Mostly Monday Reads: War and Pieces
Posted: March 2, 2026 Filed under: Anti-War, Crimes against Children, Corruption and Criminal Insanity, #We are so Fucked, Middle East War Israel Iran United States, Follow the Money | Tags: @johnbuss.bsky.social John Buss, Cadet Bonespur's Iran War, Death of Civilians and Soldiers in the Middle East 2026, Follow the Money, Israel strikes Iran 7 Comments
“Pete Hegseth’s Department of War days ago shot down one of Kristi Noem’s border protection drones, while the USS Gerald R. Ford is experiencing a massive toilet failure on deployment. What else could go wrong?…” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
We’ve been dutifully following the release and blowback from the Epstein Files here. If Orange Caligula wanted center stage back and the headlines to shift from that, he certainly is accomplishing his goal. He now has dead school children, dead American troops, and attacks on numerous American Assets and countries in the Middle East on his nasty orange hands. We’re in there for real now, just like we were with the last bumbling Republican idiot in that office. I thought we’d learned our lessons on regime change back then.
The questions now are what’s next and what’s the actual goal here? Then how the hell do we get out with the least amount of carnage and destruction? Unfortunately, the folks who started this have no clue. Planning and follow-through are not their strong points. It’s one big show to distract from other failures. Let’s review the headlines this morning and hope there are some adults somewhere in the State Department and the aptly-named Department of War.
This Reuters headline sums up the idiocy that we’re being spoonfed minute by minute. Two old fascist codgers with scandals and lawsuits just teamed up to create a needless slaughter fest and economic disaster. “Pentagon tells Congress no sign that Iran was going to attack the US first, sources say. This is reported by Phil Stewart and Humeyra Pamuk.
Trump administration officials acknowledged in closed-door briefings with congressional staff on Sunday that there was no intelligence suggesting Iran planned to attack U.S. forces first, two people familiar with the matter said.
The United States and Israel launched their most ambitious attacks on Iran in decades on Saturday, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sinking Iranian warships and hitting more than 1,000 targets so far, officials say.
But Sunday’s remarks to Congress appeared to undercut one of the key arguments for the war made by senior administration officials.
They told reporters the day before that President Donald Trump decided to launch the attacks in part because of indicators that Iranians might strike U.S. forces in the Middle East “perhaps preemptively.
“Trump, one of the officials said, was not going to “sit back and allow American forces in the region to absorb attacks.
All this was happening while Trump was at a big donor fundraising gala in Florida, utilizing a small hut with curtains as the War Room. This is from CNN. “Hunkered at Mar-a-Lago, Trump makes his club a makeshift Situation Room.” I guess an easel is the latest technology they have down there at Mar-a-Lago.
As gala-goers in gowns and tuxedos were dancing the night away inside Mar-a-Lago’s ballroom Friday evening, a very different scene was unfolding on the other side of the rambling estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
Out the gilded doors, past layers of security and behind a set of black curtains, the country’s top national security officials were convening in anticipation of a long night.
The CIA director, the secretary of state and the secretary of defense had all slipped in earlier, unseen by the crowd sipping cocktails by the pool. So had the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose map of the Middle East showing the locations of American assets — along with Iranian targets — was set up on an easel.
By the time President Donald Trump touched down, the space was running as a makeshift Situation Room from which he would oversee the start of a sustained attack on Iran.
First, though, the ballroom summoned.
“Have a good time, everybody,” Trump called out to the black-tie crowd gathered for a charity gala after briefly jerking his arms around to his anthem, “God Bless the USA.”
“I gotta go to work.”
Behind the black curtains, photos released by the White House showed Trump, tieless and wearing a white hat emblazoned with “USA,” watching the unfolding action, which would include the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Raw Story‘s Robert Davis delves deeper into the prior TV News reports that the U.S. has a weapons shortage from already from all the prior attacks made on targets by the Trump Regime. “
U.S. troops in Iran are staring down a difficult situation in the wake of strikes that killed Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to a new report.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that U.S. troops are racing to destroy Iran’s ballistic and nuclear missile facilities before they run out of interceptors to defend from Iranian retaliatory strikes. The exact size of the military’s ammunition base is classified, but analysts and former officials who spoke to The Journal said the stockpile has been diminished after repeated conflicts in the region.
At the same time, military troops are working to fend off a series of retaliatory strikes from the Iranians. U.S. Central Command said on Saturday that they mounted a “largely successful defense against hundreds of Iranian missile and drone attacks,” according to the report.
“One of the challenges is you can deplete these really quickly,” Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, told The Journal. “We’re using them faster than we can replace them.”
Troops are also running low on sea-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles and aircraft-launched weapons following the operation last year to take out Yemen-based Houthi militants, according to the report.
“Eventually it boils down to numbers,” Jonathan Conricus, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told The Journal. “How many interceptors will we have versus how many launchers will they be able to field and fire.”
Axios follows up on the number of attacks and results Orange Caligula has chalked up during his Regime of Terror. Zachary Basu reports this story. “Trump’s lethal presidency.”
No president in the modern era has ordered more military strikes against as many different countries as Donald Trump.
- He’s attacked seven nations, three of which — Iran, Nigeria and Venezuela — had never been targeted by U.S. military strikes. He authorized more individual air strikes in 2025 than President Biden did in four years.
Why it matters: Trump explicitly ran as the anti-war candidate. The White House argues he still is — that he always exhausts diplomacy before acting, and that projecting overwhelming force is itself a path to lasting peace.
- The death of three U.S. service members in the first 24 hours of Trump’s Iran strikes is putting that argument to its most brutal test.
- “Sadly, there will likely be more before it ends. That’s the way it is,” Trump said in a video statement Sunday. “But we’ll do everything possible where that won’t be the case,” he added, vowing to “avenge their deaths.”
The big picture: Trump’s strikes are historically distinctive not just in number but in kind.
- President Bush’s post-9/11 campaigns and President Obama’s drone wars were massive in scale — but concentrated in inherited or congressionally authorized theaters.
- Alongside traditional counterterrorism efforts, Trump has opened new fronts — a Christmas Day strike in Nigeria, drug boats sunk in the Caribbean, Nicolás Maduro snatched from Caracas.
- His preferred model is consistent: no boots on the ground, no lengthy entanglements, overwhelming force applied quickly and framed as essential to defending American interests.
