Trump criticizes *the Kurds* for not helping America in WWII, "they didn't help us with Normandy." (!!!) pic.twitter.com/yC8yijgjTh
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) October 9, 2019
It says something to me that of the several dozen people with whom I served in the army back in the day and every single person I know who served in the military, not one person thinks betraying the Kurds is a good idea and uniformly think of it as a disaster and something that would previously be unthinkable:
urkey sent warplanes and troops into northeastern Syria on Wednesday in a military operation aimed at flushing out an American-backed militia, Turkish and Syrian officials said.
The Turkish attack came amid a flurry of confusing policy statements from the White House, which on Sunday acquiesced to the operation, agreeing to move American forces out of the way, but on Wednesday, hours after it began, condemned it.
“The United States does not endorse this attack and has made it clear to Turkey that this operation is a bad idea,” President Trump said in a statement on Wednesday.
Turkish fighter jets streaked through the sky over Syrian towns, while explosions from artillery shells boomed, causing traffic jams of terrified civilians fleeing south in trucks piled high with their possessions and children.
Subscribe for original insights, commentary and discussions on the major news stories of the week, from columnists Max Fisher and Amanda Taub.
After about six hours of airstrikes, Turkish troops and their Syrian rebel allies crossed the border late Wednesday, the Turkish Defense Ministry, beginning a ground offensive.
In a normal, sane, world, this would be the end of Trump, even among his diehards. I doubt we will hear a peep, though, even from the evangelicals, as Kurdish Christians are slaughtered at the hands of Erdogan.
But, as Trump stated, where were the Kurds at Normandy, or Pearl Harbor, for that matter? Or Vietnam. So fuck them, really.
David Evans
BBC reporters on News 24 can usually find something to say. But after reading out the “Normandy” quote they were literally speechless.
Kent
The Israelis weren’t with us in Normandy either.* Or in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, or any other damn place where American troops have ever fought. But that doesn’t keep Trump from sticking his head all the way up Bibi’s ass.
*and yes I know Israel wasn’t a country in 1944. Neither was Kurdistan.
Just One More Canuck
And they didn’t help fight the Germans at Pearl Harbour
Christ, what an asshole
opiejeanne
@Kent: And there’s Italy. They didn’t help us at Normandy either. (playing the absurdist)
Chris
In a society that can’t hold a fucking football game without turning it into a paean to the glory and honor of THE TROOPS!!! it remains staggering how free people feel to shit and piss on the people who do the bulk of the fighting and dying against America’s enemies.
RAVEN
@Kent: The Izzies had time to attack the USS Liberty.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
“The Kurds didn’t help me dodge the Vietnam draft.” ~ Dump
MattF
Someone must have said the word ‘Normandy’, and after rattling around in T’s brain for a while, it spilled out. Random association.
jl
Trump also claimed that the Kurds were too expensive and we spent a huge outsize amount of money supporting them [100 percent false by any sane standard].
And, Turkey will pay a catastrophic price [how?] if it is not ‘fair’ to the Kurds, by standards the US will make up as things develop [senseless].
Ridiculous. The GOP stands behind this toxic fool.
rk
Every day I ask myself “is it possible to loath a man so much and can I hate him more today than yesterday”? The answer is yes.
Omnes Omnibus
@opiejeanne: Italy, hell. How helpful were the Germans at Normandy?
Kent
Why are people not labeling this as cowardice. If Obama did this the outrage machine would be screaming 24/7 about how America does not “cut and run”. I hope to got there are some good photojournalists over there who can document this because we are going to get some new images reminiscent of the famous final helicopters leaving the embassy compound in Saigon.
mrmoshpotato
@rk:
LOL Same.
But I can’t even bring myself to mock him on this “Normandy” shit.
This is definitely when we start looking for a retirement home for Gramps.
Raven
@Kent: Minor point but it wasn’t.
Almost everything you thought about the famed Fall of Saigon photo isn’t true
NotMax
Tomorrow’s tweets today:
“Turkey makes Great Taffy. What the hell do the Kurds make?”
//
(reference for the young’uns)
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: not only were the Germans not helpful to us at Normandy, but one could almost argue that they were actively sabotaging our efforts there. Angela Merkel has blood on her hands.
