While President Obama was busy working on his left hook on the golf courses of Hawaii, Islamic militants were taking control Of several cities in Iraq. John F’ing Kerry says the US will help Iraq as long as no troops are needed in this stupid war.
The kook conspiracy people say Saudi Arabia is actually behind this and intend to take control of Iraq’s oil fields. Backing up that crazy theory is Iran is offering help to Iraq. That tunnel between Iran and Kurdistan may get some use soon. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who knows what I’m referring to.
I believe this tunnel may have a small design issue
http://kurdistan-geology.com/?p=856
The tunnel is about a mile and a half long and I see no evidence of ventilation in the design. Long tunnels either need big fans or vertical exhaust shafts if the fumes are significant. Ventilation in long railroad tunnels is a major safety issue. Run a military convoy through the tunnel and the guys in the back are going to fall asleep and not wake up.
Agree on the vents needed in long tunnels. I saw pics on VT last night and this morning on CBS news. At least the Iraqi army has ‘top quality’ military equipment.
They were running a Bradley fighting vehicle at top speed by the camera. Saw a Abram tank or two.
Saw those special trucks that are built specifically against IED’s, called Mine Resistant Protected’ MaxxPro MRAP vehicles. Pentagon is giving those trucks to the Po Po here in the US.
So the Iraqi’s will run them till they break, and leave it on the side of the road.
Way to go Obo & McCain, your Al-Quiada boys are taking over. Your support to them is working. Go over and have another pic made with them McCain in their new gained territory in Iraq, you big dork.
parrott
and in the ‘same story, different war’ category:
I have neighbors who are air force pilots. One of the current rotations that they and some of their friends are serving is … training the “Afghani air force”. (no, I am not making this up).
I am told it is about the crappiest, most boring job that a pilot can have. The Afghani’s (most of which have never driven a car) have no interest in flying planes. But we have to pretend to teach them to fly all the billions of dollars worth of C-130’s and other military aircraft that the American people have gifted them.
You would think we would at least teach them to fly crop dusters so they could spray poison on all the poppy fields in Afghanistan. It makes one wonder who is making money in the heroin trade when the U.S. (a country fighting the ‘war on drugs’) invades the world’s leading heroin producer but then does nothing to cut off the source of the product.
It’s hard to teach a pilot about ILS and vectoring to radials when they can’t read – let alone know anything about non-Euclidian geometry
LOL, I think that is called throwing good money after bad. I bet the Air Force pilots are watching their backs, so they don’t catch a bullet in the back of the head. Such a waste.
You are correct Foyle, all the Afghans want to do is get back to chasing goats and stoning women.(with rocks, not MaryJane)
Wonder if Kerry is negotiating with the Taliban?
what’s your vector, Victor ?
parrott
Surely you can’t be serious?
That’s Rotciv, Rotcev.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM2K7sV-K74
more Bitcoins, please
Free radicals in my bagel store’s poppy seed varieties.
With all do respect, I think you have that backwards, foyle. If the US can not win the War on Drugs in its own prisons where prisoners are given “three squares per day” (Curtis Sliwa speak for three square meals), then it makes you wonder not only why someone would think we could win it as a foreign invader by cutting off the livelihood of people that need to revenue to subsist.
Farmers growing corn in Afghanistan stand no chance of selling their product in the US and competing against the high US tarriff and corn subsidies.
See this 10 year old file http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/fpb84.pdf
See the last paragraph here
http://www.opendemocracy.net/julien-mercille/grading-drug-war-in-afghanistan-decade-after-f
My tongue is normally planted firmly in cheek. I don’t personally believe the “war on” anything (cancer, drugs, terror, poverty) can be “won”. It is all about propaganda — guilting the American taxpayers into once again “saving” something or some group of people in exchange for billions of wasted dollar.
I merely was pointing out the great irony that the American government, which has spent God knows how many billions of your grandchildren’s dollars fighting the war on drugs, doesn’t even pretend to stamp out one of the biggest cash crops of the industry when we invade and occupy the chief producer. I guess the Napalm lobby just doesn’t have the pull in Congress anymore.
foyle, they did stamp out a few of the poppy fields, just not the fields protected by the warlords the US needed to hold the country together.
And GMO seeds, and nitrogen fertilizers and the lack of useful transportation. They have nothing (legal)to produce to earn the money to buy things they would need in order to create a viable 21st society. Pray it stays that way – the last thing we need is Jed Clampett striking oil
His niece, Ellie May Clampett is 80 years old right now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Douglas
So when Hollywood makes the movie, she can play granny.
Did Max Baer ever jump off the Tallahatchee Bridge?
Didn’t Max Baer go into production/direct porn flicks? Wasn’t he executive producer for the classic movies” Drive This Miss Daisy” and
“Ellie does Hooterville” ?
I heard,
parrott
Not sure about the bridge. Rumor was they he did in fact drive his Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry.
Just don’t cause a traffic jam.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-CDzDpSdzY <— for the NJ/NYC commuters
Imagine if there is a crash inside the tunnel that causes a fire. A state of the art tunnel has a separate service tunnel next to it (or between two parallel tunnels) that is pressurized with closed doors. That makes it so that the smoke doesn’t go into the pedestrian tunnel where you can walk to safety if you can get to the door before being overcome by the smoke.
Other than the first 20 feet of the tunnel, there is also no clue how they actually dug this tunnel. Slave labor and teaspoons seems like one possibility.
Isn’t it cheaper to just put a door on each end of the tunnel? When there is a fire, close the doors so that flame goes out like a candle? … that would be the Soviet way. 😉
LOL, Don’t call me ‘Surely’
classic
Parrott
There are still about 8,000 ‘troops plus another 5,000 ‘contractors’ providing security for the US Embassy in Baghdad. It is the largest US Embassy in the world covering 1.5 square miles. There was a $13 billion dollar arms deal with Iraq in 2011, don’t know if they ‘sold’ more since then. Anyway back to the US Embassy, the State Department (read Hillary) wanted a $6.1 billion annual budget to run the embassy in 2012, but I have not bothered to verify if that was approved.
Back in 2009 I corresponded briefly with a private contractor who said the projects they were building near Erbil (Kurdish area) were all ‘defensive’ in nature. He added this statement that I have co-opted and use regularly, “Something Big is Coming”.
So, expect more upheaval in the days ahead because the main goal of the criminal class is to promote hatred, chaos, corruption, and of course, endless war in the ME. One of the biggest missions of the State Department is to provide lots and lots of training to the Iraqi police forces. That type of training is probably increasing here in America’s largest cities.
Something Big is Coming.
Saddam Hussein (prior to the first gulf war) was building the world’s biggest mosque in Baghdad. I wonder if we ended up paying to finish it or whether we just made it into our embassy.
To be that big, there must be a lot of visa applications to process.
Just imagine what we probably built in the desert by the Syrian border out of sight (and hidden from Google Earth)
Look out!
he lived in the spiderhole
was he strong?
listen bud
he had got radioactive blood
his life hung from a thread
take a look overhead
hear that?
there goes the spiderhole
Yeah, it probably is Nidster.
Iraq Anbar province and southern Syria will join up and make Al-Quida jihad central state area or Palestine.
They will change the name of the Fallujah airport to
McCain-Goat International airport.
Big change,
parrott
The Kurds and Iranians routinely lob artillery barrages at each other across their present borders. Can the Kurds always count on the Eternal Fire of Baba Gurgur, in Kirkuk? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/P3110004.jpg/800px-P3110004.jpg