Last Call For And Iran, Iran So Far Away, Con't

President Biden is making good on his threat last week that Tehran would pay a price for Iranian suicide drone attacks in Iraq, and Biden followed through with airstrikes late last night.

President Joe Biden's decision to conduct airstrikes against Iran-backed militia groups on the Iraq-Syria border Sunday night follows a recent spate of attacks against US military assets in Iraq by a new class of Iranian-made drones that US officials say can evade US surveillance and defenses. 

The latest of these attacks occurred earlier this month when an armed drone detonated at a dining facility at a key entry point in the Baghdad airport used by American soldiers and diplomats, a US military official told CNN. In April, a drone damaged a CIA drone hanger near Erbil. 

The American airstrikes Sunday night hit operational and weapons storage facilities at two locations in Syria and one in Iraq, according to the Pentagon, targets that were "selected because these facilities are utilized by Iran-backed militias that are engaged in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) attacks against U.S. personnel and facilities in Iraq." 

For months, US intelligence and military personnel in Iraq have been raising alarms about the risk to American forces from these newer, more sophisticated Iranian-made drones. Rather than being guided by a pilot from a remote location, some of these small, fixed-wing drones use GPS navigation, making them far less visible to US surveillance systems and impervious to jamming. 

"Suffice it to say the (CIA) is now paying a great deal of attention to this issue, because those things tend to wake you up a little bit," said one former intelligence official with experience in the region. 

While rocket attacks against US personnel in Iraq have become almost routine, these new Iranian-made drones, so-called suicide drones, are viewed by US intelligence and military personnel as a clear escalation by Iran — and a worrying signal to intelligence officials that the US no longer enjoys autonomy in the skies over Iraq. 

Packed with explosives, the new drones come in varying sizes -- anywhere from a five-foot wingspan to a 12 to 15 feet, according to one US military official -- with the larger iterations carrying up to 30 kilograms of explosives. 

That's far smaller and less lethal than the American-made MQ-9 Reaper drones. But current and former officials say these new Iranian-made drones pose a unique threat in part because Tehran has no deniability -- since no one else is known to have the technology. 

Unlike the more commonly-available Katyusha rockets often fired at US troops in Iraq, US officials say there's no question that Iran is providing them to the complex web of militia groups who seek to oust the United States from Iraq. 

They are also substantially more dangerous, these sources say. 

"Someone could get killed, and more so than in the past, because things are accurate," said one US military official who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity. "We think they're actually aiming them -- and the warheads on these things are pretty substantial."    

 

Cool, so the US war in the Middle East will continue, as-is. I didn't expect Biden to change much, other than not hurtling towards a full-on war like Trump was, but we're unable to win a land war in Europe or Asia right now, and frankly, everyone knows it.

More diplomacy, please.

A Tank Blast From The Past

Mr. Tank himself, Michael Dukakis, has fired a sabot round into the Democratic police funding fight, declaring that Black Lives Matter activists are "nuts" for wanting police funding changed.

A generation ago, Michael Dukakis saw his chances of winning the presidency crushed after Republicans cast him as soft on crime.

Now he is warning his party not to make the same mistake.

The "defund the police" movement is “nuts,” Dukakis, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988, told this column.

“I’m saying to myself, my God, what the hell is going on here?” Dukakis added during a 40-minute phone interview from his home in Brookline, Mass., late last week.

“On one hand, you have folks screaming and yelling about getting rid of policing, which makes no sense at all. And then on the other hand, you have some people totally misinterpreting what community policing is, just as we were really making huge progress,” he said.

The day before the interview, President Biden had laid out his plan to counter a nationwide rise in crime.

Biden’s efforts will prioritize police funding and disrupting the illicit circulation of firearms. The president is encouraging local authorities to use money from the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill passed in March to hire more law enforcement personnel.

Asked if he thinks Biden strikes the correct balance, Dukakis said: “I think he gets it and understands it. I’m not sure he and for that matter my party is articulating it very well.”

The issue, for Dukakis, is not about taking away or adding “gobs of new money” but about establishing trust between the police and the community.

 

Three huge problems here as I see it. 

 

Number one, Dukakis should probably not get involved, no offense, but you don't get much higher on the Democratic loser scale than this guy. 

Number two, look how easy it is for Dukakis to mischaracterize the argument. No wonder Democrats are getting crushed on this.

Number three, there is a non-small subsection of BLM activists that actually do want police abolished, period, rather than any reform efforts (although actual police reform would be, well, firing most police nationwide and starting over). This isn't helping either.

No, this is a fight that Democrats are bound and determined to lose, so of course President Biden is doubling the federal grant fund to hire more cops. It's a lost cause, and Democrats should wisely move on to something else, not that Republicans or the media will ever, ever let them.

Retribution Execution, Con't

Trump-era Republicans aren't messing around and wasting time with Bush-era white resentment politics and all the implications and dog whistles from 20 years ago, they're going right for the politics of white rage, bullhorns and all in predominantly white swing states like Wisconsin.

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson preached unity and positivity to the party faithful at the state Republican convention on Saturday, painting Democrats as an angry party bent on fundamentally changing the United States.

Johnson said he's "more panicked" than ever about the state of the country, having run for the first time in 2010 based on the same fears. Johnson defeated Wisconsin Democratic folk hero Russ Feingold in 2010 and again in 2016, outperforming Donald Trump when the former president won Wisconsin — the first Republican presidential candidate to do so since 1984.

"The leaders of the left talk about fundamentally transforming this nation. Do you even like, much less love, something you want to fundamentally transform?" Johnson asked. "America’s not perfect; we had that original sin from slavery, but we’ve made progress. We’ve continuously improved. That’s not good enough for the left."

Johnson has not yet announced whether he will seek a third term, but took the stage to chants of "six more years!" He told supporters the Republican Party's mission statement should be "to unify, unite and heal this nation."

"We’re not going to do that by being angry. We’re not going to do that by imitating what (liberals) do, by being nasty," Johnson said. "We’re going to do that by allowing light to pierce the darkness."

Johnson cited several examples of recent confrontations as evidence that the left has grown increasingly angry, including a man who approached him on an airplane, got in his face and called him a "disgrace," and a woman who followed him through the Milwaukee airport making the same statement.

The senator also referenced Milwaukee's Juneteenth celebration, where he said he had a generally positive experience but was booed and shouted at by a small group of "incredibly profane and nasty" people as he spoke to the press. Johnson blocked legislation to make Juneteenth a national holiday last year, but backed off this year. Johnson said he supports the holiday itself, but questions why federal employees need another paid day off.

"I don’t want to make this speech about me, I just want to talk about what’s happening to our culture," Johnson said.

Johnson called on Republicans to run candidates at every level of public office, arguing that the GOP has spent too much time focused on federal elections while letting seats go at the local levels.

"Take back our school boards, our county boards, our city councils. We will take back our culture. We don't have to fear this anymore," Johnson said, advocating the concept of "trickle-up elections."

 

The most awful thing about 2021 is that we have sitting US senators, ostensibly up for reelection, openly spouting Stormfront, Project Evropa, and VDARE white supremacist dogma, openly, and without reservation, with millions of voters from a major political party approving of it.

If these assholes get control of the federal government again, we're not going to make it.