Chamblee54

On August 1, 1914, war was breaking out in Europe. The British foreign secretary said to a friend, “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time”. That is what yesterday morning felt like, waking up to the news that the war had started.
It is an old truism that in war, the first casualty is the truth. Propaganda has long been a major player in the West Asian conflicts. X is full of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Below is a very small sample of the news and opinions available. It should be noted that these opinions belong to the tweeters. I am personally taking in as much as I can stand, and trying to make sense of it all.
@dccommonsense “In general the problem the U.S. has in its Middle Eastern interventions is always underestimating the complexity and powder keg-like conditions in these countries. Instead of empowering a side we favor we usually open up a Pandora’s Box of violent Murphy’s Law outcomes instead.” … Dan Carlin has been relatively quiet since October 7. The other prominent history podcaster, Darryl Cooper, has been outspoken about the various wars, and has caught hell for it.
@RaniaKhalek “Trump unleashed Hell. Bombs are falling on the entire Middle East. The Strait of Hormuz is almost closed. All sides are digging in. It’s all about who cries mercy first. The U.S. and Israel murdered the restrained Iranian leadership that was invested in endless negotiation. What comes next will probably understandably be more hawkish bc strategic patience doesn’t work. · Even before these decapitations they decided to go all out. This is for survival so escalation against a rogue empire is the only option. They’re even hitting Oman, the one gulf country to condemn the U.S.-Israel attack while playing a constructive and mediating role. · There’s no going back now, the strategy is to regionalize the conflict in hopes the GCC demands an end. It’s a huge gamble but the Iranians were cornered into it by the U.S. and Israel. And if this draws out global shipping and oil markets will be impacted. Meanwhile, Team Trump is dumb and insane. They don’t understand Iran, they suck at geopolitical maneuvering and think they can do regime change with overwhelming air power alone. · This was all unnecessary but here we are, tens of millions of people afraid and unable to leave their homes. The end game is unclear. There are no good options. This is what people warned about. More reckless idiocy from the nuclear armed pedophilic class in Washington.”
@_ZachFoster “”You do not need to close the strait. You just need to make it uninsurable.” This is called Iranian “economic statecraft,” as U.S. Secretary of state Scott Bessent would say.”
@DanMKervick I don’t think the absence of protest in the US is due to Americans being pacified. I suspect it’s actually because they have an increasingly accurate undertanding of the way the world works and know that protests have rarely proven to be an effective form of resistance. /1 The right to petition the government or demonstrate one’s opinion doesn’t mean much if the government doesn’t care what most people think. It’s just a way of expressing the desire for resistance without actually resisting. //2 @DrBrianReid Give Xanax credit too.
Armchair Warlord @ArmchairW Well. War with Iran it is. I had hoped it would not come to this juncture, but here we are. Some thoughts after the day’s fighting. · 1. As an initial matter, the Trump Administration’s actions here are aggression and perfidy. This attack on Iran was unprovoked and occurred during negotiations in which the Iranians were by all indications willing to make significant and lasting concessions to assuage American and Israeli concerns about the peaceful nature of their nuclear program. Soon enough we will regret setting this precedent. · 2. US and Israeli forces appear to have achieved tactical surprise by launching a limited decapitation strike first against senior figures in the Iranian regime. The measure of performance of the strike – did they hit what and whom they intended to hit – is currently the subject of… significant debate. The measure of effectiveness of the strike – did it dislocate the Iranian defensive response or cause panic and infighting in the regime – was negative. The Iranian military deliberately cleared what was at the time an airspace crowded with civilian traffic, brought air defenses online, and began launching retaliatory strikes about an hour later. · 2A. The Iranians only brought their air defenses online after their airspace was clear of civilian traffic, suggesting they felt confident in their ability to absorb a limited first strike and also indicating that they very much wanted to avoid repeating Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 with wild defensive fire. · 3. Iran has thus far had some success penetrating US and Israeli missile defenses on the far side of the Middle East and considerable success smashing up US bases (and local critical infrastructure) in the Gulf and Iraq with their plentiful arsenal of short-range missiles and cruise drones. There’s nothing really new and game-changing here from the Twelve Day War, as I pointed out earlier. They have a lot of missiles and drones and seem more than happy to contest with us on throw-weight. · 4. As I pointed out earlier, the considerable standoff that US and Israeli aircraft are operating from has wrecked sortie generation. Coalition strikes on Iran throughout the day have been remarkably modest following the initial wave of attacks, likely due to a combination of delay from forced refueling, disruption to remote bases due to Iranian missile attacks, forced use of standoff weapons due to Iranian AD coverage, and Iranian AD attriting incoming salvos. Effects have not been particularly impressive either – I’ve seen a grand total of two strikes with noticeable