4 Americans killed in Benghazi - Led to 10 investigations...6 by Republican controlled committees. Huge deal made of it by Republicans and their voters
13 Americans killed in Afghan withdrawal - a 3 year investigation by the House Foreign Affairs Committee (led by Republicans). Huge deal made of it by Republicans and their voters.
17 Americans killed (so far) in Iran War - not much more than a peep from Republicans and their voters don't care much at all.
On a separate monetary note (if the deaths weren't enough)
Obama unfroze $50 billion of Iran's assets (it was already theirs) and republicans acted like Obama gave them our money
Trump's deal (not sure if it still active now that we are going back to war) was for $300 billion towards rebuilding Iran and it wasn't Iran's money (it is unknown where that money is coming from because the administration isn't forthcoming..obviously they don't want people to know about that part)....But not a peep from Republicans about that.
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Yes, people die in war and billions get spent but what exactly do we have to show for it? A previously opened strait is now closed and no oversight to their nuclear program like we had in the JCPOA that trump said was awful. At this point, Trump would easily end the war if he got anywhere near the deal outlined in the JCPOA. He would just make sure it was called something else and claim to be a master negotiator.
You don't think Iran winning the war, and winning is surviving with no major concessions and increased control over Hormuz, will make nations rethink their American dependence?
It could. Maybe that is a bad thing. Maybe if Middle East nations are less dependent on us we don't have to be involved as much there anymore. Maybe if the world moves to solar because of this, no one really needs to be involved there as much anymore. We will see.
But of course, some people think the result of the Iraq War was to push other nations close to China. Are you counting that on the Iraq War side of the ledger?
@bradstevens yep, but we won. In a region of despots, winning carries cache. We freed Iraq first from Saddam than from ISIS. Aligning with America to be a part of that power was logical. An Iran loss would show America power isn't as total as it looked. Even combined with Israel.
In a world of strongmen, appearing weak is bad.
Further, it seems axiomatic to me that victory is superior to loss.
I think a more relevant consequence of the Iran war is that other Middle East countries are building pipelines and ports to circumvent the Gulf of Hormuz altogether.
@hhlurker for Saudi Arabia, that takes them to the Red Sea where they either go past the Houthis or back up to Suez where they have to stop, offload oil, pass, stop and load back the oil. Then if going to Asia, leave the Med and go around Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn.
@hhlurker for Saudi Arabia, that takes them to the Red Sea where they either go past the Houthis or back up to Suez where they have to stop, offload oil, pass, stop and load back the oil. Then if going to Asia, leave the Med and go around Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn.
To put a little context to this:
The Houthis have been taking a hard look at what Iran is doing and are realizing that they have the ability to take military control of the Bab-al Mandab Strait and do the same thing that Iran is doing (hold the world hostage for its oil supply).
Saudi Arabia does not have an ocean coastline, so most of its oil goes to the Red Sea or Persian Gulf. The only three waterways out of those two seas are Hormuz, Bab-al Mandab, and the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean Sea. The problem with the Suez canal is that it is very shallow. Big super carriers can not cross through the Suez at full load. The Suez Canal option also adds several weeks of travel time as Lurker notes since you have to go all the way around Africa if you are delivering oil to the Asian markets.
Oil prices continue to rise while crucial inventories shrink.
Great job, Trump.
"The United States, meanwhile, is approaching critically low levels in its oil storage facilities due to the extensive drawdowns since the start of the war with Iran. These drawdowns have pushed inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma, to minimum operational levels, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier in July, meaning further draws from that facility would be ill-advised as they would compromise the storage facility itself. In more worrying news, inventories in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve are also running low, the WSJ reported in the same news story, sitting at the lowest since 1983."
We're burning through interceptors, attack missiles and other advanced weapons, "with much of America’s inventory not expected to return to pre-war levels until the end of the decade, according to the CSIS."
This impacts not only our ability to safely sustain operations in the Middle East but creates vulnerabilities if a wider conflict (one involving Taiwan, for example) were to break out.
Oil prices continue to rise while crucial inventories shrink.
Great job, Trump.
"The United States, meanwhile, is approaching critically low levels in its oil storage facilities due to the extensive drawdowns since the start of the war with Iran. These drawdowns have pushed inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma, to minimum operational levels, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier in July, meaning further draws from that facility would be ill-advised as they would compromise the storage facility itself. In more worrying news, inventories in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve are also running low, the WSJ reported in the same news story, sitting at the lowest since 1983."
I was reading up on this a few days ago and it is kinda interesting (at least to science nerds like me). There is a bit of debate right now as to exactly how much usable oil is left in the SPR. The way it works that you have this large storage area for oil, but the stuff that's in there is not pure oil. It's got sediment and other crap in it that tends to settle on the bottom of layer of the oil, and it's not a distinct cut-off point where "all oil below this level is unusable and everything above is fine". There's plenty of usable oil in those lower layers, but getting the crap out is another level of refinement, so it costs more to use it.
Second, the whole amount of oil is actually sitting on top of saltwater. These storage areas don't have empty space. They pump in water to regulate the level so the storage volume is always completely full. Oil is lighter than water, so the oil sits on top of the water and the usable oil they pump out comes from the top. The point where the water and oil meet is called a brine layer. It's a soupy oil / water / salt mixture that is also not particularly perfectly layered. So even if you have a process to dig into the sediment layer of oil to get usable oil out, you still have to watch out that you don't have a patch of the brine mixed in there, because that is also an extra level of processing that would be required for the oil.
Lastly, there are pressure concerns. The system is not particularly designed to have only water in it (density differences between oil and water). So there are legitimate structural concerns about what happens when the oil level gets too low.
So now that we are getting to the point that the SPR is getting "low", engineers are debating just what the cutoff point is going to be to where we have to stop. Some say that level is about 250 million barrels. Some are saying it's as low as 70 million barrels. We've got about 30 days and that debate is going to start becoming really really important.
@squeakyclean and it isn't just crude, we are struggling to refine the oil we have. Ukraine is blowing the hell out of Russian refineries. I suspect that is why we aren't going for Kharg. If we do, Iraq may start aiming for refineries over desalinization plants.