Why yes, I was a history major. Why do you ask?
RAVEN
I’ll be surprised if the Kurds don’t kill some GI’s behind this.
Cacti
Has anyone mentioned that Fred Trump, Sr. didn’t help us with WWII either?
RAVEN
Justice Department announced arrest of Defense Intelligence Agency employee Henry Kyle Frese for allegedly leaking sensitive information
Patricia Kayden
Talk about the kettle calling the pot black. How is Trump in a position to criticize anyone for not fighting when he got out of military service via fake bone spurs? Zero self awareness.
Steve in the ATL
@Cacti: or Prescott Bush. Isn’t it treason to finance the war effort of the people we are at war with?
The GOP loves its crime families.
mrmoshpotato
@Steve in the ATL: We’re not fighting you. We’re actively sabotaging your efforts.
opiejeanne
@Omnes Omnibus: I flirted with that one, but thought Germany was too obvious.
Patricia Kayden
@NotMax: Or: “Kurds don’t have any Trump Towers like Turkey does so screw them!”
Raven
@Steve in the ATL: Speaking of not fighting. . .
Mary G
What’s the problem? He said this:
I’m sure he’ll demolish the Turkish economy by the weekend.//
Words fail, lips so tightly pursed.
hueyplong
He let his slip show when he complained that the Kurds cost “us” Vicksburg.
Rommie
By tomorrow Twitler will be telling us how awful the Kurds really are and how our Heroic NATO allies are just taking out more Bad Guys.
MattF
So, this is happening:
https://mobile.twitter.com/PaulLidicul/status/1181987508202041344
ETA: Unclear how real this is.
GregB
Trump is also going Scarecrow by unleashing the inmates of Arkham on Gotham by gleefully declaring that all of the ISIS detainees held in Syria will be going to Europe.
I assume this is an actual plan to push the anti-immigrant/Muslim hysteria and create more fascists.
Dark times.
Steeplejack
@Raven:
I switched over to MSNBC.
No spoilers for people who aren’t home yet.
NotMax
@hueyplong
Not a single solitary Kurd at the Bowling Green Massacre.
;)
More seriously, while there are plenty of commonalities there also are schisms among (and within) Iraqi Kurd, Turkish Kurd, Iranian Kurd and Syrian Kurd populations.
RAVEN
@Steeplejack: Well at least they are throwing at batters.
trnc
Wow! You can really feel the manliness coming off that statement. I bet Erdogan stopped dead in his tracks and called for an immediate retreat of his troops. If anyone sees them overrunning Kurds, it must be fake news!
hells littlest angel
The Kurds wanted to help us in Vietnam, but they couldn’t. Bone spurs.
Steeplejack
@MattF:
Not real, according to a comment by Lidicul himself.
Steve in the ATL
@Raven: I’m down to college football as my only sport until pitchers and catchers report next spring!
Steeplejack
@RAVEN:
They’re probably screwing that up too.
rikyrah
I knew our luck would run out. I just didn’t know what losing our luck would look like.
Now, I know-genocide ???
Those responsible for Dolt45 will NEVER EVER BE FORGIVEN ? ?
NotMax
@Steve in the ATL
Curling season is just around the corner.
:)
MattF
@Steeplejack: I guess I should try harder to maintain my connection to reality. Hmmm.
Yutsano
@rikyrah:
Not.
One.
Iota.
Cheryl Rofer
Here’s an explanation of that idiot quote.
Mary G
Heartbreaking thread by a Fox News (!) reporter who spoke to an American soldier in Syria:
She says the Kurds are as close to Westerners as anyone in the Middle East, that atrocities are happening, but the Kurds are sticking to their fighting and guarding ISIS prisons positions still, hoping for American help to come back. She ends with:
We don’t deserve their loyalty. God.
lurker dean
from a fox news national security correspondent of all people. there’s an entire thread. it’s bleak. this is judas-level betrayal.
Ladyraxterinok
And where was Turkey at Normandy, Pearl Harbor, Vieynam???
And didn’t Turkey fight on Germany’s side in WWI??
Trump is an ignoramus. So are his supporters.
And they are all proud of their ignorance!
sanjeevs
Trump as usual is giving the game away here.
