US-Iran War Mudpit Thread

[DennisR6]

If either one agrees or disagrees with what is now a reality is of no matter. We are in this one way or the other so now we have to figure out for ourselves because clearly we are not getting the entire picture from any authority on the matter.
I find it difficult to see either party peacefully exit with no further escalations. That being said both Iran and the United States both want this to end.
So if everyone could put politics aside and maybe for a page or two come together and brainstorm best outcome scenarios that would limit or exclude further harm I bet most here will easily find common ground and realize that this type of thinking is what should have been in the first place.

[IdeomotorPrisoner]

If either one agrees or disagrees with what is now a reality is of no matter. We are in this one way or the other so now we have to figure out for ourselves because clearly we are not getting the entire picture from any authority on the matter.
I find it difficult to see either party peacefully exit with no further escalations. That being said both Iran and the United States both want this to end.
So if everyone could put politics aside and maybe for a page or two come together and brainstorm best outcome scenarios that would limit or exclude further harm I bet most here will easily find common ground and realize that this type of thinking is what should have been in the first place.

I'm not too sure how intent we are at ending this. 

Hegseth is is asking for more money for urgent war funding needs..

We are getting towards "The Folly of Moscow" stage.

Which is a situation where the leadership gets into a conflict that significantly depletes them (in some way) and they enter a sunk cost fallacy where they become more committed to not backing down no matter how deep they get in. 

And I think our leadership's controlling personalities, like President Trump, are too prone to entering a spiral like that. And contrary to what is expected, i really want to get proven wrong here. 

I want the following to be wrong: 

"This conflict will still be ongoing on January 1st, 2027 and have a total price tag of between 100 and 500 billion."

With casualty and cost skyrocking with any ground invasion.

[Oldcarpy2]

I'm not too sure how intent we are at ending this. 

Hegseth is is asking for more money for urgent war funding needs..

We are getting towards "The Folly of Moscow" stage.

Which is a situation where the leadership gets into a conflict that significantly depletes them (in some way) and they enter a sunk cost fallacy where they become more committed to not backing down no matter how deep they get in. 

And I think our leadership's controlling personalities, like President Trump, are too prone to entering a spiral like that. And contrary to what is expected, i really want to get proven wrong here. 

I want the following to be wrong: 

"This conflict will still be ongoing on January 1st, 2027 and have a total price tag of between 100 and 500 billion."

With casualty and cost skyrocking with any ground invasion.

No, it's all good.

Trump is a genius and a master of military strategy.

Hegseth, too.

What could possibly go wrong?

[EXETER]

I don't think Biden was ever considered the sharpest guy in the room.

Obama and Bill Clinton had far higher official IQ's. Biden's was unpublished but has been estimated to be about 120, and possibly the lowest of all US Presidents.

I think that Trumb needed to try and appear more adequate than Biden.

It is hard to know Trumb's IQ because it is now known that he cheated and paid for his academic results. He also was never at the top of his class, despite his lies that he was.

And Trumb has teams of people who have had the job of 'scrubbing' anything from his past that he doesn't want known (it probably has been a staple of all Republican Presidents since Nixon's "Gemstone projects". It wouldn't surprise me if the Democratic Party did the same thing).

His former college professor, William T. Kelley described Trumb as the "dumbest goddam student I ever had". Another of his teachers said that Trumb was always unprepared, and his classmates that remember him, said he was always skipping classes.

Trumb's vocabulary is also that of an 8 year old.

I've given the question of Trump's IQ a fair amount of thought over the last few years.

The only way to get an accurate indication of someone's IQ is for that individual to have taken an IQ test somewhere along the line and to know what the score of that test was.  That's because IQ means intelligence quotient--in other words, one person's amount of intelligence compared to the population average.  Almost everyone forms ad hoc opinions about whether some other individual seems to be "smart" or "stupid", but almost no-one has an accurate idea of what the population average intelligence looks like, unless they have actually looked at the test scores of a large sample size. And very few people have ever done that, except specialists trained to administer IQ tests.  

