Finally, Friday Reads: “The Thought of War Blows my Mind”

“The dumbbeat of war echoes across the world.” @repeat1968, John Buss

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Gotta thank  @repeat1968 for giving me this earworm today, as well as today’s Featured Funny. Today’s topics are War, Inflation, and a domestic terrorist attack on a place of worship. All these are brought to you by the letters #FARTUS. Yes, Cadet Bonespurs with his band of incompetents is doing more damage to the world and our country than most folks thought possible.

We’ve lost more U.S. service members, furthering whatever the Iran War is supposed to be about. This is from NBC News. “All 6 U.S. crew members killed after refueling plane crashes in Iraq. The crash brings the number of U.S. service personnel killed since the Iran war began Feb. 28 to 12. A 13th died of a medical issue.” Watching body counts rise is never a good thing to see constantly in the news.  We should’ve learned by now. This sad news is reported by Patrick Smith.

All six U.S. crew members have been confirmed dead after their military refueling plane crashed in Iraq while taking part in Iran war operations, the U.S. military said Friday.

U.S. Central Command said in a post on X early Friday that the KC-135 plane went down at approximately 2 p.m. ET Thursday in western Iraq, with four crew members initially confirmed dead. That statement said “rescue efforts continue.”

CNN has the headline this morning. “Trump administration underestimated Iran war’s impact on Strait of Hormuz.”  Ya think? I’m just glad that my legs, my bike, and the St. Claude Ave bus pretty much take me wherever I need to go these days. You can lessen that earworm by humming Send in the Clowns as you read about what passes as the national security advisors these days.

The Pentagon and National Security Council significantly underestimated Iran’s willingness to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to US military strikes while planning the ongoing operation, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

President Donald Trump’s national security team failed to fully account for the potential consequences of what some officials have described as a worst-case scenario now facing the administration, the sources said.

While key officials from the Departments of Energy and Treasury were present for some of the official planning meetings about the operation before it started, sources said, the agency analysis and forecasts that would be integral elements of the decision-making process in past administrations were secondary considerations.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Energy Secretary Chris Wright have been key players throughout the planning and execution stages of the conflict, the sources acknowledged. But Trump’s preference of leaning on a tight circle of close advisers in his national security decision making had the effect of sidelining interagency debate over the potential economic fallout if Iran were to respond to US-Israeli strikes by closing the strait.

And now it may be weeks before the administration’s efforts to alleviate the intensifying economic fallout take hold, officials said Thursday, including high-risk naval escorts of oil tankers through the strait that the Pentagon believes are currently too dangerous to conduct. The president, meanwhile, has continued to downplay the tumult in energy markets and the danger. He told Fox News that oil tanker crews should “show some guts” and go through the strait.

The reality in the strait has left diplomatic counterparts, former US economic and energy officials and industry executives who spoke with CNN in a state of confusion and disbelief.

More than a dozen vessels have been attacked near Iran since Feb. 28

There have been at least 14 reports of attacks on ships in the Persian Gulf and near the Strait of Hormuz since war broke out between Iran and the US and Israel, according to UK Maritime Trade Operations. The incidents have effectively halted traffic through the vital oil corridor.

You may read the details at the link. Iran is warning ships in the air that it is also actively mining the area. There appears to be no solutions or discussion on this mess.  According to Cade Bone Spurs, we shouldn’t worry about it.   This is from AXIOS. “Scoop: Trump claimed in G7 call that Iran is “about to surrender”. Barak Ravid has the lede.

President Trump told G7 leaders in a virtual meeting Wednesday that Iran is “about to surrender,” according to three officials from G7 countries briefed on the contents of the call.

• 24 hours later, Iran’s new supreme leader issued his first public statement vowing to keep fighting.

Why it matters: Trump is as confident about the war’s outcome in private as he is in public. But his assessment is colliding with a more complex reality on the ground.

• The Iranian regime has shown no signs of imminent surrender or collapse — and on Day 14 of the war, is moving to gain more leverage by choking off the Strait of Hormuz.

Behind the scenes: Trump boasted about the results of Operation Epic Fury on the G7 call Wednesday morning, telling allies, “I got rid of a cancer that was threatening us all.”

• While claiming Iran was about to surrender, he also suggested there were no officials left alive in Tehran with the power to make that decision.
• “Nobody knows who is the leader, so there is no one that can announce surrender,” Trump said, according to two officials briefed on the call.

