sadat was building it from scratch - it's really no wonder they were at odds.

Using the yellowcake as a commodity to sell, as bait.
(Sorry I didn't finish that sentence, I have no idea what happened.) On whose part? Are you suggesting that Gaddafi intended to bait someone else, or that the Khan network was baiting Gaddafi for no reason?

But the rebel movement is known to be a group worse than him. The only purpose can be to want a destabilized Middle east. There is no honorable purpose here. Libya will not be worse than it has been for decades.
Really? Did the rebels decide to keep proliferating, keep torturing prisoners dissidents en masse, and be openly hostile to the United States?

Why do you speak of actions four decades old? Is that the best you have?
Why does it matter how long ago it was? He's still the same guy, and there's no reason that he should be absolved of guilt just because he outlived the immediate responses?

What have they done to us, or other countries outside of chain rattling?
They've engaged in clashes with South Korea, kidnapped Americans, South Koreans, and Japanese, and have assiduously (if incompetently) tried to construct a nuclear arsenal.

I'm not going to look. Apparently you weren't watching back in 2011 when they were being pointed out. Go back and look at protest YouTube videos. Why do peaceful protester carry weapons? In some of these, you see them firing first if you look closely, unless in over site they were shown and have been pulled since.
LOL, it's your claim, it's your job to provide the evidence. I'm not required to prove your point for you.

You know why we knocked out Gaddafi?

It;'s because he was starting to become a big player in the world game. He had a strong economy and wanted to unite Africa. He had the 8th wonder built, and Libya was thriving. Too bad we bombed the 8th wonder. Anyone know if it ever got repaired?

:roll:
 
'VLAD THE BAD STEALS A MARCH ON THE WEST
by Eric Margolis


Soviet leader Josef Stalin used to shrug off critics by his favorite Central Asian saying: “The dogs bark; the caravan moves on.”
Russia’s hard-eyed president, Vladimir Putin, is following the same strategy over Ukraine and Crimea.
Putin swiftly moved his knight into the empty chess square of Crimea, thereby regaining full control of one of Russia’s four strategic port regions: Sevastopol, Murmansk, St Petersburg and Vladivostok.
Sevastopol, now firmly in Moscow’s hands, is Russia’s sole gateway to the Black Sea, Mediterranean, and Mideast. The vast, co-shared Russian-Ukrainian Sevastopol naval base was a shaky, awkward arrangement doomed to eventual failure.
Semi-autonomous Crimea, over 60% ethnic Russian, will hold a referendum on 16 March to decide to remain in Ukraine or rejoin Russia. A referendum is clearly the answer to the whole Ukraine-Russia problem.
Ukraine has been a corruption-ridden failed state since it separated from Russia in 1991. This writer has long suggested that partition of Ukraine into Western and Russian-oriented halves is the sensible solution, with Crimea returning to Russia.
Putin asks if Western-backed Kosovo can go independent of Serbia, why can’t Crimea break its links with Kiev?
The temporary attachment of majority ethnic Russian Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 after 250 years of Russian rule was unnatural, a ticking time bomb. It has now exploded, triggered in part by the West’s successful effort to overthrow the elected but corrupt government in Kiev of Viktor Yanukovich.
Overturning regimes deemed uncooperative or hostile has long been a CIA specialty. Its first big success came in 1953 with the subversion of Iran’s democratic-nationalist leader, Mohammed Mossadegh by a combination of propaganda, rented crowds, and bribes. We saw this same technique used – enhanced by modern social media – in Ukraine’s first Orange Revolution, Georgia, again in Iran(unsuccessfully), and, with the help of US and British special forces, in Libya and Syria. Egypt came next, where a US-backed tinpot military dictator, the self-appointed “Field Marshall al-Sisi” claims he is answering the people’s call.” Not a peep from Washington. Or about the crushing of opposition by Bahrain’s US-backed monarchy.
Russia, which used to be adept at subversion, has lagged in recent years but it still knows the signs. The Kremlin is convinced that Ukraine’s latest revolution was engineered by Washington. The US Undersecretary of State for Europe admitted Washington has spent $5 billion over recent years in Ukraine to bring it into the West’s orbit – aka “building democracy.”
Two points to note. Did Washington think that tough Vlad Putin would just take its coup lying down?
Second, it’s amazing how determined Washington’s cold warriors remain to tear down Russia. The bankrupt US, $17 trillion in debt, running on money borrowed from China, with bridges collapsing and 44 million citizens on food stamps, suddenly finds the money to offer bankrupt Ukraine a new $1 billion loan – just to compete with Moscow. A loan unlikely to be repaid.
America has a bad habit of personalizing foreign affairs and demonizing uncooperative leaders. Remember when Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser was denounced as “Hitler on the Nile?” “Khadaffi, Mad Dog of the Mideast?” Most Americans have little knowledge of geography, history or world affairs so the easiest way to market overseas adventures to them is by creating foreign bogeymen like Khadaffi and Saddam.
Vladimir Putin is the latest. He is being hysterically demonized by the US and British media. Vlad the Bad.
Disturbingly, US Republicans and the usual media propagandists are heaping blame on President Barack Obama for “losing Crimea,” as if any of them knows where it was before last week. John McCain and his sidekick Sen. Lindsey Graham have been demanding that Obama “get tough.”
Sure. Let’s mine Russia’s ports or blockade its oil and gas exports. Nothing like a nuclear war to show how weak the Democrats are. Thank god McCain did not win the presidency. The dolts at Fox TV can’t tell the difference between caution and cowardice.
President Putin’s ambition is to slowly reassemble some parts of the old USSR, Ukraine being the most important. Doing so is in Russia’s national interest, much as we may not like it. Nearly all Russians believe Putin is on the right track. By contrast, Washington wants to keep Russia weak and treat it as an obsequious, defeated nation, like postwar Germany or Japan.
The US won’t accept that Russia has any legitimate spheres of influence, while Washington’s span the globe. Last week, US Secretary of State John Kerry, who used to be a sensible fellow before becoming corrupted by power, blasted Russia: “you just don’t invade a country under a phony pretext!”
I guess Kerry has never heard of the US invasions of the Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Libya. Or can’t remember Vietnam and the Gulf of Tonkin “incident.”
Kerry should cut the hypocrisy and get to work on a diplomatic settlement. Two major nuclear-armed powers cannot – must not – be allowed to confront one another.
Ukraine could turn out to be the 1914 Bosnia-Herzegovina of our era if we don’t stop primitive breast-beating over a region no one could even find on a map until recently'

