Those Who Can’t Possibly Learn From History Are Doomed To…

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Remember yellowcake? 

 The story was that intelligence agencies had learned Saddam Hussein was trying to buy yellowcake uranium to build nuclear weapons to use against the United States, which would have posed a threat to our national security, so we had to go to war against him to prevent him from using weapons of mass destruction on us.

 The entire international coalition shared the intelligence evidence as did select members of Congress including John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, both of whom supported the war based on that intelligence assessment.

 Except – no yellowcake.  Turns out the intelligence was faulty.  Nobody should have relied on it, much less gone to war over it.  Bush lied, people died.

 Fast forward a decade.  Portions of the intelligence community believe Russia hacked into the DNC computers but portions of it do not, the evidence is unclear, the motive is unknown, the result on the election is impossible to prove.  But some idiots in Congress are ready to start a war over this?  And not just war with some two-bit tin pot dictator, war with a nuclear nation whose conventional military forces dwarf ours? 

Insane.  Literally, not sane.  Should be locked up as a danger to themselves and all the rest of us.

 Joe Doakes

Knowing some of this might come from reading military history.

But you can count liberals who read military history on one hand.

23 thoughts on “Those Who Can’t Possibly Learn From History Are Doomed To…

  1. Liberals: Reading military history with one hand and lighting a doobie with the other. The distortion of history is often chemical in nature.

  2. One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to make only on-topic comments on SiTD (Note that I usually fail at my resolutions by Jan 2)

    Re-post because it’s kind of interesting

    Nov. 13, 1986: “In spite of the wildly speculative and false stories of arms for hostages and alleged ransom payments, we did not, repeat, did not, trade weapons or anything else for hostages. Nor will we.”
    March 4, 1987: “A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.”
    Ronald Reagan

    It sounds like an Onion headline but it’s not.

  3. And libidiot snowflakes are worried about Trump starting a nuclear war?! It looks like the moron in chief wants to start one on his way out! For once, I wish he would go golfing.

  4. I thought the reality was that: in fact, Saddam had attempted to purchase the yellowcake but been rebuffed.

  5. “It looks like the moron in chief wants to start one on his way out! For once, I wish he would go golfing.”

    I can only assume you’re referring to the latest dust up with Israel. We recently promised to give Israel $4 billion every year for the next 10 years. And folks claim Obama hates Israel?

    Unfortunately Netanyahu nor Trump seem to understand that Israel’s future depends on a fair and lasting settlement with its Arab neighbors. These men understand the strength of arms, but not the quieter strengths of principle and good will.

    When Donald Trump assumes office, America’s friends enemies will soon come to see that the new president, is in way over his head in complex affairs of state.

  6. Unfortunately, EI, the only lasting settlement in the minds of the Arab neighbors is the elimination of Israel.

  7. No, Emery. I am referring to the sanctions against Russia for their ALLEGED involvement in the election that the dear leader is encouraging. You don’t poke a bear, especially when your sole reason for doing so, is based on myths, lies and memes. DemonRAT idealogues can’t seem to get that!

  8. Unfortunately Netanyahu nor Trump seem to understand that Israel’s future depends on a fair and lasting settlement with its Arab neighbors

    Bollocks.

    I say that not out of any desire to be uncivil, but rather because yelling “Bollocks!” to kick off a vigorous disagreement may be one thing the Brits got right.

    But I digress.

    Bollocks!

    Netanyahu absolutely understands the need for a fair and lasting settlement.

    He also realizes a few things that may elude Trump, but absolutely elude the American left:

    • It’s hard to have a “Fair, lasting” settlement with people who are pledging to exterminate you, and doing their feeble best to act on it.
    • Unlike the entire American left, Netanhahu remembers the Barak government, where the Israelis gave peace and rapprochement a chance. The PLA took the concessions offered – and launched the intifada anyway. The Israelis gave peace a chance, and ended up with bombs in the streets. Because the current leadership, and much of the “rank and file”, in the PLA is dedicated to exterminating Israel>

    I forget if it was Netanyahu or Dennis Prager who said it, but either way it applies: “If the Israelis laid down their arms, there’d be genocide. If the Palestinians laid down their arms, there’d be peace”.

  9. In order for a conflict to end–whether an international dispute or a personal quarrel–both sides have to want a resolution. It might be time for the US to stop trying so hard to orchestrate a solution and simply leave our calling card with a note saying “when you’re ready, give us a call.”

  10. Linking to Jim Hoft should result in two minutes in the penalty box.
    Assange says that Russia was not the source of the Podesta emails. Or is congress talking about something else? They want to start an investigation over unidentified “news reports” that accuse Russia of what, exactly?

  11. Trump may not “understand” the Middle East, but he thoroughly understands negotiation. You don’t come to the table with your best offer and beg the other side to take it, which is what has been the U.S.’s position with the current administration. With his choice of Ambassador to Israel, Trump has taken the carrot off the table and replaced it with a bear trap. If (and I do mean, “IF”) the Palestinians and their handlers really want peace they have just been told, “This is the new offer. It might get a little better, but you have to negotiate.”

  12. From The Hill

    The administration up until now has provided little documentation to back up its official October assessment that the Russian government was attempting to interfere in the U.S. election.

    Nor has it corroborated subsequent leaks from anonymous officials contending that the CIA believes the campaign was an attempt by Russian President Vladimir Putin to ensure Donald Trump’s victory.

