As tensions between Iran and the United States increase in the Middle East, the Pentagon briefing room is being used to host Gene Simmons of Kiss. pic.twitter.com/NauZ0bfkgm
— Idrees Ali (@idreesali114) May 16, 2019
No, really. (It was a ‘surprise appearance’ to ‘thank American troops for their service’.
Meanwhile, perpetual war cheerleader Tom Cotton is doing his best General Turgidson imitation:
Senator @TomCottonAR tells Firing Line if it comes to war with Iran, he is confident the United States would win, and would win swiftly. “Two strikes, the first strike and the last strike,” says the Senator. pic.twitter.com/twTdrFTwHu
— Firing Line with Margaret Hoover (@FiringLineShow) May 14, 2019
I can't believe after 18 years of non-stop fighting, there are still grown men who are horny for war.
— Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) May 14, 2019
Because it's mostly the same grown men who leveraged launching the Iraq War into MASSIVELY lucrative corporate board seats and media careers. https://t.co/6p3RLF0NLf
— Zeddediah Springfield (@Zeddary) May 14, 2019
… because nothing props up a Republican “president”‘s sagging self-esteem poll numbers like a nice photogenic foreign war, amirite?!?
The main firewall against John Bolton and his acolytes right now seems to be that Trump thinks (a)being in charge of a war is too much work; and (b) it would give entirely too much media attention to people who are not Donald Trump. Slender reed.
Needs saying. This morning I heard Andrea Mitchell basically say how wary the press is about repeating their Iraq mistakes and then go into a segment where much of the Trump administration Iran charges were taken at pretty much face value. https://t.co/8q3OXHrypl
— Schooley (@Rschooley) May 15, 2019
2. will our elected officials allow him to send our military men and women into harm’s way in his continued effort to retain his presidency? If so, make no mistake about it, this will be our politicians allowing Trump to attempt “distraction by death” of American soldiers…
— Glenn Kirschner (@glennkirschner2) May 15, 2019
4. with any remaining shred of patriotism or decency or concern for the well being of our men & women in uniform, do not allow this president to commit what would be the ultimate sin. If you are unwilling to protect our troops, then resign. Full stop.
— Glenn Kirschner (@glennkirschner2) May 15, 2019
TenguPhule
We are so fucked.
Cacti
War with Iran will be the end of the American empire.
NotMax
Halliburton profits need a shot in the arm? //
Mike in NC
Gene Simmons was one of the celebrity has-beens who debased themselves by appearing on Trump’s shitty reality TV program. Might have been offered the SecDef job at one time.
JPL
Laura Ingraham said it was a bad idea, and since then trump has backed away from the idea. He wants to negotiate but Iran is simply ignoring him. Who would have thought that fox news would possibly be able to prevent a war.
Damien
Dear Glen,
There are no good Republicans left, politicians or voters. The longer we pretend there are the more fucked we become.
Take a second to absorb that, then join the fucking fight to lift up the soul of this nation and begin to long process of cleansing these mistakes in a renewed march toward redemption.
Sincerely,
A FUCKING CLUE
Shalimar
It seems to me like Kirschner is wrong about the motivations. If Trump really thought war would delay his inevitable legal reckoning, he would be all-in. This seems to be more a Bolton/Pompeo/Cotton/Graham power play.
Mnemosyne
Of course Iran isn’t talking to us — they don’t need us. If we start a ginned-up war, we will have ZERO support from our allies, most of whom now have renewed at least some economic ties to Iran.
Iran is almost 4 times larger than Iraq and has twice the population, with a median age of 30. We couldn’t manage to conquer Iraq but we can TOTALLY win in Iran?
Also, Iran has about 9 times the population of Israel so, yeah, good luck with that, Bibi.
jl
@JPL: I guess watching opinion babble on Fox News will be best indicator of whether the Trumpsters will blunder, intentionally or unintentionally, into a disastrous and murderous war crime.
I think the Trumpsters are looking for a great patriotic war scare to juice their chances for the 2020 election, but haven’t found anything all that promising yet.
Our depraved and mindless corporate media won’t be able to resist cheering blowing up stuff and killing people not considered to be white by the US bigot base.
But I notice on news that our allies are fairly aggressive in spreading word that the Trumpster pretexts for war are bogus. And it seems to be that conflict with Iran means almost automatic closing off Persian Gulf tanker traffic, sky rocketing oil prices, and recession, in addition to a lot of death. So, marketing that blunder and crime has some huge problems.
Their goofy idea to get some military action in Venezuela seems to have fizzled for now. So, if they can’t even get that off the ground, not sure they have the appetite for blunders and war crimes an order of magnitude larger.
