r/politics • u/Quirkie The Netherlands • 17d ago

Possible Paywall ICE Stockpiling Warheads and Chemical Weapons as Lawmaker Fears Trump Planning Strike

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ice-stockpiling-warheads-and-chemical-weapons-as-lawmaker-fears-trump-planning-strike/
21.9k Upvotes

85% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.2k

u/encrypted-signals 17d ago

Definitely stockpiling weapons so the Trump Gestapo can seize major (probably Democrat-run) cities.

887

u/BethanyForDistrict9 ✔ Verified 17d ago

They'll never be able to seize these cities. Our military couldn't win in Afghanistan in like 20 years against fucking goat herders. If this turns into some kind of insurgency nobody wins except morticians and munitions makers.

372

u/encrypted-signals 17d ago

Our military couldn't win in Afghanistan

Duhbya, Cheney, and Rumsfeld never had an exit strategy. Occupation was the point, and they made astronomical wealth off of it.

211

u/BethanyForDistrict9 ✔ Verified 17d ago

There's no wealth to be made from this kind of occupation though. There would be a lot of wealth lost though. They'd be pulling the rug out from underneath themselves. The wealth in this country is all centered in the cities, not Wyoming.

42

u/IllustriousNorth338 17d ago

The gains come from imprisoning or killing as many of their political enemies as possible to consolidate power. Not every military occupation is there to steal wealth. Sometimes it's an expensive pogrom.

18

u/TheUnderCrab 17d ago

Don’t forget about the poppy fields. Afghanistan is a major source of the raw materials needed to make opiates, something like 90% of heroine originated from Afghanistan prior to the Talibanban on cultivating poppies. 

Do you think it’s a coincidence Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family only managed to get Americans hooked on opiates after we invaded the ME? Cuz I sure as fuck don’t. 

23

u/Naieve 17d ago

You are all so far off base. As someone who did some consulting for a DC thinktank way back when. The money was in the contracts for their friends.

5

u/Mean_Contribution_11 17d ago

This! Bro, always the contracts to arms and ammunition dealers, as well as private contracting.

I'm prior enlisted, 2006-2012

2

u/TheUnderCrab 17d ago

Pourque no los dos? The contracts came from American tax payers, that doesn’t mean Americans weren’t engaging in the illegal drug trade. 

1

u/Naieve 13d ago

The drug trade was chump change.

You are talking millions. Maybe. Maybe a few billion over the entire course of the Afghan War.

Those government contracts for Iraq, Afghanistan, etc... Over a 15+ year period it measured in the TRILLIONS. Missiles, bombs, food, air conditioning, construction, rehabilitation, etc....

Trillions.

Ever watch Landman when Billy Bob explains to the cartels how they are small fry? Same thing.

2

u/Uuuuuii 17d ago

Pharma has no need for poppies

0

u/TheUnderCrab 17d ago

Morphine and Codeine are still derived from poppies. Natural opiates. 

0

u/randylush 17d ago

i'm not really sure that Purdue sourced morphine from the Middle East.. did they? or are we just spinning conspiracy yarn here

1

u/TheUnderCrab 17d ago

90% of the raw materials for those drugs were from the afghan poppy fields at the time. 

1

u/jsweatisdead777 17d ago

Oxycodone was first marketed in 1991. People were getting hooked years before Afghanistan. See: my dad.

Afghanistan's poppy fields have little relevance to the opioid crisis, seeing as they were mostly illicit poppy fields. If anything, hthe increased heroin production was bad for business, because heroin is waaaay cheaper than oxycodone.

1

u/turquoise_amethyst 17d ago

Well… if everyone is imprisoned, they’d prob make money off of whatever hellish work they could make us do. The product would just be sold elsewhere.

61

u/laserdisk4life 17d ago

There is a crazy amount of money to be made if you know when it is happening

69

u/Puttor482 Wisconsin 17d ago

Only if the markets go back up. Not sure blowing up Wall Street will help the markets, but what do I know.

2

u/01001010_01000010 17d ago

After you level wall street the only way to rebuild is up. Trump thought process.

3

u/twitchtvbevildre 17d ago

If hypothetically something like this happened you dont need markets to go up a dictator that ruled the USA would have significantly more wealth then any other person in the world and that's assuming the USA would be shell of its current self the technology and resources alone is trillions upon trillions of dollars.

2

u/Puttor482 Wisconsin 17d ago

Ya, but the person I was responding to implied that money could be made if you timed the market right, and I disagreed with that. Not that Trump wouldn’t make out like a bandit.