He’s like a walking stereotype for all the complaints every country has ever had about us. We are truly Ugly Americans. Judd Legum follows the money at Popular Information. As we’ve learned, that’s the central role of getting to this level of destruction and lunacy. We used to call it the military industrial complex, abetted by bribed politicians. “The money behind the new Iran War.”
In private calls over the last several weeks, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) reportedly urged President Trump to attack Iran. Iran is a top regional rival of Saudi Arabia, and MBS had become concerned about Iran’s growing military capabilities.
The lobbying campaign achieved success on Saturday, when Trump announced he had begun “major combat operations in Iran.” Trump launched a war even though U.S. intelligence assessed that Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States. In June 2025, Trump publicly declared that more limited strikes “completely obliterated Iran’s nuclear capability.”
MBS’s influence with Trump has grown as the Saudi government has invested billions in projects that personally enrich Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Despite the glaring conflicts-of-interest, Trump installed Kushner as a top negotiator with Iranian officials. Kushner and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff participated in a mediation session with their Iranian counterparts in Geneva on Thursday, billed as a last-ditch effort to avoid war.
The Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF) is the largest investor in Jared Kushner’s private equity fund, Affinity Partners. PIF invested $2 billion in Affinity Partners in 2021, even though the PIF committee that screens investments recommended rejecting Kushner’s proposal, citing “inexperience” and “excessive” fees. The committee’s recommendation was overruled by MBS, who heads PIF’s Board of Directors.
PIF pays Kushner 1.25% of its investment, or $25 million, annually. The Senate Finance Committee estimates that Kushner will be paid $137 million in management fees from PIF by August 2026. Further, in September 2025, PIF, Affinity Partners, and others jointly acquired Electronic Arts, the publisher of iconic video games like The Sims and Madden NFL, for $55 billion. The deal, which is the largest leveraged buyout in history, will likely be very lucrative for Kushner.
After raising billions for the Saudis and other foreign governments, Kushner dismissed concerns about conflicts of interest, pledging he would not be involved in Trump’s second term. In February 2024, Axios’ Dan Primack asked Kushner whether his business relationship with foreign governments would make it “very difficult… to do any sort of foreign policy work” moving forward. “I’m an investor now,” Kushner replied. “I served in government, and I think my track record is pretty impeccable. Now I’m a private investor.”
Yet, after Trump took office, Kushner resumed his central role in shaping U.S. foreign policy. In an October 2025 interview on 60 Minutes, Kushner argued that financial conflicts made him and Witkoff more effective. “What people call conflicts of interests, Steve and I call experience and trusted relationships that we have throughout the world,” Kushner said.
CNN reported that both Saudi Arabia and the UAE lobbied Trump to strike Iran. Like Saudi Arabia, the UAE has significant financial ties to Kushner and Trump.
The UAE is another major backer of Affinity Partners, directly investing about $200 million with Kushner’s firm. Additional money came via Lunate, a supposedly private Abu Dhabi investment firm that is financed by government money and tied to the UAE’s sovereign wealth funds.
Witkoff is the co-founder of the crypto firm World Liberty Financial (WLF) and retains an 8-figure stake in the company. Trump and his family also own significant pieces of the company. Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s national security advisor and head of the country’s largest sovereign wealth fund, purchased 49% of WLF days before Trump’s inauguration. Of the $250 million paid up front by the UAE, $187 million was directed to Trump family entities and $31 million to the Witkoff family. In May 2025, MGX, a company controlled by Tahnoon, purchased $2 billion of crypto tokens from WLF.
Following the conclusion of the mediation on Thursday, Kushner and Witkoff “ominously issued no statement,” and the pair was reportedly “disappointed“ by the Iranian negotiating position. After presumably being debriefed by Kushner, Trump said, “we’re not thrilled with the way they’re negotiating.” According to Trump, it would be “wonderful” if the Iranians “negotiated in … good faith and conscience but they are not getting there so far.”
The new Iran War comes weeks after PIF financed a $7 billion development deal in Saudi Arabia with the Trump Organization. Under the agreement, Dar Global, a developer with close ties to the Saudi government, will build a “Trump-branded hotel and golf course,” along with “500 mansions, priced between $6.7 million and $24 million.” The project is part of Diriyah, a $63 billion development funded entirely by PIF.
Only Trump could make Nixon look good. You can read a lot more about the money trail at the links above. Meanwhile, “fog of war” actions look pretty bleak for as many mistakes are being investigated. The Hill reports that “Kuwait mistakenly’ shoots down 3 US F-15s: Pentagon.” Tara Sutter reports the story.
Kuwait “mistakenly” shot down three U.S. F-15 fighter jets on Sunday after strikes were launched against Iran one day earlier, according to U.S. Central Command (Centcom).
Centcom said in a statement that the fighter jets were downed in Kuwait shortly after 11 p.m. EST Sunday.
The jets “were mistakenly shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses,” according to the statement.
The six service members who were on board the jets “ejected safely,” Centcom added, and are “in stable condition.”
“Kuwait has acknowledged this incident, and we are grateful for the efforts of the Kuwaiti defense forces and their support in this ongoing operation. The cause of the incident is under investigation. Additional information will be released as it becomes available,” its statement said.
Here’s another example of bad planning and big lies from Politico. “Pentagon offers no evidence to support claim it attacked Iran in defense. The Trump administration’s effort to construct a case for war after shots started flying has few historical parallels.” Again, there really was no case for this regionwide war we have created with Israel.
The Trump administration is making the case that it ordered expansive, deadly strikes to stop an imminent threat from Tehran, but is providing no evidence Iran had such plans.
The White House, amid the largest military buildup in the region in decades, has yet to explain to the public or to Congress what Iranian threat prompted the massive attacks that have upended the region and could draw the U.S. into another Middle East war.
The administration first tested out its justification more than 12 hours after the U.S. began bombarding Iran with missiles, drones and long-range artillery. A senior Trump administration official told reporters Saturday that the U.S. had determined American troops would have suffered far more casualties by waiting for an impending Iranian strike. In the same briefing, two other officials said the president ordered the strikes after he determined Iran would not agree to stop uranium enrichment altogether.
But the administration’s efforts to construct a case for war only after the shots have started flying has few historical parallels. The Pentagon has held no briefings nearly 36 hours after the U.S. military strikes, bucking a practice of doing so after attacks that goes back to the Vietnam War. And unlike past presidents embarking on major military campaigns, Trump made little effort to drum up support from Congress, U.S. allies or the American people. The administration did not try to convince the Senate to authorize the war, as President George W. Bush did in Iraq, or plead to the United Nations, as George H.W. Bush did to build a coalition against Saddam Hussein’s attack on Kuwait.
