[Mentalist]

 Abyss, on 07 April 2017 - 02:07 PM, said:

Approval rating down, own party turning against you, once supportive alt-elements starting to voice doubt... WAR TIME!!!

yep. A "quick an successful" one, right?

[worry]

 Briar King, on 09 April 2017 - 04:25 AM, said:

Not much else known atm.

This is actually his 2020 campaign motto.

[Werthead]

 Briar King, on 09 April 2017 - 04:25 AM, said:

Carrier rerouted from its course to Australia to head to Korean Pen. Not much else known atm.

The USS Carl Vinson carrier group. They're already in the South China Sea and heading for South Korea ASAP. It was on deployment last month off South Korea and is still carrying all the stuff that is needed for deployment in that theatre (most notably, the escorting destroyers have AEGIS capability, so can shoot down any ballistic missiles North Korea fires into the area). The US has possibly both the Nimitz and Theodore Roosevelt available to deploy to the Pacific if needed, but both groups need to be outfitted and sent out to sea, which would take time.

The States are adopting a multi-pronged approach here. They take military action (if wholly ineffective) in Syria to show North Korea and China they're not messing around, they invite China to take a more forceful role in diplomacy, they inform North Korea that they will not tolerate the kind of provocations they've seen before (such as a couple of years ago, when North Korea shelled a South Korean island and the South and the US contemplated but agreed not to carry out reprisal air strikes on the North Korean artillery positions) and they put the pieces in place so they can respond swiftly if needed. The US already has significant airpower in the region (at Guam, Japan and the Philippines, and can fly long-range bombers direct from the US at almost zero notice), but there's nothing like a US carrier battle group sitting off the coast to send a message that they are not messing around.

The question is whether North Korea will now back down for a few months or continue ratcheting up the tensions. And the question will also arise about what South Korea wants, since their civilians are first in the firing line from any reprisals.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 09 April 2017 - 04:56 PM

[Cause]

 QuickTidal, on 07 April 2017 - 11:49 AM, said:

Well this is escalating quickly...

"President Putin considers the U.S. strikes against Syria an act of aggression against a sovereign country violating the norms of international law, and under a trumped-up pretext at that,"

Politicians amaze me. It'd not their ability to lie. It'd their ability to believe it. To ignore history and reality. A man who is conquering the Crimea really can't make this statement

[Werthead]

 Cause, on 09 April 2017 - 07:19 PM, said:

Politicians amaze me. It'd not their ability to lie. It'd their ability to believe it. To ignore history and reality. A man who is conquering the Crimea really can't make this statement

The attack on the Syrian airbase was wholly ineffectual. Blowing up a cafe and a couple of training blocks is not going to make Syria or Russia quake in their boots. The US warned the Russians (who warned the Syrians) and they used a completely inappropriate weapon: Tomahawks are precision munitions which are awesome for targeting radar sites, office blocks, communication facilities and targets in build-up areas, but completely shit for wide-scale destruction and area denial operations, like putting a runway out of commission. You need aircraft-carried, heavy bombs and runway-busters for that and the Americans know that the Russian AA batteries are probably the best in the world and don't want to test their effectiveness, even against a stealth bomber.

This attack served political purposes: it showed that America is resolute and prepared to do things that would have been considered unthinkable a few months ago. It also showed Russia that there is a red line in the sand - using chemical weapons - which the US is happy to enforce but Syria can carry on as it has been (basically winning the war on local levels with conventional force) up to that point. Given that I suspect even Russia was surprised that Assad used the chemical weapons (there really wasn't much point, and possibly a sign of Assad getting cocky after winning in Aleppo), they're probably not too unhappy with that. If the US had come in swinging without warning and flattened the base completely, that would have been a completely different situation (although arguably even more to Russia's detriment: aside from using nukes, Russia could really do absolutely nothing about it in reprisal).

I suspect there is going to be a strong pivot to confronting North Korea in the coming months and Trump also wanted to lay down a marker that he - or his generals - are not going to be taking the eye off the ball in the Middle East as well.

[Aptorian]

 Werthead, on 09 April 2017 - 04:55 PM, said:

 Briar King, on 09 April 2017 - 04:25 AM, said:

Carrier rerouted from its course to Australia to head to Korean Pen. Not much else known atm.

The USS Carl Vinson carrier group. They're already in the South China Sea and heading for South Korea ASAP. It was on deployment last month off South Korea and is still carrying all the stuff that is needed for deployment in that theatre (most notably, the escorting destroyers have AEGIS capability, so can shoot down any ballistic missiles North Korea fires into the area). The US has possibly both the Nimitz and Theodore Roosevelt available to deploy to the Pacific if needed, but both groups need to be outfitted and sent out to sea, which would take time.

The States are adopting a multi-pronged approach here. They take military action (if wholly ineffective) in Syria to show North Korea and China they're not messing around, they invite China to take a more forceful role in diplomacy, they inform North Korea that they will not tolerate the kind of provocations they've seen before (such as a couple of years ago, when North Korea shelled a South Korean island and the South and the US contemplated but agreed not to carry out reprisal air strikes on the North Korean artillery positions) and they put the pieces in place so they can respond swiftly if needed. The US already has significant airpower in the region (at Guam, Japan and the Philippines, and can fly long-range bombers direct from the US at almost zero notice), but there's nothing like a US carrier battle group sitting off the coast to send a message that they are not messing around.

The question is whether North Korea will now back down for a few months or continue ratcheting up the tensions. And the question will also arise about what South Korea wants, since their civilians are first in the firing line from any reprisals.

In relation to this it appears China has moved/is moving 150,000 troops to the NK border:

http://www.dailymail...rea-border.html

I've also read that China denies this, but still.