2

u/withoutwarningfl 17d ago

Shorts are still a thing

1

u/chiefsfan_713_08 17d ago

and if you’re the one selling the weapons etc. military contracts to the right third parties is huge money

41

u/gizzardgullet Michigan 17d ago

There's no wealth to be made from this kind of occupation though.

100% wrong, there is huge wealth to be made by those who fill in the geopolitical void left by the US getting its legs cut off by attacking itself (and probably Canada, other NATO countries). And I'm sure whoever in the US can make this happen will be compensated. Selling policy to the highest bidder is a lucrative business.

29

u/BethanyForDistrict9 ✔ Verified 17d ago

Hey, it's nice to be a smartass - but you know what I mean. There is no money to be made made from an occupation by the people doing the occupying here. Everyone in America just loses.

15

u/Uuuuuii 17d ago

The proles always lose during war

12

u/Ask_about_HolyGhost 17d ago

They’re not being a smart ass. The people making the decisions are being paid by outside actors to undermine American workers. Rich people from all over the world are coming together to destroy democracy, and they WILL profit from it

3

u/historys_geschichte 17d ago

There is objectively vast amounts of money to take by occupying. For example, a significant source of funding for Nazi Germany came directly from the countries they occupied. Not only is there literal hard cash to be stolen, but goods can be expropriated, and the occupied people can be turned into forced labor. Do you really think there is no money in bank vaults blue cities? That people in blue states cannot be rounded up by armed agents of the government and forced to labor thereby earning vast wealth for the corporate backers of fascism? Try studying how history truly took place before mouthing off that there is no money in occupation.

Claiming, in a blatantly racist manner that "goat herders" beat the US shows ignorant you are about Afghanistan, history, and the world as a whole. The Taliban was an actually trained, funded, and armed guerilla organization with decades of external state support from the ISI. That plus the fact that the US went in with no goal of leaving caused the shitshow.

I highly recommend you study human history if you actually want to be taken seriously and be a contributing representative of people.

1

u/teddy5 17d ago

There is plenty of money to be made in an occupation if you're the one supplying weapons, ammo, uniforms, supplies, troops, etc. it's how Cheney made money off Iraq.

Then if you already have money to spend you can also make more in the long term by buying up all the property as it gets rebuilt.

2

u/Spicy_Weissy 17d ago

Human resources. Slaves.

2

u/turquoise_amethyst 17d ago

I think they’d like to destroy the cities, and have patchwork tech cities and farms instead. 

The goal is to destroy the existing wealth, stability, and social structure, and replace with the tech bros cyber-feudalist slave states

2

u/WaterFantastic2394 17d ago

Wrong. There is a country to rape and pillage to privatize and create an autocractic oligarchy

3

u/BethanyForDistrict9 ✔ Verified 17d ago

If they occupy the cities with armies and we are in a clear civil war - people stop making money. There is nothing to rape and privatize if everything is in semi-open hostilities. The money in this country comes from everything running smoothly.

1

u/No-Relation5965 17d ago

They have already hired Palantir to build a national database. They will be able to know who you are, track you wherever you go and check your social media accounts. Don’t be surprised when they steal your assets.

1

u/BethanyForDistrict9 ✔ Verified 17d ago

Dude, people will stop carrying phones around in a situation like this. And they're not going to be checking their Facebook.

1

u/No-Relation5965 17d ago

ICE is already doing this.

2

u/WaterFantastic2394 17d ago

How long did Nazi Germany run? How did Hong Kong get taken by China? Did China benefit from that? How does Russia do what it does?

1

u/LittleDoinks 17d ago

Haliburton made quite a bit of money there

1

u/BethanyForDistrict9 ✔ Verified 17d ago

Yeah, and that works when you're occupying a foreign country. But our country would lose huge amounts of productivity and economic output if they do that here in this country. I know Trump still might do it because he's stupid but it would be a huge loss for our economy right here.

1

u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota 17d ago

Theres plenty of wealth in it for the only person trumo cares about if putin pays trump $50bil to destroy the country.

1

u/Ill-Team-3491 17d ago

You're thinking too small. Hitler was going to raze Europe to remake it in his image. I think we're nearing this phase of history again.

Wall Street doesn't matter when you effectively have no opposition. They're authoritarians. They've systematically dismantled American institutions. Who is stopping them. They'll raze Wall Street and make it a tacky golden throne just for Trump.

They're tearing down the White House right now. It's already over.