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[Strife26]

That Wikipedia page, interestingly, says it was only about enforcing UN resolutions - the bill said nothing about war, if you want to believe Wikipedia.

Correct me if I'm wrong: Iirc Colin Powell tried to convince the UN that Saddam had a new WMD program, the UN didn't buy it and told us to go away, and Bush went "You're either with us or you're against us" (but didn't invade New York to take control of the UN :V), and then invaded on the basis which was in my last post. Wikipedia called it "pre-emptive self defense," except we were never in any danger from Iraq until we knocked Saddam over.

That's a weasly justification for the resolution. It was an authorization for George W. Bush to use any and all force for shitty self defense pretenses. Any politician who didn't think it was effectively a war authorization is in prime bridge-buying levels of naiveté (or prime politician levels of dodging responsibility).

I wouldn't say that it's a 'Nam in terms of body count (then again, injuries that wouldn't be survivable in the 60's/70's are potentially survivable today), but in terms of it being a mistake and clusterfuck, yes.

Being a mistake and cluster fuck and resulting in juuuust short of a full commitment of the United States military apparatus and a similar burden to society that we'll get to watch in the next two decades and

Calling it a smaller commitment is much more a result of today's Army being a 1% volunteer force than the Vietnam Era, Korea-priority legion.

[Strife26]

Welp. Case in goddamn point. Feel free to add another body for the Iraq pile. Damn good leader and damn good man from how well I knew him. Wore Amber Oakleys. One more who didn't make it home all the way.

[scriver]

This is a pro-poverty measure. The only reason you could possibly support this is if you want to make rich people (who spend a very low portion of their wealth) richer, and make poor people (who spend everything they get and still don't have enough money) poorer.

This is the Democratic policy group! This is the LIBERAL party!

Well yes. That is liberal policy. I see no contradiction.

[socialism intensifies]

[RedKing]

That Wikipedia page, interestingly, says it was only about enforcing UN resolutions - the bill said nothing about war, if you want to believe Wikipedia.

Correct me if I'm wrong: Iirc Colin Powell tried to convince the UN that Saddam had a new WMD program, the UN didn't buy it and told us to go away, and Bush went "You're either with us or you're against us" (but didn't invade New York to take control of the UN :V), and then invaded on the basis which was in my last post. Wikipedia called it "pre-emptive self defense," except we were never in any danger from Iraq until we knocked Saddam over.

That's a weasly justification for the resolution. It was an authorization for George W. Bush to use any and all force for shitty self defense pretenses. Any politician who didn't think it was effectively a war authorization is in prime bridge-buying levels of naiveté (or prime politician levels of dodging responsibility).

Yeah. I remember it as a "Give authority to the President to use force whenever and however he sees fit to Protect MURRICA, cause Congress is too slow and stupid to do anything right" resolution. Basically Congress self-abrogating any of their constitutional authority to "make war" and handing the keys to the kingdom to a guy who shouldn't have even had a learner's permit.

And the justification was "The UN imposed a no-nukes, no-chemical weapons sanction on Saddam, so we're not going to war as the US, we're enforcing those sanctions." And then when the UN refused to authorize force, we argued that we were doing it because the UN secretly WANTED us to do it, they were just scared of big, bad Saddam. Also that the UN was going to make itself irrelevant by refusing to enforce its own sanctions. Also that we were saving the UN by enforcing its sanctions whether it wanted us to or not. It was such a pile of obvious bullshit that it was sickening to see how many people totally bought into it. Like Condi Rice's line about how we "didn't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud".

Fuck all those fucking fuckers and the fucking fuckers that fucking supported their fucking lying asses. (Warning: I may have strong opinions about the George W. Bush administration.)

[Descan]

Welp. Case in goddamn point. Feel free to add another body for the Iraq pile. Damn good leader and damn good man from how well I knew him. Wore Amber Oakleys. One more who didn't make it home all the way.

I'm not sure I'm grokking this correctly, but are you saying a friend of yours who was deployed was KIA?

"home all the way" Or does that mean they had PTSD at home, and things went badly?

[smjjames]

Welp. Case in goddamn point. Feel free to add another body for the Iraq pile. Damn good leader and damn good man from how well I knew him. Wore Amber Oakleys. One more who didn't make it home all the way.