I think the article is terrible but it's certainly alarming. 150,000 troops is a lot but I guess when you're the size of China it's less so? Is this just a refugee surge prevention measure or is it something more?

[Morgoth]

It's the Daily Mail.

[Aptorian]

Look you can't expect me to actually go out there and find other reliable sources, that's far too much work!

[Macros]

I prefer the daily hates scaremongering morgoth, don't take it away from us!

[Morgoth]

 Macros, on 11 April 2017 - 08:35 AM, said:

I prefer the daily hates scaremongering morgoth, don't take it away from us!

I've already petitioned my lovecraftian masters to have it banned.

[Gorefest]

Oh gods, Sean Spicer said that even Hitler didnt use chemical weapons in WW2. How is it that this man is still in a job? The guy is going beyond embarrassing into a whole new realm of cringeworthiness.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 11 April 2017 - 08:09 PM

[amphibian]

 Gorefest, on 11 April 2017 - 08:08 PM, said:

Oh gods, Sean Spicer said that even Hitler didnt use chemical weapons in WW2. How is it that this man is still in a job? The guy is going beyond embarrassing into a whole new realm of cringeworthiness.

There's a memetic going around white supremacist circles (which don't call themselves white supremacist, naturally) that Zyklon B, the gas used to murder at least a million people, was a pesticide and therefore "not a chemical weapon".

It is one of the dumbest "splitting the hairs" moments in recent history, but it has been a thing for a while and the Trumpians are willing to put this out into their message. That's who's running the country now.

[worry]

That's pretty interesting. I tend to chalk up Spicer's constant gaffes to his profound classical-sense stupidity, but he's shown himself willing to tow the line for his racist bosses plenty too.

Then again, these aren't mutually exclusive attributes. So much of neo-Nazi apologetics goes 1) The Holocaust Never Happened; 2) But It Should Have, and you kinda-sorta have to be a moron to subscribe to that line of thought.

[amphibian]

 Briar King, on 11 April 2017 - 09:34 PM, said:

He just put a shotgun in his mouth on that one. It was very clear he meant in comparison to the mustard gas WW1 attacks but I agree he deserves every ream directed his way today.

No, he didn't mean that at all.

His post-press brief statement talks about how he meant to distinguish the two types of chemical weaponry by pointing to Assad's usage of airplanes to drop them on people. It's pretty fucking clear from his shitty statements during the briefing and after the briefing that he's not talking about World War 1's mustard gas attacks.

[worry]

Yah, I have to conclude from that 'clarification' and the fact he said that Hitler didn't use chemicals on "his own people" that what Spicer meant all along was: there's a difference between using chemicals on "normal" people and "other" people (e.g. Jews, gays, etc.).

I don't think Spicer -- like I said, he's stupid -- even recognizes how awful even 'innocently' making that distinction is. Like if you're suggesting taking the chemicals to the population center is on a worse tier than taking undesirables from the population center to the chemicals, you're not making a distinction based on human suffering and murder, you're making it on the fact that you might accidentally hit "your" people along with the undesirables. It's an ugly point of view with or without the sheen of overt bigotry.

[Cause]

 Gorefest, on 11 April 2017 - 08:08 PM, said:

Oh gods, Sean Spicer said that even Hitler didnt use chemical weapons in WW2. How is it that this man is still in a job? The guy is going beyond embarrassing into a whole new realm of cringeworthiness.

The guys and idiot and his clarifications make him seem an even bigger idiot!

I do have to point out though that many documentaries etc will point out that while both sides in ww2 prepared and stockpiled chemical weapons Niether used them. Hitler own experience on ww1 apparently left him afraid of them and he never ordered them used. The allied position was apparently not to use them unless the Germans did first.

Did he gas people. Absolutely. Was he a racist spychotic murderer absolutely. Can I see how a man might not think a gas chamber is a chemical weapon in the way a chemical artillery shell or bomb is? Yes. Especially since as I say I have seen documentaries do the same. If he had argued that point to defend himself great. Instead he implies that German Jews were not hitters own people and may have not been innocent civilians. So moron.

[HoosierDaddy]

Carter Page is going to be in front of lots of congressmen and women.

[worry]

And perhaps a firing squad. Treason is still a capital offense!

[Tapper]

 Briar King, on 12 April 2017 - 01:37 AM, said:

I was waiting on it ever sense hearing the carrier was rerouted. N Korea is supposedly threatening us with nukes now(like always). This nation is always my biggest worry about going through with threat more then any other.

Why? NY Times published last month that while North Korea's arsenal and range is growing, they also trend towards smaller, mobile launch war heads, and that might mean moving away from longer ranged missiles. Even with ICBM at their disposal, they'll probably never be capable of a knock-out strike, so if they do use their capabilities, they will face annihilation and no-one will protect them.

For the regime, the goal of (getting a) nuclear threat was imho mostly internal: to keep them in power by preventing outside forces from trying to topple them: "you try regime change, we'll nuke Seoul, and try our damnedest for Tokyo and LA: is that worth it to you?".
.
The Kims are (and were) not evil geniuses out for world destruction/domination. They're a dynasty of tyrants. To do keep it that way, they need as little outside interference as possible, and that also means as little information, technology, liberty, education and freedom coming in to the bottom of the society: that's how the west could threaten them.

[QuickTidal]

Yep, Tapper has the right of it.

I don't think that NK are stupid enough to do anything so drastic. They are just posturing...and it's a BIT of brinkmanship (but not really on the scale that can play in the arena with the States like the Soviets once did during the cold war)...but overall it's a bunch of hot air designed to keep them in power. If they ever launched even one thing at the States, they would be bombed back to the stone age in a day. I think they are well aware of that fact. They want to be on the world stage, and keep power. That's it.