US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

[Kepler]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

I am not sure a Nuclear Iran is good for Saudi Arabia and it sure as HELL aint good for Israel. Sure it is good for Netanyahu but he is soon going to prison anyways.

The only ones happy now are defense contractors.

The Saudi/Israeli endgame for Iran is a US war and regime change. They are extremely generous with Baby Huey's blood and treasure.

It's Dump voters' sons who will die in the war. So there is some justice. But it's the middle class who will have to pay for it.

[dxmnkd316]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

Obama published a post in the last half hour about Iran. 8-9 paragraphs of well reasoned, properly structured sentences with no all caps shouting.
Toddler in chief will hopefully release some crayon drawings and shouts tweets with misspelled words soon

This is where we are in the country today. Pathetic.

[solovsfett]

Saudi Arabia and Israel come to mind.

Bingo!
EDIT: wouldn’t it be nice if we had a potus who cared about the Palestinians and peace and told The Saudi’s to **** off we’re done selling arms to you?

It’s difficult to accept the country we are vs who and what I was taught we are all through HS, college, news reports etc.

As it turns out, imo, we may be the biggest purveyor of violence, lies, deception, war and greed in world history and that’s a lot to digest when you figure that’s mostly occurred over the last 100 years. It’s the covert nature of most of it the makes it so sinister.

We’re 30 years on from Iran/Contra and no-one talks about how we destroyed Nicaragua and they’ve never recovered.

End of rant......i’m utterly depressed

[dxmnkd316]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

EDIT: wouldn’t it be nice if we had a potus who ...told The Saudi’s to **** off we’re done selling arms to you?

I'm pretty sure we sell arms to the saudis for two reasons:
1. Oil stability - Saudi Arabia is a stabilizing force in the region. If the entire region went to sh-t, 33% of the world's oil supplies become unstable. Instead of it just being Iraq and to a lesser extent Iran (~5-8%). There aren't many other friends in the neighborhood that are Muslim and produce an asston of oil. Sure that might be self-inflicted but it's the world we live in.
2. To keep Iran in check

But mostly #1

[solovsfett]

I'm pretty sure we sell arms to the saudis for two reasons:
1. Oil stability - Saudi Arabia is a stabilizing force in the region. If the entire region went to sh-t, 33% of the world's oil supplies become unstable. Instead of it just being Iraq and to a lesser extent Iran (~5-8%). There aren't many other friends in the neighborhood that are Muslim and produce an asston of oil. Sure that might be self-inflicted but it's the world we live in.
2. To keep Iran in check

But mostly #1

I agree this may be self-inflicted. We de-stabilize Iraq and Iran grows bolder. But of course we effed up Iran by overthrowing Mossadegh and installing the Shaw.

Jimmy Carter was dumped on by gop but he is a very smart man. When the cia and pentagon were asking him to allow the Shaw in for medical treatments he turned them down. But they persisted and picked off his advisors one by one. In the end Cartr was the last man standing and when he realized he was alone and would have to acquiesce he asked “ what will you advise me to do when they overrun our embassy and take hostages?”

I still haven’t found what the response was.

EDIT: as an FYI I was a conservative for my first 40 years or so. I've had a tremendous awakening in the last 6 years which started from reading about Cold War history etc...so if I sound naive and/or repetitive it’s cause i’m Learning lessons I should have absorbed in my 20’s and am quite surprised by the denouement as it were.

[ticapnews]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

No one tell Sniffles that the deal was called Seward's Folly or he'll try to "fix" it by giving Alaska back to Russia.

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/o...imes&smtyp=cur

Our choice for the CIA.

I was abducted from exile in Southeast Asia and secretly jailed in one of Libya’s worst dungeons. But the worst torture of my life wasn’t done to me by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s thugs. It was done in Thailand at the hands of the C.I.A.

It was March 2004. During this nightmare — my detention and “rendition” to Libya — I was pregnant. Shortly afterward, I gave birth. After what the C.I.A. did to me, my baby weighed four pounds.

Now I hear that Gina Haspel, who as a C.I.A. officer ran a black site in Thailand in 2002 that sounds like the one where I was tortured, has been chosen to lead the whole agency. On Wednesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee will question her to decide whether she is fit to be director.

I also read that the C.I.A. says America’s foreign allies respect Ms. Haspel. Maybe so. But if America wants to persuade the Muslim world it means us no harm, if it wants to regain lost trust, the C.I.A. can’t ignore history in the hope that it will go away. People remember injustice for a long time. The only answer is to explain what happened.

Even now, after everything I went through, I don’t think badly of Americans. In fact, I think Americans deserve honesty from their intelligence officers. I don’t believe most ordinary people would have supported what the C.I.A. did to me if they’d known.

I won’t get to ask Ms. Haspel these questions, but I hope a senator will. And if she wasn’t involved, and feels in her heart that torturing me was wrong, she should say so.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/o...imes&smtyp=cur

[Kepler]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/o...imes&smtyp=cur

Our choice for the CIA.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/o...imes&smtyp=cur

The purpose of torture is always the torture itself. It is a window onto the soul of these people. They have been with us since the dawn of the species -- a mentally ill subset of the population that externalizes its own cowardice in acts of viciousness.

