MILITARY COUP IN TURKEY ?

[pmccarthy]

Herbert Hoover, probably the smartest President ever, arrived at the wrong moment in history too.

 

 

[Gnarly Gnu]

Oh yeah, there are so many negative achievements one can barely scratch the surface, the first truly anti-American US President. I forgot Obama also threw away victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. Never mind he now has thousands of troops back fighting in Iraq all over again, just another failure that others will have to sort out.

 

 

 

 

Octave, I chose it from your favourite website also. Or if you prefer Bloomberg.

 

 

[Marty_d]

Obama "threw away victory". Like they ever HAD victory. That whole pile of shite in Iraq was started by the Bushes, who destabilized the whole region, cost the US about 3 TRILLION, thousands of Iraqi dead and a few thousand Yanks. Not to mention a whole new generation of returned servicemen with PTSD. And now, due in large part to their post-invasion bungling, radical islamic groups have sprouted and spread their insanity among the weak of mind.

 

And you blame Obama? What a leap.

 

 

[octave]

Oh yeah, there are so many negative achievements one can barely scratch the surface, the first truly anti-American US President. I forgot Obama also threw away victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. Never mind he now has thousands of troops back fighting in Iraq all over again, just another failure that others will have to sort out.

 

Uhhh where do I start, how about "Obama also threw away victory in Iraq and Afghanistan" yes it was all going stunningly well until Obama took over wasn't, well how about you post some facts????? Tell me who started the whole mess in the first place, perhaps you could have a little read of the Chilcot report. Weapons of mass destruction???? Mission accomplished???? Yes Saddam was a total evil tool but were we any better off at the end of Bush2? are we any better off now???

 

Soooo the Bloomberg link perhaps I am a bit thick..... but exactly what point are you trying to make?

 

Can I ask gnu whether you accept that unemployment also fell under Reagan? Because it did an although I am not a fan of his style of politics I am passionate for truth and it would be intellectually dishonest to say otherwise, by the way it also fell under Carter. but I guess you need to manipulate the evidence to support your beliefs, I don't.

 

 

[dutchroll]

I forgot Obama also threw away victory in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I don't think you understand what it means to be "victorious" in a war.

 

If you think Bush, or potentially McCain/Palin had they beaten Obama at the presidential election, would've claimed anything even remotely resembling "victory" in Iraq or Afghanistan, you need your head read.

 

Foreign powers have been invading Afghanistan for 2000 years. None of them have been victorious. Not once.......ever.

 

In Iraq the Bush administration started the rot. I remember vividly (I was still serving in the military although I had left full time service and was doing reserve service) when it came out after the initial invasion that he wanted to form a "Christian democracy" in Iraq. I thought "Seriously? Christian democracy? This guy is a moron! Does he even know where Iraq is?" Then he installed the most corrupt Government Iraq has ever seen in its history. He expected the Iraqi people to love him because he liberated them from Saddam, yet couldn't even give them running water, power and sewerage for months because he'd authorised the destruction of their infrastructure and the total dismantling of their civil service, then wondered why people started hating him so quickly!

 

I know someone who was a very senior officer in the command chain of joint force operations and special forces operations. He was tearing his hair out at the incompetence of it all from the political masters, well before Obama came to power.

 

 

[dutchroll]

By the way Gnu, if you knew your Iraq war history, you would also know it was the Bush administration who agreed to the troop withdrawal date, not the Obama administration. Obama simply followed the agreement Bush signed. It's called the "US-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement" and it was personally signed by George W Bush. If you're interested in the long, official title, it is "Agreement Between the United States of America and the Republic of Iraq On the Withdrawal of United States Forces from Iraq and the Organization of Their Activities during Their Temporary Presence in Iraq".

 

Obama did however complete the troop withdrawal 15 days early, on 16 December 2011 instead of 31 December 2011.

 

I'm surmising that you honestly believe Obama's withdrawal of US forces 15 days early after an 8 year occupation in accordance with a status of forces agreement as he was obliged to do under international law regarding foreign forces occupying other countries with the agreement of the "host" country, signed by his predecessor, is the entire cause of the mess and instability in Iraq and thus solely his fault.

 

Interesting argument, but not entirely convincing shall we say?

 

 

[Phil Perry]

Mr. Erdogan is a democratically elected person. As was Hussein Saddam. Therefore any attempt at regime change by non-democratic means is illegal under international law.

 

This does not prevent media persons from making fun. This picture is doing the rounds on social media in the UK at the moment. . .

 

[ATTACH]47947._xfImport[/ATTACH]

 

[dutchroll]

It'll be interesting to see the results of the next Turkish election. However the situation in Turkey from a democratic perspective isn't comparable to Saddam's Iraq.

 

In reality in Iraq you had a choice between the Baath party and the Baath party. If you worked for the Government, you had to be a member of the Baath party. If you wanted Saddam's internal security police to leave you alone, you also had to be a member of the Baath party. This is what caused the civil service to unravel after the invasion by the US. The Bush Administration banned anyone who was a Baath party member from any role in the post-war Iraq.

 

This meant thousands of civil servants who were Baath party members - many purely for their own survival - were banned from any role in the reconstruction despite their in depth knowledge of how Iraq's infrastructure and bureaucratic systems worked. Also banned were doctors, teachers, and numerous other professions. You could't even attend university without being a member! Rather than looking at it from a practical perspective and banning the Baath party from future involvement but not banning people on account of their former membership, Bush went for pure ideology over common sense (gee if only I had a dollar for every time I've seen that I wouldn't need to work for a living)..........and paid the price.