secondaries. · 4A. As long as the Iranian IADS network remains intact enough to deter Coalition forces from flying “downtown” into Iranian airspace proper, there’s very hard limits on the amount of coercive power that can actually be applied to Iran. We only have so many standoff missiles and don’t have a Russo-Chinese missile printer to call upon. And I remind the reader that our bigger and stronger adversaries (Russia and China) are very invested in ensuring that IADS network remains intact so as to preserve their ally. · 5. There has been no noticeable regime fracture or civil insurrection in Iran. Everyone in the regime seems to have fallen in line immediately and all the demonstrations in Iran through the day have been pro-government. This is to be expected – the Iranians have not only rehearsed this, they’ve had multiple repetitions of executing it over the past year. · 6. Mossad’s attack network in Iran seems to be well and truly dismembered – as I suggested it had been earlier. There have been no reports of commando or insurgent activity in Iran over the course of the day. The Iranian internet is shut down at the moment and nobody seems to be posting online via Starlink. · 7. Oil shock is a real prospect here. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. The Bab al-Mandeb is likely going to be interdicted soon by the Houthis. Iran has already begun limited strikes on oil and gas infrastructure in the region. Air and missile campaigns are inherently indecisive, and Americans are not going to tolerate a weeks or monthslong campaign that spikes oil to $150+/barrel. · 8. Claims are floating around – out of Israel, of course – that this entire affair was a scheme cooked up by Trump and Netanyahu and that the negotiations were always a sham. I suspect that isn’t the case, and that Trump was herded into action by Netanyahu threatening to attack unilaterally after the US “coercive task force” was finally fully assembled in the Gulf. · So how does this end? Well, Trump has been quite explicit that he’s aiming for a short war (probably trying to beat the markets), so I wouldn’t be surprised if this is over relatively quickly. On whose terms… well, that’s another matter altogether.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Jack Delano took the social media picture in October 1940. “The foremen and tractor operators of the Woodman Potato Company at lunch. Near Caribou, Maine” ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah

This content was published February 26, 2008. … This item was in kikoshouse today: “Barack Obama wants to ban the use of cluster bombs while Hillary Clinton and John McCain don’t. What makes the use of these submunitions, which are miniature bombs nested inside a mother bomb, so insidious is that they drop beneath tissue parachutes and are magnets for unsuspecting Iraqi children. Some 82 countries have signed the Wellington Declaration to ban cluster bombs, but don’t expect the U.S. to join them anytime soon.”
Cluster bombs are air-dropped or ground-launched munitions that eject a number of smaller submunitions (“bomblets”).When they are dropped on enemy territory, many of the bomblets fail to explode, and form a land mine like hazard. They are often dropped with tissue like parachutes.
They have been called “Lethal Pinatas.” They are often a bright yellow. This is similar to food packages, and can confuse someone who does not speak english.
They remain on the ground, waiting to explode, when civilian populations return home after the war. According to Handicap International: “Ninety-eight percent of cluster submunitions casualties are civilians killed and injured while returning home in the aftermath of conflict or while going about their daily tasks to survive.”
ADDENDUM – A 2008 article takes a familiar rhetorical turn. “But isn’t the campaign against cluster bombs just a cover for those opposed to Israel? While we’re at it, why does Israel always get singled out for using them against Lebanon? … Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, a minister in Angela Merkel’s German government, was one who felt the sting of being labeled an anti-Semite. After referring to the cluster bomb as “a sort of lethal piñata,” she asked the United Nations to investigate its use by Israel in civilian areas of Lebanon.”
“On June 7, 2023, the US Department of Defense announced that President Joe Biden had signed a “determination” that the transfer of cluster munitions to Ukraine was necessary for the national security interests of the United States. He authorized the transfer of an unspecified number of cluster munitions that have a greater than 1% unexploded ordnance rate to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”
“The Ukrainian conflict has recorded the highest confirmed death and injury toll from cluster munitions for the third year running, UN-backed researchers said on Monday. According to the latest Cluster Munitions Monitor, more than 1,200 people are known to have been killed or maimed in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. The true figure is likely much higher, but it could be years before an accurate number is known, said Loren Persi, team lead for the Cluster Munition Monitor report.” … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Jack Delano took the social media picture in November 1940. “ Having a beer in “Art’s Sportsman’s Tavern” on a rainy day in Colchester, Connecticut” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah

This content was published February 6, 2012. … BHO set a new standard for public statements from the oval office. He was talking about economic recovery. “So I want to send a clear message to Congress: Do not slow down the recovery that we’re on. . Keep it moving in the right direction.” Thank you Democracy Now for that transcript, and for the rest of the quotes in this story.