Trump and Putin want to recreate the conditions of 2014 and 2015 in Europe where Middle East refugees flocked to Europe whilst Middle East terrorists created atrocities.
The conditions that helped lead to the rise of the pro-Putin far right in Europe.
Steeplejack
@MattF:
Lidicul’s fatuous justification:
And he scarpers from the criticism:
JaySinWA
He said somebody wrote a powerful article that mentioned Normandy and other battles. Has anyone found something that this riff is from? Somewhere in the fevered swamps? Or is this one of the “sir” moments, attributing nonsense to his imaginary columnist?
ETA I see @Cheryl Rofer: found the culprit.
Repatriated
@trnc:
In other words, we’re too weak to stop them.
Great.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Were were the Kurds at Valley Forge? Absent
Agua Nueva 1835? Absent without leave!
At Fort Pillow in 1864? 16 MIA!
Winded Knee? The same?
My Lai? Not a Kurd in sight.
Ladyraxterinok
@Steve in the ATL:
Didn’t Ford build panzers for German army and IBM supply method and equipment to Nazis to locate Jewish ancestry and track down people with it?
sanjeevs
@JaySinWA: see Cheryl at 43 above
waspuppet
@Repatriated: Does anyone else in that “administration” ever make statements? Or is he too much of a diva and drama queen to let anyone else do anything?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne:
Attorney General Barr is trying to get to the bottom of that as we speak.
Cheryl Rofer
Chris
@Cheryl Rofer:
I was wondering how long it would take before the “they’re all commies anyway” defense of genocide would come in.
Rojava is running, or claims to be running, as an anarcho-socialist state. The minute I first read that about them, I was like “there is no way in hell this story doesn’t end with the West throwing them to the dogs.” In virtually any other context, this is the kind of movement that has us all screaming “ACK! KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE! BURY IT IN THE DESERT! WEAR GLOVES!”
I’m, if anything, kind of surprised that it took them this long to get around to making this argument (though the utter ignorance of the region probably contributed – there’s lots of stories of good God-bothering Christian fundamentalists traveling to Syria to fight the Evil Muslims, only to discover to their shock that all their Kurdish friends are left-wing feminist devil-worshipers).
Viva BrisVegas
@Raven:
That article is from the NY Post, it’s right wing historical revisionism.
The photo is an easy one to trace and it always has been. It was taken by Hugh van Es at the Pittman Apartments, 22 Gia Long Street.
Pittman housed USAID and CIA employees. It is those who are being evacuated. The Huey belonged to Air America (CIA).
So while it is not actually of the embassy, it’s certainly of US officials and employees making a panicked departure from Saigon.
I don’t quite understand how the Post being ignorant of this makes the Saigon evacuation any less of a shambolic rout that left tens of thousands of Vietnamese loyalists to the tender mercies of the North, or how that rout now suddenly becomes honorable as a result of that photo.
hueyplong
@Mary G: What is this “senior leaders” bullshit? It’s Trump, and only Trump. FFS.
Mary G
Bloomberg has another leak about something else:
The House staff responsible for typing up the Articles of Impeachment are all going to have severe carpel tunnel disease.
Roger Moore
@NotMax:
Cheese?
RAVEN
@Viva BrisVegas: Did I say that? It wasn’t the fucking embassy.
Ryan
What is a Normandy? What was WWII? Where were they recently? Were they there with us in Iraq, against ISIS? what is the discount rate on being there for Normandy? Were they even free to act in the 1940s given the British and French?
Mary G
@hueyplong: Soldiers aren’t allowed to diss the preznit, I think. He came as close as he could without being brought up on charges.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Cheryl Rofer: This man have dementia? That quote comes across like he has no short term memory.
JaySinWA
@Cheryl Rofer:
Sounds like a “blood and soil” paraphrase.
debbie
@Repatriated:
AND YET HE SET IT IN MOTION!!!
Repatriated
@waspuppet: Fair point.
So to clarify my previous remark, Trump is saying that HE is too weak to stop them.
Great?
Repatriated
@Roger Moore: No, whey!
Repatriated
@debbie:
That’s just his “great and unmatched wisdom” in action.
So much wising we’ll get tired of all that wising.