One way we can get an estimate, however, is to look at someone's experiences with the higher education system.  It turns out that Trump was going through high school and preparing for college the same year I was, and the process was pretty much the same across the country.  Admission to college was based almost entirely on Scholastic Aptitude Test scores and high school GPAs.  (Unless your father was wealthy enough to buy your way into a college admission.  My father wasn't, but Trump's father was).

Back in the mid 1960s when Trump and I were applying to colleges, the SAT basically was an IQ test.  Many of the High-IQ societies like Mensa would accept high scores on the SAT or Graduate Record Exam from back then as equivalent to a score on the Stanford-Binet or other standardized IQ test.

It was also true back then that a 4 year college curriculum was designed so that an individual with an IQ of 115 could earn a 4 year degree if they worked at it.  

So, what's special about an IQ of 115, you may ask?  It's the dividing line between average intelligence and high intelligence.  IQ scores are distributed along a bell curve, not a straight line.  That means that as an IQ score gets numerically larger, it gets progressively rarer in the population.  An interval of 15 IQ points is one standard deviation (abbreviated by the Greek letter Sigma). The interval between 85 and 115 is 2 standard deviations around the average, 100.  An IQ between 85 and 100 is considered low average while an IQ between 100 and 115 is considered high average.  About 2/3 of the population has an IQ between 85 and 115, and only about 16% of the population has an IQ higher than 115.  

This is why a college education has always been an elite activity; the curriculum is designed so that only about 1 in 6 people can get through it legitimately (i.e., by studying), and an IQ of 115 or higher is the ticket to enter. 

By all accounts, Trump did not get admitted to Penn State based on SAT scores (i.e., IQ) and did not get through based solely on his own work (i.e., by studying).  

Based on that, I don't see how his IQ could be anything more than high average (i.e, 115, max).

Another discriminator between average intelligence and higher intelligence is whether someone went to a graduate program and earned a postgraduate degree of some kind, such as a law degree.  It is almost impossible to get into a graduate program in the US on anything other than intellectual/academic merit.  Biden, Obama, Harris, and Clinton all earned Juris Doctor degrees.  George Bush Jr. earned an MBA from Harvard Business School.  None of them are Rocket Scientists (IQ above 130) but they are clearly above average.  Probably have IQs between 115 and 130.

[DBCowboy]

We're actually fighting a war to win, not to perpetuate, or to fuel the MIC.

It'll be quick, decisive, and violent.

Like wars should be.

I should know, I fought in Obama's war, Bush's war.  Clinton's war.

Now ya'll can mock my stance, make fun of my service or opinions, but it's a far greater reflection on your inability to see the world in reality than through your little red colored glasses.

 

[chr0naut]

No, it's all good.

Trump is a genius and a master of military strategy.

Hegseth, too.

What could possibly go wrong?

Iran has Moscow and Beijing for allies, that are nuclear armed, and that have economies dependent upon oil.

The USA has also taken control of Venezuelan oil and if it took control of Middle Eastern oil, too, it could affect oil and petroleum availability in BRICS countries.

Although Russia gets most of its oil from Siberia, other BRICS countries like China and much of Eastern Europe relies Russian oil. Siberian oil resources only account for about two-thirds of Russian demand.

A surprise coordinated nuclear attack upon the USA from Russia, China, North Korea and Pakistan would defeat the USA.

There are now several new-technology weapons and delivery systems that are changing the balance away from mutually assured destruction. Russian superweapons.

Also, with the USA's break away from disarmament and alliance treaties under Trumb, the USA may well be perceived as no longer having the protection it once had. Would NATO commit to atomic war with BRICS countries countries if the US was nuked?

The threat of nuclear war is currently considered higher than at any time after the cold war:

Nuclear War Risk Assessment (2026): Current Threats, Factors & Expert Analysis

The idea that the USA is unassailable and that it is supreme over all the world and any threat will 'just go away' was behind the Trumb administration's mishandling of COVID-19 that led to the preventable deaths of more than a million US citizens.

There are things government has to do to protect the way of life of its citizens, and Trumb clearly is incapable of even conceiving of that.

