LaxPower Back-Up Stick

old salt wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 8:42 pm

MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 7:37 pm

DocBarrister wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 7:04 pm This should put to rest any idiotic notion that Erdogan “blindsided” or “forced” Trump into allowing Turkey to invade Syria. Trump, who has significant personal commercial interests in Turkey, ENDORSED Turkey’s invasion.


WASHINGTON — In a major shift in United States military policy in Syria, the White House said on Sunday that President Trump had given his endorsement for a Turkish military operation that would sweep away American-backed Kurdish forces near the border in Syria.

Turkey considers the Kurdish forces to be a terrorist insurgency, and has long sought to end American support for the group.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/us/p ... syria.html

Trump betrayed the Kurds, and he did it willingly, probably to protect his commercial interests in Turkey.

DocBarrister

The latter bit about Trump's motivation is speculative, but the rest appears to be confirmed.
And he did it without warning the Kurds, without consultation from his own advisors, and without consultation of our allies.
Which is why R's are going nuts, not just D's.

But Salty, true to form, says this is the right move by Trump...gee, what does Russia think?

Stop trying to speak for me. You're not qualified. Nowhere have I said that Trump is making the right move. I'm telling you why he's doing what he's doing. We still don't know what Trump has committed to, other than pulling back 50 exposed troops that shouldn't be on hostage tripwire duty, when our mission there is to fight ISIS. I'm not for pulling out all our troops (yet). I've objected to these joint patrols as a misuse of our troops since they were started.

We've been hearing that Trump was pulling out all our troops, Turkey has started air strikes, Kurds are being slaughtered.
As usual, it's shown to be hysterical BS. Do you think Erdogan is going to start "slaughtering Kurds" a month before he visits DC to get his F-35 program back on track ? Get a grip, try putting your political prejudice aside & don't sucker for every agenda driven leak.

MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 10:20 pm

old salt wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 8:42 pm

MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 7:37 pm

DocBarrister wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 7:04 pm This should put to rest any idiotic notion that Erdogan “blindsided” or “forced” Trump into allowing Turkey to invade Syria. Trump, who has significant personal commercial interests in Turkey, ENDORSED Turkey’s invasion.


WASHINGTON — In a major shift in United States military policy in Syria, the White House said on Sunday that President Trump had given his endorsement for a Turkish military operation that would sweep away American-backed Kurdish forces near the border in Syria.

Turkey considers the Kurdish forces to be a terrorist insurgency, and has long sought to end American support for the group.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/us/p ... syria.html

Trump betrayed the Kurds, and he did it willingly, probably to protect his commercial interests in Turkey.

DocBarrister

The latter bit about Trump's motivation is speculative, but the rest appears to be confirmed.
And he did it without warning the Kurds, without consultation from his own advisors, and without consultation of our allies.
Which is why R's are going nuts, not just D's.

But Salty, true to form, says this is the right move by Trump...gee, what does Russia think?

Stop trying to speak for me. You're not qualified. Nowhere have I said that Trump is making the right move. I'm telling you why he's doing what he's doing. We still don't know what Trump has committed to, other than pulling back 50 exposed troops that shouldn't be on hostage tripwire duty, when our mission there is to fight ISIS. I'm not for pulling out all our troops (yet). I've objected to these joint patrols as a misuse of our troops since they were started.

We've been hearing that Trump was pulling out all our troops, Turkey has started air strikes, Kurds are being slaughtered.
As usual, it's shown to be hysterical BS. Do you think Erdogan is going to start "slaughtering Kurds" a month before he visits DC to get his F-35 program back on track ? Get a grip, try putting your political prejudice aside & don't sucker for every agenda driven leak.

Yup, all those GOP Senators are worried about nothing.
It's a HOAX.
After all, Erdogan is trustworthy...and so is Putin.

You're amazingly full of it, Salty.

jhu72 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 10:42 pm

MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 10:20 pm

old salt wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 8:42 pm

MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 7:37 pm

DocBarrister wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 7:04 pm This should put to rest any idiotic notion that Erdogan “blindsided” or “forced” Trump into allowing Turkey to invade Syria. Trump, who has significant personal commercial interests in Turkey, ENDORSED Turkey’s invasion.