I'm not sure I'm grokking this correctly, but are you saying a friend of yours who was deployed was KIA?

"home all the way" Or does that mean they had PTSD at home, and things went badly?

Might have been referring to http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/19/politics/u-s-service-member-killed-in-iraq-after-rocket-attack/index.html ? Then again, Strife was a Tank operator I believe and thus, in the army.

[Strife26]

Nah, good guy killed himself here in the States. Someone you'd never expect too.

[RedKing]

That's happening way too much. I worry about my brother on occasion. 
Hasn't shown any signs of it, but I know he's got PTSD and at least a touch of TBI. And his finances are a mess (which are indirectly making my finances a mess, because he owes me an increasingly large amount of money that I've been lenient about).

Sometimes I feel like authorizing military action should come with an automatic clause that the politicians who vote for it will see half their salary and retirement benefits taken and put into a fund for returning veterans from that war who need help. We'd suddenly be the most pacifist nation on Earth, cause nobody wants to give up that dolla dolla bill, y'all.



EDIT: Bill Clinton in some hot water after talking about how "Hillary can put the awful legacy of the last 8 years behind us". That's about as smooth as some $5 wino-grade brandy right there, Bubba.

[Shadowlord]

He was talking about republican obstruction, but there's no reason to expect that to go away if they still control the House just because the President's Hillary Clinton instead of Barack Obama.

In other news, Rob Ford has died of cancer.

[smjjames]

Newt: We need a bigger Guantanamo Lelwhat Newt? I guess we could expand the current Guantanamo with the land available because we won't be able to get more from land from Cuba and I seriously doubt that we are going to be able to purchase land or lease something from another country for that purpose.

He was talking about republican obstruction, but there's no reason to expect that to go away if they still control the House just because the President's Hillary Clinton instead of Barack Obama.

I expect that they'll obstruct even harder if Hillary becomes president. Especially if they still control the House and Senate.

[RedKing]

Maybe we could just invade the whole Middle East and use it to house people from the Middle East.

[Strife26]

I've got a really cool idea. What if we notionally did that? No mess at all.

[SalmonGod]

So someone made the call earlier on that a major terrorist attack would benefit Trump immensely.  Any signs yet that he's capitalizing on it?

[Shadowlord]

I expect that they'll obstruct even harder if Hillary becomes president. Especially if they still control the House and Senate.

Maybe, thanks to Trump, they'll have realized the terrible consequences of their previous words and actions. Maybe they'll stop trying to tear the country apart. Or maybe not (they haven't so far - they've just denounced Trump while continuing with their same proposals and so on). So far they're still on the same course, as if they don't realize that even they've been (metaphorically) piling up logs and kindling for years until Trump decided it was the right time to jump in and light it all on fire.

The truly amusing thing is that Trump's detailed policy proposals (e.g. on health care (block grants) or taxes), when he put substance to them, are still standard Republican plans that could have easily been cribbed from any of the other campaigns. Is Trump not even reading what his advisors are writing for him? Or does he just think his followers are too gullible or enthralled to notice? Or that they will selectively ignore any inconvenient information, since they likely already have to do so in order to support him in the first place?

SalmonGod:
I couldn't point out Brussels on a map, or tell you how big it is. If you asked me to name three facts about it, I'd say it's in Europe, it's the source of brussels sprouts, and it's in western Europe, and my confidence on those is only 100%, 25%, and 75%.

P.S. And it has something to do with some place named Luxembourg, maybe? My memory is vague and likely wrong on this point, and I'm not cheating with google for now.

[SalmonGod]

Major terrorist attack in the US would be what he primarily benefits from.

Yeah, but the way the media is reporting it, you'd think it had happened in the U.S.

Watched the news on it in the break room for a few minutes.  The scrollbar at the bottom noting that major U.S. cities are beefing up security, while some U.S. official was being interviewed and literally saying "We need to give up more freedoms for security!"  Literally as in using that language, without any attempts to dress it up.  Co-workers chatting all day about what a scary place the world is.  President of the company I work for sent out a global e-mail telling basically everyone to live in a state of hyper-paranoia (seriously it went out to every employee around the globe and told us to do things like "take alternate routes to destinations", "don't wear our company logo in public", and "don't wear flashy clothes or jewelry").

Even though it happened on another continent, it looks like a ripe situation for politicians to cash in on.