On that you and I agree.

I am willing to hear more about it though. But on the surface I am not a proponent of that.

quote:

Originally posted by reloader-1:
Things can change, especially in that part of the world - I don’t like the possibility of any nuclear deal with any country in the ME.

Nor do I. The muslims cannot be trusted...no matter the flavor.

Tuco delivers the famous rebuttal, "When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk,"

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
It's a video game.

Well fudge..... shoulda caught that!

“Yemen's Houthi rebels, backed by Tehran, claimed attacks on two Saudi oil tankers Wednesday night. This is their first strike since declaring a blockade on the kingdom's shipping earlier this week. 
………
The attacks came as US forces carried out a 12th consecutive night of strikes on Iran, and Trump warned that America would destroy an Iranian bridge or power plant for every ship targeted in the Strait of Hormuz. …”

https://mol.im/a/15999709

I think we are well past the warning stage.

At this point, what does success look like? Is that clearly being communicated? What is our goal? Who is paying for it? Are the major oil exporters assisting in cost?

quote:

Originally posted by reloader-1:
At this point, what does success look like? Is that clearly being communicated? What is our goal? Who is paying for it? Are the major oil exporters assisting in cost?

What we are paying for is decades of not having to worry about a renegade fanatical regime funding and encouraging our enemies, both foreign and domestic, along with a stable and regulated global oil market. We can fight them there, or in a few years, fight them here. Iran would love to see the horror and tragedy of 911 written large. We will not be able to measure success until it is clearly evident in terms of being able to go about our daily lives without fear.

I would like to see more of the civilized world assisting the US since we will all benefit in the long run. But it is comforting knowing that we have the strength, knowledge, and will to do it on our own when we must.

^^^ Well said.

architect, I agree completely with you - if that is what we are trying to achieve.

I haven’t seen that communicated, expressed, or said to the American people yet.

quote:

No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.

That was said more than 80 years ago, and it holds true to this day. There must be a clear goal; if that goal is the annihilation of Iran as a functioning military power, then that is a noble goal - one that demands all of their export infrastructure to be leveled.

That has not been the case.

End goal is to not allow iran to have nuclear weapons. Then iran decided to try to close the straight. That is a big issue. So that is another task to address. That has not really changed. Going to have to continue to attack until some in iran gain enough control to bring them to the table to sign an agreement. That is it. Stay tuned and support the effort. That is how we will get to where we want to be.

Lest we not forget for almost 5 decades we have ignored or fostered the problem 47 inherited. And lest not forget that in just the last few month the wildeyed fanatics killed around 50,000 of their own citizens. So while this is going on lest we not forget what these fanatics have continually shouted about America and Israel since overthrowing their own county almost 50 years ago.

quote:

Originally posted by reloader-1:
I haven’t seen that communicated, expressed, or said to the American people yet.

And yet was also true of all the conflicts the US has been involved in since the end of WWII.

Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say since the Civil War. There was some attempt at a justification for our involvement in World War I, but to “Make the world safe for democracy” wasn’t all that compelling for many (most?) Americans. And although WWII saw plenty of propaganda explaining our involvement, the fact that war was declared on us made much of it superfluous.

I believe we have been justified in most of our wars, but explaining why to the public has been very feeble.

Completely agree, and it has led to very poor outcomes for us in each war (Korea being the major exception).

Lets stop playing games. This tit for tat we are engaged in is ridiculous. Time to shit or get off the pot.
Why are all these problems now our problems?
We are told constantly that we don't need the oil from the middle east, We destroyed all there nuclear capability, The citizens of Iran want there government thrown out, we are alone in all this.
The Israelis have skin in the game and have greatly contributed, and must destroy the Iranians and actually ALL the Arabs for there own survival.
I don't believe that any of the Arabs/muslims are our friends and ever will be.
The CIA should be stirring up hatred between the two Arab/muslims factions. Let them invade and take control of Iran and deal with the losers as they see fit in there historic ways.

The Arabs/muslims respect fear and create terrorism all over the globe, lets give them what they understand and get this over with.
Carpet bomb them with 2000# dumb bombs, everything, power plants, bridges, all infrastructure, all night, all day. I hear that we have nuclear deep penetration bombs that will collapse the mountains the Iranians hide under, lets see if they work. who cares if the world is outraged, they are any ways to everything we do. Let our barbaric approach to our enemy sit with all our other enemy's across the planet.
Then bring our brave troops home ASAP.
There loss of life and injury is not worth it for the benefit of Muslims who hate us and will till they are able to kill us all.

I'm sure most of you have heard the fable of the little green frog:

The thought of swallowing a little green frog is not pleasant, but if it is inevitable that you do so, the better plan is to do so before he grows into a big, ugly toad - at that point, the swallowing is much more difficult and much more unpleasant.

The Iran "frog" has been beaten down into a little green frog once again, but he is inevitably growing. We can handle it now - or hope that all of their pent-up hatred for the USA will somehow go away in the future. I can assure you that it will not go away - because religious hatred festers and will flame-up time and again.