WASHINGTON — In a major shift in United States military policy in Syria, the White House said on Sunday that President Trump had given his endorsement for a Turkish military operation that would sweep away American-backed Kurdish forces near the border in Syria.

Turkey considers the Kurdish forces to be a terrorist insurgency, and has long sought to end American support for the group.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/us/p ... syria.html

Trump betrayed the Kurds, and he did it willingly, probably to protect his commercial interests in Turkey.

DocBarrister

The latter bit about Trump's motivation is speculative, but the rest appears to be confirmed.
And he did it without warning the Kurds, without consultation from his own advisors, and without consultation of our allies.
Which is why R's are going nuts, not just D's.

But Salty, true to form, says this is the right move by Trump...gee, what does Russia think?

Stop trying to speak for me. You're not qualified. Nowhere have I said that Trump is making the right move. I'm telling you why he's doing what he's doing. We still don't know what Trump has committed to, other than pulling back 50 exposed troops that shouldn't be on hostage tripwire duty, when our mission there is to fight ISIS. I'm not for pulling out all our troops (yet). I've objected to these joint patrols as a misuse of our troops since they were started.

We've been hearing that Trump was pulling out all our troops, Turkey has started air strikes, Kurds are being slaughtered.
As usual, it's shown to be hysterical BS. Do you think Erdogan is going to start "slaughtering Kurds" a month before he visits DC to get his F-35 program back on track ? Get a grip, try putting your political prejudice aside & don't sucker for every agenda driven leak.

Yup, all those GOP Senators are worried about nothing.
It's a HOAX.
After all, Erdogan is trustworthy...and so is Putin.

You're amazingly full of it, Salty.

.. and that is not even to mention all the military guys in theater who were taken in by the HOAX.

Trinity wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 10:34 pm “A bad situation in Northeast Syria is about to get much worse. Sources tell me that US officials have just informed the Syrian Kurds that Turkey is likely to attack on air and ground in next 24 hours. The US will do nothing. Targets are Tal Abyad and Ras al Ayn....I’m told also told that Turkish attack appears coordinated with the Russians. Russian-backed forces are mobilizing to invade the Kurdish area from the south — towards Tabqa and other spots. Meanwhile, ISIS is mobilizing sleeper cells in Raqqa and attacks have taken place tonight.And finally there is the scary issue of the thousands of ISIS detainees and families, who may be breaking out of camps and prisons after Turkish attack--with NO American back-up plan. This is a major disaster coming at us because of Trump's decisions. Hours left to stop it..”

David Ignatius. WP

jhu72 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 12:06 am Little late to be asking that question. You were warned that sending in a light foot print ran this risk. Better to have gotten out when Trump entered office.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/th ... story.html

Oct 30, 2015
TAL ABYAD, Syria — When Islamic State fighters fled this northern Syrian town in June, they took with them the electricity generators, the water pumps, the hospital equipment and pretty much everything else that had helped sustain the semblance that they ran a functioning state.

They left behind their graffiti, their instruments of torture, the block of wood on which they beheaded their victims, the cage in which they punished smokers — and a community riven with suspicion and distrust.

Today, Tal Abyad is a tense and troubled place. Its new Kurdish masters are seeking to assert their control over a mixed town that, at least until recently, had an Arab majority — some of whom were not entirely unhappy to be governed by the Islamic State.
...recent attacks by Turkey underscore the kind of complications likely to arise as the U.S.-led effort to defeat the Islamic State liberates territory in Iraq and Syria — absent a wider settlement to the many rivalries fueling the region’s wars.

As the U.S. military prepares to deploy 50 Special Operations troops to the vicinity ahead of a new focus on the Islamic State’s self-styled capital of Raqqa, 60 miles to the south, Tal Abyad represents something of a test also for a strategy that will rely heavily on the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, to take control of Arab areas.

Located on Syria’s border with Turkey, Tal Abyad is among the most strategically significant of the conquests made under the umbrella of the 14-month-old U.S. air campaign against the militants. The trading town had served as the Islamic State’s main gateway to the outside world, the transit point for foreign fighters arriving to join the group and for supplies of everything from Nutella to the fertilizers needed for making explosives.

Its fall within two days to the YPG represented a major defeat for the militants and has been held out by the U.S. military as a blueprint for future battles involving capable ground forces backed by U.S. airstrikes. The collapse followed two weeks of intense airstrikes against Islamic State positions in villages surrounding the town, and the group’s fighters appear to have chosen to flee rather than fight.

