myshkin said:
Google "Caspian Basin" and US Bases
Asking someone to google is not one of the stronger debate tactics. It is easily
misread as, "I only kinda know what I'm talking about. Why don't you do this while I hope I'm right?"
Your case would be so much stronger if you were to provide about 3 relevant links w/ snippets that demonstrate why these links are relevant. I know that they’re out there. I've seen them. This plan has been the subject of discussion since before the Clinton years.
RightatNYU said:
That all boiled down to this: smart politiking. Every damn person there knew that they meant more than they were saying, thus the veiled language. It's a necessary evil in politics, and again, I'm not that opposed to it. It's not as if it couldn't have been seen, and it IS still a little early to be speculating on the final outcomes.
On a side note as a matter of curiosity, what exactly is the criterion (or criteria) that distinguishes "smart politicking" from fibbing?
Contrasting the SECDEF’s comments re the permanent bases w/ the reports from the Army trade magazines how does it rate on the ‘smart politicking’ to fibbing scale?
Growing up in my world, much of what politicians do, including the use of a negative pregnant, would've gotten me a whupping for lying. I suppose I'm obligated to place some of the blame for my ignorance about the variety of non-wholly-true statements on my parents. But, to be fair, they were just kids- naive country folk at that -back then. They themselves prob'ly had no idea of the wide world of non-wholly-true statements available to modern man.
Too bad I didn't know about all of this stuff when I was a kid. I'm sure if I could've just explained to my parents about how I wasn't actually telling a lie I could've been spared a spanking (or two) and thereby acquired greater leeway in reporting my daily activities (and thus greater leeway in my daily activities).
RightatNYU said:
What are you specifically referring to?
There's a movement who have some excellent sounding goals of force transformation and realignment for the US military. While the goals are widely supported in a general way some of the specifics are subject to controversy w/in the military.
Anyway, a number of these folks want to pull substantial numbers of our troops from places like Germany to be used elsewhere.
RightatNYU said:
Never was a more true statement uttered.
Actually, the truest statement I can think of off the top of my head is "S**t happens." The more vague, the more true a statement is. However, the more vague, the less actual content the statement has.
Remember this, as it can be of help when dealing with politicians and their negative pregnants, not-lies, and newspeak.
RightatNYU said:
It's a whole big cluster****, always has been, always will be. Yet despite that, we survive the day.
I may be wrong, but as I recall it hasn't always been this way. IIRC, the rise of the American military industrial complex has occurred only recently- in the past few generations since WWII.
One should also note that not only do nations "survive the day" until they don't (look at Hussein's Iraq- it survived the day doing what would lead to it's ruin until it was ruined), but surviving is not enough of a goal for America.