Birb_at_Arms

The main thing that might have prevented Saddam Hussein from starting a third regional war is the state of his army after the second one. Fair enough, he was still able to do some massacres, but I feel like the Iraqi military post-desert storm would have struggled against any neighboring country.

You'd almost respect the hustle in how the Israelis blatantly cash in on that belief, if only it didn't cause such suffering in others.

I mean, yeah, but this is a terrible one. Like, worse than Hegseth getting up and ranting about how bombing Iran made his dick hard or whatever it was

Frankly, given its transactional approach to alliances, the Trump administration ought to have an easy time saying "if you do that, you're on your own." I guess they can only bring themselves to hang allies out to dry when those allies are acting in good faith, though.

This is the Trump administration. They talk about hanging US allies out to dry all the time, but then the one time a US ally comes up to them and says "hey, we're going to do something really stupid so you better save us from ourselves" the Americans are like "yes sir, anything for you!"

That's such a wild, pathetic, terrible excuse that it makes me wonder if Rubio has developed a public humiliation kink while working for Trump.

It's genuinely a worse justification than whatever the fuck Hegseth was doing.

I feel like you don't even need to get into good guys and bad guys to understand that it's usually better for everyone if e.g. the enemy is willing to surrender to you, and that e.g. killing POWs usually has the opposite effect.

The Bluesky illiteracy crisis continues.

I fully believe that if he really puts his mind to it, Donald Trump can end the regime of Cuban President Fidel Castro

I think I'd be pleasantly surprised by an Israeli government that voluntarily agreed to withdraw to the 2024 line of contact in Syria, at this point.

Everyone makes slips of the tongue and most of the time it doesn't mean anything, but sometimes you hear a slip of the tongue that just can't be a coincidence.

To some extent, yes, but my partner and I have been to Italy together and I did not find that she looked Italian

My partner (who is half Indian on her father's side) once took a university class on immigration and visible minority status. The professor made an observation about none of the students being visible minorities, then told her "you don't count, you look Italian"

You don't seem to be able to read, because my contention is that the media should attribute responsibility when it has evidence of who was responsible. I also said they will probably have that evidence in a day or two.

I see you're quite open to making up stories if they feel right or truthy to you, so maybe journalism isn't for you.

Well, it probably wasn't a joint attack but a strike by one of the two countries. It's not yet clear how closely the US is coordinating operations with local allies, but given the unusually large number of friendly fire incidents over the last day or so, I would think not that closely.

One assumes it will become possible to know whether the US or Israel bombed the school within a few days.

Until then, maybe take your pills or go to therapy if it bothers you this much.

Yes they do, because Iran claimed responsibility and the NYT has reporters in Israel to check.

There are no Western reporters in Iran AFAIK, Iran could not identify which country struck the school, and both the US and Israel deny responsibility. One of them obviously did it but it matters which one

Iran claimed responsibility for the strike in Israel, and NYT has reporters in Israel to verify the claims. It's harder for western journalists to operate in Iran, which delays verification. Also, Iran was not able to say whether the US or Israel struck the school, and both deny responsibility.

So what? They're separate countries and you need to know which one did it to write it in the newspaper

It's generally more responsible to positively identify the specific country that launched the strike before identifying them in a newspaper.

This is true, but I think it's important to understand that Iran is going to suffer a lot more at the tactical level even if it is too big and target-rich for the US and Israel to suppress its long-range fires completely.

Iran is unlikely to collapse but very likely to be weakened.

Re-upping Clarkson here not just because it's a very good point (even stupid, pointless wars can be fought well in a tactical sense, and the US military is well equipped to do so) but also because keeping this in mind is extremely important for any Canadian defence against an American threat.

Iran said either the US or Israel. Israel denied any knowledge and CENTCOM said they would "look into it"

AFAIK it's not clear whether the US or Israel carried out the strike either.

They forgot to describe this as a "policing action" where US forces were in Iran to simply "serve a warrant" like they said about Venezuela. Rookie mistake, really.

I wonder how that conversation went

Yes, and there wasn't much left after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 anyway. Russia did manage to capture a few Ukrainian warships before they could be permanently scuttled and sink a few before they could be evacuated, though.

Russia sunk the entire Ukrainian Navy in February 2022, and of course that immediately caused Ukraine to cease all resistance and do whatever the Russians wanted.

*someone whispers to me*

Oh, OK, but it definitely prevented Ukraine from threatening Russian warships, right?

In fairness, it's very easy to get taken by surprise when journalists hit you with really out there, penetrating (not like that) questions such as "do you have a plan to accomplish your stated goals?"