The leaked “weeks of ground operations” talk is not a surprise twist. It is the quiet admission that the war’s stated goals lean toward occupying something, even if they keep calling it a “raid.”
Thank you for the comprehensive receipts. The single most dangerous thing an invading country can do is to underestimate the enemy. Russia underestimated Ukraine and we are vastly underestimating Iran. Iran is an ancient culture who built beautiful modern cities in a country comprised mostly of inhospitable mountains and desert. While many young and educated Iranians despise their current regime, few would trade it for an American controlled alternative. Trump has opened the proverbial can of worms.
"The single most dangerous thing an invading country can do is to underestimate the enemy."
Hahahahaha! Damn right. Using Russia again as an example, they did the same thing in Afghanistan! And of course, as we are doing in Iran. The US just gave every faction in Iran a unifying target. Us, the USA! Iranians don't hate us because of our vaunted "freedoms." They hate us because unlike most in our under-educated nation, they remember the Shah!
I think there is more to it, but yes, what price have we and Iranians paid for the 1953 CIA coup that overthrew Iran's secular, elected government and installed the Shah? How would the politics of the region arguably differ if we hadn't? All for control of Iran's oil. Follow the money.
Oh yes! To be sure. But I've already written some long posts today so I left plenty of events out. Still you take my point which is all that I could ask for.
And since he cannot imagine a world without him in it due to his malignant narcissism, he would gleefully 'go nuclear' and destroy the world to assuage his bruised ego, given half a chance!
My heart is sad, my brain is angry. I am also a Veteran. This is so scary. Most Americans are not paying attention and/or do not care that this is really happening. The lessons of the past have not been learned by most of our leaders. My hope is that people wake up!!
Jamelle Bouie NYT3/25/26: "If you can set aside both the unconstitutionality and the immorality of President Trump’s unprovoked...it is hard not to be bewildered by the utter lack of real planning, or even basic strategic thinking, that has gone into it.”
And work to raise awareness and get the @#$%^& excess money OUT or politics. It is beyond Orwellian to claim that unlimited money to purchase political outcomes is "Free Speech" and that good faith opposition the sitting regime is not.
"But the main culprit, the cancer on the body politic, is money: Money, money, money. When I ran 6 years ago, in 1998, I raised $8.5 million. That $8.5 million is $30,000 a week, every week, for 6 years. If you miss Christmas week, you miss New Years week, you are $100,000 in the hole and don't you think we don't know it and we start to work harder at raising money.
As a result, the Senate doesn't work on Mondays and Fridays. We have longer holidays. The policy committee is adjourned and we go over to the campaign building because you can't call for money in the office. So we go over to the building and call for money and obviously we only can give attention to that. We don't have time for each other. We don't have time for constituents, except for the givers. Somebody ought to tell the truth about that."
But wait. Corporations are people? Right? Doesn’t the same apply to PACs? They have rights free to free speech like people? I just had a drink last night with Northrop Grumman. I’m starting to see this war…..whoopsie!….I meant excursion (or is it incursion? I’m too hung over to even care lol) kinda differently. It’s all a cycle. It’s all just human nature. Right?
Mom of two career, active-duty, enlisted military members here. Words can't express my gratitude to you for writing this. Especially:
"Pick one person you love who has worn the uniform, or would be asked to. Picture their hands. Picture their back. Picture their sleep. Then read the line again: “weeks of ground operations,” “war-gamed,” “not last-minute,” “protecting your guys once they are there is the difficult task.” [1]
If that does not change how you hear this story, the machine has already done its work on you."
I also think about my daughter in laws and my grandchildren. None of us have slept well since November 2025. Now we're feeling lucky to sleep at all.
I am a former US Marine and the thought that I can trust the Iranian government MORE than my own makes me seethe with a furious and righteous anger.
They are going to any lengths to divert from the Epstein files and the maladminsitration from the top on down does not care if they get people killed. They'll get the diversion they need and the profits they crave at the same time. A two-fer!
I think that you are correct X and there will be "boots on the ground" which equals "bodies in boxes" being shipped back home. Remember when republicans high-fived one other when they defeated an expansion of VA care promoted by the Biden administration? Uh huh. I do too. Yep. Let's see how they "support the troops" this fucking time!