VLAD THE BAD STEALS A MARCH ON THE WEST « Eric Margolis
 
'VLAD THE BAD STEALS A MARCH ON THE WEST
by Eric Margolis


Soviet leader Josef Stalin used to shrug off critics by his favorite Central Asian saying: “The dogs bark; the caravan moves on.”
Russia’s hard-eyed president, Vladimir Putin, is following the same strategy over Ukraine and Crimea....

....

....The US won’t accept that Russia has any legitimate spheres of influence, while Washington’s span the globe. Last week, US Secretary of State John Kerry, who used to be a sensible fellow before becoming corrupted by power, blasted Russia: “you just don’t invade a country under a phony pretext!”

I guess Kerry has never heard of the US invasions of the Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Libya. Or can’t remember Vietnam and the Gulf of Tonkin “incident.” Kerry should cut the hypocrisy and get to work on a diplomatic settlement. Two major nuclear-armed powers cannot – must not – be allowed to confront one another.

Ukraine could turn out to be the 1914 Bosnia-Herzegovina of our era if we don’t stop primitive breast-beating over a region no one could even find on a map until recently'

VLAD THE BAD STEALS A MARCH ON THE WEST « Eric Margolis

That's an excellent article. I agree with much of what he says, but I disagree that Putin can be said to be simply acting in his own nation's best interests. He is acting in Russia's best interests, but slyly, hypocritically and pretty ruthlessly. This passage is very apropos:
Last week, US Secretary of State John Kerry, who used to be a sensible fellow before becoming corrupted by power, blasted Russia: “you just don’t invade a country under a phony pretext!”

I guess Kerry has never heard of the US invasions of the Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Libya. Or can’t remember Vietnam and the Gulf of Tonkin “incident.”
The author however fails to remind us of Putin's elegant and verbose criticisms of the US and its allies' interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Afghanistan (twice - 1980 & 2001), Iraq, Georgia, Kosovo and that list above, have all been justified with disingenuous, self-serving rationalisations. 'Preventive war', 'humanitarian protection of civilian populations' or 'democracy building' - they're all weasel words invented by resurgent imperialists.