    President Obama has ordered the intelligence community to produce a complete review of its findings before Trump takes office on Jan. 20. The White House has said it will make as much of the report public as it can.

    But officials have warned that the document will contain “highly sensitive and classified information” and it is unclear how much concrete evidence it will be able to release.
    . . .
    “If the CIA Director [John] Brennan and others at the top are serious about turning over evidence … they should do that,” Trump aide Kellyanne Conway said earlier this month. “They should not be leaking to the media. If there’s evidence, let’s see it.”

    Obama has asked the public to take the assessment of Russian interference largely on faith, suggesting that the American people already know everything they need to know to accept the conclusions of the CIA report.

    “There are still a whole range of assessments taking place among the [intelligence] agencies,” Obama told NPR earlier this month, referring to the report. “But that does not in any way, I think, detract from the basic point that everyone during the election perceived accurately — that in fact what the Russian hack had done was create more problems for the Clinton campaign than it had for the Trump campaign.”

    Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, which published the stolen emails, has denied that the Russian government gave them the files.

    http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/312049-obama-under-pressure-to-prove-russian-interference-in-election

  13. One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to make only on-topic comments on SiTD

    Wait, what? You mean you’re going to put the effort into googling cut and paste plagiarization that is pertinent to the topic? You’re not going to snap up the first thing with a vocabulary simple enough for you to understand?

    That’s just crazy talk, SSOLSEmery. Talk about setting yourself up to fail.

  14. Mitch….I briefly put on WCCO radio in the car yesterday afternoon. They had a Palestinian-Arab on. My god……..I had to turn it off to keep me from road rage. It was everything from the lie that there were no Jews in Israel pre-1945, to saying that “Palestine” is a real nation. Of course he didn’t mention that Abbas and other Palestinian-Arab leaders have pledged to cleanse all of their lands of Jews.

  15. Say…..so Obama is kicking out Russian diplomats in DC and San Fran. Since San Francisco is a sanctuary city, they actually don’t have to leave. (stole that from Iowahawk)

  16. I want to hop in a time machine, head back to 1983, and tell Ronald Reagan that a Republican president-elect responded to a Russian attack on the United States by saying “I think we ought to get on with our lives.”

    I suppose we’ll soon enough see whether Trump is a puppet, or just a useful idiot.

  17. Trump is no more of a useful idiot than you are for your DemonRAT plantation owners, Emery.

  18. Time for an epistemology check, Emery. Why do you believe that there was a Russian attack on the United States? Write down the reasons you believe this on a sheet of paper, you will likely find the evidence is thin or contradictory. Ask yourself some counter factuals. If the Russian government hacked the DNC (and this is far from certain), how do you know what motivated them? The Left is using unsourced rumors of Russian hacking as part of their effort to delegitimize Trump’s election.

  19. As a Sapper friend of ours says (more or less), “Don’t tell me there weren’t WMDs in Iraq. It was my job to blow them up when we found them.”

  20. This is typical of the “reporting” done on Trump by the establishment media: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/david-fahrenthold-tells-the-behind-the-scenes-story-of-his-year-covering-trump/2016/12/27/299047c4-b510-11e6-b8df-600bd9d38a02_story.html?utm_term=.1c4a1f750103&wpisrc=nl_most-draw14&wpmm=1

    It is, unashamedly, a hit piece by a reporter for a newspaper that has long held the position that Trump is uniquely unqualified to become president. Fahrenholt seems to think he’s paid to hate Trump. He actually treats the story as a joke.

    “When I came home from my last TV hit, the kids, ages 4 and 5 months, were asleep. The house was quiet. I was still full of caffeine and do-gooder energy and decided to tidy up.

    Among the clutter on the coffee table, I found my 4-year-old’s Party Popper, a bright yellow gun that fired confetti. For some reason, I held the gun up to my eye and looked down the barrel, the way Yosemite Sam always does.

    It looked unloaded.

    Then, for some reason, I pulled the trigger.

    When I got to the ER, I had a swollen face, metal-foil confetti in my hair and a faint odor of gun smoke. Finally, the doctor could see me.”

    Yes, Fahrenholt wrote that in a story about Trump’s charitable donations and still expects to be taken seriously.
    This is how bad the WaPo has become. Headline: “FBI in agreement with CIA that Russia aimed to help Trump win White House”
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-blames-putins-personal-grudge-against-her-for-election-interference/2016/12/16/12f36250-c3be-11e6-8422-eac61c0ef74d_story.html
    It’s in the “Politics” section, not the opinion section. This is how the headline is justified:

    The positions of Comey and Clapper were revealed in a message that CIA Director John Brennan sent to the agency’s workforce Friday.

    “Earlier this week, I met separately with FBI [Director] James Comey and DNI Jim Clapper, and there is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in our presidential election,” Brennan said, according to U.S. officials who have seen the message.

    The CIA and the FBI declined to comment on Brennan’s message or on the classified intelligence assessment that CIA officials shared with members of the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this month, setting off a political firestorm.

    In the closed-door Senate briefing, CIA officials said it was now “quite clear” that electing Trump was one of Russia’s goals, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

    Unsourced rumors are reported as fact in toady’s Washington Post. The sources who anonymously supplied the information about the classified info given to the Senate Intelligence Committee are probably staffers for one of the senators present, but who knows? The reporter could have made up the story, or he could have been mislead by a source, or he could have put his own spin on what the source told him.

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