Putin puts troops in western Russia on alert in drill 1.1

[Deleted]

eu is really firing on it's own feets in that situation, never expected even germany to pull down it's pants like that.

I guess next elections when we're back in recession and euro skeptics get 75% of the votes maybe they wake up?

[KingInYellow]

Always depends on one's perspective. I really don't care about other nation's opinions beyond how those opinions effect American power.

Until some of their citizens fly a few planes into some important buildings. Then all of a sudden you get angry and upset about their opinions.

[Deleted]

Except the US has not taken territory by force of arms (which does not require said arms to be fired) and integrated said territory for ~70 years.

The us has done much much worst. So I wouldn't out it down to that level if I was you.

[Skroe]

Yeah, tell me how we should immigrate to Western Europe and then laugh at Russians that their country will be destroyed because of brain drain.
Slovakia will never prosper if "allied" with you. It will never prosper if "allied" with Russians. There's no alliance between small and great powers.

And you know what? You're entirely right. This is a world where size matters, now more than ever.

Europe figured that out. Countries of 30 million... 20 million... 60 million and GDPs on one side or another of a trillion dollars figured that out. And the solution was the EU, an idea you denigrate.

Like what you want is a fantasy. You want somehow, a small country with, in your case, 5.4 million people to be a peer to Germany, or France, or the UK... or Russia or the US or China? Impossible for dozens of reasons. The way your country makes an impact, such as it is, is deepest integration possible in the EU. It is the only way a country with 5.4 million can punch above its weight. But you need to understand, that even that has a ceiling. In the US we sorted that problem 200 years ago. Rhode Island has a voice and a role.... but it's not the magnitude of that of California or Texas or Florida. The word for that is "fair" because those States, with populations tens of millions strong and huge GDPs, should have the larger impact.

So this is a big sorry for being born in a small land locked state of negligible economic and strategic importance. Really. That's the hand you got dealt. You can bitch about the state of affairs - which to be clear, is what you've done - or you can figure a way out of it. And for Slovakia, the EU is the only game in time. You're either a junior partner in that, a vassal to Russia, or an insect on a field filled with titans fifty times your size. Those are your options.

[Cybran]

I've been wrong about nothing.

Do you have any idea how laughable this statement is considering you claimed that "Iraq is a stable democracy" a few days before half the country was overrun by Islamists funded by the CIA?


Stop embarrassing yourself further.

[Skroe]

I guess next elections when we're back in recession and euro skeptics get 75% of the votes maybe they wake up?

Hey! Hey Djalil!

Wanna come on my mumble? We can read the sectoral sanctions announcement together. We can alternate paragraphs. You know. That thing you spent months and months saying would never happen? That thing that very much did happen?

I eagerly await your thoughts on how this impossibility happened. Was it magic?

Infracted

[Deleted]

Hey! Hey Djalil!

Wanna come on my mumble? We can read the sectoral sanctions announcement together. We can alternate paragraphs. You know. That thing you spent months and months saying would never happen? That thing that very much did happen?

I eagerly await your thoughts on how this impossibility happened. Was it magic?

Can someone ban this flame baiter?

[Skroe]

Do you have any idea how laughable this statement is considering you claimed that "Iraq is a stable democracy" a few days before half the country was overrun by Islamists funded by the CIA?


Stop embarrassing yourself further.

No. I said it was the most established democracy in the arab world, which even with ISIS in the North, is still a true statement. Them being a democracy (a deeply flawed one nevertheless) is in no way in conflict with the statement that they have a serious terrorist problem.

What it does speak poorly about is the state of democracy in the Arab world. When Iraq is among the best it has, there's a real problem.

But hey, you're reaching for straws, and I said the exact same thing I just wrote at least once before when someone brought it up. Are you done? Because I'm not. Those sanctions you said would never happened, did happen. And I'm not going to let you forget it!

"The West won't do Shit"
-Cybran, March 2014.


If I cared enough I'd put it in my signature.

[KingInYellow]

And you know what I said about that last big terrorist attack on many prior occasions?

If support for the Afghan Mujahideen in the 1980s lead indirectly to it over a decade later, it's a small price to pay for ridding the world of an existential threat to the West. It's a bargain. Terrorists are not an existential threat. The pain they inflict, while great, is orders of magnitude less than the pain a nuclear war would cause Non-allied nuclear armed states who we have antagonistic relationships with are an existential threat. That is why we have long sought to coral them.

And who said anything about militarily attacking China. That's the second time in two pages you assume I suddenly want to send B-2s over Moscow and now Beijing. Gosh, what's with your war boner?

You just justified 9/11. I'm in awe, sir. Awe.

[Cybran]

http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/0...entary/375162/

Losing Iraq, a new FRONTLINE documentary airing tonight 10:00 p.m., EST on P.B.S., takes a closer look at how we got to this point and where we're going in the future.

In this exclusive clip General David Petraeus explains his controversial "Sons of Iraq" initiative, in which he put Sunni insurgents on the American payroll. A critical part of the "Anbar Awakening," the effort was heralded as a turning point in the war against al-Qaeda.

Training and arming islamic terrorists is the best way to spread democracy.

[Deleted]

You just justified 9/11. I'm in awe, sir. Awe.

Don't talk about 9/11 or he claims he'll smash your face

[Skroe]

Can someone ban this flame baiter?

Flame baiter?! Ridiculous We have discussed this for months. Since March. And you were the most dogged advocate of how the EU wouldn't do anything.

And yet... here we are. It's July. And it did.

If I didn't ask for a response from you, I'd be letting you off the hook for a position you took on dozens of occasions. Why the hell would I want to do that? You staked out a position. You put your name on it. You stuck to it doggedly.

And it turns out, you made a horrific, horrific bet.