Mike in NC
When our Great Patriotic Minutemen were busy securing the airports during the Revolutionary War, where were those damn rotten Kurds?
Fat Bastard is ready for his straightjacket fitting.
Repatriated
Duplicate post deleted.
cain
I’m sure Germany is next. They didn’t help us at Normandy either. Assholes.
JaySinWA
@NotMax: Don’t forget Turkish delight. Here’s some Kurdish food for thought https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_cuisine
Ksmiami
@rikyrah: how about those responsible for Dolt 45 better look for a new country?…
delk
Probably overheard someone calling him Norma Desmond and that got rattling around the part of his brain not occupied by Obama and Hillary.
Mnemosyne
Can’t shake the devil’s hand and say you were only kidding, Lindsey. Sucks for you, but sucks WAY worse for the thousands of people whose murders you enabled.
Timurid
Saladin didn’t defend Cahokia against the Algonquin horde, so the Kurds can fuck right off…
Jay
Keep in mind, that this is the YPG.
They were surrounded by ISIL in Kobane, for weeks, with Turkey blocking all help and actively aiding ISIL, not only did they not give up, destroying ISIL VBIED’s and T-64 tanks with sheer heroism,
They sent flying columns across ISIL lines into Iraq, to rescue and evacuate the Yazidi from Mt. Sinjar, with only assistance from the PPK, while everyone else, either tried to stop them or ran away.
The Turks are using their proxy Radical Islamic Terrorists, ( including rebranded ISIL and al Quida) as cannon fodder, so don’t count Rojova out yet.
It’s past time that the rest of the Coelition realizes that in Royjova, the Turks, ISIL and the US are the enemy.
CliosFanBoy
@Ladyraxterinok: yes, but we never declared war on the Ottoman Empire or Bulgaria, the 3d and 4th parties in the “Central Powers.”
Mnemosyne
@RAVEN:
Poor bastard is probably one of the whistleblowers.
Chris
@Timurid:
Bigly kudos for knowing that Saladin was a Kurd.
FelonyGovt
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: They weren’t at Bowling Green either.
patrick II
@opiejeanne:
I would bet, if a reporter asked him ” Italy didn’t help us at Normandy either, why are they our friends?” He wouldn’t know the answer, or the basis for the question for that matter.
gene108
@Kent:
From what I have seen on Twitter right-wingers are all about bringing the troops home, let the murderous Muslims murder each (why should we care?), and end these endless wars by bringing all troops home & let the chips fall where they may.
I think they will believe anything to defend Trump.
germy
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, Trump is Graham’s Racist Friend.
Jay
@gene108:
And yet I’m old enough to remember when they said that we had to fight them there, before they could take over all the overpasses in the USA.
germy
Kent
New Fox news poll: 51% of Americans want Trump impeached and removed from office:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/fox
Wow……. Going well for him. Yes, please drag this whole thing out for 12 more months. Awesome strategy.
Jay
Viva BrisVegas
@RAVEN:
Did I say you said it? I said it was the fucking NY Post.
Why even link to a Trumpist rag pushing a revisionist agenda without adding some suitable mockery?
RAVEN
@Viva BrisVegas: Because I didn’t pay attention to the paper.
Jay
Jay
Jay
Stuck in moderation again.
BC in Illinois
The man is devoid of human feeling.
cain
@Jay:
We had to fight them over here before they come here and fighting with us in traffic.
MomSense
Where the hell were Normay and Nambia?!?!1!!11!
gene108
@patrick II:
You will never catch Trump speechless. He’ll ramble in vague terms that mean nothing. Maybe a big burly Italian man came to him, with tears in his eyes and said, “ Sir, Italy will die without American friendship. You save our country. Only you, sir, can save us by being friends”.
Jeffro
Hey for giggles, just picture if Hillz had betrayed the Kurds like this, and THEN added in the “Normandy” comment afterwards.
I know, I know…
BC in Illinois
@BC in Illinois:
And a response:
Jay
Jeffro
@Cheryl Rofer: He’s latching on to that PKK nonsense ‘cause he thinks it somehow smears Obama.
