In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
On October 16 2016 23:58 zlefin wrote: re: portugal I'm sure they had lots of people like trump (also a total invitation to that Trevor Noah african leader skit); trump is simply far less useful than you think he is, and far more common. Also not sure what kind of difference you think it would've made.
I mean, someone that wants the well being of his own nationals first and wants to make america great again instead of being a corrupt leader like hillary that makes backdoor deals with other corrupt world leaders, that's what we have in Angola, i would like a nationalist there for a change.
The well being of his own nationals... Let me think. You mean people like the Clintons? Like the muslims living in the US? Like the Judge from Indiana with mexican heritage? Like the people running the NYT? Like woman?
I dont see him wanting the well being of these people.
On October 16 2016 15:01 xDaunt wrote: Oh, by the way, Wikileaks released an email that confirms what everyone already knew: Obama could have had a status of forces agreement in Iraq if he wanted one. So yeah, let's finally dispense with the retarded pretext that Obama didn't abandon Iraq of his own volition.
Again, when entire documents are leaks, stop trying to cherry pick.
The Iraqis are keenly interested in understanding President-Elect Obama's position on the SOFA. Indeed, a number of senior Iraqi officials - including a number of Prime Minister's most senior advisors -- are claiming that Mr. Obama will not support a SOFA signed by President Bush and interpreting the few messages publicly available as a pretext to reject the agreement on the table. After you have had time to review the SOFA text, we ask that the Obama transition team express support for the SOFA, lest the Iraqis use previous positions or the absence of comment to scuttle the deal.
By way of suggestion, we offer the following as possible reassurance to the Iraqis, perhaps in letters to Talibani and Maliki:
"We believe that any Status of Forces Agreement, or Strategic Framework Agreement, should include commitments by the U.S. to begin withdrawing its troops and to foreswear permanent bases. Any such agreements must provide strong protections and authorities for our troops. We will respect the agreement as negotiated and not insist it be ratified by the US Congress. We hope it can be concluded as soon as possible. "
Bolded is what everyone tells you every single time this comes up.
This is too rich. I linked to the entire document. You quoted only the self-serving part for you, and you accuse me of cherry-picking! Here, let's take a look at the portion that you conveniently left out:
The U.S.-Iraq SOFA is reaching the endgame. The U.S. negotiators have provided the Iraqis with a text we consider final, accompanied by a letter from President Bush urging the Prime Minister to lobby Iraqi officials to approve the document and send it to the Council of Representatives for approval. Intensive lobbying by Ambassador Crocker and our negotiators is currently taking place in Baghdad.
We believe we have negotiated an agreement that provides President-Elect Obama the authorities and protections he needs to exercise the full perogatives as Commander in Chief. We would like to offer, at your earliest convenience, a full briefing to you and your staff on the details of the SOFA. Ambassador Crocker and General Odierno would appreciate the opportunity to brief you personally, via SVTC, at a time that's amenable. Representatives from both Mr. Obama's and Mr. Biden's Senate offices are scheduled to receive a briefing on the text on Wednesday the 12th, and the text has and will continue to be available to those named staff in the Senate's secure facility.
In other words, there was a deal on the table that the Bush Administration had already negotiated, and which Obama apparently rejected.
EDIT: In contrast, what you quoted weren't "facts" regarding the dynamics of the negotiations, so much as a prepared fluff-piece that General Lute suggested that the Obama Administration send the Iraqis to reassure them that he wasn't looking to torpedo the SOFA negotiations.
That still talks about lobbying the Iraqi's to approve it. Do we know if they did approve it or if they denied that version of the SOFA?
This is the only look that we've had into the internal negotiations of SOFA. I don't think that a version of SOFA was ever submitted to the Council of Reps for approval, strongly suggesting that the agreement negotiated by the Bush Administration and the Maliki Administration was torpedoed by Obama and that a replacement agreement was never negotiated. Regardless, it's very clear that a version of SOFA was available to Obama if he wanted it. Getting the Council of Reps on board wouldn't have required much other than a few extra concessions from the US to grease treads.
Looks like shitposting for Trump has become a lucrative activity.
Gotta love this campaign. As Oliver put it: "look up. No further up, even further, wayyyy up there. You see that? This is rock bottom!"
Don't know why, i can only wish my ancestors homeland had someone like Trump.