We’ll have to hope that Trump’s marketing sense, or flunkies worried about losing their money, will keep disaster at bay.
misterpuff
@TenguPhule: Cottton: ” The Greeks did it with 300. We can do it with 3000….nukes.”
Drumpf: “What good is having them if you can’t use ’em?”
Sab
@Mnemosyne: Isn’t there somewhere a small island with a school with American students that needs to be invaded? Carribean won’t work anymore because hurricanes.
Duane
@JPL: All the horror and tragedy of war is acceptable to Trumpov, but Ingram’s disapproval is too much. These warmongers shouldn’t be in charge of an ice cream truck.
TenguPhule
ETA: NM.
TenguPhule
@Sab:
Puerto Rico?
Waynski
“I’m not saying we won’t get our hair mussed.”
Anne we cannot have language like that in the war room.
Mike in NC
Rep. Liz Cheney wants to get tougher with Iran. An apple that didn’t fall far from the rotten tree that gave it life.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: Also, unlike Iraq, Iran is a ‘real’ country, with pride, a strong sense of self, and a well-run military.
Amir Khalid
@Mike in NC:
Gene Simmons, aside from playing bass in a legendarily shitty (if commercially successful) band, is also a very pro-Israel Jewish right-wing nutjob.
bobbo
Gotta say, Margaret Hoover has a bit of a hard-on for war her own self.
Sab
@TenguPhule: It’s already ours, which is why we don’t have to help them.
jl
@TenguPhule:
” Puerto Rico? ‘
Probably thought about it. How about an executive declaration of an emergency: anti-Trump insurrection in the blue states?
Invade Canada? Everyone knows they’re weaklings, saying ‘surry’ all the time.
Bill Arnold
A classic for times like these:
The War Prayer
(Mark Twain, 1905, published posthumously 1916)
NotMax
In tonight’s production, the role of Ahmed Chalabi will be portrayed by a high ranking member of MEK.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Slender, this is a man up at 3:00am tweeting to be the center of the days media cycle. There is nothing more important in Trump’s mind than himself!
I think we saw how this war would be fought with the Mother’s Day Tanker attacks. Trump tweets and briefings proclaiming great victories, confused Iranian officials tell the press nothing has happened. We are in the age of Fake News Warfare.
NotMax
@NotMax
Gotta remember that John Bolton promised MEK in person – promised! – that they would be celebrating in Tehran by 2019, and time’s a-wasting. //
jl
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Trump and his flunkies won’t be able to do anything about the sky rocketing oil prices, and probably someone has explained the consequent problems marketing the war crime. Trump can understand that. Probably the one argument that works with Trump is that a stupid criminal stunt won’t be popular, won’t be able to ‘sell it’ to the rubes.
ruemara
@Mike in NC: He actually talked about his grandparents being interned and rescued by Americans so, cut him some slack.
@misterpuff: Hillary the Hawk; Donald the Dove.
Since this is open, I have booked my LA gig and will be in town bright and early Saturday morn! And hustling out of town bright and early monday.
mrmoshpotato
@Mnemosyne:
I see morons smashing French’s mustard and champagne again in our future.
Fucking morons.
MomSense
I think Schactman needs to brush up on our history. We’ve been in conflict and/or war pretty much non stop since WWII. And when we are not, there is a cohort of mostly GOP who are angling and advocating for more.
trollhattan
@Mike in NC:
And to think, with one of Wyoming’s senators retiring we’ll soon enough be writing Senator Cheney, fuck me very much.
“‘New York Times’ Rehires Judith Miller To Cover Escalating Iran Tensions ”
Just The Onion, for now.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@ruemara: If you’re still interested in a meetup while here, let us know. I’m free all weekend except Sunday evening, I’ve got a shoot in Venice.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan:
A picture just for this sentiment.
Tim C
@jl: This feels right. And I suspect the only thing saving us is Trump’s low cunning on the matter says this won’t be popular. Best Case: Bolton walks in a huff and this whole thing dies down.
Bill Arnold
@Mnemosyne:
We’ll have moral (//s) support from the Saudis – “Onward, Christian Soldiers!”, and from the Israeli government “We convinced the US president [to exit the deal] and I had to stand up against the whole world and come out against this agreement,”
Not thinking of anyone else; perhaps a failure of imagination.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@jl: Of course, a real war is to messy. so a Trump war will be all done in the cheap with press briefings and stock film from the Gulf Wars. When the Iranians point out they no signs of any military action in their country Trump will just scream “liars!” and then there will be a three month debate on whether the was an Iran War or not, Trump War will poll at 37% the greatest victory ever in American history, even though there is no evidence for a single shot fired.
ruemara
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yes, I am. I haven’t seen y’all in a bunch.
mrmoshpotato
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Oh goody! We can use old Bill Hicks and George Carlin clips to commentate!