It was also, however, a significant setback for Turkey, which has vowed to prevent the establishment of a Kurdish region along its southern border with Syria. Turkey accuses the YPG of ties to Turkey’s domestic Kurdish separatist movement, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which is designated a terrorist organization by Ankara and Washington.

The border crossing, once one of the busiest between Turkey and Syria, has been sealed shut for months, hampering deliveries of food and humanitarian aid and further undermining Tal Abyad’s recovery.

It is against this backdrop that the Kurdish YPG has set about absorbing Tal Abyad into its self-declared Kurdish autonomous region, which now stretches more than 300 miles from the Iraqi border in the east to the banks of the Euphrates River in the west.

The Kurds formally renamed Tal Abyad with its Kurdish name, Gire Spi, and proclaim its new identity in signs throughout the town — written in the Latin script used by Turkish Kurds but not readily understood by Syrian Kurds or Arabs. They have also unilaterally detached it from the existing Syrian province of Raqqa and made it a part of their newly formed autonomous enclave, carved from areas traditionally inhabited by Kurds but steadily encroaching also on territories that were historically Arab.

The move has drawn condemnation from Turkey and from the Syrian opposition in exile, and revived long-standing disputes about whether Tal Abyad and its surroundings can be considered Arab or Kurdish lands. Though most records indicate Tal Abyad had a majority Arab population before the Syrian war, Kurds claim they were in the majority.

The Kurds are making an effort to embrace the local Arab population, and officials say they recognize they must. Hundreds of ­Arabs have been arrested, but most have been freed in return for making televised pledges of allegiance to the YPG, according to Ocalan Iso, the deputy defense minister for the area.

The YPG claims that as many as 30 percent of its fighters are Arab, and it has partnered in the area with a local unit of the Free Syrian Army. It is now working on empowering a larger Arab force to focus on the battle for Raqqa, YPG commanders say.

They have appointed a council to oversee the town. It is headed by an Arab and includes an Arab majority, as well as representatives of the minority Turkmen and Armenian communities.

Its president, Mansour Salloum, is a retired teacher who has remained in Tal Abyad throughout the four successive administrations that have governed it over the past four years, from the Syrian regime through the Free Syrian Army, the Islamic State and now the Kurds.

The regime was corrupt, the Free Syrian Army was corrupt, and under the Islamic State “it was like Hiroshima,” he said. With the arrival of the YPG, however, “now we have brotherhood and solidarity,” he said.

Meanwhile, many of the tens of thousands of Arab residents who fled the advancing Kurdish force have not returned, for fear of retribution from the YPG. The YPG denied allegations this month by Amnesty International that it had forcibly displaced ­Arabs and destroyed Arab homes, including in the Tal Abyad area. But officials do not dispute that they have targeted for arrest those whom they believe cooperated with the Islamic State.
... “We couldn’t stay under the Kurds, because they burned houses and did bad things,” he said. “We will wait until Tal Abyad is liberated again, and then we will return.”

old salt wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 12:21 am

jhu72 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 12:06 am Little late to be asking that question. You were warned that sending in a light foot print ran this risk. Better to have gotten out when Trump entered office.

...& not finish off ISIS ? How big a footprint would you have sent in ?

old salt wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 11:40 pm

jhu72 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 10:42 pm

MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 10:20 pm

old salt wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 8:42 pm

MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 7:37 pm

DocBarrister wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2019 7:04 pm This should put to rest any idiotic notion that Erdogan “blindsided” or “forced” Trump into allowing Turkey to invade Syria. Trump, who has significant personal commercial interests in Turkey, ENDORSED Turkey’s invasion.


WASHINGTON — In a major shift in United States military policy in Syria, the White House said on Sunday that President Trump had given his endorsement for a Turkish military operation that would sweep away American-backed Kurdish forces near the border in Syria.

Turkey considers the Kurdish forces to be a terrorist insurgency, and has long sought to end American support for the group.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/us/p ... syria.html

Trump betrayed the Kurds, and he did it willingly, probably to protect his commercial interests in Turkey.

