Відео

This is one of the best posts I have seen in the Internet. Well done.

While I agree that the ICBM fleet WAS a powerful deterrent it's increasingly clear that through complacency and inadequate attention it has become a useless expense. SLBMs drastically reduce response time since they are launched much closer to their targets. US submarine technology is still some of the best in the world even though our missile R&D has fallen behind. While Russia, China, and even Iran and N. Korea have built their nuclear arsenals, the US has allowed its own to slip into disarray to such an extant that our ICBMs are not only far less capable than those of our main adversaries, but stand to be mostly ineffective. A Minuteman III launched from the midwest to strike targets in Russia is no match for modern missile defenses or cyberwarfare efforts, but Russia and China are proliferating hypersonic missiles which stand a high probability of striking CONUS targets. So Mattis was not wrong. Either modernize US defenses or cut the expenses and find something else.

I'm sick of people repeating this myth. Iraq absolutely DID HAVE weapons of mass destruction (we had service members receive documented treatment for exposure to Sarin and other chemicals encountered when capturing weapons and supply depots, for example), they problem was that their program was tremendously degraded, internally due to corruption and incompetence, and their stockpiles were not in an effective state of readiness and their equipment was mostly broken or inoperable through lack of maintenance, and thus it didn't pose a clear or imminent threat. It _could have_ , had funding stopped being siphoned off and competent people started reorganizing and re-fitting the units, but that would take months at minimum and the signs would be obvious. The reasons that the "intelligence community" (and by this I mean the political appointees at higher positions and decision-makers in the executive branch) got things wrong about whether Iraq's WMD program was an active threat or a deteriorated junk heap were multi-faceted, but largely center around a few things: First, the sources that we were getting information from had incentive to exaggerate things due to their strong urge to get rid of Saddam's regime (which on its own is a legitimate position). Second, the information we gained directly from within the regime (basically stolen info, via spies/SIGINT/hacking/etc) was wrong _because people within the regime were lying to themselves_, which means the reports and data that the US was surreptitiously gaining access to made the Iraqi program seem much more capable than it actually was. This "misinformation" in modern parlance was not intended to fool the US and other countries, but to fool people within the Iraqi regime itself. I don't know if you've ever heard the term "pen-whipped" for paperwork, but there was a LOT of that going around (e.g. falsified documents for inspections, tests, etc), partly due to a culture where family importance and personal connections were more important for getting high rank positions than competence, but also because these high-ranking people were embezzling money. Equipment and delivery systems (rockets, radars, etc) didn't get maintained because generals and high-ranking civilians were stealing the money, the paperwork and reports for inspections and tests were falsified to A) cover their tracks, and B) prevent Saddam or his inner circle from finding out how jacked up his units were, because he had a habit of brutally executing people who failed to meet his expectations, sometimes extending to torture of family members. Third, the combination of our exiled and defected sources saying "their program can do X, Y, and Z" and the Iraqis' own internal documents saying "our program can do X, Y, and Z" fit very well with the pre-existing biases of those holding high office in the US. This confirmation bias resulted in conflicting info (e.g. reports coming in from less usual sources indicating their program was in much worse shape than thought -- and these sources being a bit less noticeable or traceable because they would have been internally suppressed even in Iraq for reasons mentioned above) being dismissed as anomalies or inaccuracies, rather than signaling that maybe a more in-depth look should have been taken at the accuracy of sources, or maybe those "anomalies" that popped up had more veracity when taken as a big picture than initially expected. It doesn't mean that "IrAq DiDn'T hAvE wMdS"; it meant that their program was not "capable of X, Y, and Z" but rather "could maybe do X after 6 months of preparation, might be able to do Y after a year with some more funding, probably can't do Z without having to buy a whole lots of parts from Such-and-So." Not enough of a "clear and imminent threat" to justify the invasion on its own. But they DID have them, and if Saddam had his way they would have been functional.

Not really, no. What US troops and allies did find were largely forgotten or inactive remnants from the 1980's. US forces also discovered thousands of documents confirming the Iraqis had gone to great lengths to destroy their own stockpiles and had abandoned WMD research for years.

@@jsquared1013 All true. The Marines out west found over 2200 rockets filled with sarin, and I did casualty reports on US soldiers that were injured when illiterate locals used mustard artillery rounds for IED's.

​@@jsquared1013 Great summary! I would also add that the existence of WMDs in Iraq or not was actually immaterial to the decision to invade. Iraq was defeated in the 1991 Gulf War and part of the conditions THEY agreed to end that conflict was continual external monitoring of their WMD capabilities. But they reneged on that. THEY started playing games about what they would allow inspectors to look at. THEY eventually kicked out inspectors. So, in the end, it doesn't really matter if they had WMDs or not. An analogy would be a sex-offender who is released on probation - and one of the provisions of their probation are random no-warning inspections from a PO. If that sex-offender suddenly refused to allow the PO in this home - it's back to jail for him. It doesn't matter what he actually might, or might not, be hiding in his house.

@@arkwill14 Liberals don't care about facts. They are freaks, and their hate for this country and us normal people is the only thing that fuels them. Anything not supporting their fantasy is ignored as a rule.

yep, if you stay put during an assault you will start taking more and more casualties due to indirect fire that will become more and more accurate.

immobility == Death to onself.

it's Cajun/ Louisiana accent

@@norger isn't that French?

@@menachem2521 Cajun speak a dialect of french

Do you even understand how much of a pawn you are?

Total War is Shortest War

It’s a shame that Trump is a tyrant and good for us that Mattis see that and wanted nothing with him.

Mattis is a neocon who believes in Forever Wars. F him!

Going to his happy place.