quote:

Originally posted by Aglifter:

But, I don’t get a full-bird saying stuff like he did, publicly.

Did he have a stroke?

Just because the guy is an Army Colonel doesn't mean he was any sort of conservative one bit

I served with wildly left-wing people in uniform, it's an assumption that many people make that military = conservative

Ran into a Chaplain once on deployment who sounded just like this guy, he was a Protestant or Catholic chaplain but HAAATED Israel for some reason. Thought they were the worst thing in the world. Made no damn sense.

Indian news reporting on Iranian hypersonic missiles hitting Israel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF5e6t4Mv4Y

I understand the military goes left as people move up the ranks.

I just don’t get a full bird being so politically unaware that he made those statements, publicly.

There's a lot of sensationalist, politically biased news reporting and that might be one of them.

Look at their previously posted videos for a sense of who they are.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Just because the guy is an Army Colonel doesn't mean he was any sort of conservative one bit

I served with wildly left-wing people in uniform, it's an assumption that many people make that military = conservative

To me it's not really a question of left or right. When you're an O6, you should be smart enough to know when to STFU and stay out of politics.

quote:

Originally posted by stoic-one:
When you're an O6, you should be smart enough to know when to STFU and stay out of politics.

Most E2s have that figured out. Or, maybe he realized that he'd never make General so he figured he'd go out with a little style.

quote:

Originally posted by wcb6092:
Indian news reporting on Iranian hypersonic missiles hitting Israel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF5e6t4Mv4Y

[FLASH_VIDEO]<iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iF5e6t4Mv4Y?si=cjco5CZ1WNtzbcMa" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>[/FLASH_VIDEO]

Iran has a lot of missiles. Perhaps those three Chinese ships were loaded with arms.

quote:

Originally posted by c1steve:
Perhaps those three Chinese ships were loaded with arms.

Send them to the bottom.

Then blow the ports. Deny China ANY access to oil, except for the US' at OUR price.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:

We should be wary of undue influence over our foreign policy.

Yes we need to put America first like all the other countries put themselves first..

From 2013:

Report: Israel Passes U.S. Military Technology to China

https://www.military.com/defen...-technology-to-china

Secret U.S. missile and electro-optics technology was transferred to China recently by Israel, prompting anger from the U.S. and causing a senior Israeli defense official to resign.

The head of defense exports for the Israeli Defense Ministry resigned after a U.S. investigation concluded that technology, including a miniature refrigeration system manufactured by Ricor and used for missiles and in electro-optic equipment, was sent to China, according to the Israeli newspaper Maariv.

Another Israeli news site, Aretz Sheva, reports the U.S. is concerned the technology could ultimately find its way to Iran, which last year sought to buy military equipment from China for its nuclear program.

Ricor, on its company website, identifies a number of defense programs using its miniature cryo-coolers, including UAVs, airborne enhanced vision systems, missile warning systems, hand-held thermal imagers and thermal weapons sights.

The Maariv report identified the Israeli defense official as Meir Shalit, and said he apologized to U.S. officials on a recent visit.

Israel has a long record of getting U.S. military technology to China.

In the early 1990s then-CIA Director James Woolsey told a Senate Government Affairs Committee that Israel had been selling U.S. secrets to China for about a decade. More than 12 years ago the U.S. demanded Israel cancel a contract to supply China with Python III missiles, which included technology developed by the U.S. for its Sidewinder missiles, The Associated Press reported in 2002.

1993:

https://www.independent.co.uk/...o-china-1510406.html

First off Israel is > < far from being communist.
I'd be worried that Israel is passing their own technology to China too.
I've refused Chinese national engineers in.
They have to be Israeli citizens first.

Now a rant about the spineless anti Israel media
I read an online news report on the hospital that was struck.
More than one site reported(BBC included) they had to corroborate that a hospital was actually hit or it was secondary damage.
But let a hospital in Gaza have a missile hit nowhere near it and it's gospel that Israel targeted crippled children.
Fuck the MSM. Journalists are scum.

quote:

Y'see, we don't owe our place in the military to the whims of a political agenda as you seem to do in the US Armed Forces.

Primarily a problem under recent Democrat presidents.

Republican presidents sometimes make mistakes, but they strive to appoint effective leaders that are competent in military matters.

Well, Lindsay gave the OK, so let's roll!

https://thehill.com/homenews/s...srael-iran-conflict/

"“Be all in, President Trump, in helping Israel eliminate the nuclear threat,” he said. “If we need to provide bombs to Israel, provide bombs. If we need to fly planes with Israel, do joint operations.”

“But here’s the bigger question: Wouldn’t the world be better off if the ayatollahs went away and were replaced by something better? Wouldn’t Iran be better off?” the GOP senator added.

Graham later answered his own question.