The current maladministration has weaponized conflict for profit. Da Boyz (dt jr and eric the lump) are investing in new start-up drone companies mere days before the conflict they started began. Daddy Dearest has robbed 'We the People' of billions for his "Council of Peace" aka the "We Can ALL Get Our Beaks Wet" stolen resources and finance club, their friends and hangers-on are manipulating stocks to their advantage, they're blatantly using classified info on the prediction market (among other instances of observable criminality) and we STILL have people who are more worried about what's in that lady's pants cause she wants to use the restroom!
I went to a No Kings rally yesterday. It was "nice." I watched all these folks with signs and regalia walk right on past poor folks immigrant folks begging without a second glance. While holding signs saying "Abolish ICE" and whatnot. I'm glad folks are out marching and chanting and sign-waving but maybe they aren't serious enough yet. Maybe they haven't been hurt enough yet. They will be. We all are in for it!
Maybe when we the 99% are all fully invested in the movement, we can come together and do what it takes to stop these awful humans in the only way they would truly understand. General strikes. In my opinion a general strike will stop their money cold. Then we'll have their attention!
But people will have to feel as though they've been forced to the wall and have no other option before they will be willing to risk everything in that manner Perhaps change we can live with will come before the situation is so dire but somehow, I don't think so.
Thank you for this piece and all the others that you do. I am proud to support and share this most critical information!
For decades I have thought that "Surely this time they have crossed the line. This time "public sentiment" will turn decisively." and been disappointed to see the Tsunami's of corruption breaking over the republic, the republic that Orwellian "Republicans" are trying to dismantle. Now it could not be any more obvious, and I hold out hope. Most Americans seemed to be taken in by smarmy Reagan who ridiculed "government of the people, by the people, for the people" and prescribed neo-feudalism as the cure. It never worked as advertised, but jeeze. At least this regime is not popular, except with the oligarchs and the cult. I still hold out hope.
Me too but in my opinion they would risk burning the entire thing down than giving up what they have so openly stolen. It's a cult that needs an end!
Either they'll keep doing us until we're all used up or we can turn the tables, return the favor and is there no one among all of these so-called intelligent humans that can work out an economic system that does not require someone to be completely and thoroughly exploited for all their lives in order for capitalistic parasites to thrive?
There are all sorts if cults, such as the members of "Heaven's Gate" who took cyanide to ostensibly join a space ship hidden in the tail of the Comet Hale-Bopp. Cult dynamics seems like "virus" of the mind, to get you to believe the "unbelievable". It seems to be a "security hole" in our DNA, and humanity is split on whether or not to exploit it. It does not, in and of itself, a part of religion, but religion is often wrapped in it, when politics and religion are fused. Religion can inform one's politics, as it did for MLK, but you cannot have personal and societal liberty and a mandatory state religion at the same time. It's a patent contradiction.
So too is the term "Free Market" when what you mean by that is no barriers to monopoly. Monopolies or either financial or political power are both definitions of tyrannies; and corrupted governments blend the two, along with extortion by violence, for bad measure. All three are forms of social power.
The secret hiding in plain sight is that we create and maintain an environment of "liberty and Justice for ALL" by unselectively recognizing, maintaining, and protecting one another's universal human rights.
"Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises."
Well made points all the way thru. Especially "The secret hiding in plain sight is that we create and maintain an environment of "liberty and Justice for ALL" by unselectively recognizing, maintaining, and protecting one another's universal human rights."
What if tomorrow morning everyone woke up thinking "I'm going to treat everyone I interact with the way I want THEM to treat ME?"
Since the US Senate adjourned last Thursday, March 26 and is on a 2-week vacation, this is the perfect time for tRump to not declare WAR, while actually performing WAR because the Senate isn't available to declare it themselves. Obviously, this is the only "planned" part of this mess - get the Senate out-of-town.
It's simple to figure out how The Simpleton in the WH thinks. Troops on the ground before dawn's early light on Monday, March 30, 2026 in Iran. Meaning Today!
"You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory-must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
'O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle-be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen. ' " -- Mark Twain
Thank you for the comprehensive receipts. The single most dangerous thing an invading country can do is to underestimate the enemy. Russia underestimated Ukraine and we are vastly underestimating Iran. Iran is an ancient culture who built beautiful modern cities in a country comprised mostly of inhospitable mountains and desert. While many young and educated Iranians despise their current regime, few would trade it for an American controlled alternative. Trump has opened the proverbial can of worms.