DocBarrister

The latter bit about Trump's motivation is speculative, but the rest appears to be confirmed.
And he did it without warning the Kurds, without consultation from his own advisors, and without consultation of our allies.
Which is why R's are going nuts, not just D's.

But Salty, true to form, says this is the right move by Trump...gee, what does Russia think?

Stop trying to speak for me. You're not qualified. Nowhere have I said that Trump is making the right move. I'm telling you why he's doing what he's doing. We still don't know what Trump has committed to, other than pulling back 50 exposed troops that shouldn't be on hostage tripwire duty, when our mission there is to fight ISIS. I'm not for pulling out all our troops (yet). I've objected to these joint patrols as a misuse of our troops since they were started.

We've been hearing that Trump was pulling out all our troops, Turkey has started air strikes, Kurds are being slaughtered.
As usual, it's shown to be hysterical BS. Do you think Erdogan is going to start "slaughtering Kurds" a month before he visits DC to get his F-35 program back on track ? Get a grip, try putting your political prejudice aside & don't sucker for every agenda driven leak.

Yup, all those GOP Senators are worried about nothing.
It's a HOAX.
After all, Erdogan is trustworthy...and so is Putin.

You're amazingly full of it, Salty.

.. and that is not even to mention all the military guys in theater who were taken in by the HOAX.

...& what do you military geniuses recommend we do to stop it ?
We've got 1000 troops trapped in NE Syria & 50 nucs in bunkers at Incirlik.

old salt wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 12:21 am

jhu72 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 12:06 am Little late to be asking that question. You were warned that sending in a light foot print ran this risk. Better to have gotten out when Trump entered office.

...& not finish off ISIS ? How big a footprint would you have sent in ?

U.S. discloses ruling last year by Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that FBI’s data queries of U.S. citizens were unconstitutional

The October 2018 court ruling identifies improper searches of raw intelligence databases by the bureau in 2017 and 2018 that were deemed problematic in part because of their breadth, which sometimes involved queries related to thousands or tens of thousands of pieces of data, such as emails or telephone numbers. In one case, the ruling suggested, the FBI was using the intelligence information to vet its personnel and cooperating sources. Federal law requires that the database only be searched by the FBI as part of seeking evidence of a crime or for foreign-intelligence information.

MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 7:26 am

old salt wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 12:21 am

jhu72 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 12:06 am Little late to be asking that question. You were warned that sending in a light foot print ran this risk. Better to have gotten out when Trump entered office.

...& not finish off ISIS ? How big a footprint would you have sent in ?

According to regular toady Lindsey Graham, the "biggest lie" of this Administration is that ISIS is defeated, much less 'finished off'.

The Kurds have done most of the fighting and nearly all the dying.
10,000 hard core ISIS prisoners about to get released when the Kurds need to turn to fight the Turks.

Repugnant.

jhu72 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 8:15 am

old salt wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 12:21 am

jhu72 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 12:06 am Little late to be asking that question. You were warned that sending in a light foot print ran this risk. Better to have gotten out when Trump entered office.

...& not finish off ISIS ? How big a footprint would you have sent in ?

It was time to get out - YEARS AGO. If it was up to me, we wouldn't be there, we would have left years ago We would not have made promises to the Kurds; we would have let the Turks fight their own battle at a time when they did not want to. We have not defeated ISIS. We are back to whack-a-mole, as predicted.

But this is not the first time you have heard this from me. It is clowns like you who wanted this and now you have it. Choke on it!

MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 9:45 am

jhu72 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 8:15 am

old salt wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 12:21 am

jhu72 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 12:06 am Little late to be asking that question. You were warned that sending in a light foot print ran this risk. Better to have gotten out when Trump entered office.

...& not finish off ISIS ? How big a footprint would you have sent in ?

It was time to get out - YEARS AGO. If it was up to me, we wouldn't be there, we would have left years ago We would not have made promises to the Kurds; we would have let the Turks fight their own battle at a time when they did not want to. We have not defeated ISIS. We are back to whack-a-mole, as predicted.

But this is not the first time you have heard this from me. It is clowns like you who wanted this and now you have it. Choke on it!

It's a fair argument, though I disagree as to when our 'moral responsibility' began.
I'd say that once we went into Iraq, we were stuck with that obligation to see it through.
Same for Afghanistan.