Jesus what a scumbag
CarolPW
So yesterday there was a guest editorial in the WaPo by Fahrettin Altun, Turkey’s communications director. The first sentence is “During a phone call with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday, President Trump agreed to transfer the leadership of the counter-Islamic State campaign to Turkey. The Turkish military, together with the Free Syrian Army, will cross the Turkish-Syrian border shortly.”
Has anyone talked about this “transfer of leadership” or did no one one read it? Seems pretty horrifying to me.
Dave P
I’ve long believed that the only thing that would cause Trump’s base to turn against him would be if he was caught in bed with two boys named Ahmed and Julio. But I’m beginning to think the wingnuts have guzzled so much Fox News Kool-Aid that even that wouldn’t cause a dent in his support.
Mick McDick
fuck the kurds, they don’t vote for us anyway
{sarcasm alert}
Mnemosyne
@Jeffro:
Note the slam against Adam Schiff. That’s not just random — Schiff has pissed off the Turkish government more than once by pushing for official recognition of the Armenian Genocide. His constituency is heavily Armenian American, so it’s a big deal locally.
cain
@Dave P:
It wouldn’t. They’ll laugh because it would annoy the libs. They’ll keep voting for this man because it pisses them off.
We are at the stage of when a man shoots himself in front of a doctor and laughs because he frustrated the doctor from saving him.
Jay
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne:
Where’s the Adam Schiff slam? Not seeing it in the links.
Kraux Pas
@Jay:
I’m still waiting for the day a massacre occurs and the attacker has “thoughts” and “prayers” painted on the side of a pair of weapons, thus rendering the usual post-massacre pablum even more insensitive to the victims.
Jay
BTW, the YPG is not going to “slaughter” the 70,000 ISIL prisoners they are holding, ( some 10,000 fighters, some 2,000 of whom are Westerners, some 60,000 women and children).
What will happen is when they can no longer afford to guard them, they will release them, unarmed.
Some, Turkey will allow to pass through their territory to return home, and form new ISIL terrorist cells, not just in the West, but across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
The Syrian and Iraqi ISIL members will be rebranded as FSA, and will be armed and supported again by Turkey.
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack:
It’s in the Schlicter article that Trump is cribbing from, not something Trump said. Look for “Schiffs and giggles”:
https://mobile.twitter.com/bbofun/status/1182058297689612289
Jay
Jay
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
It’s not just the thing about Schiff making a big deal about the Armenian Genocide. They also hate him because he’s Jewish.
Kraux Pas
Of course. Would we ever expect Trump to pay more than lip service to any concern that doesn’t directly involve him?
He heard people complaining about the potential freeing of ISIS prisoners and decided to tweet about it as though it were fait accompli and probably envisions a battle front that is no more than a small contingent of Kurd soldiers (maybe a few hundred, equivalent to the biggest crowd he’s ever seen) amassed around a prison labeled ISIS. So of course he thinks “what’s the big deal?”
Mary G
Cool history thread:
You never know what will overturn a tyrant.
Jay
For Sister Golden Bear,
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
And I’m sure their Russian mob buddies hate Schiff because of his successful prosecutions of their comrades. So many reasons to hate him. ?
mrmoshpotato
@BC in Illinois: Devoid of human feeling and devoid of normal human description of things.
Raoul
@Kent: I think calling Trump weak is a key lever. It happens to be stunningly true. But it also gets at his one remaining power. He still makes GOPers jump. They have to understand that WE understand that Trump is a classic, cowardly bully.
He can tweet a mean streak like no body’s business. But he can’t stomach actual conflict. He collapses and makes terrible, awful ‘deals’. The jig is up, and it has to be damned obvious.
Jay
Jay
Jay
Jeffro
I guess whether or not allies were “with us at Normandy” is the new standard.
How exciting for Japan, South Korea, India, Italy, the Scandinavian countries (BUT NOT FINLAND THATS DIFFERENT), Australia (I probably have that one wrong), and also Covefefe-Land and Wirchistan.
You were either us, or the Brits, or Canadian, or that’s it. So F U, Kurds.
It must be so soothing to be a wingnut and just amazeballs to be the Ultimate Wingnut, trumpov. Nothing gets in, and nothing sensible gets out. Ahhhhhhh
Jay
Because news,….
