Iran shoots down our drone

[nafod]

Not a small one, either. The MQ-4C is a huge asset. Navy one, used for ocean surveillance. Super hard to believe it was actually in the wrong airspace, unless it got GPS spoofed.

The Revolutionary Guard said the downed drone was a US-made RQ-4 Global Hawk, while the US official said it was a MQ-4C Triton.

There are people on both sides who want to escalate this.

[Fat Cat]

It's bad news and it has some of the spirit of '03 to it, in the sense that things seem to be drifting inexorably towards war even though everyone swears up and down they don't want it. American credibility regarding the attacks in the Gulf of Oman is shit, thanks to our long track record of cooking up bullshit pretexts for war. It's obvious that there are people who are itching for it, but none of them seem to have the interests of the American on the street in mind. We are not threatened in the slightest by Iran. We have military stationed all around them. There's no need for this to happen, unless it's really true that our government has been hijacked to serve the interests of (((other))) people and not our own.

[Gene]

Not a small one, either. The MQ-4C is a huge asset. Navy one, used for ocean surveillance. Super hard to believe it was actually in the wrong airspace, unless it got GPS spoofed.

The Revolutionary Guard said the downed drone was a US-made RQ-4 Global Hawk, while the US official said it was a MQ-4C Triton.

There are people on both sides who want to escalate this.

My guess is that Iran and the US disagree on the definition of "Iranian Territorial Waters". The US may think three miles, Iran might figure it's further out into the Straights of Hormuz. I'm guessing, I don't know.

The Iranians imposed their territorial claims.

[Sangoma]

Poor drone, flying there, minding it's own business...

[Gene]

Here's an article with the map of the shoot down....

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ir ... ar-AADaTvX

Here is a map of water claimed by Iran.

http://www.marineregions.org/gazetteer. ... ls&id=8469


They're pretty damn close.

[nafod]

Thank goodness our CIC bothered to ask someone 10 minutes before the lead started flying whether any collaterals would get vaporized, and called off the strike while birds were in the air. Without a tweet, we’d have never known how close we came.

Probably felt a tremor in his bone spurs.

It pains me to watch people with previously good reputations prostrate themselves before such mind-numbing obvious bullshit.

[Gene]

Thank goodness our CIC bothered to ask someone 10 minutes before the lead started flying whether any collaterals would get vaporized, and called off the strike while birds were in the air. Without a tweet, we’d have never known how close we came.

Probably felt a tremor in his bone spurs.

It pains me to watch people with previously good reputations prostrate themselves before such mind-numbing obvious bullshit.

During the Iran-Iraq war legions of children were inducted into the "Basiji". They would put on green head bands with religious phrases on them. Up at the front with Iraq they would march into mine fields to set off the mines.

One hundred fifty dead soldiers would not impress such people. Probably just inspire them to shoot down more "American" stuff.

I wonder who President Trump is trying to impress here? Why is he being indiscreet with operational information? The planes were in the air? Planes from where? What is their security situation? Carrier based? Could a Martydom group aboard a submarine sink it?

Is a submarine worth $100 million with a trained crew worth the cost of one $20 billion air craft carrier? These people would go for it.

If you're going to fight people who send children into mine fields go big or not at all.

[nafod]

Yeah, we are already winning with the sanctions.

Of course the Mullahs aren’t going to roll over. Thinking like a Mullah, who have their own war hawks to deal with, at some point they are going to have to kill some Americans to incite us, and then use that to (try to) unite their country. That’s the obvious way this plays out. The sanctions are boxing them into a corner, and they won’t go down easy.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the gulf states will gladly let us handle their worst enemy for them.

[Gene]

Yeah, we are already winning with the sanctions.

Of course the Mullahs aren’t going to roll over. Thinking like a Mullah, who have their own war hawks to deal with, at some point they are going to have to kill some Americans to incite us, and then use that to (try to) unite their country. That’s the obvious way this plays out. The sanctions are boxing them into a corner, and they won’t go down easy.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the gulf states will gladly let us handle their worst enemy for them.

The Iranians scored one. We are bluffing about air strikes.

They might incite us. Sink an aircraft carrier. Hope that it doesn't happen but if it did that would be more American dead than what happened on Sept 11 2001. "Five thousand dead sailors!".

More likely the Iranians are going to punish the people who are bombing their friends in Yemen. We have people in Yemen. The Saudis are using those weapons that we sold them on the rebels.

The Houthi have shot missiles at Saudi Arabia. US ABMs shot them down. This is a real war.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuZ1UkuFM18

A while ago back Saudi internal security went batshit, started arresting royal family members. I figure it was part of a general purge. They're probably frightened of people in their midst doing something for Iran. Maybe also Qatar. So they were rounding up the suspect ones.

I figure that China has a lot to do with our refusal to act. China is Iran's biggest consumer of oil. If they can't buy Iranian oil the price for everyone goes up. China's rate of growth is slowing down. They don't want social problems from a recession. They'll squeeze our nuts if we make life hard for them.

Money talks and all of that.

[Shafpocalypse Now]

Last thing the average US citizen needs is to continue to make the owners of military industrial companies richer while our infrastructure and shit around our country continues to degrade into 3rd world country level infrastructure.

Trillions to warmongers

But lets fuck our kids up via cutting education and eliminating the middle class