US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2425

On October 22 2015 01:25 Mohdoo wrote:
If Iraq ends up receiving assistance from Russia, Obama has officially failed in his Middle Eastern policy.

On October 22 2015 01:33 Plansix wrote:

Considering the political structure in Iraq that will make that decision was put in place by Bush, I am going to continue to blame him over the guy tasks with dealing with that disaster. Once the Bush administration put an elected government in place, our ability to directly influence the direction of the country is limited. They of course, never considered the idea that the elected government might do really stupid things in the coming years. But that sort of forward thinking wasn’t the hallmark of the Bush administration.

A few weeks before the last great international climate conference—2009, in Copenhagen—the e-mail accounts of a few climate scientists were hacked and reviewed for incriminating evidence suggesting that global warming was a charade. Eight separate investigations later concluded that there was literally nothing to “Climategate,” save a few sentences taken completely out of context—but by that time, endless, breathless media accounts about the “scandal” had damaged the prospects for any progress at the conference.

 Now, on the eve of the next global gathering in Paris this December, there’s a new scandal. But this one doesn’t come from an anonymous hacker taking a few sentences out of context. This one comes from months of careful reporting by two separate teams, one at the Pulitzer Prize–winning website Inside Climate News, and other at the Los Angeles Times (with an assist from the Columbia Journalism School). Following separate lines of evidence and document trails, they’ve reached the same bombshell conclusion: ExxonMobil, the world’s largest and most powerful oil company, knew everything there was to know about climate change by the mid-1980s, and then spent the next few decades systematically funding climate denial and lying about the state of the science.

This scandal—traveling under the hashtag #exxonknew—is just beginning to build. The Inside Climate News series of six pieces is set to conclude this week and be published as a book, but the LA Times apparently has far more reporting waiting to be released. Already members of Congress—Ted Lieu and Mark DeSaulnier of California—and presidential candidates Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders have called on the Department of Justice to investigate, comparing it to the predations of the tobacco industry.

Should the DOJ muster its courage to go after this most profitable and connected of companies, the roadmap is already well laid out by the two investigations.

 ICN has demonstrated that as early as the late 1970s, Exxon scientists were briefing top executives that climate change was real, dangerous, and caused by their product. By the early 1980s, their own climate models were predicting—with great accuracy—the track the global temperature has taken ever since.

 The LA Times reporting is at least as important. It demonstrated that Exxon clearly believed their own climate models and used them to guide their efforts in the newly melting Arctic, where as their senior researcher said “warming will clearly affect sea ice, icebergs, permafrost and sea levels.” (Indeed, he added, climate change “can only help lower exploration and development costs,” thus making their bids for Arctic lease rights more profitable).

On October 22 2015 01:45 Mohdoo wrote:


Bush created a terrible situation. Obama was getting things going a good direction, then let politics pull us out of Iraq. Now, if Russia ends up securing both Iraq and Syria, Iraq complete disaster and we become 100x more reliant on Israel than previously. I think it is fair to blame Obama for how he treats the disaster. Every president will inherit disasters. I am still a strong Obama supporter, but there's no way to say that Russian relations with Iraq would be clearly our fault.

On October 22 2015 01:50 ticklishmusic wrote:
Russia isn't going to secure Iraq or Syria, they can sustain a short flashy bomb campaign but an extended deployment isn't something Russia can afford either politically or financially. They're broke as shit, and jingoism is a lot cheaper than nationbuilding. Putin knows his image will be shattered once soldiers start coming back in caskets, so he's not going to do it.

Iraq is a mess, the last prime minister was a borderline racist and marginalized a huge swathe of the population (not to mention he kicked out thwe U.S. for political points). The distrust that's built up has severely stunted the ability to build an effective governing coalition, let alone a coordinated military response to ISIS. And we let him do it.

On October 22 2015 01:45 Mohdoo wrote:


Bush created a terrible situation. Obama was getting things going a good direction, then let politics pull us out of Iraq. Now, if Russia ends up securing both Iraq and Syria, Iraq complete disaster and we become 100x more reliant on Israel than previously. I think it is fair to blame Obama for how he treats the disaster. Every president will inherit disasters. I am still a strong Obama supporter, but there's no way to say that Russian relations with Iraq would be clearly our fault.

On October 22 2015 02:03 RCMDVA wrote:
Russia's goal is for Team Alawite to win and prevent any pipeline from Saudi Arabia, or Qatar/UAE or anywhere else from reaching Turkey and gutting the prices they charge Europe for natural gas.

And to keep a warm water port. That's it.

If that mean being friends with Team Iran and Team Hezbollah, then that's fine with them.

On October 22 2015 02:50 Slaughter wrote:
Why do we care if Russia wants to do what we have been doing? Who cares? Let them take the reigns and we can stop draining our effort and money into that region. Have fun with the clusterfuck Russia. We will take our Israeli ally (strongest military in the region) and laugh while we focus on our domestic issues.

On October 22 2015 02:56 Plansix wrote:
Russia also has this habit of supporting dictatorships that are actively hostile towards the US and allow of terrorist to exist and operate in their countries.

On October 22 2015 03:02 Gorsameth wrote:

You mean like America did throughout the Middle East during the Cold War?
I mean, its not like America trained the Taliban to fight Russia right? That would be silly.