Hail To The Chief (Read Mod Warning In OP)

Igotadose wrote: »

On your schedule D (which you must file) you report the origin of the dividends and interest. Further, you're required to file FINCEN showing income from overseas sources, which lists banks and accounts.

Right, but what does a bank name tell you? "Cayman Islands Bank?" No great shock there, we all know that people of that wealth have really damned good tax lawyers who know how to hide funds, make them innocuous, and keep as much of it as possible in tax havens.

Data? Military poll that agrees?

GWB got us tired of middle-east adventures. I am not sure the country nor the military has the will to get into it again. Whether 'boots on the ground' will make a difference viz. Isis is not clear in my opinion.

No hard data, no. Hence 'I think.' Not that I'm entirely divorced from the general opinion of the US Military, I would think that being 16 years in it so far, given all the people I interact with, I have something of an insight.

What we're tired of is not adventures, it is repeated deployments away from home with no definable or apparently attainable endstate. The running joke in Iraq was that it seemed to be that the primary concern from above was our not getting killed. If that were the case, could we just not get killed at home in California instead? The military is currently suffering its next manpower shortage, partly because folks who signed on to fight are fed up with the way we're operating. (The other part is because of the Army's personnel management system, which sucks)

The British military have what they call the covenant, which is something of an informal understanding with the government. Part of it is along the lines that "we, the soldiers, have no problem with going and risking our necks, but we trust that you, the government, have duly weighed the merits of getting militarily involved in the first place."

Obama has, for whatever reason, been very vocal about not having boots on the ground in Iraq. Well, combat boots, apparently Special Forces advisors are fine. As a result, for the last, oh, three years, we've been watching ISIL holding terrain, the Iraqi military has been slowly, very slowly, working its way back up half of its country, prolonging the misery for the citizens who live in ISIL-held territory, with the occasional US air strike or drone strike directed perhaps by US Special Forces. Why? If the US military does nothing else well, it's advance to the enemy, kill them, and take territory. The US has already concluded that we want the government of Iraq to defeat ISIL. We have already concluded that it's worth spending our time and money helping Iraq. If that's the case, do the job properly and get it over with quickly. Send in a division, kill every ISIL fighter we can find, and then go home and let the Iraqis govern their own country. Iraq may or may not solve its own problems as a result, but at least ISIL won't be as much of an issue any more. And then we can focus on painting our tanks green again and putting them in Poland, Estonia, Korea, or the other places where we might find them useful in the next year or two.

Mattis seems to be of a similar mind to this, given his writings and talks.