“It’s time to close the chapter on the ayatollah and his henchmen. Let’s close it soon and start a new chapter in the Mideast: one of tolerance, hope, and peace,” he said.

The South Carolina Republican is among the most reliable military hawks in the Republican party and has long advocated a heavy hand against Iran."

Lindsay whispering in one ear, Bannon in the other:

US Intel: Iran Likely To Pursue Nukes If US Joins Israel's War - Trump Worried About 'Libya Scenario'

Reiterating a long-running US intelligence community consensus that Iran has not been building a nuclear bomb, US intelligence officials are warning that an American entry into Israel's war would likely incentivize Iran to pursue becoming a nuclear-weapon state after all. Meanwhile, insiders say President Trump is wary of turning Iran into "another Libya" if Israel's regime-change ambitions are somehow realized.

In other major developments:

President Trump on Thursday issued a statement seemingly granting more time for a diplomatic solution: "Considering there’s a significant likelihood of negotiations that may or may not happen with Iran soon, I will determine whether or not to engage in the next two weeks."
The Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency has advised top officials that America's formidable 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs may be insufficient to destroy Iran's nuclear enrichment facility buried in a mountain at Fordo -- and that doing so may require a nuclear bomb. Otherwise, even in the wake of bombings of various other facilities, Iran could conceivably be capable of producing a bomb if it decided to.
Steve Bannon joined Donald Trump for lunch at the White House on Thursday; Bannon is staunchly opposed to America entering Israel's war, telling an audience, "We can’t do this again. We’ll tear the country apart. We can’t have another Iraq.”
Iranians have largely been cut off from the internet for more than 36 hours, with some observers claiming it reflects the government working to stifle domestic dissent, but most attributing it to Iranian wariness of potential cyberattacks.
Israel and Iran traded more attacks over Thursday night, with the Israeli Air Force claiming it hit ballistic missile launchers, missile production facilities and a nuclear research center, and Iran hitting the city of Beersheba, with unconfirmed reports of damage to a Microsoft building.

Speaking to the New York Times, senior intelligence officials say a US strike on the uranium enrichment facility buried under 300 feet of mountainous rock at Fordo, or a US-facilitated assassination of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would probably push Iran to build a nuclear bomb to deter further aggression against it. In 2003, Khamenei issued a religious order -- or fatwa -- prohibiting the development of any kind of weapon of mass destruction. That edict is "right now holding," a senior intel official told the Times.

One of the officials cast doubts on Israeli claims that Iran could have a bomb in 15 days. Iran would first have to take uranium it's already enriched to 60% and enrich it to 90%. That's probably the easiest part. Next, they'd have to construct a nuclear explosive device, and miniaturize it so it can fit inside a missile warhead. As an alternative, US intel analysts speculate that Iran could build a crude, 10,000-pound Hiroshima-style bomb that would have to be dropped by plane -- which wouldn't be a particularly credible deterrent. The analysts say that, contrary to Israeli claims, it would take between several months and a year to have a missile-ready warhead after a hypothetical decision to pursue one. Of course, it's always worth noting that Netanyahu has been warning of an imminent Iranian nuclear bomb since 1992 -- when he said they would have one by 1997 at the latest.

The US assessment that Iran has not decided to pursue a nuclear weapon comes three months after the same conclusion was shared with Congress by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, which in turn came 18 years after the intelligence community first made that assessment. When confronted with Gabbard's testimony in the wake of Israel's bombing-and-mass-assassination attack on Iran, Trump told a reporter, "I don’t care what she said. They were very close to getting a nuke." Vice President JD Vance offered his own flimsy deflection in a social media post, writing "Tulsi's testimony was in March, and a lot has changed since then." Thursday's remarks from senior intel officials severely undercut Trump's and Vance's characterizations.

Unlike nuclear-weapon-state Israel, Iran is a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has long insisted that its nuclear program is peaceful. In 2015, Iran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), by which it agreed to physical modifications, additional monitoring and other provisions that would assure outsiders that the country would be incapable of enriching uranium to a weapons-grade level. Though Iran was in full compliance, President Trump withdrew the United States from the JCPOA in 2018 and reimposed harsh economic sanctions on the country -- having promised to do so in a 2016 presidential campaign fueled by $45 million from Israel-focused billionaires Sheldon and Miriam Adelson. His JCPOA withdrawal came just a month after Trump appointed archetypal Iran hawk and neocon John Bolton as National Security Advisor.

After several days of the feeling that US engagement in Israel's war could be imminent, Trump's setting of a two-week timeframe for making that enormously consequential decision partially reflects his wariness that Iran could turn into a failed state if the Ayatollah's regime is toppled, according to administration officials who talked to the New York Post. One of the insiders said

"[He] doesn't want it to turn into Libya...There are two reasons Trump talks about Libya: the first is the chaos after what we did to Gaddafi. The second is the Libya intervention made it more difficult to negotiate deals with countries like North Korea and Iran.”