He would have put them onto the slave ships personally. Probably provided the slavers with ships in the first place.
My ancestors did the same, there were signed deals with slavers regarding the people they could take as slaves. Contracts between the King of Congo and the Portuguese per example.
Legit question from Maher: what happens when Katrina Pierson becomes Secretary of State?
"New rule for Trump voters, if you think you hate the establishment now, wait until he wins, and the Trump surrogates, that basket of inexplicable he sends up every day to speak for him, become the establishment. We are thinking of giving these people the reigns of power? I wouldn't put them on the bus without asking the driver to make sure they don't miss their stop."
Oh and some weird logic going on in this thread. Consider to rename the whole thing "the bizarre thread". I'm trying to follow but I struggle.
Actually, I have to take it back. It looks like the version of SOFA discussed in that email was actually signed and ratified before Bush left office. So that email is useless.
On October 17 2016 00:53 xDaunt wrote: Actually, I have to take it back. It looks like the version of SOFA discussed in that email was actually signed and ratified before Bush left office. So that email is useless.
I think if it had been really significant / damning in any way, we would have heard about it.
That's why "leaking" millions of documents without making any editorial or research work is really a bad idea. The only thing you'll get are people trying to find stuff by improvising themselves armchair specialist of extremely technical topics.
I don't blame you, also because you have the elegance of saying you were wrong, but I don't think discussing our own analysis of raw documents is a super good idea.
Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence said evidence implicates Russia in recent email hacks tied to the U.S. election, contradicting his running mate, Donald Trump, who cast doubt on Russia's involvement.
Pence said in an interview aired on "Fox News Sunday" that Russia or any other country involved in hacking should face "severe consequences." The disagreement with Trump, the Republican nominee for the Nov. 8 election, came after the pair also publicly disagreed about U.S. policy toward Russia in Syria.
U.S. intelligence officials believe Russia is behind recent email hacks targeting Democratic Party officials, including the continuing dumps by Wikileaks of documents stolen from the email account of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta.
"I think there's no question that the evidence continues to point in that direction," Pence said. "There should be severe consequences to Russia or any sovereign nation that is compromising the privacy or the security of the United States of America."
In another interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," Pence said "there's more and more evidence that implicates Russia,."
On October 17 2016 00:53 xDaunt wrote: Actually, I have to take it back. It looks like the version of SOFA discussed in that email was actually signed and ratified before Bush left office. So that email is useless.
I think if it had been really significant / damning in any way, we would have heard about it.
That's why "leaking" millions of documents without making any editorial or research work is really a bad idea. The only thing you'll get are people trying to find stuff by improvising themselves armchair specialist of extremely technical topics.
I don't blame you, also because you have the elegance of saying you were wrong, but I don't think discussing our own analysis of raw documents is a super good idea.
I'm going to make a wild, bold, daring assertion here: if it were trumps emails, you would do a complete 180.
Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence said evidence implicates Russia in recent email hacks tied to the U.S. election, contradicting his running mate, Donald Trump, who cast doubt on Russia's involvement.
Pence said in an interview aired on "Fox News Sunday" that Russia or any other country involved in hacking should face "severe consequences." The disagreement with Trump, the Republican nominee for the Nov. 8 election, came after the pair also publicly disagreed about U.S. policy toward Russia in Syria.
U.S. intelligence officials believe Russia is behind recent email hacks targeting Democratic Party officials, including the continuing dumps by Wikileaks of documents stolen from the email account of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta.
"I think there's no question that the evidence continues to point in that direction," Pence said. "There should be severe consequences to Russia or any sovereign nation that is compromising the privacy or the security of the United States of America."
In another interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," Pence said "there's more and more evidence that implicates Russia,."
I hope Trump gets asked about this at the next debate so we can see him contradict Pence and say they haven't been talking again. That was a delightful moment.
On October 17 2016 00:58 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On October 17 2016 00:53 xDaunt wrote: Actually, I have to take it back. It looks like the version of SOFA discussed in that email was actually signed and ratified before Bush left office. So that email is useless.
I think if it had been really significant / damning in any way, we would have heard about it.
That's why "leaking" millions of documents without making any editorial or research work is really a bad idea. The only thing you'll get are people trying to find stuff by improvising themselves armchair specialist of extremely technical topics.
