Tag: perpetual war

Is the Signal ‘Scandal’ an Attempt to Cover up the Truth?

We’re two days into what the Democrats and their willing accomplices in the mainstream press are trying to turn into a “scandal” — the accidental inclusion of Atlantic Editor Jeffrey Goldberg in a chat about the Trump administration’s operations against the Houthis on the texting app Signal. The more we learn, the more we know that the whole affair is a massive nothingburger with everything on it and a big ol’ side of fake news fries.

Key members of the administration’s intelligence apparatus testified that the Signal messaging thread didn’t divulge any classified information. And for all the commendation of Goldberg for not spilling too many beans, we have a better idea that there weren’t many beans to spill.

It’s hard not to speculate on why the left is so desperate to blow this thing out of proportion and make it more than it should be. Obviously, the left wants nothing more than to slap the scarlet letter S for “scandal” on this administration because it has been so effective and popular with the American people. But a White House press release from Tuesday reveals the most plausible reason why the left wants to discredit the administration when it comes to action against the Houthis.

“Democrats and their media allies have seemingly forgotten that President Donald J. Trump and his National Security team successfully killed terrorists who have targeted U.S. troops and disrupted one of the most consequential shipping routes in the world,” the White House states (with emphasis in the original). “This is a coordinated effort to distract from the successful actions taken by President Trump and his administration to make America’s enemies pay and keep Americans safe.”

“The Biden Administration sat back as a band of pirates — with precision-guided, Iran-provided weaponry — exacted a toll system in one of the most important shipping lanes in the world,” the press release continues.

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Mainstream Media Criticizes Ceasefire Negotiations in Ukraine: Don’t Believe Them

The mainstream media continuously points out that while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has expressed readiness to accept the Trump administration’s proposed thirty-day ceasefire without preconditions, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said only that he supports the idea of a ceasefire while attaching preconditions that render it unworkable.

Neither claim is true. Zelensky has attached preconditions, and Putin’s preconditions are not a priori designed to render a ceasefire unworkable.

Zelensky has said, not that he has no preconditions, but that “We do not set conditions that complicate anything.” Though largely omitted from the mainstream narrative, Zelensky has agreed to negotiations with certain key preconditions. According to reporting by The Independent, Kiev stipulates that negotiations must guarantee the return of children abducted by Russia and of Ukrainian civilians illegally held by Russia. Two key red lines are that no territory beyond that already occupied by Russia be ceded and that adequate security guarantees be given. Those security guarantees, Zelensky has previously made clear, must be NATO membership or must be international forces that include the United States.

Though those two key red lines have escaped criticism, they are not categorically different from Putin’s key preconditions. Putin, too, has made territorial demands to address Ukraine’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements and to protect the rights and lives of ethnic Russians in Ukraine. And Putin, too, has made security demands to address NATO’s failure to implement its promise not to expand east, a broken promise that has made its way all the way to Ukraine and threatened Russia’s security. The Kremlin has recently called this its own “ironclad” security guarantee, and the Russian readout of the conversation between Trump and Putin refers to “the root causes of the crisis” and “Russia’s legitimate interests in the field of security.”

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Radical Dem’s INSANE Hot Take On Trump Officials’ Signal Group Chat…

Extremist Democrat Rashida Tlaib has drawn widespread condemnation for expressing outrage at the notion of the Trump administration conducting air strikes on Houthi terrorists.

Several national security officials including Vice President Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth were part of a conversation about the strikes on a Signal group chat that a staffer of Mike Waltz inadvertently included an Atlantic journalist in.

While some on the left are seizing on what isn’t really much of a story and inflating it into some sort of ‘national security leak,’ Tlaib instead offered up this insane take…

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Dear DOGE: Here’s How To Cut the Pentagon Budget by $100 Billion in 6 Easy Steps

America’s military budget is more than just numbers on a page – it’s a reflection of the priorities that shape our society. Right now, that nearly trillion dollar budget is bloated, inefficient, and far removed from the needs of everyday Americans. We’ve identified six simple yet effective ways to cut at least $100 billion from the Pentagon’s budget – without sacrificing even the most hawkish of war hawk’s sense of national security. Ready to take the scissors to that excess spending? Here’s how we can do it.