Raoul
@Cheryl Rofer: This Normandy thing is a prime example of how Trump’s tiny, paranoid media world is feeding him such utter bullshit that, to those not glued to Fox, it comes off as more and more insane. Because it is.
Don’t know if it’ll get him unelected (and FSM willing, more GOP Senators unelected), but it damn should.
Mnemosyne
@Jeffro:
FWIW, the ANZACs were there (Australia and New Zealand).
http://www.ddoughty.com/-normandy.html
Raoul
@sanjeevs: Indeed, this is how Hungary got cemented into an illiberal sham-democracy under Orban.
trnc
@BC in Illinois: Daniel Dale
This sounds like the opening of a Tommy Wiseau movie.
Raoul
@Mary G: So, multiple witnesses to the corrupt request. Well, done, anonymous ‘Dex Willerson’. Keep leaking.
schrodingers_cat
@Jeffro: India was there both in WWI and WWII, with blood and also keeping Britain fed and flush with money. Hollywood has done a great job whitewashing history.
JPL
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Where was trump?
Zzyzx
@Jay: I’ve been fasting today and as we finally get closer to sunset, I’ve been reading the news again. This is why I want to punch any Jew who defends the alt-right on grounds that Muslims are our enemies. If nothing else, the same nationalists will always come after us.
mad citizen
Haven’t been able to read all the threads today but I can’t believe the things that are happening. Getting out of the Open Skies treaty just went totally under the radar (not here, talking general media). I watched the ABC nightly news last night, and wondered why they don’t show and say the exact language of trumpov’s tweets. It’s truly insane. Either his party/Senators impeach him, or that whole party is going down down down.
Jay
Viva BrisVegas
@Jeffro:
Australia had about 3,000 personnel at Normandy. Mostly Air Force, plus men aboard Royal Navy vessels. Only a couple landed ashore.
The rest of them were busy helping the US fight the Japanese.
Jay
@Zzyzx:
Yup.
Uncle Cosmo
@Chris: On my shelf there sits a signed first hardback edition of an action-adventure novel titled The Second Saladin by Stephen Hunter, in which a Kurdish freedom fighter crosses the Mexican border into the USA determined to assassinate a (never named) prominent American political figure who has consigned his people to the tender mercies of a brutal dictator.
Sound familiar? The novel was published in 1982, and the political figure is never named – but remarkably enough, in 1975 one Henry Kissinger and the Shah of Iran cut off support for the Iraqi Kurds who had rebelled against one Saddam Hussein & abandoned them to a vicious retribution. Kissinger famously said, “fuck the Kurds if they can’t take a joke” and “covert action should not be confused with missionary work.”
And this in turn is entirely separate from Saddam’s Kurdish genocide of 1986-88, which killed upwards of 100,000 Iraqi Kurds. The awful history of those unfortunate people just repeats and repeats and repeats… :^(
sukabi
You know who didn’t help his country with Viet Nam…Mr. Bone Spurs, who chose to be a coward instead of a soldier. Always putting his own self interests first.
Adding that the ONLY reason he chose Normandy as his “justification” is to not draw attention to his own cowardly past.
NotMax
@Jay
“I’ll retire to Bedlam.”
– E. Scrooge
Jay
@schrodingers_cat:
Yup, like France, or Canada.
In 1939, France was still a nation of widows. Their Collonial troops bore the brunt of early WWII.
The Canadian War Cemetery in S’pore contains also the Indians who died alongside their Canadian comrades.
Jay
Jay
Chris
@Uncle Cosmo:
Don’t forget that in the 1980s genocide, the Reagan administration reacted to Saddam’s gas attacks on his Kurdish population by… covering for him and trying to blame Iran instead.
It’s very much a history of the Kurds being fucked, not just by Americans, but very specifically by Republican administrations. Dubya is probably the only one of them who dealt with them without being linked to an atrocity on this scale, which is a jaw-dropping moment of “Fezzik… You did something right!” considering how comprehensively catastrophic he otherwise was.
Jay
ISIL and Turkey have put the band back together.
japa21
Just occurred to me. Trump can’t do anything (not really can’t but won’t) about what Turkey is doing because if he comes out to hard on Turkey or tries to stop them Erdogan can release a transcript, or even worse, a recording of their call.
SO many countries have so much leverage over us because of him.