I don't blame you, also because you have the elegance of saying you were wrong, but I don't think discussing our own analysis of raw documents is a super good idea.
I'm going to make a wild, bold, daring assertion here: if it were trumps emails, you would do a complete 180.
Fortunately, every single one of the relevant Trump stories has trickled through media outlets doing investigative research, rather than me looking at his tax returns and deciding some of the numbers looked fishy. It's almost like that's the point of the media.
On October 17 2016 00:53 xDaunt wrote: Actually, I have to take it back. It looks like the version of SOFA discussed in that email was actually signed and ratified before Bush left office. So that email is useless.
So still no smoking gun.
And yay for whoever reported this 'damning' email without bothering to check what accord was actually being discussed.
The effort it takes to create a conspiracy pales in comparison to the effort it takes to debunk them.
On October 17 2016 00:58 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On October 17 2016 00:53 xDaunt wrote: Actually, I have to take it back. It looks like the version of SOFA discussed in that email was actually signed and ratified before Bush left office. So that email is useless.
I think if it had been really significant / damning in any way, we would have heard about it.
That's why "leaking" millions of documents without making any editorial or research work is really a bad idea. The only thing you'll get are people trying to find stuff by improvising themselves armchair specialist of extremely technical topics.
I don't blame you, also because you have the elegance of saying you were wrong, but I don't think discussing our own analysis of raw documents is a super good idea.
I'm going to make a wild, bold, daring assertion here: if it were trumps emails, you would do a complete 180.
History says that if it were a Trump email we would probably find evidence to show it is true... We dont have to make wild claims about Trump. Reality is damning enough
I think we can all agree that in hindsight, the Iraq matter was not handled very well. The political aspect of the time was very clearly in favor of quitting Iraq and not continuing a really unpopular war. But the policy aspect should have been very clearly supporting a withdrawal that did not make things worse. Shit happens, people make mistakes. I don't like how Hillary's excuse for a bad result is "we couldn't do anything about it" because that is a really flimsy explanation. But it only seems to be like a garden variety mistake, and a garden variety face-saving excuse. It would be a lot more meaningful an issue to address if there were an alternative. But we're stuck with a situation where the only one with any substantial FP expertise is one without enough judgment to make good use of that knowledge. Oh well, we'll survive.
On October 16 2016 23:58 zlefin wrote: re: portugal I'm sure they had lots of people like trump (also a total invitation to that Trevor Noah african leader skit); trump is simply far less useful than you think he is, and far more common. Also not sure what kind of difference you think it would've made.
I mean, someone that wants the well being of his own nationals first and wants to make america great again instead of being a corrupt leader like hillary that makes backdoor deals with other corrupt world leaders, that's what we have in Angola, i would like a nationalist there for a change.
what i'm hearing is you have absolutely nothing but stuff that's not remotely true and no sense of reality. Trump is not an example of a low corruption person. All leaders favor their own nationals and want to make their countries better. at least in decent places, I dunno about shitty places in africa. also the notion that america isn't already great; or that trump's proposal would help anything (especially considering how vague they are)
On October 16 2016 23:58 zlefin wrote: re: portugal I'm sure they had lots of people like trump (also a total invitation to that Trevor Noah african leader skit); trump is simply far less useful than you think he is, and far more common. Also not sure what kind of difference you think it would've made.
I mean, someone that wants the well being of his own nationals first and wants to make america great again instead of being a corrupt leader like hillary that makes backdoor deals with other corrupt world leaders, that's what we have in Angola, i would like a nationalist there for a change.
what i'm hearing is you have absolutely nothing but stuff that's not remotely true and no sense of reality. Trump is not an example of a low corruption person. All leaders favor their own nationals and want to make their countries better. at least in decent places, I dunno about shitty places in africa. also the notion that america isn't already great; or that trump's proposal would help anything (especially considering how vague they are)
I'm talking about the shitty place in Africa i came from (Angola) if you don't know the country you can check the wikipedia link if you feel like learning about shitty places https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angola . We could do well with more people like Trump in Africa at least the nationalist ideas and the well being of the country.
On October 16 2016 23:58 zlefin wrote: re: portugal I'm sure they had lots of people like trump (also a total invitation to that Trevor Noah african leader skit); trump is simply far less useful than you think he is, and far more common. Also not sure what kind of difference you think it would've made.