1. Halt the F-35 Program (Save $12B+ per year)

The F-35 is the poster child for military mismanagement. It’s a fighter jet that was supposed to revolutionize our military – except it’s plagued by cost overruns, delays, and underperformance. Despite a projected lifetime cost of over $2 trillion, this aircraft only meets mission requirements about 30% of the time. If we ended or paused the F-35 program now, we’d free up $12 billion annually. The military-industrial complex can afford a few less fancy jets that destroy land and lives, especially when they don’t even do their job right.

2. Reassess Long-Range Missile Defense (Save $9.3B+ per year)

For over half a century, we’ve sunk an eye-watering $400 billion into long-range missile defense systems that have never delivered. The cold, hard truth is these systems are ineffective against real-world threats. In fact, no missile defense technology has ever proven capable of neutralizing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) attack. Cutting back on these programs would save us $9.3 billion per year – money that could be better spent on diplomacy initiatives that actually work.

3. Cut the Sentinel ICBM Program (Save $3.7B+ per year)

ICBMs were once the crown jewels of our nuclear deterrence strategy, but they’re outdated in today’s geopolitical climate. With more reliable and flexible platforms like submarines, bombers, and emerging hypersonic technologies, maintaining an expensive, high-risk ICBM arsenal makes little sense. Ending the Sentinel ICBM program would save taxpayers $3.7 billion annually, and even more in the long run, with total savings over its lifespan estimated at $310 billion. It’s time to face facts: we don’t need to keep pouring money into a strategy that no longer aligns with modern defense needs. Especially when the best nuclear deterrence system is ending nuclear weapons programs to begin with.

4. Cease Procurement of Aircraft Carriers (Save $2.3B+ per year)

Aircraft carriers are relics of a bygone era, costing billions to build and maintain, while becoming increasingly vulnerable to modern missile technology. These floating cities are no longer the symbols of naval power they once were. By halting new aircraft carrier procurements, we can save $2.3 billion a year – money that could be better allocated to ways that actually keep us safe in the 21st century like housing, healthcare or climate justice.

5. Cut Redundant Contracts by 15% (Save $26B per year)

The Pentagon’s bureaucracy is a cash cow for contractors – more than 500,000 private sector workers are paid to do redundant and often wasteful work. Many contracts overlap or go toward projects that are, frankly, unnecessary. Cutting back just 15% on these contracts would save $26 billion annually. That’s a massive chunk of change that could be reallocated to more efficient and effective defense projects. Want a starting point? Look no further than SpaceX’s lucrative contracts – it’s time we hold these companies accountable.Maybe DOGE knows a guy there?

6. Prioritize Diplomacy (Save $50B+ per year)

The best way to avoid unnecessary military spending is to prevent conflicts from happening in the first place. By focusing on diplomatic solutions instead of military interventions, we can scale back expensive overseas bases, reduce troop deployments, and use reserves and National Guard units more effectively. This shift could save up to $50 billion a year – and possibly as much as $100 billion in the long term. It’s about time we put our resources into creating peaceful solutions rather than preparing for endless wars.

What Could We Do with the $100 Billion in Savings?

The possibilities are endless when we take a more practical approach to national security spending. What could we do with the $100 billion we save? Here’s a snapshot of just some of the incredible investments we could make in American society:

  • 787,255 Registered Nurses: Filling critical healthcare gaps nationwide.
  • 10.39 million Public Housing Units: Making affordable housing a reality for families across the country.
  • 2.29 million Jobs at $15/hour: Providing good jobs with benefits, boosting the economy.
  • 1.03 million Elementary School Teachers: Giving our children the education they deserve.
  • 579,999 Clean Energy Jobs: Building a sustainable, green future for the next generation.
  • 7.81 million Head Start Slots: Giving young children a foundation for lifelong success.
  • 5.88 million Military Veterans receiving VA medical care: Ensuring those who served our country receive the care they earned.

The Bottom Line?