Trump has mocked Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei as a “lightweight,” previously telling Axios that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s son would be “unacceptable” to the U.S.

• In a message read out on state television Thursday, Mojtaba Khamenei vowed to avenge Iranian “martyrs” and open new fronts in the war “where the enemy has little experience and is highly vulnerable.”

• Khamenei said Iran will continue to threaten the Strait of Hormuz, where attacks on tankers have already pushed oil prices above $100 a barrel and triggered fears of a global economic crisis.

Meanwhile, the Secretary of War is on the job! Not really!  He said this today.

CNBC headlined his little performance this way. “Pete Hegseth on Strait of Hormuz: ‘Don’t need to worry about it’.” 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday brushed aside concerns that the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz because of the Iran war, which has spiked oil prices, would continue being a problem for the U.S. and the world for much longer.

Iran has been “exercising sheer desperation in the Straits of Hormuz,” Hegseth said at a Pentagon press briefing.

“We have been dealing with it, and don’t need to worry about it,” he said.

The price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil on Friday morning was around $93 per barrel. A day before the war began on Feb. 28, a barrel of WTI was selling for about $67.

I bet that made you feel so much better!  I know I’m back to my original earworm now.  Economic data make it increasingly clear that the economy was slowing even before Cadet Bone Spurs started his war.  Prices were also rising. This is from the AP. “US economy expanded at sluggish 0.7% in fourth quarter, government says, downgrading first estimate.”  Let’s see if he blames Democrats and Biden.

The U.S. economy, hobbled by last fall’s 43-day government shutdown, advanced at an unexpectedly sluggish 0.7% annual rate from October through December, the Commerce Department reported Friday in a big downgrade of its initial estimate.

Growth in gross domestic product — the nation’s output of goods and services — was down sharply from 4.4% in last year’s third quarter and 3.8% in the second. And the fourth-quarter number was half the government’s first estimate of 1.4%; economists had expected the revision to go the other way — and show stronger growth.

Federal government spending and investment, clobbered by the shutdown, plunged at a 16.7% rate, hacking 1.16 percentage points off fourth-quarter growth.

For all of 2025, GDP grew 2.1%, solid but down from an initial estimate of 2.2% and from growth of 2.8% in 2024 and 2.9% 2023.

The news from Michigan on the Temple domestic terrorist is beginning to shape the narrative on why it happened. This is from The Detroit News. “Temple Israel synagogue shooter’s family recently killed in air strike.”  Damn! There goes that earwig again.

A Dearborn Heights man whose relatives were recently killed in a military strike in Lebanon is the accused assailant in Thursday’s attack on the Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, two sources apprised of the investigation told The Detroit News.

Ayman Ghazali, 41, a restaurant worker in Dearborn Heights, is accused of driving his truck into the synagogue just after noon Thursday and opening fire, before he was shot and killed by security, the sources said. They spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the details publicly.

Late Thursday night, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security confirmed that Ghazali was the individual who carried out the attack.

Ghazali, a native of Lebanon, was granted U.S. citizenship more than 10 years ago, under the Obama administration, according to the department. He entered the U.S. through Detroit on May 10, 2011, on an immigrant visa as the spouse of a U.S. citizen, a DHS statement said. He applied for naturalization on Oct. 20, 2015, and was granted citizenship on Feb. 5, 2016.

Ghazali’s ex-wife filed for divorce in Wayne County Circuit Court in August 2024, records show. The couple had at least one child, according to court records, and a divorce was granted seven months later, in March 2025. Mohammad Ahmad Moussa, the ex-wife’s divorce lawyer, declined comment when contacted by The News on Thursday.

So, here is the headline from The Los Angeles Times, March 1.  “Israel hits Lebanon after Hezbollah attacks; in Iraq, militia targets U.S. troops.”  How literal are we here about the Eye for an Eye thing in modern times?

• The Israeli military hit Beirut on Monday and urged people in nearly 50 villages in Lebanon to evacuate ahead of possible retaliatory strikes after Hezbollah fired into Israel.
• In Iraq, the Shiite militia Saraya Awliya al-Dam claimed a drone attack on Monday targeting U.S. troops at the airport in Baghdad.

So, I think the world’s pretty fucked up right now, we are doing a lot of that, and I just am going to stop at this now and hope Congress starts fighting this with some integrity and grit.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?