One reason why I *think* where I land is “I wouldn’t use either neoconservatism or imperialism to describe this, at least not yet”, is that these isms’ main utility is helping us to understand what comes next. And I don’t think that either really does.

i mean, we’ll see on the “can’t do shit” front, but folks are getting mad at this post thinking it’s rah-rah rather than just analysis

You fools in the media ivory towers don’t realize that in the critical election year, when Donald trump triumphantly campaigns to the country about how he helped kill the supreme leader of Iran, a man with the blood of countless Americans on his hands, American voters will shower our president with…

oh okay

I don’t even really think this is fair. Iraq was heavily debated publicly, and there was a plan. It was a stupid and delusional plan based on unrealistic assumptions, but it was known publicly and voted on by Congress. There was no public debate or Congressional authorization in this instance.

okay, deleting this because he apparently meant michigan rather than miami. we regret the error

It's genuinely wild how much better her and Tlaib are than all of Congress

Looks like they shouldn’t have opened up all those craft breweries and wood fired pizza places.

i already called my shot on ossoff a few months ago but i’ll go for a stretch pick: spanberger as veep. woke 2 comes out of the south, led by a jewish guy and a cia operative. it would drive the online right maximally insane and is in keeping with this show’s lazy writers room

The 20K is in Navy hulls (the 075/076 LHDs and 071 LPDs, also all the LSTs/etc), civ shipping probably plausibly bumps that upwards of ~75K total, but the civ shipping is gnarly because even the RoRos designed for at sea ops don't support disembarkation of AAVs as quickly as grey hulls w/a well deck

I saw a comment the said we aren’t “angry enough.” But all we are is angry. Our veins circulate it like acid. It cracks our sternums. It poisons and paralyzes us. We hiss and spit at each other, all impotent, helpless rage. We don’t need more anger. We need more direction.

the war is unpopular but it's also illegal but it also doesn't serve any purpose but it also undermines diplomacy but it also is set to produce the opposite outcome as intended but it also already has hundreds dead and threatens more but it also will not make anything better for anyone but it also

they gotta find somebody named Khumeni

fuck, they already got another one

trump did this because he was frustrated listening to career staff having to explain repeatedly that khamenei and khomeini are not the same guy

imagining the syriana scene with the guys in the boat but they're going up the intracoastal and blowing up trump's putting green

I’m voting for the candidate who promises to imprison everyone who makes money insider trading on war.

“surely no one would ever try to assassinate OUR heads of state just because we assassinated THEIR heads of state,” they think, thus perpetuating one of the great repeating fallacies of world history

in case anyone ever needed confirmation that it's not about building a democratic Iran, it's about collapsing Iran and turning it into a land of rubble that can be bombed every six months

remember this? oh, the laughs we had together @rickywlmsbong.bsky.social

An NSC career staffer patiently explaining to Trump for a third time why he can't just appoint Mamdani

BREAKING: Iranian state TV has confirmed that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in Israeli and US air strikes today. A tearful host on state TV's channel one announced the news live on air.

hassan rouhani can still be supreme leader if mike pence has the courage to do what's right (i'm sorry)

sis i don't know how to tell you this but soldiers do be fuckin

I led an interagency study of Iranian retaliatory capacity in late '13/early '14, this was around the Syria "red line" moment. We were responsible. Good sourcing, rigorous analytic methodology, consistent assumptions checks, etc. Solid review of intelligence & policy. Informed the NSC staff, etc.

I used to "pour off" the juice from black olives; now, I WILL DECANT them. Thank god my wife doesn't drink wine, prepping could get confusing. Great fun podcast @proptermalone.bsky.social , @mbkplus.bsky.social , @ed3d.net , @rickywlmsbong.bsky.social , @peark.es .

running after the county animal control truck as it drives away with dozens of trapped possums, making the roll-down-your-window gesture, struggling to keep up, eventually just screaming "please, I need them for the ants"

people don’t know apparently

no more private schools means fictional mit too, go noles

Don’t worry, he’s on it!

well, yeah

Until now I've never seen a thread with every single post being ratioed.

think i'm resolutely in the "i dunno, we'll see how it goes" camp. getting dead is pretty easy, so i'd probably try to make a go of survival

I will donate substantially to a credible challenger to this guy.

scrawny 18-year-old about to fall out of an army helicopter over tehran: this is so epic. this is totally sigma, right babe? AI e-girl operated by a balding intelligence officer in virginia: that's right baby, Iran is totally cringe

"we had to attack iran to stop their nuclear development, even though we supposedly did that last summer, because they won't agree to a deal we'd withdraw from anyway so we could go to war"

If you’re an American service member who gets killed in a retaliatory strike, your family can take comfort in the fact that it was done in service of making the host of Celebrity Apprentice feel like a big man for a minute, before he moved on to something else and forgets about this forever

I am already seeing "it's a distraction!" takes and please fucking kill me

More chatter that they were able to kill Khamenei. I’d weight this relatively low still without better confirmation.

other people can make inroads and find common ground with regretful trump voters, in my personal capacity as a private citizen i am committed to hating those dumb motherfuckers for the rest of my life

Sam Altman picked a hell of a day to basically urge the world to trust the morality and legal restraint of the Department of Defense

just circling back...

"escalating series of strikes with off-ramps" so like they are just bombing them more and more and seeing if trump is still into it

This is the way

i feel like people should go back and read up on how long staging for ground invasions took for (say) russia in ukraine or the us in iraq maybe the iranian government falls because iranians have had enough and it's that fragile (put me down for Doubt), but it won't be due to a ground invasion

Duration - target relationship contingent on the tempo, but it's not like Iran is the PLA and it's not like they have ball bearing factories for us to hit also none of this has any plausible relationship to the desired end state because it's literally: bomb stuff -- ??? -- regime change

i think that Hegseth should have unlimited access to the model which convinces you to kill yourself, white house doctor oxycodone, and military-grads firearms