Someone who is just a boring good administrator should get in as POTUS. Not a 'new broom' or an 'idealist'. Someone who just cares about the mundane things of life of all the people.

[DBCowboy]

Iran has Moscow and Beijing for allies, that are nuclear armed, and that have economies dependent upon oil.

The USA has also taken control of Venezuelan oil and if it took control of Middle Eastern oil, too, it could affect oil and petroleum availability in BRICS countries.

Although Russia gets most of its oil from Siberia, other BRICS countries like China and much of Eastern Europe relies Russian oil. Siberian oil resources only account for about two-thirds of Russian demand.

A surprise coordinated nuclear attack upon the USA from Russia, China, North Korea and Pakistan would defeat the USA.

There are now several new-technology weapons and delivery systems that are changing the balance away from mutually assured destruction. Russian superweapons.

Also, with the USA's break away from disarmament and alliance treaties under Trumb, the USA may well be perceived as no longer having the protection it once had. Would NATO commit to atomic war with BRICS countries countries if the US was nuked?

The threat of nuclear war is currently considered higher than at any time after the cold war:

Nuclear War Risk Assessment (2026): Current Threats, Factors & Expert Analysis

The idea that the USA is unassailable and that it is supreme over all the world and any threat will 'just go away' was behind the Trumb administration's mishandling of COVID-19 that led to the preventable deaths of more than a million US citizens.

There are things government has to do to protect the way of life of its citizens, and Trumb clearly is incapable of even conceiving of that.

You're okay if I refer to the New Zealand PM as a bald-headed prick, aren't you?  

I mean, since you can mock Trump all day, and you obviously know more than him and are a bigger billionaire than he is.

It's cool, right?

[IDELB2006]

Hegseth was questioned about the state of the Iran war, and his request for additional funds.
He also needs to clarify the making Iran combat in effective for years to come, doesn't mean much.

Senate Democrats are pushing back on Hegseth’s request for more money when he and Trump claimed months ago that Iran’s military was destroyed and the U.S. military’s objectives met.
“You’re asking for literally $1.5 trillion for a war that President Trump said he already won,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York told Hegseth. “You’re asking for $1.5 trillion — unlimited money for bombs, but insufficient money for the American people, for their health care, their food, their housing, and our farmers.”
Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia zeroed in on similar statements about the ongoing conflict.
“Mr. Secretary, you stated four months ago that Iran’s military had been rendered ‘combat ineffective’ for years to come,” Ossoff said.
Hegseth countered that his statements didn’t mean that Iran didn’t have any more capabilities.

General Caine tells senators about the limits of air strikes.

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged the limits of airpower after being pressed on the reliance of airstrikes alone against Iran.

“As you look across the totality of history, airpower’s got limits, and we always have to be mindful of those,” Caine said. “I think where America’s area of exclusivity is, is when we bring the totality of the diplomatic, informational, economic and pair that with the military. And there’s a lot of that work going on.”

Caine declined to say whether ground combat could be next after being pressed by Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who noted the likely costs of having boots on the ground.

The general later said: “Iran will continue to be a challenge moving forward.”

Link

[DBCowboy]

Hegseth was questioned about the state of the Iran war, and his request for additional funds.
He also needs to clarify the making Iran combat in effective for years to come, doesn't mean much.


General Caine tells senators about the limits of air strikes.

Link

There are no guarantees in war.  You'd know that if you read history.

[chr0naut]

You're okay if I refer to the New Zealand PM as a bald-headed prick, aren't you?  

I mean, since you can mock Trump all day, and you obviously know more than him and are a bigger billionaire than he is.

It's cool, right?

Yeah, go ahead. Christopher Luxon's a typical bullet headed right-whinger toady, pushed around by his deputies, who are further right-whingers. They are all more interested in racist driven agendas than in the welfare of citizens.

I think Chris Hipkins was, and would be, a better PM, although not a patch on either previous PM's, John Key (National Party), or Jacinda Ardern (Labour Party).

I'm not a billionaire by a long shot.

But politicians should not be primarily concerned about their personal wealth. It would be a conflict of interest with the economic needs of US tax payers. The accumulation of excessive personal wealth by politicians is corruption.