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Signs U.S. Massing B-2 Spirit Bombers In Diego Garcia

A significant force of B-2 Spirit stealth bombers looks to be currently wending its way to the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. Satellite imagery shows at least three C-17 cargo planes and 10 aerial refueling tankers forward-deployed in the last 48 hours to the highly strategic British territory, which has been used as a staging point for U.S. strikes in the Middle East on multiple occasions in the past. The build-up comes amid a new surge in U.S. strikes targeting the Houthis and growing warnings to Iran from the Trump administration over support for the Yemeni militants and Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

The crews of two B-2 bombers, callsigns Pitch 11 and Pitch 14, could be heard communicating with air traffic controllers in Australia earlier today in publicly available audio. The crew of Pitch 11 confirms the presence of a third bomber, as well. The trio of bombers appears to have refueled in flight over Australia while heading westward.

A fourth B-2, callsign Pitch 13, landed at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii yesterday after declaring an emergency in flight. Video subsequently emerged showing that aircraft being met on the ground by a crash truck, but the nature of the emergency remains unknown.

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The Last Chapter of the Genocide

This is the last chapter of the genocide.

It is the final, blood-soaked push to drive the Palestinians from Gaza.

No food. No medicine. No shelter. No clean water. No electricity.

Israel is swiftly turning Gaza into a Dantesque cauldron of human misery where Palestinians are being killed in their hundreds and soon, again, in their thousands and tens of thousands, or they will be forced out never to return.

The final chapter marks the end of Israeli lies.

The lie of the two-state solution. The lie that Israel respects the laws of war that protect civilians. The lie that Israel bombs hospitals and schools only because they are used as staging areas by Hamas.

The lie that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, while Israel routinely forces captive Palestinians to enter potentially bobby trapped tunnels and buildings ahead of Israeli troops. 

The lie that Hamas or Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) are responsible — the charge often being errant Palestinian rockets — for the destruction of hospitals, United Nations’ buildings or mass Palestinian casualties.

The lie that humanitarian aid to Gaza is blocked because Hamas is hijacking the trucks or smuggling in weapons and war material. 

The lie that Israeli babies are beheaded or Palestinians carried out mass rape of Israeli women. The lie that 75 percent of the tens of thousands killed in Gaza were Hamas “terrorists.”

The lie that Hamas, because it was allegedly rearming and recruiting new fighters, is responsible for the breakdown of the ceasefire agreement.

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Vance Cautioned Against Bombing Yemen, Calling It A ‘Mistake’

Vice President JD Vance cautioned against bombing Yemen before the US restarted its airstrikes on the country, calling it a “mistake,” and suggested delaying the attack by one month, according to a leaked Signal conversation between administration officials.

Jeffrey Goldberg, a reporter for The Atlantic, was included in the Signal thread, apparently by accident, which is how he obtained the conversation. An account believed to be Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth shared details of the March 15 airstrikes on Yemen two hours before they happened, and the White House confirmed that the Signal conversation appeared to be authentic.

A day before the airstrikes, an account labeled “JD Vance” expressed misgivings about the idea of targeting the Houthis. “Team, I am out for the day doing an economic event in Michigan. But I think we are making a mistake,” the Vance account said.

Vance framed his opposition to the airstrikes based on President Trump’s policies toward Europe, which have involved pressuring the Europeans to pay more for their own militaries to be less reliant on the US. Vance pointed out that only a small percentage of US shipping goes through the Suez Canal compared to European trade.

The message said: “3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message.”

Vance continued, “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”

An account believed to be Joe Kent, President Trump’s nominee to lead the National Counterterrorism Center, replied to Vance, saying, “There is nothing time sensitive driving the time line. We’ll have the exact same options in a month.”

Hegseth responded to Vance by saying the messaging to the American people about the war would focus on President Biden failing to deter Yemeni attacks and the Houthis being “Iran funded.” Iran is aligned with the Houthis, but it’s unclear how much support they give to the group, and US officials have acknowledged the Houthis wouldn’t take orders from Tehran and have their own weapons supply.

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Chronicle of An Unnecessary War: How the West Provoked Russia and Squandered Peace

Scott Horton’s 900-page masterpiece, Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine, is a hugely important work that meticulously documents how three decades of Western encirclement provoked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This long review aims to provide a broad and comprehensive overview of the many crimes, miscalculations, and failures by all sides that led to an unnecessary war.

