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This morning, Israel has invoked Article 40 Aleph, a formal declaration of war, for the first time in 50 years. (1973, Yom Kippur). 9/11: Nine-eleven of 2023, that is. Biden and Blinken authorize $6 Billion in funds to Iran. The next day, Lester Holt interviewed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and pressed him on how the funds would be spent. Raisi said: “Humanitarian means whatever the Iranian people needs, so this money will be budgeted for those needs, and the needs of the Iranian people will be decided and determined by the Iranian government.” Now, we have Iranian backed Hamas launching an unprecedented attack into Israel, kidnapping and slaughtering civilians. There are numerous videos and unconfirmed reports of Hamas terrorists wielding US made weapons with some claiming they are grateful to the people of Ukraine for allowing Hamas to purchase them. The Taliban is claiming they are sending fighters to Palestine to destroy Jerusalem. But, where will they get the weapons and equipment? Now, the US is working out emergency military aid to Israel. Billion dollar solutions to our Billion dollar fkups. So Israel is going to absolutely lay waste to Palestinian territories, which will most definitely inflame the Islamic world and shred the Abraham Accords. Will Israel finally go after Iran? Will they be able to do it without massive US support? The collapse of Afghanistan, The invasion of Ukraine, and The war in Israel. All of these things, in addition to the domestic issues of inflation, unchecked immigration, insane levels of debt have accelerated in a very, very short period of time under the current leadership of the US. I suppose we get what we're willing to accept.

Can you imagine. Mexico and south american countries continually flood America with fighting age males...... oh wait 🙂

I believe you can judge someone by who they call their friends. Hamas considers Iran, China, Russia, North Korea, The Squad, etc. their friends (and vice versa). All evil and wicked. That should tell you all you need to know.

At this point, I don't think that dude actually reads anything, he just downvotes my username. Fuck 'em. I honestly try to empathize and imagine myself in the position that the average Israeli and Palestinian finds themselves in. There's plenty to be angry about on both sides and plenty of blame to go around. Conflict and killing is a messy business and there will always be a loss of innocent life. It's a terrible thing but an inextricable part of human existence. For me, the difference is that in addition to inflicting death, Hamas planned to kidnap, target women & children & elderly, rape, torture, publicly glorify it, then publicly parade the desecrated bodies through the streets. Whatever sympathies I may have had for the average Palestinan by imagining their plight are instantly lost on anyone who would endorse or make excuses for that sort of thing.

Appreciate the analysis in this thread so far. A lot of news is hyper partisan and has already censored videos I saw yesterday of atrocities against civilians. The scale of this attack is impressive. That it could be developed while intel agencies were unaware is mind boggling. I understood 9/11 escaping notice of CIA; a small savvy force of disciplined folks is hard to track/assess. In this case they missed an entire army assembling! Holy shit. And the Iran financial connection is out in the open, as is weapons from the AFG withdrawal. Hamas is proud of it. Not sure KJP can spin her way out of our bad decisions directly enabling these actors.

Well then. Seems like this is all going swimmingly. Good thing we have strong, savvy, and decisive leadership in the US. Over-under on real actions in the Taiwan straits before the next US election?

They did get more than enough. There we so many applicants they increased the number to 190-200, I think.

Ya think!!!

You are already getting down votes because our liberal friends are still "mostly happy with Biden." I've been watching Al Jazeera this morning to see how the narratives are shaping up. At one point they were interviewing the main spokesman for Hamas Ghazi Hamad. How can anyone down vote when the Hamad himself admits to the BBC that Iran gave its support to the Palestinian terror group to launch its surprise multi-front attack on Israel. What did you think would happen when you handed Iran $6B? The Al Jazeera reporter actually tried to press him on the subject of killing civilians, the reply from Hamad..."yes it is wrong to attack and kill civilians like the Israelis have done, we are attacking settlers which is different as they are war criminals."

Pivot back to Trump? There may be a few MAGA hardliners here but most of the conservatives on here are moderates who have repeatedly said we don't like or want Trump. Sadly, it looks as if we are going to have him as the GOP nominee. Begrudgingly I hear a few DNC folks admit Biden is mentally deficient but rarely does your side admit the far left DNC is just as bad as the Proud Boys...and your mainstream leaders like the Clintons are drifting ever closer to Communism. I will however give Bill some props for coming out last week admitting the border is in crisis and now magically Biden wants to build a wall. Those props are limited because he did it for political reasons, trying to save Biden, rather than stop the invasion at our border.