 

In contrast, Turkey had a hung parliament after the early 2015 election, something which never would've happened in Iraq! At the next election only a few months later, Erdogan's party won a majority and although there were suspicions over media bias and ballot rigging, nothing much has been proven that would've affected the end result of him being re-elected. Since then he seems to have gone off the rails a bit though, so the next one will be interesting.

 

 

[Marty_d]

Yeah, to put it simply, they threw out the baby with the baath water.

 

 

[bexrbetter]

Just because you may not bother to click on the link to unemployment graphs here is the narrative that go with the graphs United States Unemployment Rates by President, 1948-2016

True unemployment figures are actually hard to determine and can be twiddled with by Governments.

 

That isn't a comment on your Obama debate there, just a fact.

 

For example Australia at one stage lowered the hours worked each week to determine that person as employed and of course the unemployed figures also dropped accordingly, we still have that nonsense I believe not reflecting the truer figures..

 

 

[bexrbetter]

Grief.I thought " In fact the GFC " was solely Keeting's poverty we had to have, 18% mortgage drove a few to suicide.

 

spacesailor

22%. A number of my friends lost their houses while Keating was trying to play big boys with the rest of the world. He still has the largest security contingent of any current or ex-PM, a lot of people haven't forgotten to this day.

 

No Cookies | Daily Telegraph

 

 

[dutchroll]

Those who say "you think you have it tough? Think yourself lucky you didn't have to deal with what we went through when interest rates were at record highs!" don't seem to realise that in fact housing affordability is less today, with low interest rates, than it was then.

 

Yeah rates were 17%+. But they didn't stay that way and the median house price was $75,090 in Melbourne. Over 30 years you would pay 14 cents in every dollar you earned to pay off your house taking into account historical interest rates.

 

Today you will pay 25 cents in every dollar you earn to pay off your house and just as many, if not more, people are either defaulting on loans or more commonly just selling up and giving up as repayments kill them.

 

Fact: Young people are pretty much screwed for home buying these days, but the boomers just can't get over their "we did it so tough, what are you complaining about?" mentality. The interest rate doesn't tell the whole story. Unfortunately they don't have one individual like Keating to focus their anger on, as successive governments have done stuff all about it.

 

 

[Phil Perry]

It'll be interesting to see the results of the next Turkish election. However the situation in Turkey from a democratic perspective isn't comparable to Saddam's Iraq.

In reality in Iraq you had a choice between the Baath party and the Baath party. If you worked for the Government, you had to be a member of the Baath party. If you wanted Saddam's internal security police to leave you alone, you also had to be a member of the Baath party. This is what caused the civil service to unravel after the invasion by the US. The Bush Administration banned anyone who was a Baath party member from any role in the post-war Iraq.

 

This meant thousands of civil servants who were Baath party members - many purely for their own survival - were banned from any role in the reconstruction despite their in depth knowledge of how Iraq's infrastructure and bureaucratic systems worked. Also banned were doctors, teachers, and numerous other professions. You could't even attend university without being a member! Rather than looking at it from a practical perspective and banning the Baath party from future involvement but not banning people on account of their former membership, Bush went for pure ideology over common sense (gee if only I had a dollar for every time I've seen that I wouldn't need to work for a living)..........and paid the price.

 

In contrast, Turkey had a hung parliament after the early 2015 election, something which never would've happened in Iraq! At the next election only a few months later, Erdogan's party won a majority and although there were suspicions over media bias and ballot rigging, nothing much has been proven that would've affected the end result of him being re-elected. Since then he seems to have gone off the rails a bit though, so the next one will be interesting.

 

'Ere. . .'ang on a mo,. . . I always type my posts into MS first, then copy and paste the completed, spell checked and grammar checked result onto RF. Knowing the full history of the Iraq story, when I copied / pasted my comment . . .I missed the bit on the end, which said "in Ba'athist terms" when mentioning Hussein Saddam's regime.

 

Having visited Iraq twice before and then three times during his tenure, I saw for myself the difference. . . . Quiet anf guarded mumbling in coffee and tea houses was the only indication of any dissent. The Ba'athists had ears everywhere,. . . and it was tantamount to suicde to be heard to speak out against it. . . .

 

As it will soon be in the Caliphate of Turkey. . . . .( According to some friends I have living there . . . )

 

But thank you for your response on this Dutch.

 

 

[dutchroll]

As it will soon be in the Caliphate of Turkey. . . . .( According to some friends I have living there .

I've got friends who reckon 9/11 was an inside job, thermite traces were clearly evident in the WTC ruins, and no plane wreckage was ever found (conspiracy myths debunked many times).

 

I don't always believe everything they say......but I still like having a beer with them.

 

 

[bexrbetter]

"in Ba'athist terms" when mentioning Hussein Saddam's regime.

I thought that was Peter Brock's regime?

 

 

[Phil Perry]

I've got friends who reckon 9/11 was an inside job, thermite traces were clearly evident in the WTC ruins, and no plane wreckage was ever found (conspiracy myths debunked many times).

I don't always believe everything they say......but I still like having a beer with them.

 

Indeed Sir !. . . ya gotta love the conspiracy theorists, My mate Erich von Daniken assures me that God was an astronaut as well. . . .Seems to be fairly sure. . . . .