Scott Horton, founder and director of the Libertarian Institute, is best known for conducting over 6,000 in-depth interviews with experts on U.S. foreign policy. His impressive new book Provoked is a monumental indictment of Western foreign policy follies, tracing how NATO expansion and regime-change wars fueled Russia’s hostility. With thousands of citations, Horton’s research persuasively shows that Western actions—cloaked in rhetoric of democracy and humanitarianism—provoked Moscow’s response.

From NATO’s broken promises to the arming of extremists, Horton exposes a pattern of Western hypocrisy, painting Russia as an expansionist aggressor while sabotaging peace talks in Ukraine. The book is not a defense of Putin’s regime but a forensic audit of how Western overreach and ideological hubris transformed post-Cold War optimism into nuclear standoff. With the precision of a historian and the tenacity of an investigative journalist, Horton challenges the mainstream portrayal of Russia as the sole architect of global instability, arguing instead that U.S. and NATO policies exacerbated conflicts from Chechnya to the Donbas.

By weaving diplomatic cables, declassified documents, battlefield testimonies, and historical analysis into a gripping narrative that is as engrossing as it is unsettling, Horton encourages readers to challenge the myths that threaten to destroy us. Every pivotal claim is substantiated with quotes and data from unimpeachable sources, even establishment figures and outlets. Horton’s reliance on mainstream-respected voices, paired with granular archival research, grants the book a rare authority, transforming what might read as contrarian revisionism into an irrefutable counter-narrative. Horton’s sharp analysis and dark humor make Provoked compelling. This is not a polemic but a forensic use of the West’s own records to expose its missteps.

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‘Where Was the UN?’ Asks Freed Israeli Captive. Its Staff Were Busy Being Killed

Israel has found a captive recently released from Gaza willing to regurgitate some of its most nonsensical talking points on the stage of the United Nations. Predictably, those talking points are already being exploited to justify Israel intensifying its slaughter of Palestinian children in Gaza – and further bully the United Nations into even greater timidity.

Eli Sharabi has every reason to feel aggrieved. After all, he not only spent 490 days in captivity in terrifying conditions before his release last month, but emerged to find his family had been killed during Hamas’ break-out from Gaza on 7 October 2023.

Nonetheless, sympathy for his plight should not obscure the bigger picture: he has allowed himself to be recruited to the Israeli government’s propaganda campaign for genocide.

He has echoed Israeli politicians in claiming that Palestinians in Gaza – all 2.3 million of them, apparently – are “involved” in the mistreatment of the Israeli captives. In other words, he has given succour to the Israeli government’s efforts to justify the extermination of Gaza’s entire population, half of whom are children.

He has also claimed that Hamas stole aid that entered Gaza to eat “like kings”, while he and the captives starved. In other words, he is bolstering the argument of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel is justified in blocking food and water to Gaza – a crime against humanity for which Netanyahu is being sought by the International Criminal Court.

But perhaps most ludicrously of all, Sharabi asks of the two largest bodies involved in humanitarian operations on behalf of the destitute, decimated people of Gaza: “Where was the Red Cross when we [the Israeli captives] needed them? Where was the UN?”

Sharabi, more than anyone, ought to know the answer to his own question.

Local staff of the UN and Red Cross – or Red Crescent as it is known in Gaza – have spent the past year and a half living under constant and ferocious air strikes, like everyone else in the enclave. Large numbers have been killed and maimed by the US-supplied bombs Israel has been dropping continuously.

They have certainly not been idle, as Sharabi suggests. When they have not been killed themselves, they have been dealing with the many tens of thousands of dead and the hundreds of thousands of wounded.

And all the while, they have been desperately struggling to help feed a population that Israel has spent the past 18 months actively starving through its strict blockade of food and water into the tiny territory.

The job of the UN and Red Cross has been to save life. That is what they have been doing. Their job is not to go on a wild goose chase, trying to find Israeli captives that Israel itself, with all its technological know-how and military might, has been unable to locate.

Where was the UN?

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