“Whatever imminent threat they’re posing was likely in reaction to our unprecedented military buildup in the region,” said Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.). “This is an example of the president deciding what he wanted to do, and then making his administration go and find whatever argument they could make to justify it.”
The administration briefed some Hill staffers Sunday on the operation. But officials did not present clear evidence the Iranians were preparing an imminent attack on U.S. troops, said two people who attended. They, like others in this report, were granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dan Caine and CIA Director John Ratcliffe will give an Iran briefing to House members on Tuesday, according to four people with direct knowledge of the meeting. They will also meet with senators, according to two people familiar with the plans.
This gives the idea of ‘going off half-cocked’ an entirely new meaning. This was basically an impulsive decision that will cost us plenty. But as we can see, some folks will make lots of money from the death and destruction. We are also far beyond flintlocks with hammers.
I really am at a place where I just can’t deal with this anymore. There’s far too much at stake, and there will be blowback for all of us. If they can bomb a girls’ school and not really talk about it, where the fuck are we? This is from the New York Times. “Strike on Girls’ School Kills at Least 175, Iranian State Media Says. Videos and images verified by The New York Times showed that at least half of the school was destroyed. It was not immediately clear why the school was hit, or which country’s forces had fired at it.”
At least 175 people, most of them likely children, were killed in a strike on a girls’ elementary school in southern Iran on Saturday, health officials and Iranian state media said.
The search for survivors in the rubble of the Shajarah Tayyebeh school in the southern town of Minab ended Sunday, according to Mohammad Radmehr, the governor of Minab, Iranian state media reported. It appeared to be the deadliest attack in the ongoing American-Israeli bombing campaign.
Several videos and images verified by The New York Times showed that at least half of the two-story school was destroyed in the explosion. Emergency workers with the Red Crescent could be seen alongside families desperately combing through the rubble, which was littered with schoolbooks and book bags covered in blood and ashes. Portions of the building jutted out from the rubble, with bits of colorful murals visible on what were once the walls of the school. Desks were piled with debris.
In other verified videos, rescue workers retrieved a severed arm from the rubble. Victims were laid out in body bags at the scene, where throngs of people were gathered among ambulances and rescue workers.
“The Minab school incident has no comparison with any other incident,” said Pirhossein Kolivand, the head of Iran’s Red Crescent, in a video posted on social media on Sunday.
“Even in Gaza,” he added, there had not been such a high number of students killed simultaneously, calling the attack “a unique and bitter incident.”
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
Finally Friday Reads: How Goes the War
Posted: February 20, 2026 Filed under: #FARTUS, #MAGAnomics, #We are so Fucked | Tags: #FARTUS Mafia State, Bobby Kennedy Jr., Cadet Bonespur's Iran War, Incompetence, Kid Rock, Supreme Court, Trump Tarriffs, Trumpers 6 Comments
“DEFCON 1!!!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Glancing through the headlines in traditional and social media reminds us that there is nothing normal about life in the United States these days. Economic news is surreal, as historical, economic, and constitutional mistakes like tariffs are back in the headlines. Plans for a potential war with Iran sit on the resolute desk somewhere. Don’t even get me started on jaw-dropping weirdness still happening among the jerks and incompetents sitting in Cabinet offices. I guess it’s just another normal yet insane week in Trumplandia.
It may be hard to choose the read to start out with, but the rest will be equally shocking today, believe me. Just minutes ago, the Supreme Court made the obvious decision to strike down most of Trump’s tariffs in a 6-3 vote. This is from the New York Times. Live Updates: Supreme Court Strikes Down Trump’s Sweeping Tariffs. In a major setback for President Trump’s economic agenda, the court ruled that he could not invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to set tariffs on imports. (I’ve gifted the full article for you to read.)
The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that President Trump exceeded his authority when he imposed sweeping tariffs on imports fromnearly every U.S. trading partner, a major setback for his administration’s second-term agenda.
The court’s 6-3 decision has significant implications for the U.S. economy, consumers and the president’s trade policy. The Trump administration had said that a loss at the Supreme Court could force the government to unwind trade deals with other countries and potentially pay hefty refunds to importers.
Mr. Trump is the first president to claim that a 1970s emergency statute, which does not mention the word “tariffs,” allowed him to unilaterally impose the duties without congressional approval.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the statute does not authorize the president to impose tariffs.
“The president asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope. In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it,” the chief justice wrote.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Brett M. Kavanaugh dissented, with Justice Kavanaugh warning that any refund process could be a substantial “mess.”
The United States “may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers who paid” the tariffs, he wrote, “even though some importers may have already passed on costs to consumers or others.”
The court’s ruling, backed by justices from across the ideological spectrum, was a rare and significant example of the Supreme Court pushing back on Mr. Trump’s agenda. Since he returned to the White House, the court’s conservative majority had overwhelmingly issued emergency orders allowing the president to carry out his policies on a temporary basis. But the decision on Friday will have a more lasting impact.
Early last year, Mr. Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to set tariffs on imported goods from more than 100 countries. He said his goal was to reduce the trade deficit and spur more manufacturing in the United States. Since then, he has used the tariffs to raise revenue and to pressure other countries in trade negotiations.
A dozen states and a group of small businesses, including an educational toy manufacturer and a wine importer, sued over the tariffs, saying the president had unlawfully infringed on Congress’s power under the Constitution to impose taxes. The businesses, which rely on imported goods, argued in court filings that the tariffs had disrupted their operations and led to higher prices for consumers and cutbacks in staffing.
In court filings and social media posts, the president and his advisers cast the outcome of the Supreme Court case as critical to his trade and foreign policies, making clear he would see defeat as a personal rebuke. Without the emergency power, the solicitor general had warned the justices, there would be economic ruin akin to the Great Depression, in addition to an interruption of trade negotiations and diplomatic embarrassment.
This is from Talking Points Memo‘s Layla A. Jones.
The Supreme Court blocked President Donald Trump’s signature economic and foreign policy Friday morning in a fractured 6-3 split decision.
Trump cannot use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to override Congress’s power of the purse, using the emergency declaration to levy widespread global tariffs, the majority held. The decision will now likely require an end to those tariffs, and could trigger the return of tariff revenue collected by Customs and Border Protection and deposited into the U.S. Treasury.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, which was joined in part by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Kagan filed a concurring opinion, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson, while Jackson filed her own concurring opinion. Gorsuch and Barrett also filed concurring opinions.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito dissented, with Thomas filing one dissenting opinion and Kavanaugh filing another, joined by Thomas and Alito.
