Unforgivable

How much crazier will Trump get as the Iran war drags on, gas prices rise, food prices rise, the SAVE act tanks in the Senate, and the GOP midterm prospects look increasingly bleak?

Every option the Trump administration has to open the Strait of Hormuz is expensive, risky, and unlikely to convince oil-tanker crews and insurance companies that it’s safe enough to travel. 🎁🔗 www.wsj.com/world/middle...

I’m partial to this description. bsky.app/profile/feli...

The Strait of Hormuz is open for transit.

I remember hearing the same talking points from Cheney & Rumsfeld staffers after Kabul fell in November 2001.

🧵

CENTCOM:

Good points in this thread. To succeed, tactics must support a coherent strategy which accounts for 2nd and 3rd order effects. That strategy should support long term policy goals The U.S. is operating in a policy vacuum. Success whatever that might be requires more than ordnance and slopaganda

Hegseth’s reaction after discovering that the enemy gets a vote.

Trump going with the Leeroy Jenkins strategy. 🎁 link “Mr. Trump has said both that the war could go on for more than a month and that it was “very complete, pretty much.” www.nytimes.com/2026/03/10/u...

BREAKING: Leaked Pentagon documents reveal highly classified CENTCOM war plans

Hey NAVCENT, what’s the plan for opening the Strait of Hormuz? NAVCENT :

How to say you don’t have a plan without saying that don’t have a plan. “Gen. Dan Caine said the Pentagon is working on options to get commercial maritime traffic moving. “We’ll look at the range of options to set the military conditions to be able to do that,”” news.usni.org/2026/03/10/o...

The US has burned through over 1,000 Patriot interceptors ($4 million each) to stop an onslaught of Iranian drones ($20k to $50k each). Using my last gift link from Bloomberg, which is doing some of the best reporting anywhere on the war. 🎁 🔗 www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

NEW: The Russian military simply does not have the capacity to overrun Ukrainian defenses that Putin constantly claims. 🧵⤵️ (1/5) 1/ Ukrainian forces are successfully counterattacking not only in the Oleksandrivka and Hulyaipole directions but also in western Zaporizhia Oblast. isw.pub/UkrWar030926

Pro tip: if the Trump administration wants to reduce veteran’s disability benefits, it should stop engaging in pointless wars.

A report by the Nat’l Intelligence Council completed before the U.S. & Israel launched attacks on Iran assessed that even a large-scale military assault on the country would be unlikely to topple its theocratic gov’t, according to U.S. officials briefed on the work. 🎁 www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/w...

Clocks will skip ahead an hour at 2 a.m. Sunday for daylight saving time in most of the U.S., creating a 23-hour day that throws off sleep schedules, plunges early-morning dog walks into darkness and inspires millions of complaints. https://to.pbs.org/4lfFZns

It’s been a good week for Toyota dealerships in Erbil. Wonder how much a Hi Lux Quad Cab is going for? www.iraqinews.com/iraq/iranian...

13 countries are on board so far and rumor has it that Wakanda may also participate thehill.com/policy/inter...

Trump’s strategic doctrine in three words, “Forget about next”

Given the history of the U.S. abandoning Iraqi and Syrian Kurds… “Some Iranian Kurdish leaders said they were hesitant to work with the United States to launch operations in Iran, given the potential costs to their people if the effort failed.” No paywall. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/u...

Markwayne Mullin’s tough-guy schtick is extremely cringe, but it’s going to become hilarious in his new role as “guy who gets dog-walked by Stephen Miller.”

Basra Police confirm to Rudaw that a US aircraft has crashed within the borders of the province. Security forces have launched a search operation for the pilot.

The wife of the Iraqi President (both her and the President being Kurdish politicians with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party), releases a statement saying "leave the Kurds alone" citing various historical events, including "we saw what happened . . . in Rojava"

Dumb and Dumber but make it for DHS leadership. Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas?! Also will she take Lewandowski with her?

When the answer is yes but you’re not going to lie under oath.

Suddenly, its turns out that it is not smart to arrogantly shit on an ally that has learned how to down 200 Shaheds every single night and then wipe out and oil refinery or a military airfield with a handful of cheap drones.

I was forced to watch TV news when I had breakfast in a diner recently and I strongly resonated with the sentiment that being an intelligent person in America today is like being awake during a surgery.

I have bandwidth for only so many conflicts so #Pakistan 🇵🇰 vs #Afganistan 🇦🇫 has been ignored but this video of #Taliban airdefense is extremely glorious! Remember, they themselves filmed it and decided to post as a propaganda piece. Office jobs have destroyed the jihad!

Trying to backfill support for the 7th SFGA deployment to Ecuador.

During the Iran-Iraq war (in which the USA unofficially but obviously backed Saddam Hussein and Iraq), we lived right on the "insurance line" near the Strait of Hormuz. Dozens of tankers would amass to make a desperate sprint through the strait, each hoping that their ship, and crew, would survive.

The Trump admins goals were never clearly defined beyond we’re going to bomb shit for a week or two, claim victory, and move on. Not synched with Israel who is determined to wipe out the Clerics, the IRGC and the Basij. The “mowing the grass” policy on steroids and HGH. 1//

Primer on Iran’s Mosaic Defense Doctrine. www.intellinews.com/iran-activat...

Will Israel target the next Iranian Supreme Leader? While the Trump administration is looking for an exit ramp, Israel is committed to destroying the regime. No paywall www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/w...

”The consequence of a newly unreliable and even hostile United States, therefore, will likely be significant military buildups by former allies. This will not mean sharing the burden of collective security, because these rearmed nations will no longer be American allies.”

Special correspondent Reza Sayah is in Tehran and reports on what he saw and heard in Iran this weekend. https://to.pbs.org/4rMc8p5

Trump has set off a chain reaction and anyone who claims they know how this all ends is lying

Monty Pythonesque

Iran’s deliberate targeting of the energy sector introduces a new and dangerous dimension to this war. thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-2...

What comes next is uncertain but this raises the question of what Israel will accept after the dust settles. Gift link to the NYT article In the comments

I don't know enough derm or dermatologists to give or get a satisfying analysis of this, but as a pediatrician I feel qualified to say "Eww, that's not good."

ABC FOX Montana reports Ryan Zinke will not seek reelection to the U.S. House. House Democrats are targeting this seat and have already invested heavily in flipping it. A significant retirement: www.montanarightnow.com/elections/co...

“Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that any one who embarks on that strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter” Winston Churchill

Two good books I can recommend that deal with the 1953 coup overthrowing Mossadegh with the rich complexity it deserves, instead of reducing it to a cartoon or morality play: www.amazon.com/Patriot-Pers...

Worked great in Libya. It’s not like killing a regime’s senior leadership might create a vacuum which will be filled by warring militias and organized criminal elements or give rise to an even more violent and repressive theocratic regime than the one you just schwacked.

Tehran understands that it cannot defeat Israel or the U.S. in a conventional, high-intensity war. Instead, the regime seems to be deploying an asymmetric and attritional response designed not for decisive battlefield victory, but rather endurance and survival thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-2...