Seeking to appease the West, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi famously surrendered his nuclear development program in 2003, only to be the victim of a US-NATO regime-change campaign in 2011 that culminated in his being anally raped with a bayonet and then savagely beaten to death. That dark chapter looms as a stark cautionary tale for rulers all around the world facing American demands.

Meanwhile, Libyans continue to suffer from the result of that Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton toppling of Gaddafi, which led to utter chaos, blacks being sold in open-air slave markets and illegal immigrants pouring into Europe as they flee the Western-cultivated Hell-scape. Insiders say Trump has also raised the specter of the disastrous outcomes of US interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Trump's confrontation with the ghosts of failed interventions -- past, present and future -- comes as Tucker Carlson, other major conservative figures and legions of MAGA social-media users are urging him not to get America involved in another foreign policy disaster. Is the growing right-wing uproar having an effect?

https://www.zerohedge.com/geop...-worried-about-libya

quote:

Originally posted by tacfoley:

quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:

quote:

Y'see, we don't owe our place in the military to the whims of a political agenda as you seem to do in the US Armed Forces.

Primarily a problem under recent Democrat presidents.

Republican presidents sometimes make mistakes, but they strive to appoint effective leaders that are competent in military matters.

Good to hear, but moot. In our Armed forces our officers are placed according to their ability to perform WAR, not Oval office intriques. In my entire 33-year career, I was never once asked about my politics. All I had to do was to perform my MILITARY duties to the very best of my abilities, 100%, every hour of every minute of every day.

What I got up to in spare time was entirely up to me, but you can your life that politics was never part of it.

The main problem, to put it simply, is that you only have two political parties, both getting turns at managing a republic. Red or blue and that's it. And from what I've been seeing and hearing over the last fifty-something years of close association with the USA, you reaLLy do hate each other - virulently.

As a result, you have people in the military with deeply felt political feeling, and add to that, ambitions that are not military, but political.

That's enough from me, since I clearly don't know shit about how you all function with all this hate around, but we spend our time in Oregon, and find ourselves with friends of both colours. It is our non-partisan attitude to them that keeps us as friends, but there is no way on earth that we could ever hold a house party and ask people from both sides of the political divide.

Our military, here in the USA, was not unlike the one you previously served in and speak of, at least in terms of self-discipline; discipline of thought and separation of politics from service/duty. That all changed here, during AND as a result of, the tenure of Barack Hussein Obama! The main problem has nothing to do with the fact that we only have two political parties. The problem, both here in the US, as well as in the UK and greater Europe is the same...It's all the Leftists, plain and simple! This is basically a one sided issue, largely because the Left politicizes everything.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
Lindsay whispering in one ear, Bannon in the other:

US Intel: Iran Likely To Pursue Nukes If US Joins Israel's War - Trump Worried About 'Libya Scenario'

Reiterating a long-running US intelligence community consensus that Iran has not been building a nuclear bomb, US intelligence officials are warning that an American entry into Israel's war would likely incentivize Iran to pursue becoming a nuclear-weapon state after all. Meanwhile, insiders say President Trump is wary of turning Iran into "another Libya" if Israel's regime-change ambitions are somehow realized…

Iran has just one nuclear power plant. It uses fuel supplied by Russia.

In January 2025, the IAEA found centrifuges at Fordow hooked up in a cascade configuration that enables uranium to be enriched well beyond the 3-5% need to fuel a nuclear reactor. They also found 83.7% enriched uranium at the same time.

For what purpose does the US intelligence community believe Iran is enriching uranium for especially to near weapons grade levels?

Fun fact: Little Boy used 141 lbs of uranium enriched to an average of 80% uranium 235. The whole thing was just under 10,000 lbs, so not practical for warhead applications.

quote:

Fun fact: Little Boy used 141 lbs of uranium enriched to an average of 80% uranium 238. The whole thing was just under 10,000 lbs, so not practical for warhead applications.

Maybe 80% uranium 235?

Wikipedia:
“The bomb contained 64 kilograms (141 lb) of enriched uranium. Most was enriched to 89% but some was only 50% uranium-235, for an average enrichment of 80%.”

quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:

quote:

Fun fact: Little Boy used 141 lbs of uranium enriched to an average of 80% uranium 238. The whole thing was just under 10,000 lbs, so not practical for warhead applications.

Maybe 80% uranium 235?

Wikipedia:
“The bomb contained 64 kilograms (141 lb) of enriched uranium. Most was enriched to 89% but some was only 50% uranium-235, for an average enrichment of 80%.”

Typo, sorry.

5.2 earthquake hit Iran today....


https://x.com/PapiTrumpo/status/1936130862719893918

Gen. Keane: We are looking at the end here