Kansas/Kenya lips were moving on another subject recently. During a “virtual interview” with youtubers last week, BHO was talking about drone strikes in Pakistan. “I want to make sure that people understand, actually, drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties. For the most part, they have been very precise precision strikes against al-Qaeda and their affiliates. ” A report from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism paints a different picture .
“We’ve been looking at this since August of last year. When we were putting together our massive database on CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, we noted that there were repeated reports at the time, contemporaneous reports in publications like New York Times, news agencies like Reuters, by CNN, that there were these strikes on rescuers, that there were reports that there had been an initial strike and then, some minutes later, as people had come forward to help and pull out the dead and injured, that drones had returned to the scene and had attacked rescuers. Now, we didn’t take that at face value when we began a major investigation, that’s been ongoing for many months now, that we just published in conjunction with the London Sunday Times, where we looked at those 18 original reports, and we’ve been able to confirm, through our researchers on the ground in Waziristan, that a dozen of those attacks on rescuers, and also two attacks on funerals, have taken place in Waziristan. And we’ve been able to name just over 50 civilians that we understand have been killed in those attacks. In total, we think that more than 75 civilians have been killed, specifically in these attacks on rescuers and on mourners, on funeral-goers.”
The US government had a witty response. “A senior American counterterrorism official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, questioned the report’s findings, saying ‘targeting decisions are the product of intensive intelligence collection and observation.’ The official added: ‘One must wonder why an effort that has so carefully gone after terrorists who plot to kill civilians has been subjected to so much misinformation. Let’s be under no illusions—there are a number of elements who would like nothing more than to malign these efforts and help Al Qaeda succeed.”
A few years ago, in Sandy Springs, an abortion clinic was bombed. About fifteen minutes later, a second bomb went off at the site, designed to hit those who had come to aid the victims of the initial blast. Apparently, our armed forces were impressed by this tactic, and have used it in Pakistan. It is not known whether abortion clinic bombers set off bombs at victim funerals.
There were indications that the situation may be improving. “And just to be clear, the attacks on rescuers and mourners that we note, they’ve all occurred under the Obama administration between 2009 and July 2011. I think that date is quite interesting, because that’s also when Leon Panetta stepped down as head of CIA. You have an interim CIA leader, and then David Petraeus comes in. We haven’t had any reports from Pakistan since July of last year of attacks on rescuers. So there’s an indication of a policy change, and there’s also an indication of a targeting change on the ground. So, things may be changing at the moment.”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The social media picture was taken in 1898. “Boys of the 71st N.Y. at Montauk Point, after returning from Cuba” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah

This content was published December 20, 2023. Bovine Bari continues to be a source of amusement. … I am listening to blocked and reported #195, while trying to finish a poem. Certified poopyhead @bariweiss is one of the main topics today. The thought enters my pointed little head to take notes. Nothing good is going to come out of this.
Something happens at 8:33. Jesse … or is it Katie … is talking about a notorious twitter account, @zei_squirrel. I pause the show, and look in the show notes for the url to zs. “You’re blocked You can’t follow or see @zei_squirrel’s posts.” There is nothing like going to an x account for the first time, and learning you have been blocked.
The main story boils down to the question: did Bari Weiss order the IDF targeted assassination of Refaat Alareer? IMO, Bari does not have a buddy in the IDF that can arrange a targeted killing. When the IDF mows the lawn, they do not target a specific blade of grass.
Bari does not get out of this unblemished. She has spewed out high octane rhetoric against Gaza for a long, long time. Take this quote from 2021.
“I am writing to you from the waiting room of my fertility clinic. Getting pregnant when you are gay is not so romantic, so we try to do little things to make it nice. Last night I took a bath. We watched “Mare of Easttown.” Nellie opened a bottle of red. Then she grabbed my stomach and gave me a shot to trigger ovulation.” Does Bari Weiss have a certain amount of privilege?
“I planned to take the morning off. The doctor says that stress is not good for baby-making. But sitting here, scrolling through my phone, looking at the tsunami of lies — lies that have permeated every Instagram story and every viral meme and every TikTok video and every popular Twitter account — I am weeping. … It appears that standing up for the right of innocent people to protect themselves from a genocidal terrorist organization has become extremely risky to one’s “brand.” And so lies have replaced truth. Memes have replaced morality. Hashtags have replaced history. I’m speaking, of course, about Israel.” … Bari’s wife Nellie Bowles gave birth to a daughter in 2022.