I mean, someone that wants the well being of his own nationals first and wants to make america great again instead of being a corrupt leader like hillary that makes backdoor deals with other corrupt world leaders, that's what we have in Angola, i would like a nationalist there for a change.
what i'm hearing is you have absolutely nothing but stuff that's not remotely true and no sense of reality. Trump is not an example of a low corruption person. All leaders favor their own nationals and want to make their countries better. at least in decent places, I dunno about shitty places in africa. also the notion that america isn't already great; or that trump's proposal would help anything (especially considering how vague they are)
I'm talking about the shitty place in Africa i came from, we could do well with more people like Trump at least the nationalist ideas and the well being of the country.
That assumes we can take him at face value. But Trump is like used car salesmen, he will say anything to get what he wants. So he says he will make America great because that is what people want to hear. And if you look at his buisness history, he has no problem going back on the a deal if it won't work out for him.
On October 16 2016 23:58 zlefin wrote: re: portugal I'm sure they had lots of people like trump (also a total invitation to that Trevor Noah african leader skit); trump is simply far less useful than you think he is, and far more common. Also not sure what kind of difference you think it would've made.
I mean, someone that wants the well being of his own nationals first and wants to make america great again instead of being a corrupt leader like hillary that makes backdoor deals with other corrupt world leaders, that's what we have in Angola, i would like a nationalist there for a change.
what i'm hearing is you have absolutely nothing but stuff that's not remotely true and no sense of reality. Trump is not an example of a low corruption person. All leaders favor their own nationals and want to make their countries better. at least in decent places, I dunno about shitty places in africa. also the notion that america isn't already great; or that trump's proposal would help anything (especially considering how vague they are)
I'm talking about the shitty place in Africa i came from (Angola) if you don't know the country you can check the wikipedia link if you feel like learning about shitty places https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angola . We could do well with more people like Trump in Africa at least the nationalist ideas and the well being of the country.
well, your name is ImFromPortugal, and you list oyur country as portugal, so I tend to assume you're from portugal. I admit Trump might be an improvement from what you have in angola, but so would hillary, and probably most us politiicans; even the ones that are crappy by US standards would probably be good by Angola standards.
nationalism isn't really super succcessful, it's more about good governance in general. And having leaders who want the country to be better (even with many different opinions about what that should be).
On October 16 2016 23:58 zlefin wrote: re: portugal I'm sure they had lots of people like trump (also a total invitation to that Trevor Noah african leader skit); trump is simply far less useful than you think he is, and far more common. Also not sure what kind of difference you think it would've made.
I mean, someone that wants the well being of his own nationals first and wants to make america great again instead of being a corrupt leader like hillary that makes backdoor deals with other corrupt world leaders, that's what we have in Angola, i would like a nationalist there for a change.
what i'm hearing is you have absolutely nothing but stuff that's not remotely true and no sense of reality. Trump is not an example of a low corruption person. All leaders favor their own nationals and want to make their countries better. at least in decent places, I dunno about shitty places in africa. also the notion that america isn't already great; or that trump's proposal would help anything (especially considering how vague they are)
I'm talking about the shitty place in Africa i came from, we could do well with more people like Trump at least the nationalist ideas and the well being of the country.
That assumes we can take him at face value. But Trump is like used car salesmen, he will say anything to get what he wants. So he says he will make America great because that is what people want to hear. And if you look at his buisness history, he has no problem going back on the a deal if it won't work out for him.
I believe that if he wins as egocentric as he is he will try to be the best president ever he won't settle for less, even with his lack of understanding of politics he can hire people to do the job for him.
well, your name is ImFromPortugal, and you list oyur country as portugal, so I tend to assume you're from portugal. I admit Trump might be an improvement from what you have in angola, but so would hillary, and probably most us politiicans; even the ones that are crappy by US standards would probably be good by Angola standards.
nationalism isn't really super succcessful, it's more about good governance in general. And having leaders who want the country to be better (even with many different opinions about what that should be).
She is corrupt and is not willing to change we already have lots of politicians like that in Africa, she makes deals with corrupt governments and oligarchies, we have that in Africa as well, not a big improvement.. if she was african instead of those millions she made with the speeches she would have billions.
EPT
