World War 3?

If this happens, it's all over except the mutant horde.

Putin Wants to Regain Finland (The Independent)
Wrong article is wrong. "Finland is not a Nato member, meaning a Russian invasion would not be considered an attack against the alliance." is false. Since Finland has joined the EU, it is protected by NATO, since the EU itself is also an official military defensive alliance. Attacking Finland would force the UK and France to declare war on Russia and thus drag in the rest of NATO - and while they may not have many nukes, they have enough to level Moscow.

Also, the guy claiming it was Putin's advisor until 2005, before running off to Washington. I'm not inclined to put much faith in hiswords about what his former master wants or does.
 
You know it's a bad fucking situation when the best case scenario is that it is a horrible coincidence of an accident.
 

Dave

Staff member
I'm very, very worried about any American involvement. Not for me. For my son. You know, the one in the Army in an infantry division? As a former military myself you always know that's a possibility, but you still hope for the best.

Guess the warhawks will get their wish even if it's not exactly what they anticipated.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I don't think this will be the trigger that starts off a war. It'll be another drop in the bucket, considering Russia basically has military in plainclothes in among the Ukraine separatists to make them more effective/prod them onward.
 
Right now nothing is clear, everything is just speculation. The only confirmed information is that flight MH17 started in Amsterdam and crashed on its way to Kuala Lumpur in East Ukarine.
 
This one depends so much on the height of the airplane.

  • Below a certain height: could be rebels w/o support. Shoulder-mounted, etc. Or on approach to landing
  • Above a certain height: You need "real military" level hardware to even know there's a plane there to fire at. Which means Ukraine's military (unlikely IMO, but I do have bias), or rebels that have been supplied by a country, ie: Russia.
Given the circumstances, I'm thinking scenario 2, with Russia. Which means even if they aren't on the ground (ya right, they are) their hardware is there for sure. They're supplying the rebels. Which is VERY bad for international relations, but IMO it won't change anything, because nobody's going to help Ukraine. If people were going to, they already would have. Nobody's willing to piss off Russia that much, because of their energy (Europe NEEDS it), and their nukes (why do you think Iran, and many others, want nukes? You are afraid to ACTUALLY deal with them then).

Sorry Ukraine.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
It'll depend on how many US and EU citizens died on the flight.
I know what you're driving at - that western civilization only acts when it is directly affected. And you're right. But even if every last person on that plane was American, I don't think we'd end up doing more than sanctions, because in 6 short years we've gone from being the bull in the china shop everybody's afraid of to the paper tiger nobody takes seriously.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Hamas military wing al-Qassam brigades in text message: 'We've been eagerly awaiting this ground operation to teach the Israelis a lesson' - @sangwonyoon

If there's one thing the Palestinians have never been short on, it's baseless confidence.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
[DOUBLEPOST=1405630041,1405629986][/DOUBLEPOST]Though the administration made a lot of interesting assertions that later were proven false during benghazi, so I suppose we can take Biden's statements with some salt.
Eh, this isn't a CYA situation, so I'm more inclined to believe him, here.
 
I think I got it, though in a weird way. I didn't know who the guy was visually until I gathered what the last half of the joke was supposed to be.
 
The Obama administration is claiming that Ukraine doesn't have the capability to have shot mh17 down.

A roundabout way of blaming Russia, since they are also claiming that it was indeed a surface to air missile that brought the plane down.
From a National Post article:
Igor Sutyagin, a research fellow in Russian studies at the Royal United Services Institute, said both Ukrainian and Russian forces have SA-17 missile systems – also known as Buk ground-to-air launcher systems.
Rebels had bragged recently about having acquired Buk systems.
As much as I do believe Russia supplies the rebels (both material and personnel in plainclothes) this does throw a decent amount of doubt into it, since it's possible the Rebels captured such a system from the Ukrainians, if one was in that region to begin with. But there's no reason for the Ukrainians to be using them in this conflict, since the rebels don't have airplanes, at all. So the most likely culprit is the Rebels, thinking they were shooting down a Ukrainian plane. Despite all their other crap, the Russians aren't stupid enough to actually fire as much as a bullet from their side of the border.
 

Dave

Staff member
Not getting it at all.
Nor I.[DOUBLEPOST=1405687377,1405687275][/DOUBLEPOST]Never mind. I did a reverse lookup for the picture of the dude. He's the Situation. So the pictures together are:

Tents Situation.

So....yeah.
 
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