Aussie wrote on Sep 17^th, 2014 at 7:38pm:


The US initially supported ISIL in Syria.

What is left to say?

What is left to say Karnal is that the U.S. if they did support ISIL got it horribly wrong.

This only heightens the onus on those that f.....d it up to go in and put things to rights.

I think it is fanciful that Obama think he can solve this with the Air Force and Advisers.

Obama has always been piss weak and has been pushed into this. I believe the highest ranking U.S. General when he said he believed it likely Combat troops would get involved.

Karnal wrote on Sep 17^th, 2014 at 10:06pm:


I'm still curious, Red. Do you think we got it horribly wrong in Iraq and Nam as well?

red baron wrote on Sep 18^th, 2014 at 2:45pm:



Where are you getting this information from?

Who told you that there is "considerable support" among Muslims for ISIL?

Where did you pull that 10% figure from?

Why not a figure of 0.01%?

red baron wrote on Sep 18^th, 2014 at 3:37pm:



You didn't answer my questions.

Who told you that there is "considerable support" among Muslims for ISIL?

Where did you pull that figure of 10% from?

greggerypeccary wrote on Sep 18^th, 2014 at 3:42pm:


I don't know where the figure is coming from but I do enjoy your "tactics".  No doubt if a source for that figure is presented you will immediately shift to saying the source is not reputable. 

It is just the way you roll. 

I have no idea why the forum sandalistas even when presented with evidence of grinning loons from Australia holding up heads still deny there is a problem with Islamic terrorism and it is alive within the Muslim community within Australia. 

I guess after a lifetime of doing making apologies, grovelling statements of mitigation and lots of "hey look over there!" It becomes unthinking second nature.

red baron wrote on Sep 18^th, 2014 at 2:45pm:


You're right there. We backed Saddam gassing the Kurds. Uncle vetoed a UN resolution against Saddam's attacks on the Kurds on the Security Council, and Australia has a policy of supporting Uncle on the UN every step of the way.

The gassing of the Kurds did not even become an issue until Kuwait brought it up after Saddam's invasion of them. And after we went into Iraq the first time, there was a deliberate policy to leave Saddam in place. When the Iraqis themselves armed up to fight Saddam, US troops allowed them to be captured by Saddam's Republican Guard in the territories the US held.

Quote:


Uncle himself supported ISIL in 2012. How quickly things change. When Syrians armed to fight Assad, Uncle thought all his Christmases had come at once. Now, it seems, the policy is to leave Assad where he is - the way the US backed Saddam, and after Saddam, Gaddafi.

Well, we first backed Saddam, then not Saddam. Then not Gaddafi, then Gaddafi, then not Gaddafi again.

In Syria, it was not Assad, then tacit approval of Assad. In Iran, it's still not the Mullahs - there are still sanctions in place - but Uncle's starting to rely on Iran in his war against Sunni terrorism. In Iraq, Uncle supports the Shi'ah regime that is starting to look a bit like Saddam, only different, so it makes sense that he'll soften towards the Mullahs in Iran, who are the enemies of his enemies enemies. Confused?

How do you think local populations feel?

And how do you expect all those Australians to know which groups are listed as terrorist organizations? Many wouldn't even know which organizations they're fighting for or sending money to.

This is a problem, sure. But if you've got relatives in Syria or Iraq who's lives are being threatened by the regimes in those countries, what do you do? Do you stay calm and hope Uncle sorts it out?

Uncle doesn't even know which side he's on.

You're making a big mistake to assume that Syrian or Iraqi nationals support head-hacking extremists for the pure head-hacking extremism of it all. Syria is at war. The Islamic State is a by-product of that war. I don't know what the percentage is - 10%? 20%? 99.9%?  - but many Australians sending funds or fighting in that war are there to defend friends and family from the Assad regime. Many just want to topple that axis-of-evil villain, Bashar al Assad.

You know, like Uncle once did.

How oculd you NOT make mistakes in your analysis of the situation in Syria and Iraq? Even the Central Intelligence Agency makes mistakes. The White House, in particular, has been known to make a few mistakes itself - Saddam's mysterious WMDs, for example, have never been found. Those nuclear fuel rods disguised as pipes?

They turned out to be pipes.

And every single regime backed by Uncle in the Middle East over the past 30 years or so - ALL have been guilty of some form of genocide, violations of human rights including torture, terrorist support, or corruption on the grandest of scales. Hosni Mubarak, for example, is believed to have been one of the richest men in the world. No one knows how much still sits in those numbered Swiss bank accounts.

It seems to me that the perpetrators of the incidents you're describing - genocide, gassing, terrorism - need to be brought to justice based on one set of criteria only: which ones AREN'T backed by Uncle.

We can pick a country at random, based on whomever we like or don't like at a random point in time. Like our last invasion of Iraq, we can take out more than 200,000 civilians. We won't call it genocide, but "collateral damage". And when the boss we put in charge turns out to be as big a bastard as the last one, we can go in again - only we won't call it invasion, but "humanitarian support".

Yes Red, we got in wrong in Nam, we got in wrong in Iraq, and we will, most likely, get it wrong next time too.

Quote:


Don't you ever get tired of trying to put things right?

red baron wrote on Sep 18^th, 2014 at 4:06pm:



Stop being a child, red.

I asked you my questions first.

Get out from under your bed, grow a set of balls, and be a man for once in your life.

Who told you that there is "considerable support" among Muslims for ISIL?

Where did you pull that figure of 10% from?