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Power Femme
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Cinnamon spiced, caramel colored, power-femme
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Married to a wonderful horse girl
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Lat: 45.60 Lon: -122.60
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Toughy
As a veteran IT IS NOT a sham or smoke and mirrors. McChrystal should be court-martialed for insubordination and busted down to Major and forcibly retired at Major pay. His aides who were part of that should be busted down to 1st or 2nd Lieutenant, but can stay in the Army.....good luck getting promoted for them anyway. The lack of leadership shown once again by McChrystal (and now his aides) is appalling and he has no business being on active duty. My understanding is there was alcohol involved in all this.
I would not argue about oil, opium base and rare earth minerals in Afghanistan being what's behind the curtain. Except it's not really behind the curtain........the info has been out there for years and years.....
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Thank you, Toughy. It's almost axiomatic that Afghanistan is where empires go to die--it broke the Red Army and eventually the Soviet Union. It gave the British Army a moment of pause and now it is giving the American military that same moment of pause. Yes, there's lots of resources there and that certainly has every mining company from here to Johannesburg salivating at the prospects. My problem is that there is no longer any *strategic* interest in Afghanistan.
Yes, it's right at the crux of two nuclear armed states one of which is seriously unstable--but, quite honestly, I see that as being more India or China's problem than the United States'.
Cheers
Aj
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Proud member of the reality-based community.
"People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so, the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn’t measure up." (Terry Pratchett)
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