If the USA cannot deal with higher gas prices and an inflated economy, so be it. But dealing with the Iranian problem is gonna be a big, ugly toad in our future and we WILL have to deal with it at some time. I may not have to see it (at the age of 82), but I can see my children and grandchildren having to do so. I hope and pray that will not be the case...........

It sounds like we're about to rain Hell on these psychopaths.

No one could have made a greater effort than President Trump, but these insane religious zealots cannot be reasoned with.

I'm beginning to think they like being bombed.

I’d love to know what the game plan was from the beginning. Surely, someone said, I’m pretty sure the IRG will never surrender, and they will surely never, ever sign a deal of any kind.
This had to be common knowledge in the planning talks.
So why did we waste time with the signing a deal nonsense? This conflict was never going to be solved that way. Maybe there’s something we don’t know, but it’s extremely frustrating that Iran wasn’t bombed into the Stone Age, then we talk.

quote:

Originally posted by sigspecops:
So why did we waste time with the signing a deal nonsense?

In order to clearly demonstrate to everyone- supporters and detractors alike- that every effort was made to reach a peaceful solution, but that the Iranians are abject liars, completely without honor.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
....I'm beginning to think they like being bombed.

Well, there's those 72 virgins and all. How's a fella supposed to resist that...

quote:

Originally posted by armored:
...We are told constantly that we don't need the oil from the middle east, ...

You've fallen for the either/or logical fallacy. Reality is much more complex than we either need ME oil or we don't need ME oil.

Let's start with two basic premises:

the news sucks and they're rarely concerned about accuracy and orders of magnitude more concerned about clicks and butts in front of screen (i.e. ad revenue). The supermajority will report a politician's press conference and won't fact check it. Viewers/Readers are left on their own to find out if true or not (e.g. "we don't need the oil from the middle east").

both R's and D's tell half truths and bold faced lies. The media is supposed to fact check it, but they definitely don't if fits their political bias. They also won't fact check if they're more concerned about being first to report than accurate.

The simple fact is that to maintain our quality of life, the US has a massive thirst for crude oil that must be satisfied. Crude oil is refined into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, etc. that keeps our economy moving. Our domestic production has greatly improved the last 15 years, but every day we have a shortage of crude oil and as of last Friday our net imports (i.e. imports - exports) showed the shortage to be ~2.5 million barrels and we're 450,000 barrels worse off than last year. That's 3 AfraMax supertankers, 2.5 SuezMax supertankers, or 1.25 VLCCS every single day that is coming from a foreign nation. Screenshot of EIA's latest data:


Crude oil is less fungible than gasoline or diesel but still pretty fungible. As a decent simplification of very complex financial and refinery efficiency models, crude oil traders mainly worry about which category of crude they're purchasing - light sweet, light sour, medium sweet, medium sour, heavy sweet, and heavy sour. Since it's more or less fungible within these six categories, we're bidding against the rest of the world for our crude units that are configured to refine one specific crude category. For example, a refinery's crude unit set up to process WTI will experience massive yield drops if trying to process the heavy sour Venezuelan crude oil, and vice versa. Feeding a refinery's light sweet crude unit with heavy sour crude has the same effect (i.e. explosive diarrhea) as feeding a human cyclosporiasis tainted lettuce when humans are designed to run on parasite free lettuce.

Why is crude oil being fungible important? We're bidding against the rest of the world for our 2.5 million barrel per day shortage. We need Asia and Europe to buy ME crude oil so that our 2.5 million barrel shortage can be inexpensively supplied from friendly (i.e. stable) and nearby (i.e. lower shipping costs and shorter transit time) preferably in the North America and South America.

Want to make US gasoline prices soar? Hell no, but let's look at it anyway. We had major price increase at the pump this spring when our crude oil exports increased to highest levels in last 2.5 years and our crude oil imports decreased to lowest levels in last 2.5 years (I did my best to line up the two EIA graphs):



Last spring when the bypasses weren't flowing and the Strait was blocked the rest of the world looked at US Domestic produced crude oil and said we'd like to bid against American refineries on purchasing that. They were somewhat successful and that is why exports increased in the chart above and the price of WTI (i.e. America's most recognizable crude sold on NYMEX) increased. The rest of the world also bid against us in other countries that normally supply American refinery's crude oil.

To tweak what I wrote earlier, to have affordable gasoline the US consumer needs both to be happening:

Asia and Europe to buy ME crude oil so that our 2.5 million barrel shortage is supplied from friendly (i.e. stable) and nearby (i.e. cut shipping costs and transit time) preferably in the North America and South America.

Asia and Europe to not be bidding up the prices for North America and South America crude oil.

---

Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity

DISCLAIMER: These are the author's own personal views and do not represent the views of the author's employer.

Food for thought… Iran has shut out internet access to the country, leaving only official news channels broadcasting. The people only get approved government propaganda!

My question is- why is that medium still broadcasting? The broadcast towers could be eliminated, even if the studios were spared. Or better, let the staff know that the studios will be silenced and to leave the premises.

What am I missing?