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2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

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Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

ericredaxe said:
And here I was thinking it was things like the mandatory transvaginal ultrasound requirements that serve no medical purpose.... silly me, who would have thought it is because women can't understand graphs and pie-charts. :rolleyes:
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Not *all* of them. Here, I have a chart on that somewhere that breaks it down....
 
Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

Holodomor, Katyn, purges, show trials, Hungary '56, Czechoslovakia '68, assassination attempt on John Paul II and KAL 007. Why would anybody even speculate that the Putin government had any direct involvement in or knowledge of the shoot down? It will be interesting to see just how much we know about what went on. Recall that after KAL 007 went down (amid Soviet denials) Jean Kirkpatrick revealed to the Security Council the audio tapes of the Russian pilot acknowledging his deliberate kill of that 747. And the NSA is much better now than it was then. One assumes the Russians provided technical assistance in setting up the BUK rocket launchers and training for the crews. That's bad enough. But what if Russian "advisors" were there, actually had hands on (or were standing around watching) in shooting down a civilian airliner?
 
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Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

Old Pio said:
Holodomor, Katyn, show trials, purges, Hungary '56, Czechoslovakia '68 and KAL 007. Why would anybody even speculate that the Putin government had any direct involvement in the shoot down? It will be interesting to see just how much we know about what went on. Recall that after KAL 007 went down Jean Kirkpatrick revealed to the Security Council the audio tapes of the Russian pilot acknowledging his deliberate kill of that 747. And the NSA is much better now than it was then. One assumes the Russians provided technical assistance in setting up the BUK rocket launchers and training for the crews. That's bad enough. But what if Russian "advisors" were actually there, actually had hands on in shooting down a civilian airliner?
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Nothing will happen of any significance. The world will bluster and make sounds about the "injustice" of it all. But Russia is not changing its government over this.

And don't forget, we shot down an Iranian airliner over / near the Persian Gulf 20+ years ago. Nothing happened.
 
Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

joecct said:
Nothing will happen of any significance. The world will bluster and make sounds about the "injustice" of it all. But Russia is not changing its government over this.

And don't forget, we shot down an Iranian airliner over / near the Persian Gulf 20+ years ago. Nothing happened.
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Apart from your apparently irresistible impulse to suggest we're just as bad as the Russians, it depends on how you define "nothing," doesn't it? There are quite a few things that could happen short of Russia "changing its government." And they would amount to more than "nothing."

In a column in today's WaPo, David Ignatius suggests the accidental shoot down of the Iranian jet (it had turned off its transponder and was not squawking "friend or foe" at the time) nevertheless convinced Khomeini he couldn't win the war with Iraq and induced him to seek a settlement with Hussein. The deliberate shoot down of KAL 007, Ignatius claims, speeded up the collapse of the Soviet Union.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...irlines-crash-de-escalate-the-ukraine-crisis/
 
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Old Pio said:
Apart from your apparently irresistible impulse to suggest we're just as bad as they are, it depends on how you define "nothing," doesn't it? There are quite a few things that could happen short of Russia "changing its government."
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JFC get the corn cob out of your posterior! The US Navy made a mistake and shot down an Iranian airliner. We apologized. End of story.

Somebody, apparently allied with Russia, but not Russia directly, also shot down a civilian airliner. The hairsplitters will yak and yak and talk and talk and, in the end, what will they do? Exactly what they've done in the past - a symbolic gesture that looks good to the media and accomplishes nothing.

In the end, both shoot downs did exactly the same thing - a lot of civilians died and the consequences were/will be identical.

No governments were harmed by this action.
 
Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

joecct said:
JFC get the corn cob out of your posterior! The US Navy made a mistake and shot down an Iranian airliner. We apologized. End of story.

Somebody, apparently allied with Russia, but not Russia directly, also shot down a civilian airliner. The hairsplitters will yak and yak and talk and talk and, in the end, what will they do? Exactly what they've done in the past - a symbolic gesture that looks good to the media and accomplishes nothing.

In the end, both shoot downs did exactly the same thing - a lot of civilians died and the consequences were/will be identical.

No governments were harmed by this action.
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And based on their unprecedented record of mass killings, you're prepared to give the Russians the benefit of the doubt in this case? You do recognize the difference between accidental and intentional don't you? Although we paid settlement money to Iran, we never apologized. Evidently in your mind anything short of war equals "nothing." We'll see.
 