"The single most dangerous thing an invading country can do is to underestimate the enemy."
Hahahahaha! Damn right. Using Russia again as an example, they did the same thing in Afghanistan! And of course, as we are doing in Iran. The US just gave every faction in Iran a unifying target. Us, the USA! Iranians don't hate us because of our vaunted "freedoms." They hate us because unlike most in our under-educated nation, they remember the Shah!
I think there is more to it, but yes, what price have we and Iranians paid for the 1953 CIA coup that overthrew Iran's secular, elected government and installed the Shah? How would the politics of the region arguably differ if we hadn't? All for control of Iran's oil. Follow the money.
"I think there is more to it"
Oh yes! To be sure. But I've already written some long posts today so I left plenty of events out. Still you take my point which is all that I could ask for.
Trump is a malignant narcissist. He plays games for his own amusement and the "Mr Hyde" side of human nature supports it. All other beings are toys.
And since he cannot imagine a world without him in it due to his malignant narcissism, he would gleefully 'go nuclear' and destroy the world to assuage his bruised ego, given half a chance!
My heart is sad, my brain is angry. I am also a Veteran. This is so scary. Most Americans are not paying attention and/or do not care that this is really happening. The lessons of the past have not been learned by most of our leaders. My hope is that people wake up!!
It’s so nice to have company in my paranoid delusions. I mean that as a compliment! Thanks for the hard work.
Sometimes "they" really do mean you harm.
Jamelle Bouie NYT3/25/26: "If you can set aside both the unconstitutionality and the immorality of President Trump’s unprovoked...it is hard not to be bewildered by the utter lack of real planning, or even basic strategic thinking, that has gone into it.”
GOP normalizes sociopathy & serial criminality of the Chosen One. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEok_seAdi4
Resist MAGA gangster grifter authoritarianism! Vote Sane. #VoteBlue!
And work to raise awareness and get the @#$%^& excess money OUT or politics. It is beyond Orwellian to claim that unlimited money to purchase political outcomes is "Free Speech" and that good faith opposition the sitting regime is not.
"But the main culprit, the cancer on the body politic, is money: Money, money, money. When I ran 6 years ago, in 1998, I raised $8.5 million. That $8.5 million is $30,000 a week, every week, for 6 years. If you miss Christmas week, you miss New Years week, you are $100,000 in the hole and don't you think we don't know it and we start to work harder at raising money.
As a result, the Senate doesn't work on Mondays and Fridays. We have longer holidays. The policy committee is adjourned and we go over to the campaign building because you can't call for money in the office. So we go over to the building and call for money and obviously we only can give attention to that. We don't have time for each other. We don't have time for constituents, except for the givers. Somebody ought to tell the truth about that."
-- Sen Fritz Hollings in 2004
We should have seen that coming too.
But wait. Corporations are people? Right? Doesn’t the same apply to PACs? They have rights free to free speech like people? I just had a drink last night with Northrop Grumman. I’m starting to see this war…..whoopsie!….I meant excursion (or is it incursion? I’m too hung over to even care lol) kinda differently. It’s all a cycle. It’s all just human nature. Right?
Mom of two career, active-duty, enlisted military members here. Words can't express my gratitude to you for writing this. Especially:
"Pick one person you love who has worn the uniform, or would be asked to. Picture their hands. Picture their back. Picture their sleep. Then read the line again: “weeks of ground operations,” “war-gamed,” “not last-minute,” “protecting your guys once they are there is the difficult task.” [1]
If that does not change how you hear this story, the machine has already done its work on you."
I also think about my daughter in laws and my grandchildren. None of us have slept well since November 2025. Now we're feeling lucky to sleep at all.
I am sincerely sorry for your family's situation. May we manage to exit the highway to hell.
I am a former US Marine and the thought that I can trust the Iranian government MORE than my own makes me seethe with a furious and righteous anger.
They are going to any lengths to divert from the Epstein files and the maladminsitration from the top on down does not care if they get people killed. They'll get the diversion they need and the profits they crave at the same time. A two-fer!
