dagblog - Comments for "Why War? The Military Industrial Complex Doesn't Care About You"

Funny, Krugman takes up the

Michael Maiello — Mon, 18 Aug 2014 12:20:54 +0000

In reply to Why War? The Military Industrial Complex Doesn't Care About You

Funny, Krugman takes up the same topic today and, I think, botches it. Krugman wonders why we even have war when the economic effects tend to be poor for both victor and vanquished. I think he misses that while the effects might be bad for the victor's economy over-all that there are benefits that go to politically influential sectors.

The widespread meme that the

Peter — Mon, 18 Aug 2014 05:07:05 +0000

In reply to I do not know if the original

The widespread meme that the Islamic State is trained and funded by the US or Israel seems to have come from Iranian sources. All of these claims have proven to be weak or absurd such as the nonexistent Snowden documents about Mossad training its leadership. Iran is extremely frightened because the IS is already on their border. Their dropping of Maliki and installing this new puppet, al-Abadi in Baghdad and a new fixer, Adm Ali Shamkani, shows their panic. People who parrot this weak propaganda seek to use it for their own reasons although some are Iranians or Iran sympathizers. This type of bogus claims also seems to soften the harsh reality that the Islamic State is a free agent acting under their own agenda and will be very difficult to counter.

This "the U.S. armed ISIS"

Aaron Carine — Mon, 18 Aug 2014 01:26:01 +0000

In reply to Why War? The Military Industrial Complex Doesn't Care About You

This "the U.S. armed ISIS" story is pretty questionable.

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/06/23/did-the-us-really-arm-and-train-the...

ISIS started out as Al Qaeda in Iraq, which was the sworn enemy of the Americans from the start.

We can go on about the military-industrial complex, but the Yezidis were being massacred, and it will be bad for both Iraq and America if ISIS takes over. That doesn't prove the air strikes are justified--I'm still on the fence--but I'd like to hear a more substantial argument against it than the standard riffs against "the military-industrial complex".

I do not know if the original

A Guy Called LULU — Sun, 17 Aug 2014 21:25:13 +0000

In reply to The conspiracy theorists on

I do not know if the original title has been changed but here is what it says now followed by an editors note.

Blowback! U.S. trained Islamists who joined ISIS

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Since publication, this story has been corrected to clarify that the fighters trained in Jordan became members of the ISIS after their training.]

PJ Tatler acknowledges what is almost certainly true. My emphasis;

It’s possible that some fighters trained by the US in Jordan ended up joining ISIS, but that’s not the same as the US knowingly arming and training a terrorist group, which is implied in the WND article and that Senator Paul states as fact.

snip

Are there US-run training camps in Jordan for Syrian rebels? Yes, we’ve been training members of the Free Syrian army for years there. But other than these anonymous “Jordanian officials,” who else has said we trained ISIS members? [PJ Tatler]

I didn't see any mention of false flags or conspiracy theories in either article.I suppose that if one were to conclude that the U.S. trained anti-Assad fighters that it would be safe to say that some combination of people conspired to help the insurgency in Syria succeed but according to Tatler that is a fact, not a theory.

The conspiracy theorists on

artappraiser — Sun, 17 Aug 2014 20:18:31 +0000

In reply to PJ didn't say anything in

The conspiracy theorists on Islamic terrorism do tend to be spread across the political spectrum. But within each political persuasion of theorists, they tend to have more active minds when it's not "their guy" in charge as president or CIA chief or whatever. Every now and then you see something like this article within a political group, saying basically: c'mon guys, get real, make sense, everything happening in the world cannot be a false flag, and the guy in charge that we dislike cannot be both incredibly competent at plots and incredibly incompetent at the same time.

PJ didn't say anything in

Anonymous — Sun, 17 Aug 2014 12:16:53 +0000

In reply to I didn't really expect

PJ didn't say anything in defense of the air strikes(in this article, that is). They were criticizing the claim that the U.S. armed ISIS. It would be strange if we did, since ISIS evolved from an organization which was founded to fight us.

I didn't really expect

Orion — Sun, 17 Aug 2014 01:32:49 +0000

In reply to This "the U.S. armed ISIS"

I didn't really expect someone to quote PJ Media here but I've been told Dagbloggers come from various political dispositions. Roger Simon and his ilk are establishment conservatives who set up that site to apologize for the Bush administration during the Bush years. One would expect them to reflexively defend an aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East, right or wrong.