Again. Taking a precision guided munition or putting 105 on it to knock down a building with a S-head who is literally incapable of effecting anything outaide AK range is not unleashing the original implication of “taking the gloves off” or “pushing shit in” to use your parlance. That’s playing whack-a-mole from a position of impunity. Tabqa damn or when it got Mosul/Raqqa was considered the most recent “Wild West” for US Forces. Compare us taking a week to stop and examine whether or not we killed civilians that ISIS herded into the building and deliberately baited air strike to or just how long we made the Iraqis wait before we finally struck the hospital in Old Mosul. Now look at Mariupol or Bakhmut and compare. And that’s still a misunderstanding of what is being asked for, total unbridled war. Total war as being opined about is to acknowledge that every portion of a societal infrastructure and the people participating in it are part of the apparatus to make war. See the Russians targeting the grain supply or the power grid on Ukraine. Or us bombing the ball bearings, steal production, fuel refining capacity, and most of all the people that build the weapons in WWII. Even in 91 or 03 that wasn’t the kind of targeting we adopted. We were attacking their immediate capacity to engage tactically or inflict casualties on our immediate forces. Mentioned earlier the “highway of death” was probably a great example of actually adopting the annihilation of your enemies war-making capacity, and what did we do once cameras were on it, we turned it off. And if you want to make this a dick measuring contest and compare deployments and “what you’ve been part of” I can very readily play. I doubt you’re going to find my perspective on the matter limited. Even still, being amazed at the killing power effectiveness of our weaponry in some individual battle is not a measure for seeing the US war making apparatus truly unchained to fight a war to a decisive definable victory. We’re talking about adopting a line of thinking inline with Lemay’s era and carrying that out. Tell me that guy could even exist in the current environment much less be types in charge when the bell goes off. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Poor comparison - we haven’t fought a mostly conventional war vs. a mostly uniformed, state-sponsored military in the 21st century. But still, seen plenty of comparative violence levied on our enemies. I get the frustration guys, but maybe throttle back on the emotion and apply more logic founded on knowledge of capabilities and the warfighters who employ them. I have plenty of real world experience to support the fact we absolutely do “push people’s shit in” when desired. Should we do that more often, yes, but to say we don’t ever do it or lack the capacity to do it now is false. And if you’ve never been a part of it, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.

I hear what you are saying but her "off the cuff jesting" typically has a basis in truth: “What? Like with a cloth or something?” she asked, then laughed. “I don’t know how it works digitally at all.” "We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business." When referencing Snapchat - "I love it. I love it. Those messages disappear all by themselves." White House’s hacking by Russian forces would not have happened "had they been using my server." "What difference, at this point, does it make?"

I have no love for Hillary Clinton, but listening to that quote in the actual interview with full context, it did not sound like she was actually suggesting it some sort of deprogramming regimen. She was expressing exasperation at a phenomenon that she does not understand, and does not know how to counter. That doesn't mean I believe in anything she's arguing, or even that I don't think they would use totalitarian means to get their way, but I'm also not doing to take what was clearly an off the cuff jesting remark as some sort of policy suggestion.

Breaking reports of dozens of American citizens being held hostage by Hamas. Reports also indicate Americans likely among the casualties. I am guessing some folks just called in from their long holiday weekend and things are going to get very interesting.

Updates over night and this morning match what we have discussed above, Israel is aiming to evacuate all Israeli civilians around Gaza over the next 24 hours. They are about to go full Leroy Jenkins on Gaza with the stated mission to "kill every terrorist and destroy all Hamas strongholds in the Wicked City." Hezbollah will almost certainly pitch into the fight. As the Israeli's are labeling this "our 9/11" it seems apparent they will go the extra mile this time. Mossad has to be reeling, what an epic intelligence blunder.

If their fans could read this, they’d probably be upset.

I hope they do. If this happened in the U.S. I’d expect nothing short of annihilation of the organization responsible.

I don’t doubt it. The images and video coming out of Southern Israel is as bad as it gets. If the words coming from Israeli leadership is matched by actions, a big part of Gaza is about to look like the surface of the moon. I could see Israel going for the complete destruction of Hamas as an organization. If Hezbollah jumps into the war the Israelis will have no reason to pull any punches. Remains to be seen if Hezbollah is willing to foot the bill. Additionally, I wouldn’t want to be an Iranian military member anywhere close to Israel right now.

Go read any news sites YouTube of this. It’s already filled with “Israeli occupiers” and other such apologetic tripe. I’m sure as soon as the Israelis start doing any effective damage the regulars in the UN apparatus will be up in arms and forget all about or apologetically ignore this brazen act of terrorism. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Texas sucks. That is all.

Israel would probably welcome that gladly. Much easier to kill these fucks when they’re out in the open.

I sort of agree, but would add couple things. First the phrase "wag the dog" implies the incident being responded to is false. Great movie by the way. In this case the incident is obviously true and Israel is surrounded on all sides by fanatics who want them dead. And I'm not a fan of what Netanyahu is doing regarding internal politics; but we are hardly in a position to judge after own politics jumped the shark these past few years. The Israel/Palestine conflict has always been messy with dirty hands on both sides. But supporting Israel is the only ethical option. interesting that this is a Hamas action not Hezbollah; I'm curious what kind of cross-pollination might exists between those two since I'd guess Iran pushing this more than Arab states. Anyone know if Hamas has previously aligned with Shia Iran for anti-Israel actions? Seems strange, but I am not a regional expert.

Bro....you have heard of nuclear weapons?

This is actually pretty scary rhetoric and an evil way of thinking. She’s talking about forcing people to change their views and opinions.

Story of my career!