American Election 2024

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Except for all the people dying. And stocks going down and gas prices going up. And people in many countries having missiles falling on them.

Trump has another first for American presidents. Even though "Israel appear to have fired the projectile that killed Khamenei", "CNN reported Sunday that the CIA provided key intelligence on the Ayatollah's whereabouts that allowed him to be targeted.
Sorry if behind paywall, from: https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/03/politics/khamenei-killing-us-assassinations-cia-iran-analysis
 
It's fairly clear to me that many Iranians, perhaps including some high placed ones, hate that government. Some people are consistently feeding valuable info to CIA and Mossad about key officials' whereabouts.
 
jimk said:
But I do think that a nuclear armed Iran would have been a very scary situation.
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This is the bottom line. Religious extremists with nukes is a recipe for disaster. They'd be too willing to become martyrs and get their 72 virgins.......
Tony Crocker said:
It's fairly clear to me that many Iranians, perhaps including some high placed ones, hate that government. Some people are consistently feeding valuable info to CIA and Mossad about key officials' whereabouts.
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For sure.
There is no clear outcome to all of this. I'm hoping your president 'chickens out' and declares some kind of victory so the whole mess settles down. The other possibility is that he puts troops on the ground...... History might tell him and his people that things can go very wrong in that situation.
 
I was a civilian employee of the US Navy for 35+ years. Worked with many submariners over the years. The sinking of the Iran warship by one of our subs is a crazy milestone that will instantly make the skipper a legend. A USN submarine hasn't sunk an enemy warship since 1945! Hopefully, this helps keep open the straits of Hormuz.
 
jimk said:
I was a civilian employee of the US Navy for 35+ years. Worked with many submariners over the years. The sinking of the Iran warship by one of our subs is a crazy milestone that will instantly make the skipper a legend. A USN submarine hasn't sunk an enemy warship since 1945! Hopefully, this helps keep open the straits of Hormuz.
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I would hope a billion dollar attack sub, firing 5 million dollar torpedoes would be able to sink a less sophisticated vessel... very little cat and mouse at play unlike in ww2 , where you had to sneak up on your pray...
what is more concerning , is Iran is attacking with drones that have wooden props. we have to use million dollar munitions to defend against them. And now we also have to worry about our alleged allies (Kuwait) shooting down our planes..
 
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jasoncapecod said:
what is more concerning , is Iran is attacking with drones that have wooden props. we have to use million dollar munitions to defend against them. And now we also have to worry about our alleged allies (Kuwait) shooting down our planes..
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Agree on the point about low cost drones. Additionally, Russia taking taking losses this way too from cheap Ukrainian drones. Darn Iranians reverse engineered our and western drones to generate the ones they are attacking us with now.
When adversaries come up with cheap drones that can sink one of our zillion dollar air craft carriers that will be a real dangerous David and Goliath situation. USN can defeat this threat for now, but maybe not in the future, perhaps from a swarm of drones.
 
jimk said:
Agree on the point about low cost drones. Additionally, Russia taking taking losses this way too from cheap Ukrainian drones. Darn Iranians reverse engineered our and western drones to generate the ones they are attacking us with now.
When adversaries come up with cheap drones that can sink one of our zillion dollar air craft carriers that will be a real dangerous David and Goliath situation. USN can defeat this threat for now, but maybe not in the future, perhaps from a swarm of drones.
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I totally agree with your point
We basically defeated the Germans with this similar tactic. The Germans had very expensive and sophisticated tanks the tiger and panther. Both were superior to our Sherman tank, but they were difficult to maintain and expensive. We produced a gazillion Sherman tanks that just basically overwhelmed them.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,"
 
jimk said:
The second Iraq War had a much more difficult aftermath.
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This is kind of soft pedaling what happened.

Acting on bad or falsified intelligence:

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed.
5,000 US soldiers killed
30,000 US soldiers wounded
4 trillion added to the US debt
Removed a regime that counter-balanced Iran

What am i forgetting?

I can't figure out the positive outcomes, maybe you can help me.
 
I was tangentially involved in a rather hawkish conversation about Iran on a chairlift today, which I did not start. At the end of the ride the soft spoken lady stranger next to me quietly said "I hope Iran does to our current leadership what we did to theirs.". She added, "And I'll watch the repeats of it on TV."
I didn't respond, as I'm generally not too confrontational in public on such touchy matters.
And fortunately the ride quickly came to an end.
 
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Harvey said:
I can't figure out the positive outcomes, maybe you can help me.
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It’s a dog didn’t bark situation. Saddam was very dangerous, had already attacked two of his neighbors and used WMDs on Iran and the Kurds. It’s pure speculation what he would have done if left in place, but invading Syria when its civil war started in 2011 is a fairly safe bet.
Harvey said:
Created a base for ISIS
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Incorrect. ISIS arose in Syria during its civil war in 2013. It was able to spread to Iraq because Obama withdrew our forces from the Sunni Triangle in 2011. Our forces remain there now to prevent an ISIS resurgence.
 
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jasoncapecod said:
what is more concerning , is Iran is attacking with drones that have wooden props. we have to use million dollar munitions to defend against them. And now we also have to worry about our alleged allies (Kuwait) shooting down our planes..
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yep, just heard a report that one patriot missle is 4 million bucks...ONE. While Shahed drones are roughly 30-50k. insane. Ukraine got smart and developed anti-drone, drones. The US is finally catching on, and has plans to start building our own/variations. A little late to the game, guys.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainma...es-deadly-drone-boats-for-western-militaries/

Also just heard this war so far is costing approx. 1 billion a day.
 
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Tony Crocker said:
ISIS arose in Syria during its civil war in 2013.
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Corrected. Still a huge blunder.

ETA:

www.pewresearch.org

A Look Back at How Fear and False Beliefs Bolstered U.S. Public Support for War in Iraq

Twenty years ago this month, the U.S. launched a major invasion of Iraq. President George W. Bush and his administration at first drew broad public support for the use of military force. Yet the campaign soon left Americans deeply divided, and by 2019, 62% said the Iraq War was not worth fighting.
www.pewresearch.org www.pewresearch.org

99% would have been against it if US taxpayers would have been forced to pay for the war in real time.
 
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