“Based on two words separated by 16 others in [a section of] of IEEPA — ‘regulate’ and ‘importation’ — the President asserts the independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time,” Roberts wrote. “Those words cannot bear such weight.”
The majority opinion ultimately agrees with the main argument of the plaintiffs, a slate of small businesses suing the government on the grounds that Trump’s IEEPA tariffs are illegal. Tariffs are a tax, the plaintiffs had argued, and taxing authority rests solely with Congress.
Speaking of authorities that rest solely with Congress, Trump is still brooding about declaring War on Iran. This is from Michelle Goldberg writing for the New York Times. “This Is How an Autocrat Goes to War.”
On Wednesday, Axios’s well-sourced reporter Barak Ravid warned, “The Trump administration is closer to a major war in the Middle East than most Americans realize. It could begin very soon.” America has undertaken the largest air power buildup in the region since the Iraq war. Outlets including The New York Times have reported that the military has given Trump the option to strike as soon as this weekend.
Not only has Congress not authorized such a war, it has barely even debated it. The administration has not bothered to explain, either to Congress or the American people, why it might bomb Iran or what it hopes to achieve. “There haven’t been any briefings about a military strategy,” said the Democratic representative Ro Khanna, who is working with his Republican colleague Thomas Massie to force a vote on an antiwar measure.
Most reporting indicates that the White House is planning for a campaign far more intense and sustained than last year’s bombing of Iran or the abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. But we don’t know if Trump and his team are after regime change, and if they are, what they think comes next. This is how an autocracy goes to war, without even a pretense that the consent of the governed matters.
At the center of the conflict between America and Iran is Iran’s nuclear program, which Trump claims he destroyed eight months ago, at the close of Israel’s 12-day war. Back then, a report from the Defense Intelligence Agency found that America’s bombing campaign set Iran’s program back by less than six months. But to this day, a page on the White House website proclaims, “Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated — and Suggestions Otherwise Are Fake News.” The administration apparently feels no need to justify a potential war to end a program that it claims it already eliminated.
The administration is also reportedly demanding that Iran curtail its ballistic missile program and end its support for regional proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. It is unclear whether these demands are serious or simply a negotiating tactic, but they seem to be red lines for Iran.
“I don’t know whether it’s pretextual or genuine,” Rob Malley, Joe Biden’s special envoy for Iran, said of the Trump administration’s conditions. Given that Iran was probably bound to refuse, he said, the Trump team’s position could be “simply part of a Kabuki game to be able to say, ‘We tried diplomacy.’”
So far, the administration has scarcely bothered to elaborate the reasoning behind these demands. After all, Iran’s missiles, and the militias it supports, threaten Israel far more than they do the United States. If you take the administration’s stance at face value, it’s hard to square it with Trump’s America First campaign rhetoric.
If Trump isn’t bad enough, he has a cabinet that’s equally incompetent and dangerous. This is yet another New York Times headline. “Labor Secretary’s Husband Barred From the Department After Sexual Assault Reports. At least two female staff members said Dr. Shawn DeRemer had touched them inappropriately at the agency in Washington.”
The husband of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer has been barred from the department’s headquarters after at least two female staff members told officials that he had sexually assaulted them, according to people familiar with the decision and a police report obtained by The New York Times.
The women said Ms. Chavez-DeRemer’s husband, Dr. Shawn DeRemer, had touched them inappropriately at the Labor Department’s building on Constitution Avenue. One of the incidents, during working hours on the morning of Dec. 18, was recorded on office security cameras, the people said. The video showed Dr. DeRemer giving one of the women an extended embrace, and was reviewed as part of a criminal investigation, one of the people said.
In January, the women’s concerns about Dr. DeRemer, 57, were raised as part of an internal investigation by the department’s inspector general into alleged misconduct by Ms. Chavez-DeRemer and her senior staff, one of the people said.
On Jan. 24, Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department filed a report about forced sexual contact in December at the Labor Department, according to their report, which was viewed by The Times.
The police report is the only one from the last three months associated with the Labor Department’s address, a police spokesman said, adding that the Police Department’s sexual assault unit is investigating.
After the women described the incidents to investigators, Dr. DeRemer was barred from entering the Labor Department’s premises, according to people familiar with the decision, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the allegations and ongoing investigations surrounding the department.
“If Mr. DeRemer attempts to enter, he is to be asked to leave,” a building restriction notice viewed by The Times said.
Mika reacts
Then there is this embarrassing, let me rephrase that to gross, televised moment from the HHS Secretary. This is from The Independent. “Even Fox News hosts struggling to make sense of RFK Jr’s and Kid Rock’s workout video, ‘Listen, somebody needs to tell RFK Jr. it’s okay to wear shorts. I mean, bro, don’t be upset about your legs,’ Fox News military analyst Johnny Jones said.” This is reported by Graig Graziosi.
Why did Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr and aging rap-rocker Kid Rock release a sweaty, shirtless workout collab video? Not even Fox News is sure.
During an episode of The Five on Wednesday, the panel members were left scratching their heads during a discussion of the bizarre video.
In a clip posted to X, Kennedy and Kid Rock, both shirtless, take turns riding on a stationary bike and doing pushups in what looks like a sauna. At one point, Kid Rock flips the middle finger to the camera. A title screen, inexplicably featuring a great white shark, tells us this is Kennedy and Kid Rock’s “Rock Out Work Out.”
The video is apparently intended to promote the DHHS secretary’s Make America Healthy Again agenda.
Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld watched the video and asked his co-panelists, “This raises a question: who rubs off on who?”
“You would think, ‘Oh, my God. RFK Jr is hanging out with Kid Rock. Oh, poor RFK Jr. is going to end up drinking. He’s going to be drinking again. He’s going to be womanizing again.’ And then what happens? You see Kid Rock at the gym,” Gutfeld said. “He’s like, you know, working out and cold plunge—it’s like RFK was a bad influence on Kid Rock. Who would have seen that coming?”
Fox News military analyst Johnny Jones pointed out that the DHHS secretary wore blue jeans throughout his entire workout.
“Listen, somebody needs to tell RFK Jr. it’s okay to wear shorts. I mean, bro, don’t be upset about your legs. I don’t care what they look like. Take it from me, nobody needs impressive legs. You look great with your shirt off. Throw the shorts on so we don’t all go, ‘Wow, that’s weird.’”