So I want to see from you three words: "I was wrong". I think you owe it to the people who have been saying there would be sectoral sanctions... that the EU would push hard, after 4 months of of saying the exact opposite.

Another case where the word for that is "fair". So are you man enough to admit that, in this very black and white kind of way, you were wrong? There is no interpretation here. There are sectoral sanctions, where you said there would be none. That makes you categorically wrong. I really want to hear you say it.

Frankly, I don't think you have the guts to do it.

[Kellhound]

Until some of their citizens fly a few planes into some important buildings. Then all of a sudden you get angry and upset about their opinions.

You obviously missed the last part of my statement....

[bufferunderrun]

And you know what? You're entirely right. This is a world where size matters, now more than ever.

Europe figured that out. Countries of 30 million... 20 million... 60 million and GDPs on one side or another of a trillion dollars figured that out. And the solution was the EU, an idea you denigrate.

Like what you want is a fantasy. You want somehow, a small country with, in your case, 5.4 million people to be a peer to Germany, or France, or the UK... or Russia or the US or China? Impossible for dozens of reasons. The way your country makes an impact, such as it is, is deepest integration possible in the EU. It is the only way a country with 5.4 million can punch above its weight. But you need to understand, that even that has a ceiling. In the US we sorted that problem 200 years ago. Rhode Island has a voice and a role.... but it's not the magnitude of that of California or Texas or Florida. The word for that is "fair" because those States, with populations tens of millions strong and huge GDPs, should have the larger impact.

So this is a big sorry for being born in a small land locked state of negligible economic and strategic importance. Really. That's the hand you got dealt. You can bitch about the state of affairs - which to be clear, is what you've done - or you can figure a way out of it. And for Slovakia, the EU is the only game in time. You're either a junior partner in that, a vassal to Russia, or an insect on a field filled with titans fifty times your size. Those are your options.

this so much this, Churchill figured out this 70 year ago but seem that the message has not been delivered.

[Kellhound]

The us has done much much worst. So I wouldn't out it down to that level if I was you.

No country with a viable global reach has clean hands, I at least accept that reality.

[Deleted]

Flame baiter?! Ridiculous We have discussed this for months. Since March. And you were the most dogged advocate of how the EU wouldn't do anything.

And yet... here we are. It's July. And it did.

If I didn't ask for a response from you, I'd be letting you off the hook for a position you took on dozens of occasions. Why the hell would I want to do that? You staked out a position. You put your name on it. You stuck to it doggedly.

And it turns out, you made a horrific, horrific bet.

So I want to see from you three words: "I was wrong". I think you owe it to the people who have been saying there would be sectoral sanctions... that the EU would push hard, after 4 months of of saying the exact opposite.

Another case where the word for that is "fair". So are you man enough to admit that, in this very black and white kind of way, you were wrong? There is no interpretation here. There are sectoral sanctions, where you said there would be none. That makes you categorically wrong. I really want to hear you say it.

Frankly, I don't think you have the guts to do it.

Listen skroesec, you're 30 not 15. If you want to discuss properly do it properly. If you want to act like an idiot you're welcome to do it without mentioning my name.
Try and be civil and we can have a discussion about it.

- - - Updated - - -

No country with a viable global reach has clean hands, I at least accept that reality.

I do too. I also accept there are various degrees of involvement.

[Skroe]

You just justified 9/11. I'm in awe, sir. Awe.

No. I'm saying that one shouldn't expect to get in fights without at least getting a bloody lip. That's not justification. That's a recognition of the reality that no action doesn't have a reaction. It's a matter of is that reaction acceptable.

We do not live in a world with the USSR in it where nukes are on hair-trigger alert, as they were for fifty years. That is a very, very good thing. That is probably the best thing to happen in the world, since the defeat of the Nazis. It is that big a deal.

And what did we do to do that? All our shitty cold war behavior, some of which still haunts us.

But the prize simply outshines every injury we had inflicted to get it. The USSR is dead, and the world isn't going to blow up because of that. Al Qaeda? 9/11 was the worst they could do. They never have been an existential threat.

[KingInYellow]

Can someone ban this flame baiter?

It's not flame that he's baiting. Though he does appear to be a master.

[Skroe]

Listen skroesec, you're 30 not 15. If you want to discuss properly do it properly. If you want to act like an idiot you're welcome to do it without mentioning my name.
Try and be civil and we can have a discussion about it.

And being 30 somehow means I can't enjoy dancing on the ruins of an edifice that you spent months building, an edifice demolished in days? You and I didn't talk once or twice about it. We went back and forth for hundreds of posts. And you got proven categorically wrong. No debate. No interpretation. The EU instituted sectoral sanctions. I am very much enjoying that happening, both out of a sense of justice for Ukraine and the victims of Russian aggression (including MH17) but also considering how 1300 pages of this bizarre conversation has gone since March. It truly crystallized for me the alternate reality people such as yourself live in.

You deserve this Djalil. You really, really do. You deserve, after hundreds of posts about how the EU would never do squat, to be told how horrifically off base you were, something that was very clear to people less myopic than you. Honestly what do you really think would happen if Russia continued it's behavior? Are you telling me right now you think the EU won't put more sanctions in place if Russia does more? Of course they will! They've even said as such! But every time that point was made, you ignored it. Why? Because you're a dishonest person who couldn't separate what they WANTED TO HAPPEN from what COULD HAPPEN.

So yes, once again, you deserve to be told, very clearly for all to see, you were so hilariously flat out wrong, that its appalling to think of the hundreds of hours you've wasted since March advocating a fantasy that only existed between your two ears. And the rest of us deserve to hear you say it.

[Cybran]

For the last 25 years the USA has had carte blanch to play world police, invade and rob who ever they please. The biggest existential threat for them today is that people might realize that their money and friendship are equally worthless.

It's a matter of time.