This board deserves to see the Tucker Carlson -John Bolton interview from two weeks ago

Wow it got nasty at the end.

I will say most people are saying Bolton got owned but I think he handled himself relatively well considering.

LINK

Should be where most people want to watch.

Tucker goes pretty hard on the overthrow and invasion of Iraq. Bolton still thinks it was a good idea.

Hahah 2 min in and he’s already saying weapons of mass destruction.

Holy fricking shite he said the strengthing of Iran was not because of the overthrow of Saddam but rather the withdrawal of us troops in 2011. Also said overthrowing saddam was unequivocally a resounding success.

I don’t have a better alternative but I’m not real fond of Bolton as NSA

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Holy fricking shite he said the strengthing of Iran was not because of the overthrow of Saddam but rather the withdrawal of us troops in 2011. Also said overthrowing saddam was unequivocally a resounding success.

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Both demonstrably true.

We won the war and lost the peace. The vacuum left by our withdrawal allowed the stronger nations to carve up and dominate Iraq.

When you destroy a country, you sign up for a Japan WWII era rebuild. I hoe we learned this lesson and do not jump in anywhere rashly.

The Bush team dropped the ball and Obama failed to cover it.

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Both demonstrably true.

We won the war and lost the peace. The vacuum left by our withdrawal allowed the stronger nations to carve up and dominate Iraq.

When you destroy a country, you sign up for a Japan WWII era rebuild. I hoe we learned this lesson and do not jump in anywhere rashly.

The Bush team dropped the ball and Obama failed to cover it.

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The shite that is going on with Iran, Iraq, Syria, Israel, etc. is the result of thousands of years of tribal feuding and fanatical religious conflict. Anyone thinking a war with Iran OR Iraq will have impact one way or the other in the region are simply delusional.

The only way to truly end the turmoil in the Middle East is to wipe all the countries clean. But that would also include Saudi Arabia and Egypt as well....

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The shite that is going on with Iran, Iraq, Syria, Israel, etc. is the result of thousands of years of tribal feuding and fanatical religious conflict.

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This is nonsense and it's not true. In the same time period, the Ottoman and Persians (who were the major powers in the region until the 19th and 20th century) fought six less wars than the British and French (15 vs 9), yet we don't use that historical animus as an explanation for major political events right now. The fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Sykes-Picot treaty, and the failure of major social and political movements created the situation we see now. Between 1948 and 2003, the region saw something like 50 armed conflicts, which ended in the death of around 2.5 million people. Since 2003, there have been something like 25 armed conflicts that have killed just as many people.

You have to be willfully dishonest to look at the course of West Asian history and reduce it to "they were always killing each other." It's nonsense. The GDP of the area was higher with the Ottomans in power than it was in 1991 (I can't remember the exact dates). In addition, the traditional powers of the region like Turkey and Iran have only recently begun to grow more wealthy (in Turkey's case) and are extending their arms into areas of historical influence. What started that opening of access in earnest was the fall of Iraq in 2003. Subsequent events compounded it, but it's hard to say that 2003 wasn't a watershed moment.

He said the fall of Saddaam didn't make Iran stronger, it was the removal of US troops in 2011. This is the height of insanity.

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The vacuum left by our withdrawal allowed the stronger nations to carve up and dominate Iraq.

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Yes, a vacuum that existed only because we took out Saddam. That's why he's completely wrong when he said the removal of Saddam didn't empower Iran. According to his theory, the only way to keep Iran in check in the region is to permanently station troops in Iraq.