Esquire’s coverage was brutal. “The Republican Party Is So Tacky Now. The party of Lincoln has been reduced to RFK Jr. and Kid Rock’s “workout” video. Are they really okay with that?” This analysis was written by Dave Holmes.
As you know by now, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got together with Woodstock ’99 standout Kid Rock to produce a short video promoting nutrition, exercise, and bathing with your pants on. The “Rock Out WORK OUT” video was filmed at Kid Rock’s home gym and sauna, and it is scored to his 1998 single “Bawitdaba,” so just when you start to realize that your tax dollars funded this video, you have to face the fact that some of your tax dollars have gone directly to Kid Rock, which is a lot to sit with. Like you, I spent much of yesterday trying not to see it. But it turns out to be a pretty good barometer of where we are as a country and a culture in February 2026, and if I have to lose 90 seconds to this goddamn thing, then so do you. Pour yourself a glass of whole milk and let’s dive in.
The video opens with Kennedy and Kid, shirtless and flexing, in front of the taxidermic bear you were already sure existed in Kid Rock’s home gym. A quick camera pan reveals that this bear is wearing a checkered fedora, suggesting that it was shot while onstage with its ska band, which hardly seems sporting. From there is a montage that includes an American flag, a shark, a fighter jet, a bald eagle, and an explosion, so what we know right off the bat is two things: One, they’re going to be throwing everything at the wall here, and two, NFTs must really be over, because this would be the perfect place to slide one in.
A highlight reel shows Secretary Kennedy and American Bad Calves running through some basic exercises in the workout room, and then it’s right to the sauna, where Kennedy keeps his jeans on and Rock does a set of push-ups so comically weak it awakens the sadistic gym teacher inside us all. Seriously: I want to bully him, and I own Liza with a Z on Blu-ray. What is happening here? As if anticipating this response, Kid Rock flips off the camera. That’s the message of American public health in 2026: Get active, eat real food, and fuck you.
Kennedy dips himself in the cold plunge, in the jeans which you have to imagine are sodden with sweat from the Assault bike session he just did in the sauna. The hygienic ramifications are too hideous to consider, so you focus your attention on the decor of Kid Rock’s home fitness center, which is identical to what you’d see in one of those Hammer & Nails salons for men, where they surround you with rough-hewn wood and tables made out of wagon wheels so you can get a pedicure and it won’t make you gay.
Kennedy gets out of the cold plunge and walks his wet ass through a sitting area, dripping his Kennedy juice all over the Navajo rug. “Where’s Kid?” he asks, a valid question only after we have answered the question “Why is Kid?” Well, Kid is in some kind of hot-tub room, flexing his biceps with a look on his face that is unmistakably 10 percent apologetic. Kennedy shakes his head. Kid, in his own hot tub? He can’t believe it!
The economy remains sluggish, with high prices. This is from CNBC. Jeff Cox reports that “Fourth-quarter U.S. GDP up just 1.4%, badly missing estimate; inflation firms at 3%.”
U.S. growth slowed more than expected near the end of 2025 as the government shutdown impacted spending and investment, while a key inflation metric showed high prices are still a factor for the economy, according to data released Friday.
Gross domestic product rose at an annualized rate of just 1.4%, according to the Commerce Department, well below the Dow Jones estimate for a 2.5% gain.
Consumer spending increased at a slower pace for the period while government spending tumbled sharply in a quarter marked by the record-length shutdown. The department estimated that the shutdown subtracted about 1 percentage point from growth, though it added that the exact impacts “cannot be quantified.”
For the full year in 2025, the U.S. economy grew at a 2.2% pace, down from the 2.8% increase in 2024.
“The Federal government shutdown clearly sent the economy careening off its strong growth path in the fourth quarter which is a one-off that won’t be repeated in early 2026,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at Fwdbonds.
It doesn’t take an economist to know that Trump and his lackeys have no idea what they are doing.
Anyway, I hate being the bearer of bad news, but other than the SCOTUS decisions, that’s what’s out there.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
Thursday Reads: What does it mean when the prevailing cooler heads are in Iran?
Posted: January 9, 2020 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Cadet Bonespur's Iran War, impeachment 15 Comments
Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!
I continue to be gobsmacked by exactly how lawless the Trumpist regime has become. Fortunately, Iran decided to signal what it could do to US bases with a warning shot at US Troops rather than providing a full show of force. The second and third order conditions are now playing out. It appears that an Iranian missile may have accidentally taken down that Ukrainian commercial airliner killing all on board.
Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, a Boeing 737–800 en route from Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airpot to Kyiv’s Boryspil International Airport, stopped transmitting data Tuesday just minutes after takeoff and not long after Iran launched missiles at military bases housing U.S. and allied forces in neighboring Iraq. The aircraft is believed to have been struck by a Russia-built Tor-M1 surface-to-air missile system, known to NATO as Gauntlet, the three officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, told Newsweek.
One Pentagon and one U.S senior intelligence official told Newsweek that the Pentagon’s assessment is that the incident was accidental. Iran’s anti-aircraft were likely active following the country’s missile attack, which came in response to the U.S. killing last week of Revolutionary Guard Quds Force commander Major General Qassem Soleimani, sources said.
U.S. Central Command declined to comment on the matter when contacted by Newsweek. No reply was returned from the National Security Council or State Department.
Of the 176 people on board, 82 were Iranian, 63 were Canadian and 11 were Ukrainian (including nine crewmembers), along with 10 Swedish, seven Afghan and three German nationals. None survived.
The Senate is getting anxious to deal with Trump’s impeachment. Here are some of the latest headlines.
Allan Smith / NBC News:
Top House Democrat: ‘Time to send’ articles of impeachment to Senate
Some Democrats in the House and Senate have joined Republicans in recent days in saying it’s time for Pelosi to send the articles to the Senate.
After initially saying in an interview Thursday morning that he thought Pelosi should submit the articles, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., backtracked, tweeting that he “misspoke.”
The initial comments from Smith, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, came as several Democratic senators this week called on Pelosi to send the articles to Senate Majority Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., so the impeachment trial can begin.
“I understand what the speaker is trying to do, basically trying to use the leverage of that to work with Democratic and Republican senators to try to get a reasonable trial, a trial that would actually show evidence, bring out witnesses,” Smith told CNN. “But at the end of the day, just like we control it in the House, Mitch McConnell controls it in the Senate.”
