The suzerain Trump

[AvtomatKalashnikova]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/02/politics/ ... d=34067065

Soon American is teaching children that world is only 6000 year old, evolution is conspiracy theory, Satan is bury dinosaur bone to trick world, oil and coal is clean renewable fuels for better tomorrow, and Jesus is cross Potomac to liberate US from Islam!

[Tero]

About time: somebody dismisses Trump.
https://news.google.com/news/amp?caurl= ... pt0-238627

[Brian Peacock]

About time: somebody dismisses Trump.
https://news.google.com/news/amp?caurl= ... pt0-238627

Job done. Troll Iran and then it's their fault when you bomb their bridges, schools and hospitals.

[Tero]

First a few botched CIA operations. Then drones.

[JimC]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/02/politics/ ... d=34067065

Soon American is teaching children that world is only 6000 year old, evolution is conspiracy theory, Satan is bury dinosaur bone to trick world, oil and coal is clean renewable fuels for better tomorrow, and Jesus is cross Potomac to liberate US from Islam!

The lunatics are in charge of the asylum...

[Brian Peacock]

Aye, the 'Alternative Facts' are strong in Mr Falwell Jnr.

I see the Wiki page on Mr Falwell senior neglects to mention his 2005 arrest on drugs and pornography charges (making movies at home, including some with underage boys, and posting them to porn sites under the pseudonym Dick Dangling). The Moral Majority will out I guess.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Who were the "military officials" who said that? So, here we have Trump, inaugurated on 1/20, and between that date and 1/29, he approved this mission. However, later in the article (which you edited out) it shows Centcom asking for operations that they believe have a good chance of success, and when THEY ask for authorization, they believe there is a chance of successful operations based on our planning.

The CENTCOM flak didn't actually respond to the allegations, as your quote shows. They neither denied or confirmed them. I think it's significant that there is no denial, since that would have been simple enough to do. I'm not in the habit of copy-pasting whole articles (see copyright and fair use laws), and the portions I quoted were not taken out of context.

The article attempts to blame Trump for this - as if he went off half-cocked and directed a mission that just didn't have adequate intelligence, ground support or backup preparations. However, it was, as the article notes, Centcom that planned the mission and asked the President for authorization. They don't go to the President and say "hey we have this mission here ,and we'd like to go forward," and the President goes "sure, go ahead - no planning or intelligence needed, just do it."

The story makes it clear that the operation was cleared before Obama left office. That means the clearance was granted weeks ago. Things in a situation such as exists in Yemen can change a lot in a couple of weeks. The source pointed out that

on-the-ground surveillance of the compound was “minimal, at best.”

“The decision was made ... to leave it to the incoming administration, partly in the hope that more and better intelligence could be collected,” that official said.

So yes, it was up to the Trump administration to nail down the situation rather than send in a team without up to date intelligence. It appears that was not done.

I mean - is that how Obama authorized missions? He conducted detailed reviews of the intelligence, planning and backup of each mission, to ensure that sufficient intelligence, planning and backup existed? Or, did he oversea general policy and goals, and the Centcom planned the missions and represented to him that the intelligence was there and the planning was there, etc., which the President o.k'd?

He had competent, experienced national security people working for him, who apparently were less ideologically driven than the zealot Flynn and the noob Bannon, who is a political operative and shouldn't even be involved in making national security decisions.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Speaking of Flynn, it's looking like he's aching for a war with Iran. It's a damn good thing that terrible, terrible hawk Clinton didn't get elected.

"Flynn and the Dangerous Iran Obsession"

Treating the attack on the Saudi vessel as an “Iranian action” [as Flynn did] is wrong and deliberately misleading. Iran can’t be held responsible for the actions of Yemeni fighters over whom it has no control. Besides, Saudi and other coalition vessels wouldn’t be targeted if they weren’t taking part in the wrecking and starvation of Yemen. They are being targeted because they are waging war on Yemen with U.S. backing (a fact that Flynn chooses to ignore entirely in this statement), not because of some grand Iranian design to attack them. Using Yemeni resistance against the U.S.-backed coalition that is attacking them to blame Iran for threatening “U.S. friends and allies in the region” is about as perverse and dishonest as it gets. But it comes as no surprise that this is how Flynn would frame the conflict.

Some quotes from Flynn's wild-eyed fever dream of a book (The Field of Fight) in the following article:

"With His Power Unchecked, Michael Flynn Could Lead Trump Into War With Iran"

One leader must be in charge overall and accountable to the president—if this leader does not meet the test, which is to win, then fire him or her and find another who can. We have to stop participating in this never-ending conflict and win! And we must accept that there is no cheap way to win this fight. The bottom line is that we have to organize ourselves first before we can expect any international coalition to seriously join forces with us to destroy this evil we must clearly define as Radical Islamism.

[. . .]

If as PC [politically correct] apologists tell us, there is no objective basis for members of one culture to criticize another, then it is very hard to see—and forbidden to write about or say—the existence of an international alliance of evil countries and movements that is working to destroy us. Yet, the alliance exists, and we’ve already dithered for many years. The war is on. We face a working coalition that extends from North Korea and China to Russia, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

[. . .]

Iran is the linchpin of the alliance, its centerpiece.

The final paragraph of the article:

Reading Flynn’s The Field of Fight, few will doubt that the author was tacitly nominating himself to be that “one leader [who] must be in charge overall.” As the Trump National Security Council has lately been emerging, the “one leader” appears rather to be Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon, newly and controversially appointed to the council. But there remains every reason to believe, and to fear, that the operative national security vision remains that of Flynn, a three-star general who may be happy to see Dunford, a four-star general, sidelined. Next to go perhaps: Secretary of Defense Gen. James Mattis, another four-star general, whose nuanced views may even now be getting in the way.

[Tyrannical]

Everyday is like Christmas now! Love it! Thank you Trump for an awesome future 8 years!

[Tero]

Alt facts massacre
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... ia=FB_Page

[Tero]

Trump voters disappear into the woodwork:
Newsweek / Gallup poll
The approval scores on the executive orders are just slightly below Trump’s overall job approval rating. Of those polled, 43 percent said they approve of how Trump is doing his job so far as president; 52 percent said they disapprove. More specifically, almost half—47 percent—say Trump is moving too fast in addressing the major problems facing the country.

[Animavore]

I can't wake up every day for the next 4 years wondering what act of tremendous stupidity this brain dead administration has done today.

[Brian Peacock]

You have to find some way to come to terms with this Ani. Tyrannical has the right idea: every day you wake up and nobody has let off a tactical nuke is like Christmas day.

[Animavore]

More Trump lies. Ie; Trump said something in general.


http://news.groopspeak.com/obama-admin- ... navy-seal/

[Animavore]

Seriously, this government is just fucking scum.

Senators voted 54-45 Thursday to kill an Obama administration coal mining rule, giving President Trump his first chance to formally take off the books an environmental rule from the previous administration.

The Congressional Review Act (CRA) challenge passed by the Senate undoes the Interior Department’s Stream Protection Rule, a regulation requiring coal firms to clean up waste from mountaintop removal mining and prevent it from going into local waterways.

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro ... -coal-rule