It is definitely likely that the Trump Administration would lie about whether that is possible or probable, or both, or neither.
That's the drawback of letting your system foist an incorrigible liar and a coterie of New Gilded Age grifters into the highest executive offices; you then don't know whether you can trust them not to lie you into a shooting war.
If the administrations of Kennedy and Johnson - that were staffed with genuinely intelligent and experienced foreign policy players - lied us into Vietnam, and the Lesser Bush administration - that was crock-full of wingnuts, imperial fantasists, outright kooks, as well as the Stupidest Man on the Face of the Earth - lied us into Iraq, I sure as hell don't trust THESE gomers not to lie us into some sort of idiotic whack-a-Persian blood hunt based on some sort of moron idea that it'd take normal humans smoking a full ounce of prime weed then drinking two cans of sterno and a half-rack of Old English 800 to come up with.
I sure as hell hope the rest of my countrymen aren't stupid enough to let the Trumpkins play this game.
And goddamn if it's not time to repeal that #@!%$!#! AUMF.
Update 6/14: The lies have already begun:
"The Japanese owner of the Kokuka Courageous, one of two oil tankers targeted near the Strait of Hormuz, said Friday that sailors on board saw "flying objects" just before it was hit, suggesting the vessel wasn't damaged by mines. That account contradicts what the U.S. military said as it released a video Friday it said shows Iranian forces removing an unexploded limpet mine from one of the two ships that were hit. Company president Yutaka Katada said Friday he believes the flying objects seen by the sailors could have been bullets. He denied any possibility of mines or torpedoes because the damage was above the ship's waterline. He called reports of a mine attack "false."As Sven points out in the comments, The U.S. hasn't been an honest player in the field of foreign policy for a long time, and this administration is a more prolific and consistent liar than most of the previous ones.
IMO this is a patently crude attempt between the Trumpkins and their Saudi pals to gin up a casus belli. If the US public and Congress falls for it, well, as a well-known foreign policy expert once said: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...won't get fooled again!"
And Jim Wright, as he often does, is asking the question that EVERY news agency should be asking: "Cui bono?".
Who would benefit from a US-Iran dustup? Especially one that would, as it inevitably would, raise the price of petroleum?
Hmmm.
Update 6/26:
"Strategy? I don't need no steenkin' strategy? I have guns! I take YOUR strategy!"
What a fucking maroon.
2 comments:
"That's the drawback of letting your system foist an incorrigible liar and a coterie of New Gilded Age grifters into the highest executive offices; you then don't know whether you can trust them not to lie you into a shooting war"
Grifters? Like Jonathan Gruber and Ben Rhodes - particularly Rhodes - failed young fiction writer transmorgrified into Deputy National Security Advisor?
Unless you have already posted that exact same observation and critique quoted above about the PREVIOUS administration, particularly the end state effectiveness of 'lead from behind' and and paralysis due to 'don't do stupid shit' foreign policy and it's outcome - you might want to ask when your personal animus (or admiration)cloud your judgement.
Two things can be true at once. Trump certainly is deeply flawed; as are many people, including many leaders I encountered in my 30 years serving in airborne infantry. Obama was and is deeply flawed as well.
But as we head towards three years in office with not just Democrats but the news media openly working to take him out along with many in his own party, we aren't starting more Obama/Clinton style 'democracy project' wars. That's good foreign policy - much better than getting in 'democracy project' shooting wars.
Coteries of despicable elites in the highest offices? Haven't caught the CIA spying on Congress yet as we did with Brennan? Should we expect the unmasking of Americans that Obama allowed those closest to him to do will occur again with Trump?
We aren't getting lies that the IRS being weaponized, targeting and shutting down opposing political groups is only a few rogue agents in one office.
With all the scrutiny from enemies including the media, along with eager leakers, it's a safe bet Trump isn't pulling an Obama, going through the phone records of dozens of reporters and their families, threatening others with jail if they won't name their sources.
Or for that matter, directing FBI investigations of political allies and enemies from the Oval Office - while incorrigibly lying to the public that he NEVER has anything to do with the DoJ/FBI about ongoing investigations (see the transcripts of the Page, Strzok, and Baker testimony).
Or FISA warrants fraudulently obtained through the FBI/CIA/NSA orchestrating and presenting the Clinton/Steele dossier as Obama's version of the "C. Turner Joy" - a fraudulent excuse for turning the weaponry of the country on an accused enemy.
Perhaps these shipping attacks are indeed similar to Obama's "Benghazi was just a protest against an offensive YouTube video that unfortunately got out of hand" - maybe the Trump administration did indeed lie about them.
Perhaps the rigged investigation of Clinton, the equally rigged investigation into any and all things Trump, a president using the country's intelligence and enforcement weaponry to shield a chosen successor and then take out their challenger are no worse than if these shipping attacks actually are Trump pulling an Obama and creating a crisis and a national threat that didn't exist. That's IF it's factual that Trump ordered them, rather than fear mongering. If so, the battalions of leakers and media haven't outed it yet.
But one thing is certain. If you haven't already applied the critique and judgement above to Obama and his administration - at least by the time of the last few years of his administration - you should be asking yourself why you identified those problems in the Trump administration and yet somehow or other overlooked them during the Obama administration.
Because Obama didn't DO this sort of stupid shit.
I published this comment - as full of ridiculous GOP talking points as it is - (IRS "weaponizing" and taking down opposing groups? No. (http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/10/debunked-irs-scandal-shows-theres-no-sane-wing-of-the-gop.html)) to illustrate how utterly fucked We the People are.
(And, I note, that the IRS was looking at Teatard groups that were hiding their political chicanery behind 503c status...so they were doing what they were SUPPOSED to be doing).
So I could waste a shit-ton of bandwidth refuting the REST of the bullshit, but why? If you don't recognize it as standard-issue QAnon GOP bullshit I'd be wasting my time just like I'd be wasting my time trying to talk actual sense to ol' Rick here.
So don't get me wrong; the Obamites prosecuted the idiot War on Terror and, as such, were fucked up in doing that. The drone program? Stupid and fucked up because of the chaos it sows. Libya? I was all over the idiocy in that one.
But nobody has been fucking up overseas like the Trumpkins since the LAST time the GOP got their grubby little paws on the executive. Anyone who is hooting and flinging poop like our boy Rick here at Obama's failings who fails to trace them back to the failings of the Bush "War on Terror" that started the whole thing is just a Republican sockpuppet, and that's my problem with Rick and everyone like him.
They aren't willing to say, straight-out "Boy howdy, is this fucked up". There's always got to be a defense of the Trumpkins' idiocy - the fact that they're so fucked up that they can't even figure out how to engineer a Tonkin Gulf Incident - as "good foreign policy".
And 40% of the U.S. public is Rick; whenever the GOP shoves the national head in the toilet they insist that it's Obama and the Democrats hand on the flush lever.
The bottom line is that I can't see a way for my country to escape the trainwreck ahead of us, the return to the Gilded Age where the wealthy did what they could and the rest of us suffered what we must. People like Rick - who can't see the stinking turd right in front of them straining to see the flyspeck in the windowscreen in their political opponents' house next door - are going to ensure that we get what's coming to us and get it good and hard.
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