The sticking point continues to be allowing witnesses to Testify that were blocked from testifying before the House. Also, if the Republicans will be able to force the country to go down the Biden/Ukraine conspiracy theory by bringing both Bidens in and subjecting them to the Benghazi treatment
Paul Rosenzweig / The Atlantic:
Trials Are for Evidence
There was no pre-impeachment criminal investigation of Trump’s efforts to compel Ukraine to pursue the alleged corruption of his political opponent. There were no lawyers and FBI investigators interviewing witnesses. There was no grand jury—merely the cumbersome House-committee process. That process didn’t last nine months; it lasted less than three. Rather than produce tens of thousands of documents, the White House and the executive branch withheld almost all those subpoenaed by the House. Likewise, rather than eventually allowing executive-branch witnesses to testify, the White House stonewalled the House inquiry: President Trump successfully frustrated the House’s efforts to hear from witnesses like former White House Counsel Don McGahn and former National Security Adviser John Bolton. And of course, President Trump never told his side of the story under oath.
So, unlike with Clinton, the Trump impeachment investigation is incomplete. Far from being given an exhaustive record on which to make a determination, the Senate has received only part of the story from the House. The Senate is not in the position of wondering whether, for example, John Bolton was truthful in what he has said already. Rather, if he is called to testify, the Senate will hear what he has to say for the first time. The process now isn’t about credibility; it’s about establishing facts.
Senator McConnell’s proffered analogy to the Clinton impeachment is ill-considered, if not disingenuous. While the Senate might, with some justification, have thought that the evidence was complete and that no witnesses were necessary to decide the Clinton matter, it cannot reasonably make the same claim now. Though the analogy of a House impeachment to a grand-jury indictment is rather strained, it does carry a bit of truth: The House has found sufficient evidence to start an impeachment trial, and it is up to the Senate now to conduct a more in-depth inquiry—a trial. Trials are for hearing evidence. That task lies before the Senate.
Clearly, Speaker Pelosi is not impressed by McConnell’s posturing to date.
And, members of both Houses are not impressed with the briefing by the Trumpist regime on the assassination of Soleimani.
Greg Sargent / Washington Post:
GOP senator who erupted over Iran briefing shares awful new details
If President Trump made the decision to assassinate the supreme leader of Iran, would he need to come to Congress to get authorization for it?
The Trump administration won’t say.
That remarkable claim is now being made by a Republican senator — Mike Lee of Utah. He offered it in a new interview with NPR, in which he shared fresh details about why he erupted in anger on Wednesday over the briefing Congress received from the administration on Iran.
As you know, Lee’s comments went viral Wednesday after he ripped into the briefing given to lawmakers about Trump’s decision to assassinate Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani.
Lee, echoing the complaints of many Democrats, blasted the briefing on the intelligence behind the assassination as the “worst” he’d ever seen. He also fumed that officials refused to acknowledge any “hypothetical” situations in which they would come to Congress for authorization for future military hostilities against Iran.
Now, in the interview with NPR’s Rachel Martin, Lee has gone into more alarming detail. Lee reiterated that officials “were unable or unwilling to identify any point” at which they’d come to Congress for authorization for the use of military force.
Trumpist Regime officials warned Congress to not ask too many questions and not to debate war powers. This is really surreal since the Constitution is clear on this. It’s just another pretzel we find ourselves in over the Constitutionality of a lawless president and the people protecting him.
On the eve of a House vote Thursday, Defense Secretary Mark Esper urged Congress not to debate limits to President Donald Trump’s power to strike Iran because doing so might embolden Tehran and hurt U.S. troops, multiple sources tell ABC News.
The suggestion by Esper, in a classified briefing for lawmakers on Wednesday, enraged some members, including Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, who swiftly marched to the television cameras following the 75-minute briefing to declare it “insulting.” Lee said the briefing felt like being told to be “good little boys and girls and run along and not debate this in public.”
“I find that absolutely insane,” he said.
Pence is now justifying holding information back from even the Gang of Eight which is virtually unprecedented. The rationale? Congress might compromise methods and sources. That’s rich coming from the shadow of the man whose speech just–and once again–presented highly classified information on sonic weapons under development.
Vice President Mike Pence responded Thursday to lawmakers, including Republicans, who criticized the lack of information shared by the Trump administration during classified congressional briefings on the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, saying the intelligence was too sensitive to share.
On NBC’s “TODAY,” Pence told Savannah Guthrie that the administration could not provide Congress with some of the “most compelling” intelligence behind the administration’s decision to kill Soleimani because doing so “could compromise” sources and methods.
“Some of that has to do with what’s called sources and methods,” Pence said. “Some of the most compelling evidence that Qassem Soleimani was preparing an imminent attack against American forces and American personnel also represents some of the most sensitive intelligence that we have — it could compromise those sources and methods.”
Pence said “those of us” who were made aware of the intelligence “in real time know that President Trump made the right decision to take Qassem Soleimani off the battlefield.” He added that Soleimani “was planning imminent attacks against American forces.”
In killing Soleimani, leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Trump administration said it launched the attack because of intelligence that showed Soleimani was planning “imminent” attacks on U.S. personnel. But the administration has yet to make public the evidence behind that assertion and, according to Democratic and two Republican senators, it did not detail that intelligence in a classified setting on Wednesday.
Trump–in a scrum today–mentioned it was because of attacks on the Baghdad Embassy even though it was clear all of that was coming from Iraqi proxies and there is still no real evidence of any actual bigger plans of an attack.
https://twitter.com/sam_vinograd/status/1215316867767832577
This increasing looks likes Benghazi reaction formation. He doesn’t want to be seen by any one in the same light as Clinton or Obama seriously overreacts at anything that might leak up to what he perceives as their weakness. However, his January speech definitely showed his continual physical and mental decline.
So, I really am revisiting more of those things that I assumed would remain as characteristics of our nation. Clearly, we are not in the position of claiming to be the temperament and thoughtful nation. Maybe it’s because I finally got used to the No Drama Obama model where we sometimes took what seemed like ages to arrive at actions and policy. Now, it’s totally a shoot from the hip of a psychologically and neurologically challenged individual surrounded by End Times Nutters who lie the majority of the time. Fact Checking that speech gave us peek Pinocchio numbers. It’s a very long list. Sit down with a good cup of coffee.