When the killing was over in 2021, there were a lot more Gazans killed than Israelis. There is no way to tell how many of them were women and children, or how many were Hamas. Bari probably did not call her connection at the IDF to order Operation Wall Guardian. Her purple prose did help justify it. When you start a fire, you don’t get to say where it stops. … Wall Guardian is an ironic name for the 2021 operation. An alert wall guardian would have been helpful on October 7. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Russell Lee took the social media picture in October 1939. “ Wife of FSA (Farm Security Administration) client fixing her daughter’s hair. Farm near Bradford, Vermont, Orange County” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah

This content was published October 22, 2009. … The New American Foundation has a report on the drone attacks in Pakistan. These attacks have increased dramatically under BHO, who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize. … Drones are unmanned aircraft operated by remote control. There is no human at risk (to us) in these operations. These reports do not mention how many drones have been shot down. These attacks are going on in Pakistan (which theoretically is not at war with the United States), and in secret operations around the world.
Drone attacks are like abortions. In a typical procedure, the doctor and mother are at little risk, and the baby dies. Abortion is safer than childbirth, just like drones are safer than aircraft with human crews. Safer, that is, for the human crew. Drones are just as deadly for the women and children on the ground as manned aircraft. … Speculation about civilian casualties continues. Estimates range from 6% to 85% of the deaths are civilians. This is going to be impossible to verify, with militants exaggerating and Americans denying. The lowest estimates are from The Long War Journal.
It should be noted that if these operations were happening in America, and white citizens were being killed, a 6% rate of civilian death would be an outrage. However, when you are talking about dark skinned Muslims eight time zones away, a human life is worth less, compared to the military advantage gained. … One thing from the NAF report caught the eye here. “As a result of the unprecedented 41 drone strikes into Pakistan …about a half-dozen leaders of militant organizations have been killed–including two heads of Uzbek terrorist groups allied with al Qaeda.” What are Uzbek terrorist groups doing in Pakistan? Are we making attacks in Uzbekistan now?
Another eye popper is in the appendix. This is from a list of drone attacks. … Location: Makeen, South Waziristan (funeral of militants killed in earlier strike), Al Qaeda/Taliban leaders killed: Unknown, Al Qaeda/Taliban killed: At least 45, Others killed: 45-83 (including militants). … We are attacking funerals. This is what gets POTUS the Nobel Peace Prize. … In addition to the moral disaster of killing women and children with unmanned aircraft, there are some strategic issues. The fighters have been staying in the mountainous frontier of Pakistan and Afghanistan. This is the area being attacked.
There are indications that the fighters are moving into more populated areas of Pakistan. They will be more difficult to fight there, and can radicalize the population. … When you drop a bomb on an outpost, you destroy cell phones, computers, and paperwork. These items can be of value for determining the future plans of the fighters. Also, dead men tell no tales. Remember the ticking time bomb in the torture debates? What if someone knows where that ticking bomb is, but we kill him? He is not going to be able to tell us where that bomb is, torture or no torture.
If the goal of the war in Stan Land is to destroy the terrorists, then we should question whether killing leaders is going to do the trick. The anger that fuels these terrorists is not going to go away, and the leaders that are killed are going to be replaced. These attacks may slow down the resistance, but they will not destroy it. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Marion Post Wolcott took the social media picture in September 1938. “Some of coal miner’s family on front porch. “The Patch,” Cassville, West Virginia” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah

This content was published October 4, 2014. … There is a Radiolab episode called The Fact of the Matter. It is about a man who likes to separate fact from fiction. “The pursuit of truth properly considered shouldn’t stop short of insanity.” After an hour or so plumbing the digital depths, I began to appreciate the truth of that comment. Does anyone have a recipe that uses a can of worms?
The show is about a photograph from the Crimean War. “The valley of the shadow of death” was taken by Roger Fenton. on April 23, 1855. TVOTSOD was taken near a place called Balaclava. (Балаклавский) Today, this is in Ukraine. (Update below) Balaclava was the site of a nasty battle in the Crimean War. Today, a Balaclava is a colorful ski mask. It is the fashion statement of Pussy Riot.
I cannot understand why this picture is a big deal. The Library of Congress has a collection of the Fenton Crimean War Photographs. The Fenton pictures were one of the first collections in the LOC that I worked with. The picture of a road, with cannonballs, did not catch my eye.