I think that you are correct X and there will be "boots on the ground" which equals "bodies in boxes" being shipped back home. Remember when republicans high-fived one other when they defeated an expansion of VA care promoted by the Biden administration? Uh huh. I do too. Yep. Let's see how they "support the troops" this fucking time!
The current maladministration has weaponized conflict for profit. Da Boyz (dt jr and eric the lump) are investing in new start-up drone companies mere days before the conflict they started began. Daddy Dearest has robbed 'We the People' of billions for his "Council of Peace" aka the "We Can ALL Get Our Beaks Wet" stolen resources and finance club, their friends and hangers-on are manipulating stocks to their advantage, they're blatantly using classified info on the prediction market (among other instances of observable criminality) and we STILL have people who are more worried about what's in that lady's pants cause she wants to use the restroom!
I went to a No Kings rally yesterday. It was "nice." I watched all these folks with signs and regalia walk right on past poor folks immigrant folks begging without a second glance. While holding signs saying "Abolish ICE" and whatnot. I'm glad folks are out marching and chanting and sign-waving but maybe they aren't serious enough yet. Maybe they haven't been hurt enough yet. They will be. We all are in for it!
Maybe when we the 99% are all fully invested in the movement, we can come together and do what it takes to stop these awful humans in the only way they would truly understand. General strikes. In my opinion a general strike will stop their money cold. Then we'll have their attention!
But people will have to feel as though they've been forced to the wall and have no other option before they will be willing to risk everything in that manner Perhaps change we can live with will come before the situation is so dire but somehow, I don't think so.
Thank you for this piece and all the others that you do. I am proud to support and share this most critical information!
For decades I have thought that "Surely this time they have crossed the line. This time "public sentiment" will turn decisively." and been disappointed to see the Tsunami's of corruption breaking over the republic, the republic that Orwellian "Republicans" are trying to dismantle. Now it could not be any more obvious, and I hold out hope. Most Americans seemed to be taken in by smarmy Reagan who ridiculed "government of the people, by the people, for the people" and prescribed neo-feudalism as the cure. It never worked as advertised, but jeeze. At least this regime is not popular, except with the oligarchs and the cult. I still hold out hope.
Me too but in my opinion they would risk burning the entire thing down than giving up what they have so openly stolen. It's a cult that needs an end!
Either they'll keep doing us until we're all used up or we can turn the tables, return the favor and is there no one among all of these so-called intelligent humans that can work out an economic system that does not require someone to be completely and thoroughly exploited for all their lives in order for capitalistic parasites to thrive?
There are all sorts if cults, such as the members of "Heaven's Gate" who took cyanide to ostensibly join a space ship hidden in the tail of the Comet Hale-Bopp. Cult dynamics seems like "virus" of the mind, to get you to believe the "unbelievable". It seems to be a "security hole" in our DNA, and humanity is split on whether or not to exploit it. It does not, in and of itself, a part of religion, but religion is often wrapped in it, when politics and religion are fused. Religion can inform one's politics, as it did for MLK, but you cannot have personal and societal liberty and a mandatory state religion at the same time. It's a patent contradiction.
So too is the term "Free Market" when what you mean by that is no barriers to monopoly. Monopolies or either financial or political power are both definitions of tyrannies; and corrupted governments blend the two, along with extortion by violence, for bad measure. All three are forms of social power.
The secret hiding in plain sight is that we create and maintain an environment of "liberty and Justice for ALL" by unselectively recognizing, maintaining, and protecting one another's universal human rights.
"Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises."
-- Abraham Lincoln
Well made points all the way thru. Especially "The secret hiding in plain sight is that we create and maintain an environment of "liberty and Justice for ALL" by unselectively recognizing, maintaining, and protecting one another's universal human rights."
What if tomorrow morning everyone woke up thinking "I'm going to treat everyone I interact with the way I want THEM to treat ME?"
No Kings.
Since the US Senate adjourned last Thursday, March 26 and is on a 2-week vacation, this is the perfect time for tRump to not declare WAR, while actually performing WAR because the Senate isn't available to declare it themselves. Obviously, this is the only "planned" part of this mess - get the Senate out-of-town.
It's simple to figure out how The Simpleton in the WH thinks. Troops on the ground before dawn's early light on Monday, March 30, 2026 in Iran. Meaning Today!
"You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory-must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
'O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle-be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen. ' " -- Mark Twain
Only the foe is our own government.