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Old Pio said:
And based on their unprecedented record of mass killings, you're prepared to give the Russians the benefit of the doubt in this case? You do recognize the difference between accidental and intentional don't you? Although we paid settlement money to Iran, we never apologized. Evidently anything short of war equals "nothing." We'll see.
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http://m.townhall.com/columnists/hankadler/2014/07/19/a-teachable-moment-n1863656
 
Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

If the Russians are responsible it will come out. If it comes out it should draw the Near Abroad closer to the West out of fear of similar ethnic Russian pretexts, and it should help EU governments take a strong line on sanctions despite the increase in energy costs.

The cost of becoming diplomatically isolated is enormous in the global economy. Putin's government is especially vulnerable to sanctions because its legitimacy among Russians rests on a decent economy. If the Russian economy crashes, the government will crash along with it.
 
Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

Kepler said:
If the Russians are responsible it will come out. If it comes out it should draw the Near Abroad closer to the West out of fear of similar ethnic Russian pretexts, and it should help EU governments take a strong line on sanctions despite the increase in energy costs.

The cost of becoming diplomatically isolated is enormous in the global economy. Putin's government is especially vulnerable to sanctions because its legitimacy among Russians rests on a decent economy. If the Russian economy crashes, the government will crash along with it.
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Communism or no, they're still a 3rd world country with nukes.
 
Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

Old Pio said:
Communism or no, they're still a 3rd world country with nukes.
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I worry about Pakistan using nukes, not Russia. Russia, like China (and us) wants to project strength to protect its people. Using nukes means getting nuked, and that means megadeaths. Nobody but a religious zealot is going to do that.
 
Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

Old Pio said:
Communism or no, they're still a 3rd world country with nukes.
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Not true. Go to St. Petersburg and tell me that. Russia is rich and somewhat sophisticated.

Kepler said:
I worry about Pakistan using nukes, not Russia. Russia, like China (and us) wants to project strength to protect its people. Using nukes means getting nuked, and that means megadeaths. Nobody but a religious zealot is going to do that.
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You should. Although the Russian government encourages local extremism in order to exert control...it is still populist. Its a slightly extreme example of what happens in some southern states. In Pakistan, the government is just trying to keep the lid on.
 
Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

5mn_Major said:
You should. Although the Russian government encourages local extremism in order to exert control...it is still populist. Its a slightly extreme example of what happens in some southern states. In Pakistan, the government is just trying to keep the lid on.
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Well, put it this way -- I worry about anybody with nukes (including us) using them, but I don't unduly worry about Russia. If I did worry about them it wouldn't be because of their populist strain, it would be their nationalism. And even then, while Russian nationalists definitely have revanchist/irredentist goals in the lost republics, nukes don't help advance those goals.
 
Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

Kepler said:
I worry about Pakistan using nukes, not Russia. Russia, like China (and us) wants to project strength to protect its people. Using nukes means getting nuked, and that means megadeaths. Nobody but a religious zealot is going to do that.
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India/Pakistan has always been my most feared nuclear scenario. The potential loss of control of Russian nukes because of the collapse of Communism is also a concern. We are seeing some erosion of our own nuclear readiness with the problems the AF is having with missile crews at Malmstrom, AFB. BTW, this is not related to the security of the weapons. It is, instead, a certain laxness in launch protocols that seems to have developed lately. Of course, the Minutemen are no longer our first line of nuclear defense, the sea launched Trident missiles are.
 
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Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

5mn_Major said:
Not true. Go to St. Petersburg and tell me that. Russia is rich and somewhat sophisticated.



You should. Although the Russian government encourages local extremism in order to exert control...it is still populist. Its a slightly extreme example of what happens in some southern states. In Pakistan, the government is just trying to keep the lid on.
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As St. Petersburg goes, so goes the nation.

Just curious, are you even capable of discussing anything without firing a shot at America? Russian populism is a "slightly extreme example of what happens in some southern states?" What a load of sh*t! Paraphrasing Bill Buckley, waiting for you to say something critical of America is like following a lighted fuse--one never has to wait very long for an explosion.
 
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Re: 2nd Term Part VIII - The Thin Red Line

Old Pio said:
India/Pakistan has always been my most feared nuclear scenario.
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Me too. Nationalism plus religious fanaticism plus instability.

#2 is some nutcase exploding a low yield "Suitcase from Allah" in Tel Aviv, since the response would be a mushroom cloud over Tehran and/or an Arab capitol.
 
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