FTS
terben
Will we see an American fleet sitting on the bottom of the Persian Gulf?
Just One More Canuck
@Sab: There’s always that island in the Indian Ocean where the natives killed the asshole evangelist
Steve in the ATL
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
the Mother’s Day Tanker “attacks“
NotMax
FYI, from the tail end of a story.
Even without knowing the terms of the publishing contracts, can any authors hereabout give a ballpark figure guesstimate as to how many copies $200 in royalties might represent? (I would also expect the bulk of sales of those volumes comes from remainder tables.)
SFAW
Something a bit more somber: noted MIT alum Ieoh Ming Pei has died at the age of 102.
Mart
@TenguPhule: Invade Puerto Rico – that would be perfect. US soldiers with 35,000 active duty islanders invading an island with 330,000 US vets, attacking 3.5 million defenseless (except for their paper towel armory) US citizens. What could be more Trumpian than that? And the two strikes to victory theory could pan out in this scenario.
SFAW
@Steve in the ATL:
Film (from Dustin Hoffman) at 11
Wayne Marks
Trump 101 was probably a textbook at his sham University.
SFAW
@Mart:
One would hope that the Chair of the Joint Chiefs would have the good sense to call it an “invasion,” but actually send the Army Corps of Engineers to fix whatever’s left to be fixed.
Brachiator
I will settle for this, that Trump’s cowardice, ego and vanity keeps us out of war.
Jay
One of the problems is, that The Ususal Suspects* have built up a great big pile of tinder dry brush in a Climate Change forest, all with different motives.
That brush pile is there, even if Needy Amin is backing off from setting it on fire.
There’s a bunch of people who would like to see it burn and have matches.
Some of the Ususal Suspects want to change the ballance of power in the Middle East, and the country in charge of maintaining that ballance since the British Empire quit, has been the US, even though the US has been shit at it since the 1990’s and 50/50 since the 1970’s.
Both Russia and China would also like to see this change.
*(Needy Amin, all the ReThugs, much of the US MSM, Prince Mohammed Bone Saw, Bibi, the UAE, a bunch of the Talibangelist Petty Arab Kingdoms).
I don’t see anybody* out there with the brains to remove the brush pile they have built.
PJ
@Mnemosyne: That’s why Bibi gets the Americans to fight his wars.
Jay
@Just One More Canuck:
It’s Indian and they won’t take kindly to that as it’s in the middle one of their most strategically important and militarized Island chains.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@NotMax: I guess a buck a book. But I think I read that half the Art of the Deal royalties go to Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer.
Mart
@NotMax: The author of “Art of the Deal” is on MSNBC and CNN about 25 times a week to complain about what a bum Trump is, and how his book created the fake image of Trump being a successful businessman. Expect he is complaining about Trump all the way to the bank.
Jay
@Brachiator:
Needy Amin’s “strategy” was to push Iran to the brink of war, in the belief they would cave to everything on US terms.
Iran has told the US to fuck off,
Qatar has told the US to fuck off,
Spain has told the US to fuck off,
Iraq has told the US to fuck off,
Russia has told the US to fuck off,
The EU has told the US to fuck off,
Switzerland has told the US to fuck off,
China has told the US to fuck off,
The British Commander of Allied Forces in Iraq has told the US to fuck off,
Canada has told the US to fuck off, please,
Iran has no interest or need to call Needy Amin,
So, how does this end?
debbie
@Jay:
This is turning into one awesome coalition. //
So help me, if Bolton’s socks turn out to be as holey as Wolfowitz’s…
But her emails!!!
@Jay:
The US either fucks off or fuck up?
jl
@Jay: Israel and Saudi Arabia are big investors in Trump and his administration, as well as Russia and some others who told us to F off.
So, we have to hope Trump doesn’t like the odds on marketing it successfully.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Via Kos
debbie
@Jay:
ETA: That Canadian “please” is a nice touch.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jay:
You folk up in our attic are so damn polite.
Sloane Ranger
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Rats. This was what I was going to say!
Aleta
@Dorothy A. Winsor: more on that at NBC news:
Jay
@But her emails!!!:
@jl:
There’s that tinder dry brush pile that still needs to be cleared away.
The Mother’s Day Tanker Attacks was somebody, ( hint, hint, UAE) trying to light a match with others piling on.
oatler.
@Steve in the ATL: Who are you callin’ a Mother’s Day Tanker?!?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Mnemosyne:
We can if we use nuclear weapons. America uber alles! All hail God-Emperor Trump! It’s morning in America and the rest of the world will cower before us!
/s
debbie
@Aleta:
“and Congress” is nice to see.
philpm
I suggest for the two strikes that Cotton is sure will win a war with Iran, he first be dropped on Iran, followed by Trump.