This article makes some good points too:
Putin’s casus belli may be one he manufactured largely by himself, but so was George W. Bush’s case for going to war in Iraq. America’s perma-hawks — the politicians and pundits who beat the drums for intervention in Iraq and now criticize President Obama for insufficient bellicosity about Ukraine — need to explain why the infinitely self-serving doctrine of “preventive war,” which they used to justify our Iraq adventure, should be reserved for us alone. Russia’s military installations in Crimea, Putin has said, were threatened by Ukrainian revolutionaries. When power needs a threat to justify its exercise, power invariably finds one. (My emphasis)

So, we can all be clear. Neither the mobilisation of Russian forces in the Crimea, nor the forthcoming referendum, nor the motivations behind the leaders of the Kiev coup, nor the coordinated outrage of the Western powers have really anything to do with either the promotion or preservation of democracy. The West ignores democratic concerns when it suits - witness the silence on the military counter-coup in Egypt - and Russia ignores elected leaders when it suits, and cries croco-democratic tears when that seems expedient. The US imposes or denigrates the Monroe doctrine at will, according to whim, tide and Wall Street.

Whatever the unrest in Ukraine is really about, three things you can categorically say it is NOT about, are democracy, human rights and respect for the rule of international law.
 
Obviously, I just think you're a weirdo.

And the reason for your claim is what exactly?
That I find people who vote to send troops to war and then stab them in the back... both for political advantage... worse vile scum?

This oughta be good.
 
And the reason for your claim is what exactly?
That I find people who vote to send troops to war and then stab them in the back... both for political advantage... worse vile scum?

This oughta be good.

That you call like a hundred million people "evil scum" because they don't agree with you on your interpretation of events and purposely spell their names wrong in order to....I don't know what...yeah, that's weird. Is that something that adults normally do, where you're from?
 
I figured you had done what Demokrats have a bad habit of doing. Either we find someone had reading comprehension problems, or they twist what was stated. You can tell the class which of these has been your problem.
That you call like a hundred million people "evil scum" because they don't agree with you on your interpretation of events and purposely spell their names wrong in order to....I don't know what...yeah, that's weird. Is that something that adults normally do, where you're from?
I didn't realize Congress had 100 million legislators. Go back and read the post again... it's not the first time I've used the line because people shouldn't forget what the Demokrats in Congress did... I said something along these lines...

QUOTE "The Demokrats voted to send troops to war for political expediency, and then stabbed these same troops in the back when they needed their support most... also for political expediency... these folks are lower than vile scum." END QUOTE

And these folks who used the most important vote an elected official can make, voting to send troops to war... because it was the politically expedient thing to do in the aftermath of 911 and then turning on the troops in an attempt to win elections is beyond disgusting and is lower than vile scum.

The aim was taken at those in Congress who used these votes and actions for political purposes... BUT...Those who supported such actions for political expediency can know deep in their hearts they earned the tag as well.

PS. For the record... I don't think there are 100 million Demokrats. There is a lot of stupidity, but not that many.
 
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I figured you had done what Demokrats have a bad habit of doing. Either we find someone had reading comprehension problems, or they twist what was stated. You can tell the class which of these has been your problem. I didn't realize Congress had 100 million legislators. Go back and read the post again... it's not the first time I've used the line because people shouldn't forget what the Demokrats in Congress did... I said something along these lines...

QUOTE "The Demokrats voted to send troops to war for political expediency, and then stabbed these same troops in the back when they needed their support most... also for political expediency... these folks are lower than vile scum." END QUOTE

And these folks who used the most important vote an elected official can make, voting to send troops to war... because it was the politically expedient thing to do in the aftermath of 911 and then turning on the troops in an attempt to win elections is beyond disgusting and is lower than vile scum.

The aim was taken at those in Congress who used these votes and actions for political purposes... BUT...Those who supported such actions for political expediency can know deep in their hearts they earned the tag as well.

PS. For the record... I don't think there are 100 million Demokrats. There is a lot of stupidity, but not that many.

Okay, that type of vitriol is just weird, man.
 
Okay, that type of vitriol is just weird, man.

Vitriol towards politicians who use their votes to send troops to war for political expediency is not only justified, it should be accepted as normal... not weird. Weird is thinking it is weird.
 
Vitriol towards politicians who use their votes to send troops to war for political expediency is not only justified, it should be accepted as normal... not weird. Weird is thinking it is weird.

Hmm...nahhhh. It's weird. Weird how you choose to see it that way, weird how you misspell the name, weird how you vilify so many people.

Signed,
2x OIF, 1x OND, 1x GWOT-E vet.
 
You are lost, Mate!

Um, US foreign policy is designed and implemented by a very few, though when speaking of US doing something, its a given that one doesn't mean all 300+ million Americans are complicit or involved at all. And no president is conducting US foreign policy, single handedly.
 
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