@rodgerp
Prof of intern'l relations at U of Louisville. SABR member, Jayhawk hoops fan, film buff, & beer snob. Sabbatical Spring 26: Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development (U Utrecht). Pictured: Blue Water Bridge linking Michigan to Ontario.
This is premature. Go back and recall the "On to Damascus" stories from late spring and early summer 2003. Here's a good example of skepticism at the time:
www.brookings.edu/articles/aft...
And just like that we’re back to “Department of Defense”
Maybe Trump would have gained some popularity from killing Khameini if he had bothered to explain ahead of time to the public why he was starting the war. But he didn't.
First, a bit odd to be fighting a war where our main ally is Israel and the others are Muslim and imply we are fighting to stay "Christian nations under God" 🤨
This is great TV even if she's now been canceled.
PAT RYAN: 'Does the US want to be the policeman of the Middle East getting nothing but spending precious lives & trillions.' Rng a bell?
COLBY: Defer to you
R: That was Trump. How about this - 'we simply cannot afford to get enmeshed in a Middle East war'
C: Defer to you
R: That was actually you
'We don't see any reason to negotiate: Araghchi We have more comments from Iran's top diplomat. In a live interview with NBC, Abbas Aragchi said Iran is "not asking for a ceasefire". "We don't see any reason why we should negotiate with the US", he said. "When we negotiated with them twice, every time, they attacked us in the middle of negotiations." Araghchi also emphasised that Iran has not closed the Strait of Hormuz, saying "it is the ships and tankers" that have refused to cross the waterway.
Iranian Foreign Minister:
“We don’t see any reason to negotiate”
(aje.news/0avpno?updat...)
Per the FY23 NDAA, ODNI is required to submit unclassified reports to Congress and public every 6 months on the status of the Iranian nuclear program. So Gabbard should have released 2 such reports since the March threat assessment. Where are they?
www.congress.gov/bill/117th-c...
What's the right word to describe apparently corrupt trading -- when you are not merely an insider, but actually the regulator?
uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-b...
Trump argues for forever wars
Trump is now defending “forever” wars.
The linchpin of his populist-style critique of the foreign policy establishment was that it got us into “forever” wars.
Trump isn’t just defending his war with Iran. Now he is claiming that he can wage “forever” wars “very successfully.”
FT comments section this morning - saying what everyone else is thinking, right?
This is from the March 2025 Director of National Intelligence Annual Threat Assessment:
"We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear
weapons program he suspended in 2003."
www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/d...
I’ve spent years, decades, obsessing over the Bush Administration’s Iraq WMD lies, writing about them, debunking them.
I can think of no lie about Iraq WMDs told by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al that comes even close to the enormity and absurdity of this lie from Donald Trump.
This is why we cannot have nice things.
kind of crazy that if you have enough money and don't like what you see in the media, you can just buy up every film studio, news station, and social media app and change it
Don't want to nitpick as I'm glad to see someone showing outrage and leadership. However, Tillis only requires "a response," which seems like a low bar and could generate merely symbolic answers. He didn't demand resolution.
Just came across this decade-old interview, "The Nuclear Family," about the work my father, George Bunn, and I have both done to reduce nuclear dangers. Has a bunch of description of nuclear dangers and progress in reducing them that's still relevant today. theworld.org/stories/2016...
I'm sorry, if you're going to make a big show about how you've got a Department of WAR helmed by a Secretary of WAR and staffed by WARfighters, it's totally inane to then claim that your massive bombing of a foreign country constitutes something other than a war.
Launching a new Middle East war that is ongoing and escalating seems to pose a much bigger risk of nuclear war. And the status quo risk was lower under the arms control agreement Trump turfed in his first term.
Tillis: "In about a week and half, we're gonna get a plaque on the wall in the Capitol thank the Capitol police officers and all the agencies that responded on January 6. All those thugs have been pardoned, and yet we haven't thanked the Capitol police officers for their work."
Trump's trying to find the guy who did this.
For the most part, the tactical, ground based weapons shared with Ukraine are not in play for the Iran strikes. Patriot interceptors are in high demand in both theaters.
Biden admin spent over $40B to replenish weapons stocks, and over $5B to expand munitions industrial base.
The third is the assessment that was made that if we stood and waited for that attack to come first before we hit them, we would suffer much higher casualties. And so the President made the very wise decision. We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher those killed, and then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn't act.
This whole press conference is an interesting read, and this specific part is a bracingly honest admission. It feels like the entire cause of this war is the tail wagging the dog, to some extent. At least, that’s what the dog’s saying.
www.state.gov/releases/off...
Trump and Zelenskyy are both commenting about weapons supplies today.
It's an opportunity for the public to sort out which one of them leads a nation engaged in a defensive war for national survival and which initiated an illegal armed attack.
New book review!
States of transition: from governing the environment to transforming society by Peter Newell.
Reviewed by Christina Frendo.
doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2026.2623724
This was before he was criticized directly by Trump. Let's wait for the UK domestic backlash polling.
Right. Outlaw Country on SiriusXM have these, for example.
Given the global backlash to Trump in various national contexts, will this criticism help propel Labour? One recent poll had them behind the Greens.
Trump saved Mark Carney in Canada by threatening sovereignty. This obviously falls short of that, but it is a more direct attack on an individual.
"It said the renewed offensive formed part of what it described as an “enhanced forward defence posture”."
Four words to obfuscate the fact that that's just occupation.
University alumni organizations promote cruises.