Jay
@jl:
Israel, the UAE and Sawdi Arabia would be fine with Needy Amin setting the Iranian side’s of the Persian Gulf on fire. They think they can come out of it unscathed and more regionally powerfull.
Russia and China would love for the US to be that boneheaded as it would probably drive the US from most of the Middle East and North Africa. Plus the arms sales.
Qatar that bought Jarvanka hasn’t seen a return on the investment at all.
Aleta
@debbie: stands out all right
Aleta
(Video at link. The NYT piece came out today, disgraceful headline. Poison reporter.)
Sab
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Will Putin be happy with nukes detonated that close? I doubt it.
Jay
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
https://www.juancole.com/2019/05/differences-between-proposed.html
And then there was Adam’s link on his Human Landscape Analysis.
Got the snark, but that’s how a bunch of them think, so even with a s/, it aint snark.
Jay
https://www.juancole.com/2019/05/184071.html
“9 Easy Propaganda steps to War with Iran
JUAN COLE
05/16/2019”
MomSense
@oatler.:
Hey, I resemble that remark!
Fair Economist
@JPL:
Evidently the puppetmasters haven’t quite yet fallen down the rabbit hole of epistemic closure and remember what a catastrophe Iraq was for Bush’s popularity.
patrick II
But if Russia attacks our elections, Tom’s ok with that.
mad citizen
Oh no, never a fan, but final Big Bang episode is on in our house, and it just took a weird turn telling Sheldon he’s a jerk. Does this happen a lot?
A couple years ago I rode in a hotel elevator with Gene Simmons. Exchanged “hi’s” like anyone else, but I didn’t recognize him, other than thinking, this dude in black with black and silver boots looks familiar, like a rock star. Later found out he was in town doing a solo concert, and was hanging in the hotel bar the night before. Didn’t know at the time he was a RWNJ, but kinda remember Indycar contracted him to do a horrible song to promote Indycar racing.
Sheldon making amends now.
Ruckus
These are men who make other people do their fighting and dying. These are men who are afraid of walking down the street, less they might see someone with more color than casper the ghost. These are the men that are afraid of women. But assault them because they lack any kind of good character. These are the men who think the world owes them everything for their lack of brilliance – lack of character – lack of humanity – lack of honesty – thievery…..
Brachiator
@Jay:
Trump never had a strategy. He thinks that acting tough and some stray shit that his ghost writer put in The Art of the Deal works with foreign policy.
What happens next? Unclear. Iran used to get weapons from the US, and for a while Russia respected sanctions.
Iran is not soft. But no one can pretend that defiance will not come without terrible suffering if Trump continues to act stupid.
Ruckus
@ruemara:
I’m in!
Chyron HR
It’s fine, I’m certain the self-proclaimed “left” will have no trouble convincing themselves that Iran was also a 100% Corporatist Neoliberal Democrat Shitlib War, just like Iraq.
Jinchi
@Damien:
Tell that to President Biden.
Jay
@Brachiator:
Russian Sanctions, and European ones went away with the JPCOA, along with China’s. That was the deal. The US never pulled Sanctions.
Iran had technology transfers with Russia, North Korea and China, and also buys weapons from the same. Now they can also get parts for some of their older systems from Europe, and have.
In a US/Iran war, yes, Iran will suffer, but not like the Iran-Iraq War, so will the rest of the Persian Gulf, as will the Global Economy, along with US Forces everywhere in the Middle East/Afghanistan except Turkey and maybe Israel. Outside of Saudi Arabia and Kurdistan, almost everywhere in the Persian Gulf, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq are Shia Majorities, mostly pissed off at their rulers and the USA.
And of course, and attack on Iran means the Hazara in Afghanistan would now be US enemies, not allies. They are 1/3rd of Afghanistan.
Jay
“Facebook bans Israeli company it says aims to disrupt elections
Social Sharing
Purge includes 65 Israeli accounts, 161 pages, dozens of groups and 4 Instagram accounts”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/facebook-elections-1.5138796
They ran the operations from 2012 until now.
7 years in violation of Faceberg’s so called rules, at least 14 elections in 7 countries.
Michael J Allen
@bobbo: She is just a totally strange person. With her perfect chiseled blonde Nordic features and perfect color not seen in nature chiseled blonde hair and her hard edged chiseled nasal buzz saw voice…. how TF did she get this job? I guess PBS is desperate to not be called liberal even though their reporting on for example the nightly news is totally boring both siderism, but why this?
Jay
@Michael J Allen:
Poster ReThug “moderate centerist” BS.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hoover
PBS hasn’t been “left, liberal or centerist”for well over a decade.
BobT
@Waynski: The full quote (and perhaps a bit prescient, unfortunately) is “