They are the people who fly planes into buildings, the cops who beat up suspects, the soldiers who burn villages. They are Mengele's doctors; they are rapists and lynchers. They are a small percentage of the population but they commit the genocides and atrocities that mark human history.

Maybe someday we'll find and suppress whatever their genetic error is. Maybe evil comes down to one A-T where a G-C should be.

But until then they will be with us, and Gina Haspel is one of them.

[solovsfett]

The purpose of torture is always the torture itself. It is a window onto the soul of these people. They have been with us since the dawn of the species -- a mentally ill subset of the population that externalizes its own cowardice in acts of viciousness.

They are the people who fly planes into buildings, the cops who beat up suspects, the soldiers who burn villages. They are Mengele's doctors; they are rapists and lynchers. They are a small percentage of the population but they commit the genocides and atrocities that mark human history.

Maybe someday we'll find and suppress whatever their genetic error is. Maybe evil comes down to one A-T where a G-C should be.

But until then they will be with us, and Gina Haspel is one of them.

Incredibly well stated! I wish someone would say exactly this today in the hearings just after they read what ex-cia officers like John Kiriakou have to say about “bloody” Gina’s practices. Evidently that nickname was well earned. Kiriakou has stated Gina tortured after they knew information was not forthcoming. Torturing out of sheer sadism.

[solovsfett]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

Lee Camp on Ray McGovern being tossed out of the Haspel hearing yesterday: https://youtu.be/GTF07picnj8

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

Ray McGovern is an Assange-supporting, Stein-voting loon who probably thinks 9/11 was an inside job. But do we really need 8 cops to take down one, 78 year-old man?

[Wisko McBadgerton]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

The purpose of torture is always the torture itself. It is a window onto the soul of these people. They have been with us since the dawn of the species -- a mentally ill subset of the population that externalizes its own cowardice in acts of viciousness.

They are the people who fly planes into buildings, the cops who beat up suspects, the soldiers who burn villages. They are Mengele's doctors; they are rapists and lynchers. They are a small percentage of the population but they commit the genocides and atrocities that mark human history.

Maybe someday we'll find and suppress whatever their genetic error is. Maybe evil comes down to one A-T where a G-C should be.

But until then they will be with us, and Gina Haspel is one of them.

I have doubts it's so simple as that.

Let's say a sociopath held solely within your power credibly divulges that a child (perhaps your child, or perhaps several children) is bound and gagged alone without food or water in an isolated and secret location. Clearly, unless that location is discovered, the child will die a horrible death. But thus far, the sociopath refuses to answer as to the location in question.

In this circumstance, the percentage of people who would eventually resort to inflicting pain on the sociopath in an attempt to garner the requisite information probably isn't restricted to just rapists and lynchers. I'd suggest the percentage of people who would do so is very high.

[5mn_Major]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

I have doubts it's so simple as that.

Let's say a sociopath held solely within your power credibly divulges that a child (perhaps your child, or perhaps several children) is bound and gagged alone without food or water in an isolated and secret location. Clearly, unless that location is discovered, the child will die a horrible death. But thus far, the sociopath refuses to answer as to the location in question.

In this circumstance, the percentage of people who would eventually resort to inflicting pain on the sociopath in an attempt to garner the requisite information probably isn't restricted to just rapists and lynchers. I'd suggest the percentage of people who would do so is very high.

Well positioned. In your example, you could see a rationale side to such an act.

However, I would say that the case of our policy of torture varies from that scenario in two ways 1) that the benefits of torture for policy are much more intangible or unknown (we can't know the true linkage to threats or our ability to execute on that information) 2) there are many dangers of both us overdoing torture and/or having the 'bad men' not just be those being tortured but those doing the torture.

[Kepler]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

I have doubts it's so simple as that.

Let's say a sociopath held solely within your power credibly divulges that a child (perhaps your child, or perhaps several children) is bound and gagged alone without food or water in an isolated and secret location. Clearly, unless that location is discovered, the child will die a horrible death. But thus far, the sociopath refuses to answer as to the location in question.

In this circumstance, the percentage of people who would eventually resort to inflicting pain on the sociopath in an attempt to garner the requisite information probably isn't restricted to just rapists and lynchers. I'd suggest the percentage of people who would do so is very high.

You're missing the whole point. Obviously Mommy's going to do that if she thinks it will save her child. That's what Mommy does.

The problem is, torture doesn't work. The victim just makes up whatever they think the torturer wants to hear to make the pain stop. Anyone will say anything. That's how you get people confessing to making deals with the devil to poison the wheat crop. Everybody who has ever studied torture understands this.

Despite the universal knowledge among people who study torture that it doesn't work, some people in positions of authority still have their fantasies drawn to it. Those people want to torture. They're not interested in information -- they're either sadists who love inflicting pain or they're cynics who know that projecting sadism plays well with the apes among us.

[ticapnews]

Re: US Foreign Policy 2.0: Have you read Kipling, Mr. Tillerson?

Just to clarify the language, we aren't "cancelling" the deal with Iran. It isn't ours to cancel. It is a United Nations arrangement and the rest of the world (including Iran) is abiding by it.

The United States is now a rogue nation.