Anyway, I have to prep for a Financial Engineering class I teaching starting next Wednesday so I need to switch from the real weapons of mass destruction to the financial ones (h/t to Warren Buffet). It is quite math and a bit like teaching physics so it’s that too. My hair will be totally gray by the end but at least it’s all good students from seniors to mbas to doctoral students so there’s that. AND, it’s back on the ground at my old University so I will have a G/A. Yippie!
What’s on your reading an blogging list today?
He Finally Did It Friday Reads
Posted: January 3, 2020 Filed under: Middle East, morning reads | Tags: Cadet Bonespur's Iran War, Qassim Suleimani assassination 22 Comments
Shop for Machining 15-inch Shells by Anna Airy. © IWM (Art.IWM ART 2271)
Happy New Year!
I wish I could say this with a lot of hope in my heart but after last night’s late news we’ll be lucky at this point if we avoid World War III. Also, this time there will be no allies because Cadet Bone Spurs thinks we can just go it alone and has managed to offend every friendly country in the world. His Maximum Pressure approach to the world has not only left us friendless but more likely facing increased violence around the world.
Trump’s freaky christofascists have been frothing at the mouth for their mythical end times. I suggest they grab a bucket and go help Australia if they’re really all concerned about the earth ending in fire. Problem is my freakish friends, according to your specific mythology, a Temple has to exist that no one’s built yet so I’d think twice about travelling any where around the world or signing up for the diplomatic corps or the marine corps for that matter. We are just one target rich environment now.
Since this assassination reminds me a bit of the Arch Duke Ferdinand one that kicked off World War I I decided to give you some paintings from the period. This collection comes from the UK’s Imperial War Museum: “6 STUNNING FIRST WORLD WAR ARTWORKS BY WOMEN WAR ARTISTS.” You can read the backstories on the painters and their work at the site. Basically, the IWM commissioned the women to capture the women’s effort in the so-called War to End all Wars.
So, here’s what’s gone down so far. The U.S. directly targeted and killed an Iranian general that was, in fact a very bad man. However, there are a lot of very bad men in the world that need to disappear and if they did, no one would care. This one has quite a few people that care about him and they all have no problem with dying for a cause as they’ve proven over the last 40 years. This is from the NYT: “U.S. Strike in Iraq Kills Qassim Suleimani, Commander of Iranian Forces”.
Iran’s top security and intelligence commander was killed early Friday in a drone strike at Baghdad International Airport that was authorized by President Trump, American officials said.
The commander, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, who led the powerful Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, was killed along with several officials from Iraqi militias backed by Tehran when an American MQ-9 Reaper drone fired missiles into a convoy that was leaving the airport.
General Suleimani was the architect of nearly every significant operation by Iranian intelligence and military forces over the past two decades, and his death was a staggering blow for Iran at a time of sweeping geopolitical conflict.
The strike was also a serious escalation of Mr. Trump’s growing confrontation with Tehran, one that began with the death of an American contractor in Iraq in late December.
Christmas Day in the London Bridge YMCA Canteen, 1920, by Clare Atwood. © IWM (Art.IWM ART 3062)
Please tell me we didn’t do all this for a Defense Department Mercenary Contractor. I have yet to hear who this person actually was but if it’s the result of Rumsfeld’s war privatization efforts I’d totally believe it.
It took awhile for the Defense Department to take credit for the assassination of Suleimani and others so we all got our news from Iraqi and then Irani state TV. Sort’ve like we always hear about news about Russia from Russian State TV first. The Spawn of the Orange Swamp Thing seemed to know more about the attack than just about any one but definitely more than Congress and the all important Gang of 8 who handle that sort’ve thing for the country. Here’s a bit from Hill Reporter: “Deleted Tweet From Eric Trump Hints He May Have Known About Strike Against Iranian Military Leader Days Ahead Of Time’. Doesn’t that bring you comfort and joy or the season? You know, Peace on Earth, Good Will to Man and all that jazz?
The protests that broke out around the embassy got an off the cuff tweet from Eric the Dim.
Those protests broke out on December 31 of last year, according to the New York Times. On that same date, Eric Trump sent out a tweet, which has since been deleted. Twitter user @realTuckFrumper had a screengrab of the tweet, which suggested military action was coming forth.
Why (the better question is HOW) did @EricTrump know anything about this in advance…and why has he since deleted… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…—
#TuckFrump (@realTuckFrumper) January 03, 2020
“Bout to open up a big ol’ can of whoop ass,” Eric Trump’s tweet read. It was followed with a flag emoji.
Other users on social media also verified the tweet as being legitimately posted by Eric Trump on that date. There’s no indication or confirmation that he was indeed aware of military action occurring later on in the week, but the words from Eric Trump caught many people’s attention after the airstrikes were announced.
The Scottish Women’s Hospital: In The Cloister of the Abbaye at Royaumont, 1920, by Norah Neilson-Gray. © IWM (Art.IWM ART 3090)
The UK Guardian has a subtle lede this morning over an Op Ed penned by Mohammad Ali Shabani. “Donald Trump’s assassination of Qassem Suleimani will come back to haunt him. The Quds force leader had the status of national hero even among secular Iranians. His death could act as a rallying cry”
The US has assassinated Qassem Suleimani, the famed leader of Iran’s Quds force, alongside a senior commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Units, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. To grasp what may come next, it is vital to understand not only who these men were but also the system that produced them.
Nicknamed the “Shadow Commander” in the popular press, Suleimani spent his formative years on the battlefields of the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein – who at the time enjoyed the support of western and Arab powers – was attempting to destroy the emerging Islamic Republic. But few remember that his first major mission as commander of the Quds force – the extraterritorial branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards – was involved in implicit coordination with the United States as it invaded Afghanistan in 2001. The Taliban were, and to some extent remain, a mutual enemy. That alliance of convenience ended in 2002 when US president George W Bush notoriously branded Iran a member of the “Axis of Evil”.
In the years after, Suleimani laboured to bleed the US military in places like Iraq. He succeeded. After having spent trillions of dollars and lost thousands of troops, Washington withdrew from Iraq – partly as a result of Iranian pressure on the Iraqi government – in 2011.
But Suleimani had little time to celebrate. His attention was turned to containing fallout from the Arab spring, focusing his energy on propping up the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. That development saw the creation of a region-wide network of Iran-backed militias numbering more than 100,000 men, unprecedented Iranian military collaboration with Russia and the transformation of Hezbollah into a force capable of operating on significant scale outside Lebanon’s borders.