But bailing on allies who have fought and died in your support is never OK.

jhu72 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 9:58 am

MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 9:45 am

jhu72 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 8:15 am

old salt wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 12:21 am

jhu72 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 12:06 am Little late to be asking that question. You were warned that sending in a light foot print ran this risk. Better to have gotten out when Trump entered office.

...& not finish off ISIS ? How big a footprint would you have sent in ?

It was time to get out - YEARS AGO. If it was up to me, we wouldn't be there, we would have left years ago We would not have made promises to the Kurds; we would have let the Turks fight their own battle at a time when they did not want to. We have not defeated ISIS. We are back to whack-a-mole, as predicted.

But this is not the first time you have heard this from me. It is clowns like you who wanted this and now you have it. Choke on it!

It's a fair argument, though I disagree as to when our 'moral responsibility' began.
I'd say that once we went into Iraq, we were stuck with that obligation to see it through.
Same for Afghanistan.

But bailing on allies who have fought and died in your support is never OK.

There have been any number of off ramps where we could have left with a relatively clean position (infinitely cleaner than now), not to mention there was no reason to have invaded Iraq in the first place. We are no longer fighting the Iraq war and haven't been for years.

MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 10:06 am

jhu72 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 9:58 am

MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 9:45 am

jhu72 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 8:15 am

old salt wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 12:21 am

jhu72 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 12:06 am Little late to be asking that question. You were warned that sending in a light foot print ran this risk. Better to have gotten out when Trump entered office.

...& not finish off ISIS ? How big a footprint would you have sent in ?

It was time to get out - YEARS AGO. If it was up to me, we wouldn't be there, we would have left years ago We would not have made promises to the Kurds; we would have let the Turks fight their own battle at a time when they did not want to. We have not defeated ISIS. We are back to whack-a-mole, as predicted.

But this is not the first time you have heard this from me. It is clowns like you who wanted this and now you have it. Choke on it!

It's a fair argument, though I disagree as to when our 'moral responsibility' began.
I'd say that once we went into Iraq, we were stuck with that obligation to see it through.
Same for Afghanistan.

But bailing on allies who have fought and died in your support is never OK.

There have been any number of off ramps where we could have left with a relatively clean position (infinitely cleaner than now), not to mention there was no reason to have invaded Iraq in the first place. We are no longer fighting the Iraq war and haven't been for years.

Again, fair argument.
But ISIS needed to be fought.
The Kurds were the primary fighters at our behest.
11,000 Kurds died in that fight.

The Turks are now striking those very same Kurdish forces, and we've actually green-lit that attack.

jhu72 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 10:16 am

MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 10:06 am

jhu72 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 9:58 am

MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 9:45 am

jhu72 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 8:15 am

old salt wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 12:21 am

jhu72 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 09, 2019 12:06 am Little late to be asking that question. You were warned that sending in a light foot print ran this risk. Better to have gotten out when Trump entered office.

...& not finish off ISIS ? How big a footprint would you have sent in ?

It was time to get out - YEARS AGO. If it was up to me, we wouldn't be there, we would have left years ago We would not have made promises to the Kurds; we would have let the Turks fight their own battle at a time when they did not want to. We have not defeated ISIS. We are back to whack-a-mole, as predicted.

But this is not the first time you have heard this from me. It is clowns like you who wanted this and now you have it. Choke on it!

It's a fair argument, though I disagree as to when our 'moral responsibility' began.
I'd say that once we went into Iraq, we were stuck with that obligation to see it through.
Same for Afghanistan.

But bailing on allies who have fought and died in your support is never OK.

There have been any number of off ramps where we could have left with a relatively clean position (infinitely cleaner than now), not to mention there was no reason to have invaded Iraq in the first place. We are no longer fighting the Iraq war and haven't been for years.

Again, fair argument.
But ISIS needed to be fought.
The Kurds were the primary fighters at our behest.
11,000 Kurds died in that fight.

The Turks are now striking those very same Kurdish forces, and we've actually green-lit that attack.

Agreed, we can't just leave now (although I would disagree that ISIS was ever ours to fight and certainly not under the circumstances we chose to). We now have to push more chips in with the attendant consequences and likely American loss of life. This by the way is exactly the scenario I outlined when we decided to listen to Mattis et. al., a small US force being nothing more than a "hostage" force.