Jeffro
@Mnemosyne: @Viva BrisVegas: @Viva BrisVegas: @Viva BrisVegas: @schrodingers_cat:
Thank you and apologies all around – I knew I didn’t know enough
Peale
@Jay: no no no. ISIS is a creation of the CIA to continue the forever war and sell weapons. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.
Jay
@Chris:
Dubya called for their revolt. Kurds and Shia.
Then denied them access to captured weapons for their revolt,
Allowed Saddam’s military to crush them,
The Shia fled to the swamps and Iran, and got slaughtered in the process,
The Iraqi Kurds fled to the mountains where starving, dying Kurds made hours of media coverage,
Only then, with the bad media coverage did Dubya and the West give a rats ass about the Kurds.
Still no rats ass given about the Shia.
Doug R
I’ll tell you who was at Normandy. The Canadians and British-who were also in the White House in 1814-burning it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@JPL: Fight the Sexual Revolution apparently. And all snark aside WTF is up with Evangelicals they just blow that off.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Jay: The Shia have the Iranians to give a shit about them, and that what was so idiotic about the whole episdose; Bushes and the Neocons wanted Saddam overthrown, but only by the right people.
Repatriated
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: What’s up is that they’re backing Trump not because they’re Evangelical, but for the same reasons they’re Evangelical. Those reasons don’t necessarily include genuine piety, but do include self-identity.
Chris
@Jay:
… what?
That was HW. Dubya’s dad. 1990-91, not 2003-present.
jl
Listening to more of Trump’s moronic presser. I wonder if he thinks the US captured all the ISIS/ISIL fighters and the US troops are the ones holding them. Otherwise I can’t make any sense of his babble. What this ass Trump says is so tenuously connected to reality and so inarticulate, hard to figure what he even means. He thinks escaped ISIL fighter are going back to Europe? Why? they left Europe to fight in the Middle East. What a fool. but he is such an idiot, worrying about he gets ‘reciprocal’, it’s a good thing is monstrous talk about the prisoners going back to Europe is nonsense.
The GOP back this low grade idiot.
Jay
@Peale:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/kurds-have-been-preparing-for-trumps-syria-betrayalwith-a-vengeance
And yes, along with others, the US helped create ISIL.
Jay
@Chris:
Ah, you mean Dubya Dubya Me Too, not the og Dubya.
japa21
If Erdogan thought there were demonstrations against him the last time he was here, I have one thing to tell him. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
And his thuggish bodyguards won’t be able to make a dent in them.
Jay
@jl:
Some 2,000 or so of the ISIL fighters still have Western Passports.
Some are off Western Radar.
Ergodan will let them pass through Turkey and go home when the YPG releases them.
Some 4,000 or so come from other areas of the Middle East, Africa, South Asia. Turkey will let them go home too.
And there are some 60,000 ISIL women and children in the camps of whom, some who will go “home” too.
The rest will join Turkey’s rebranded ISIL and al Quida as cannon fodder in their war against the YPG and Syria.
jl
@Jay: But, I don’t understand why people who went to the Middle East to fight there, will want to go back home to wherever they came from. What do you mean by ‘home’?
NotMax
@jl
There are certainly cases of their family vigorously pressing for their return.
Jay
@jl:
So, a bunch of the ISIL western recruits, learned that Middle Eastern lifestyles wern’t up to Western Standards. Lots of grains, little meat. No Mickey D’s, no fries.
No 4th Amendment, no Miranda.
So a bunch of them want to go “home”, where in most cases, even a multi year jail sentence, has better conditions than a Middle Eastern village or town.
And they get to bring jihad to the decadent West.
Most of the people who went to support Royjova, understood that they were taking the “wayback machine” in living standards, but did so because they wanted to build a better world for others.
Most of the people who went to ISIL are like ReThugs base, dreaming of a patriarchy that never really existed, other than for a select few.
Jay
MoCA Ace
I too am to horrified to even mock that subhuman piece of shit.
As an “out” liberal in a pretty conservative area I have been accused by people I know of hating America. Today I could honestly answer yeah… a little. Our betrayal of the Kurds fills me with shame.
Jay
Jay
Jinchi
Apparently Pat Robertson is horrified.