By 2014, when he successfully halted Islamic State’s attempt to overrun Iraq, Suleimani was feted as a hero among Iraqis, alongside the local commanders including al-Muhandis. The same response was evident in Iran, where he quickly became a household name and was rumoured as a potential future president – a trend that was strengthened by the Trump administration’s unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.
So the US has not merely killed an Iranian military commander but also a highly popular figure, viewed as a guardian of Iran even among secular-minded Iranians. And with the assassination of al-Muhandis, the Trump administration has put itself in the position of having killed the operational commander of a large branch of the Iraqi armed forces.
Some will characterise the killings as a huge blow to Iran’s proxy capabilities and wider policy in the region. But such an approach ignores how the Iranian system is structured.
In an Ambulance: a VAD lighting a cigarette for a patient, by Olive Mudie-Cooke. © IWM (Art.IWM ART 3051)
As reported last night on MSNBC by a very shaken Andrea Mitchell on The Last Word, this is exactly why Israel–who could’ve taken him out at a moment’s notice–never gave it a second thought. The second and third order conditions were considered to be worse than any benefit from the assassination. Mitchell actually interviewed SOD Mike Esper in what turned out to be an interview worth dissecting.
Even more disturbing was an interview later on a special Rachel Maddow with “Brett McGurk, who served as special envoy on the global coalition to defeat ISIS under Pres. Obama and Pres. Trump, talks to Rachel Maddow about the serious implications of the strike on Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force.” You may watch the video but here’s the bottom line: ” McGurk on US strike on Soleimani: ‘We need to presume that we are now in a state of war with Iran’.”
Iraq is truly in a bad place now. And, I know, it’s not like we haven’t put them in a bad place since Dubya’s adventures there at the behest of all those Chicken Hawk Cabinet members of his. But, this Op Ed from the UK Independent describes the situation in more detail “Iraq’s worst fears have come true – they are now at the centre of a proxy war between the US and Iran. General Qassem Soleimani made a terrible mistake in the final weeks of his life by underestimating the popular protests across Iraq. Donald Trump has made a bigger one in killing the influential commander.” This is written by Patrick Cockburn.
I spoke to Abu Alaa al-Walai, the leader of Kata’ib Sayyid al Shuhada, a splinter group of Kata’ib Hezbollah, one of whose camps had been destroyed by a drone attack in August. He said that 50 tonnes of weapons and ammunition had been blown up, blaming the Israelis and the Americans acting in concert. Asked if his men would attack US forces in Iraq in the event of a US-Iran war, he said: “Absolutely yes.” Later I visited the camp, called al-Saqr, on the outskirts of Baghdad where a massive explosion had gutted sheds and littered the burned-out compound with shattered pieces of equipment.
I saw other pro-Iranian paramilitary leaders at this time. The drone attacks had made them edgy, but I got the impression that they did not really expect a US-Iran war. Qais al-Khazali, the head of Asaib Ahl al-Haq, told me that he did not think there would be a war “because Trump does not want one.” As evidence of this, he pointed to the failure of Trump to retaliate after the drone attack on Saudi oil facilities earlier in September that Washington had been blamed on Iran.
In fact, events developed very differently from what both I and the paramilitary commanders expected. A few days after I had spoken to them, there was a small demonstration in central Baghdad demanding jobs, public services and an end to corruption. The security forces and the pro-Iranian paramilitaries opened fire, killing and wounding many peaceful demonstrators. Though Qais al-Khazali later claimed that he and other Hashd leaders were trying to thwart a US-Israeli conspiracy, he had said nothing to me about it. It seemed likely that General Soleimani, wrongly suspected that the paltry demonstrations were a real threat and had ordered the pro-Iranian paramilitaries to open fire and put a plan for suppressing the demonstrations into operation.
All this could have been disastrous for Iranian influence in Iraq. Soleimani had made the classic mistake of a successful general in imaging that “a whiff of grapeshot” will swiftly repress any signs of popular discontent. Sometimes this works, often it does not – and Iraq turned out to belong to the second category.
General Soleimani died in the wake of his greatest failure and misjudgement. But the manner of his killing may convince many Shia Iraqis that the threat to Iraqi independence from the US is greater than that from Iran. The next few days will tell if the protest movement, that has endured the violence used against it with much bravery, will be deflated by the killings at Baghdad airport.
Women’s Canteen at Phoenix Works, Bradford, 1918, by Flora Lion. © The rights holder (Art.IWM ART 4434)
This Dexter Filkins piece in The New Yorker from September 2013 is a good place to read a profile on Soleimani. The NYT also has a profile “Qassim Suleimani, Master of Iran’s Intrigue, Built a Shiite Axis of Power in Mideast. The commander helped direct wars in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, and he became the face of Iran’s efforts to build a regional bloc of Shiite power.” This link is for that article which was published today.
General Suleimani was at the vanguard of Iran’s revolutionary generation, joining the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in his early 20s after the 1979 uprising that enshrined the country’s Shiite theocracy.
He rose quickly during the brutal Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. And since 1998, he was the head of the Revolutionary Guards’ influential Quds Force, the foreign-facing arm of Iran’s security apparatus, melding intelligence work with a military strategy of nurturing proxy forces across the world.
In the West, he was seen as a clandestine force behind an Iranian campaign of international terrorism. He and other Iranian officials were designated as terrorists by the United States and Israel in 2011, accused of a plot to kill the ambassador of Saudi Arabia, one of Iran’s chief enemies in the region, in Washington. Last year, in April, the entire Quds Force was listed as a foreign terrorism group by the Trump administration.
But in Iran, many saw him as a larger-than-life hero, particularly within security circles. Anecdotes about his asceticism and quiet charisma joined to create an image of a warrior-philosopher who became the backbone of a nation’s defense against a host of enemies.
He was close to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who on Friday issued a statement calling for three days of public mourning and “forceful revenge,” in a declaration that amounted to a threat of retaliation against the United States.
“His departure to God does not end his path or his mission,” he said.
All this means is that many Shia Islam followers in quite a few countries are not going to let him go quietly into the great night. It also means that Congress will have another likely investigation on its hands which means a lot more on Nancy Peolosi’s To Do LIst.
So, this is a long post and it has taken me a good deal of time to compile but I hope it will give us a basis for conversation today. I hope that your New Year will be wonderful and that you will be surrounded by all the family, love, and happiness you deserve!!! May all Goodness in the Universe protect us on this where yet another war seems inevitable!
What’s on you reading and blogging list today?
Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.
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