The podcast is a detective story. It seems that there are two versions of the photograph. One has the cannonballs in the road, the other doesn’t. Were the cannonballs tossed on the road to make the picture more dramatic, or were they removed? They could have been removed to clear the road for wagon traffic, or to recycle the balls. In 1855, people picked up used cannonballs.
A very good question is why anyone would care? A man named Erroll Morris cares. The link is to a very long article at the New York Times about the picture. Mr. Morris went to Ukraine to investigate the pictures. It is possible that his pursuit of truth did not stop at the boundary of insanity.
The podcast mentions this famous picture, with a second shot that casts doubts. I went to the LOC, and found the famous picture right away. The second shot proved elusive. I viewed all 263 pictures in the Fenton collection in a slide show, and could not find the second picture. I began to think that maybe the second picture was the fake. The New York Times article by Erroll Morris has a copy of the second picture. The possibility remains that the second picture is a fabrication.
The podcast says that the location of some rocks changes in the two pictures. In the picture without the cannonballs on the road, the rocks are higher up on a hill, than they are in the famous picture. To Mr. Morris, this is evidence that the famous picture is a fake. I have examined the two images. Perhaps this search for truth will be called off before the onset of dementia.
The show has an amusing exchange between producer Jad Abumrad (جاد نيكولاس أبومراد) and Errol Morris. JAD: Hi. Is this Errol Morris? EM: I think it’s me. JAD: Hello, this is Jad from—from Radiolab. EM: Hi. Thank you for your very, very nice but somewhat disturbing email. JAD: What disturbed you in the email? EM: The term “truth fascist.”
Controversies about famous images are not new. Many people think the flag raising on Iwo Jima was posed. Just today on facebook, there was a link to a feature, The Kissing Sailor, or “The Selective Blindness of Rape Culture”. The idea is that the nurse did not want the sailor to kiss her on VJ day.
This feature was originally published in 2012, with LOC photographs of the Crimean War. In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea, including Balaklava. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in February 1942. “Meeker County, Minnesota. Farmers’ dance in crossroads store” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah

This content was published September 1, 2009. … Paul Wolfowitz has been a government player for years. After finishing his education, he got a job in the Nixon Administration, and worked with Ford and Reagan. He became a star under GHWB and GWB. Under George W. Bush, Mr. Wolfowitz (who never served in the military) was Deputy Secretary of Defense. After 911, he became a forceful advocate of War in Iraq. Mr. Wolfowitz is regarded by some as the “Architect of the War in Iraq”.
On February 27, 2003, Mr. Wolfowitz testified before congress. “There has been a good deal of comment—some of it quite outlandish—about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. Some of the higher end predictions we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark. It is hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take … to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army.”
The conquest was the easy part. The occupation, the act of putting humpty dumpty back together … this has been the tough part. More than a few people saw this in 2003. … Mr. Wolfowitz gave an interview to Vanity Fair magazine May 9, 2009. The interview had a quote about WMD. “The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason.”
The possession of WMD by “next Hitler” Saddam Hussein was one of the leading reasons for the invasion. Iraq was known to have used poison gas against the Kurds (while they were allies of the United States). The WMD were never found. … In 1941, The United States was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor. A declaration of war was issued within a week. There was no settling on an issue for bureaucratic reasons. … I found a transcript of the complete interview. HT to TomDispatch. … Gaza’s Looming Cancer Epidemic is the latest post at TomDispatch. It was published September 4, 2025.
Apparently, Mr. Wolfowitz likes to talk. One interesting segment concerns the Cruise missile, and other “smart” weapons. It seems as though the research on these weapons was almost suspended. The United States was negotiating arms control with The Soviet Union. The Cruise missile was almost abandoned as a concession to the Soviets. The Navy supported this, as they felt that the torpedoes on submarines were taking up too much room already. … This is a repost. Here is part one.
This content was published September 4, 2009. … There is a controversy about a picture from Afghanistan. A soldier is being treated, after being hit by a grenade. Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard later died. … Few graphic images from the “War on Terror” have been seen on this side of the Atlantic. The burden of the war is on the volunteer soldiers, and the families who support them. Many people in America have no contact with anyone fighting eight time zones away.
Even less is said about why we fight. The revenge for 911 has long ago been taken. Any fantasies about establishing a democracy in Afghanistan are foolish. The war has spilled into Pakistan with even less debate or public concern than was focused on Afghanistan or Iraq. Nuclear armed Pakistan is an unstable country, with a nervous border with India. The United States is killing women and children in Pakistan from unmanned airplanes. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in November 1938. Men in front of pool hall, Omaha, Nebraska ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah