If by that, you mean saving the planet from an evil regime having a nuclear weapon...I'll be happy to be duped. This is not a costly war, nor is it a foolhardy adventure. It was a precision strike to eliminate a nuclear program that cannot be allowed to come to fruition. This isn't black and white. There is nuance. And a surgical strike or set of strikes is not a protracted war, nor is it boots on the ground. No American was harmed. No aircraft took any fire. It was not under false pretenses, either. President Trump has been saying wince 2011 that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Instead of being grateful, you are conflating Operation Midnight Hammer with something it is not - a prolonged war engagement. Trump immediately moved to peace negotiations. I love your work John Leake, but you are not assessing the facts as they are in front of us.
Greetings Linda, we shall see how all this plays out. I can't quite rid myself of remembering the weirdness of the Japanese carrier group getting so close to Oahu with no one noticing it, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, hundreds of unanswered questions about 9/11, Saddam's "WMDs," and the curious fact that a former terrorist with a US $10 million bounty on his head just a couple of months ago is now the recognized head of state of Syria.
Read "Day of Deceit--The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor" by Robert B. Stinnett. (A bit hard to find, but you can probably pick up a used copy.) It is a carefully documented history of what actually happened. Based on Stinnett's research, it is clear that U.S. Naval intelligence knew about the approach of the Japanese carrier group, and made sure not to inform Admiral Husband, who was in charge of the defenses of Pearl Harbor.
That's a helpful corrective to the post by John Sutton (with whom I still broadly agree on his main points). What people constantly overlook in discussing the evils of Iran is how it was the 1953 coup d’état - backed and funded by the United States and the United Kingdom in support of BP - to remove Mohammad Mosaddegh and install the despotic Shah as Iran’s leader that led to the 1979 Ayatollah revolution and the mess we are in today.
Of those mentioned, the following were perpetrated by Iran-backed proxies in direct response to US military involvement in kinetic Middle East conflicts
• 1983 Beirut U.S. Embassy bombing
• 1983 Beirut Marine Barracks bombing
• 1996 Khobar Towers, Saudi Arabia bombing
• Killing of US troops 2003–2011 Iraq War and in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan in 2023-24
The following two incidents were direct attacks by Iranian forces
• Iran–Iraq War 1987-1988 Iranian Forces attacked U.S.-flagged ships and Naval Assets that were supporting Iraq against Iran, in the Persian Gulf.
• Missile Strikes at U.S. air Bases in Iraq injured over 100 Troops in 2020 in response to the US assassination of Qasem Soleimani.
The statement that Iran has not attacked a foreign nation, as both the US and Israel did a few days ago, in the last 50 years, still holds.
You prove my point, thank you. Iran has threatened to and attacked the US since the barracks bombing 1983, 1979 when they took over the U.S. Embassy if you want to be accurate. Your claim is these attacks were, what, in self defense? Justified under some theory?
Your claim Iran has not attacked a foreign nation in 50 years has no basis in fact.
I am with Linda here if for no other reason than I too am not sure what’s your point. The human condition hasn’t changed since Adam was thrown out of Eden & people have been killing each other ever since Cain offed Abel. As such, peace is not the absence of war. Unlike many of the conflicts you cited, there were no mass human casualties here & Trump got his point across to multiple entities on multiple levels and in the process probably brought the world an extended period of not war. So can we take this opportunity to look at the glass as half full?
You really need to widen your information sources and apply critical thinking to opposing points. Not to mention spend quite a few years on history, again with multiple competing sources.
One never really knows what skeletons are in the closets of one's own side until reading/listening to the other side(s). If you maintain an open mind, your eventual education will shock you.
Canada used to have nukes we never should have given them up. Especjally with the guy who doesn't need Congress to declare war to the south of Canada.
Why cant Iran have nukes if China does, Pakistan does, Israel does?
Does Canada get a bullseye too? Even though we played a part in the Manhattan project? I'm sure the propaganda can be worked so we miscreants deserve it.
If the strike results in no more nuclear weapons for Iran, end of story, then yes, a good move. It could result in the opposite effect though, along with other problems. It was a gamble.
Well said, Linda. John Leake’s common-sense is nowhere in evidence in his post. Instead there is a legslistic false equivalence between Israel and Iran. President Trump took action and the world is safer.
If by 'evil regime having a nuclear weapon' you mean Israel, I agree with you. Israel has shown that it IS an evil, genocidal, and cruel regime with a deep sense of entitlement, fully supported by obscenely wealthy Zionists like Miriam Adelson -- who also funds Donald Trump's political career. Through its US proxies, e.g., AIPAC, Israel also exerts a great deal of control over U.S. politicians and their efforts to rein in defense allocations on Israel's behalf.
But I am not naive enough to believe that you are referring to Israel. I am painfully aware that U.S. media propaganda has successfully drummed up public support for attacks against Iran -- in exactly the same manner that they've sold U.S. dupes (i.e., uninformed citizens) on countless wars against all the Middle East and African countries that Israel has successfully urged America to attack during the last 25 years -- Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and now Iran. Each of these military misadventures has resulted in countless deaths and needless suffering among innocent civilians and U.S. military personnel alike. In each case, U.S. propaganda has led the American people into wars based on false pretenses. Remember George Bush's fiery speeches raising the specter of "Weapons of Mass Destruction"? We have been lied to by our 'leaders' in every instance! Doesn't THAT upset you at all??
Finally, why should the U.S.A. be the ultimate arbiter selecting which countries get to develop nuclear weapons? Do we really have any moral authority on this issue? After all, we are the ONLY nation in the entire history of the world to use nuclear weapons on another country (though not all historians agree that doing so was even necessary to end WWII), and the raw carnage we inflicted on CIVILIANS was savagely brutal.
Why should America go searching for “monsters abroad” when we have them in our own backyard?! For example, the entire scamdemic and rollout of deadly poisonous jabs!
Can we talk about the dog that didn't bark? People have been asking why Israel and the U.S. attacked Iran now, given that there has been an "imminent" threat of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon for around 30 years. No-one has a good answer. What seems hard to deny is that the U.S. and Israel planned this 1-2 punch attack well before it commenced about 2 weeks ago. It makes one wonder whether even the counterattack by Iran to the initial Israeli attack was "planned" or at least anticipated, as a way of giving the U.S. apparently legitimate reason to enter the war. In spite of the claims of the war being over, and peace negotiations being initiated, there is nothing in Iran's history to suggest that they would be reasonably expected to enter into peace negotiations. The response of Russia and China seems very calculated, and likely planned in advance. Although I know little to nothing about what is happening behind the scenes, I am so disillusioned by the dishonesty in what media reports that I tend to think that nearly all of politics, and especially war politics, are theatrics designed to get the desired response from the public and others who the regime requires to be influenced. Call me cynical, but I think the whole affair is yet another ploy to gain money and power for those behind the scenes who are accustomed to pulling the strings.
I don't think Israel expected Iran's response to their attack to be so destructive or effective. Israel's port of Haifa is wrecked, their only oil refinery shut down and about a third of Tel Aviv is in ruins. It will take them years to recover from this. Otherwise, I agree with your comments.
I stopped wanting aggression after finding the warmongers knew there was none in Iraq but killed a million people any way. I read somewhere that before the president attacks a foreign power like Iraq, Mexico, Vietnam or Canada there should be a congressional declaration of war.
"Humans are absolute suckers for war propaganda." True. But I am not going to throw rocks at B2 bombers. Many years ago, I was filming a car spot out in the Mojave. At 10AM it was already getting hot, so I went over to the cooler for a cold drink. As I bent over the hairs stood up on the back of my neck, as they do when you feel someone unseen watching you. I stood up, spun around, and there—at a distance that on a good day I could throw a rock—was a B2. It was more or less hovering... flying very, very slow. I could see the pilot. It sent chills up my spine. The last thing I could imagine at that point was throwing a rock and starting a war.
Yes. It was very real. They do a lot of testing out there. And practice. While we were shooting the F-16's would practice runs over the top of our picture car. No sound on approach and then boom... At a dry lake bed in CA, while we were filming another car spot, an F35 (brand new at the time) was going through its acrobatic work out. We were too busy working to pay anything but offhand attention... nonetheless, a van came streaking out across the desert; a stern Navy fellow jumped out and warned us to keep the camera pointed in the other direction. We did not argue.
Lots of evil murderous regimes have nukes, many far worse then Iran. Netanyahu has been saying for decades that the Iraqis, then the Iranians were about to get nukes and use them on us. So, we destroyed Iraq, losing several hundred thousand troops to death, injury, or disease, $2 trillion in treasure, and killed at least 1 million Iraqis, half of whom were children.
Trump's assault over the weekend is not the end of the conflict, but the beginning of another phase that will lead.... to who knows where. America First means not looking for fights all over the earth to right wrongs, no matter how justified. That's why we keep losing inspite of massive amounts of blood and treasure. I wish the Israelis well but this is the second war they've drug us into under false pretenses.
I believe the U.S. attack on the Iranian regime was justified, but it is not surprising that so many aren’t buying it after so many decades of the government and media crying wolf about countries we had no business attacking or supporting their destruction
If by that, you mean saving the planet from an evil regime having a nuclear weapon...I'll be happy to be duped. This is not a costly war, nor is it a foolhardy adventure. It was a precision strike to eliminate a nuclear program that cannot be allowed to come to fruition. This isn't black and white. There is nuance. And a surgical strike or set of strikes is not a protracted war, nor is it boots on the ground. No American was harmed. No aircraft took any fire. It was not under false pretenses, either. President Trump has been saying wince 2011 that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Instead of being grateful, you are conflating Operation Midnight Hammer with something it is not - a prolonged war engagement. Trump immediately moved to peace negotiations. I love your work John Leake, but you are not assessing the facts as they are in front of us.
Greetings Linda, we shall see how all this plays out. I can't quite rid myself of remembering the weirdness of the Japanese carrier group getting so close to Oahu with no one noticing it, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, hundreds of unanswered questions about 9/11, Saddam's "WMDs," and the curious fact that a former terrorist with a US $10 million bounty on his head just a couple of months ago is now the recognized head of state of Syria.
They are putting the MRNA vax in your food you need to do this right now....
https://t.co/jS9BNQSsDI
like.
Are you being sarcastic, or facetious? You do know we were very well-prepared for Pearl Harbor, and it was NOT a "sneak attack", right?....
John - "the weirdness of the Japanese carrier group getting so close to Oahu with no one noticing it"
Bill - "You do know we were very well-prepared for Pearl Harbor, and it was NOT a 'sneak attack' "
How does John's point conflict with your point?
Read "Day of Deceit--The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor" by Robert B. Stinnett. (A bit hard to find, but you can probably pick up a used copy.) It is a carefully documented history of what actually happened. Based on Stinnett's research, it is clear that U.S. Naval intelligence knew about the approach of the Japanese carrier group, and made sure not to inform Admiral Husband, who was in charge of the defenses of Pearl Harbor.
Why do you think it does?....
How many nuclear weapons does Iran possess? ZERO (0)
How many times has Iran attacked a foreign nation in the last 50 years? ZERO (0)
How many nuclear weapons does the US have? Almost FOUR THOUSAND (4,000)
How many nations has the US invaded in the last 50 years? THIRTY (30)
How many nuclear weapons does Israel possess? At least NINETY (90)
In how many conflicts in the last 50 years has Israel been the aggressor? At least SEVEN (7).
So, WHO is the 'EVIL REGIME' here? The numbers do not lie.
Your claim Iran has never attacked a foreign nation is false.
For over 40 years they have chanted Death to America, and since then they have set about to do so.
Iran and/or its proxies have attacked our forces 300-400 times since 1980. These include:
• April 1983 Beirut U.S. embassy bombing killed 63 including 17 Americans
• October 1983 Beirut Marine barracks bombing killed 241 U.S Marines and Sailors
• 1987-1988 Iran-Iraq War, Iranian forces attacked U.S flagged ships and naval assets in the Persian Gulf
• 1996 Khobar Tower bombing in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 Americans
• 2003-2011 Iraq War: Iran-backed militias killed at least 603 U.S. troops with specially designed explosives.
• 2020 Missile strikes at U.S bases in Iraq, injuring over 100 troops
• 2023-2024: Iranian backed militias in Iraq, Syrai and Jordan conducted over 180 attacks on U.S forces that killed and wounded U.S services members
None of these drew a meaningful response until last Saturday night.
That's a helpful corrective to the post by John Sutton (with whom I still broadly agree on his main points). What people constantly overlook in discussing the evils of Iran is how it was the 1953 coup d’état - backed and funded by the United States and the United Kingdom in support of BP - to remove Mohammad Mosaddegh and install the despotic Shah as Iran’s leader that led to the 1979 Ayatollah revolution and the mess we are in today.
Of those mentioned, the following were perpetrated by Iran-backed proxies in direct response to US military involvement in kinetic Middle East conflicts
• 1983 Beirut U.S. Embassy bombing
• 1983 Beirut Marine Barracks bombing
• 1996 Khobar Towers, Saudi Arabia bombing
• Killing of US troops 2003–2011 Iraq War and in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan in 2023-24
The following two incidents were direct attacks by Iranian forces
• Iran–Iraq War 1987-1988 Iranian Forces attacked U.S.-flagged ships and Naval Assets that were supporting Iraq against Iran, in the Persian Gulf.
• Missile Strikes at U.S. air Bases in Iraq injured over 100 Troops in 2020 in response to the US assassination of Qasem Soleimani.
The statement that Iran has not attacked a foreign nation, as both the US and Israel did a few days ago, in the last 50 years, still holds.
You prove my point, thank you. Iran has threatened to and attacked the US since the barracks bombing 1983, 1979 when they took over the U.S. Embassy if you want to be accurate. Your claim is these attacks were, what, in self defense? Justified under some theory?
Your claim Iran has not attacked a foreign nation in 50 years has no basis in fact.
Nonsense. These were retaliatory and defensive responses, not offensive, as were the recent US and Israeli assaults on Iranian territory.
Retaliatory and defensive responses are, none the less, attacks on US forces and, therefore, attacks on the US.
I love Americans and my country but numbers don’t lie.
We have become dumb and fat.
I agree with the above statements, just wondering though on the evil of Iran by funding terrorist groups?
I am with Linda here if for no other reason than I too am not sure what’s your point. The human condition hasn’t changed since Adam was thrown out of Eden & people have been killing each other ever since Cain offed Abel. As such, peace is not the absence of war. Unlike many of the conflicts you cited, there were no mass human casualties here & Trump got his point across to multiple entities on multiple levels and in the process probably brought the world an extended period of not war. So can we take this opportunity to look at the glass as half full?
You really need to widen your information sources and apply critical thinking to opposing points. Not to mention spend quite a few years on history, again with multiple competing sources.
One never really knows what skeletons are in the closets of one's own side until reading/listening to the other side(s). If you maintain an open mind, your eventual education will shock you.
Canada used to have nukes we never should have given them up. Especjally with the guy who doesn't need Congress to declare war to the south of Canada.
Why cant Iran have nukes if China does, Pakistan does, Israel does?
Does Canada get a bullseye too? Even though we played a part in the Manhattan project? I'm sure the propaganda can be worked so we miscreants deserve it.
If the strike results in no more nuclear weapons for Iran, end of story, then yes, a good move. It could result in the opposite effect though, along with other problems. It was a gamble.
Well said, Linda. John Leake’s common-sense is nowhere in evidence in his post. Instead there is a legslistic false equivalence between Israel and Iran. President Trump took action and the world is safer.
If by 'evil regime having a nuclear weapon' you mean Israel, I agree with you. Israel has shown that it IS an evil, genocidal, and cruel regime with a deep sense of entitlement, fully supported by obscenely wealthy Zionists like Miriam Adelson -- who also funds Donald Trump's political career. Through its US proxies, e.g., AIPAC, Israel also exerts a great deal of control over U.S. politicians and their efforts to rein in defense allocations on Israel's behalf.
But I am not naive enough to believe that you are referring to Israel. I am painfully aware that U.S. media propaganda has successfully drummed up public support for attacks against Iran -- in exactly the same manner that they've sold U.S. dupes (i.e., uninformed citizens) on countless wars against all the Middle East and African countries that Israel has successfully urged America to attack during the last 25 years -- Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and now Iran. Each of these military misadventures has resulted in countless deaths and needless suffering among innocent civilians and U.S. military personnel alike. In each case, U.S. propaganda has led the American people into wars based on false pretenses. Remember George Bush's fiery speeches raising the specter of "Weapons of Mass Destruction"? We have been lied to by our 'leaders' in every instance! Doesn't THAT upset you at all??
Finally, why should the U.S.A. be the ultimate arbiter selecting which countries get to develop nuclear weapons? Do we really have any moral authority on this issue? After all, we are the ONLY nation in the entire history of the world to use nuclear weapons on another country (though not all historians agree that doing so was even necessary to end WWII), and the raw carnage we inflicted on CIVILIANS was savagely brutal.
Why should America go searching for “monsters abroad” when we have them in our own backyard?! For example, the entire scamdemic and rollout of deadly poisonous jabs!
Bibi's will and the will of the lobby held sway.
Can we talk about the dog that didn't bark? People have been asking why Israel and the U.S. attacked Iran now, given that there has been an "imminent" threat of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon for around 30 years. No-one has a good answer. What seems hard to deny is that the U.S. and Israel planned this 1-2 punch attack well before it commenced about 2 weeks ago. It makes one wonder whether even the counterattack by Iran to the initial Israeli attack was "planned" or at least anticipated, as a way of giving the U.S. apparently legitimate reason to enter the war. In spite of the claims of the war being over, and peace negotiations being initiated, there is nothing in Iran's history to suggest that they would be reasonably expected to enter into peace negotiations. The response of Russia and China seems very calculated, and likely planned in advance. Although I know little to nothing about what is happening behind the scenes, I am so disillusioned by the dishonesty in what media reports that I tend to think that nearly all of politics, and especially war politics, are theatrics designed to get the desired response from the public and others who the regime requires to be influenced. Call me cynical, but I think the whole affair is yet another ploy to gain money and power for those behind the scenes who are accustomed to pulling the strings.
I don't think Israel expected Iran's response to their attack to be so destructive or effective. Israel's port of Haifa is wrecked, their only oil refinery shut down and about a third of Tel Aviv is in ruins. It will take them years to recover from this. Otherwise, I agree with your comments.
Ah, just NOW waking up, I see! Welcome to REALITY!!....it's not so bad, once you get used to it....
I stopped wanting aggression after finding the warmongers knew there was none in Iraq but killed a million people any way. I read somewhere that before the president attacks a foreign power like Iraq, Mexico, Vietnam or Canada there should be a congressional declaration of war.
When no one cares, it can't be good.
"Humans are absolute suckers for war propaganda." True. But I am not going to throw rocks at B2 bombers. Many years ago, I was filming a car spot out in the Mojave. At 10AM it was already getting hot, so I went over to the cooler for a cold drink. As I bent over the hairs stood up on the back of my neck, as they do when you feel someone unseen watching you. I stood up, spun around, and there—at a distance that on a good day I could throw a rock—was a B2. It was more or less hovering... flying very, very slow. I could see the pilot. It sent chills up my spine. The last thing I could imagine at that point was throwing a rock and starting a war.
Hmmm. Assuming what you saw is real, the B2 may be a candidate for the "advanced propulsion" systems people have speculated about.
Yes. It was very real. They do a lot of testing out there. And practice. While we were shooting the F-16's would practice runs over the top of our picture car. No sound on approach and then boom... At a dry lake bed in CA, while we were filming another car spot, an F35 (brand new at the time) was going through its acrobatic work out. We were too busy working to pay anything but offhand attention... nonetheless, a van came streaking out across the desert; a stern Navy fellow jumped out and warned us to keep the camera pointed in the other direction. We did not argue.
Lots of evil murderous regimes have nukes, many far worse then Iran. Netanyahu has been saying for decades that the Iraqis, then the Iranians were about to get nukes and use them on us. So, we destroyed Iraq, losing several hundred thousand troops to death, injury, or disease, $2 trillion in treasure, and killed at least 1 million Iraqis, half of whom were children.
Trump's assault over the weekend is not the end of the conflict, but the beginning of another phase that will lead.... to who knows where. America First means not looking for fights all over the earth to right wrongs, no matter how justified. That's why we keep losing inspite of massive amounts of blood and treasure. I wish the Israelis well but this is the second war they've drug us into under false pretenses.
Danny Huckabee
My first thought on reading this piece was, "true, but what's your point?"
Indeed, and not just war propaganda.
As John Quincy Adams said in his famous speech July 4, 1821 - America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy”
No, but the traitors who infest our government do.
https://jqas.org/jqas-monsters-to-destroy-speech-full-text/
Bullshit time over
Get em
Obama
Time running out
Arrest the traitors
They are putting the MRNA vax in your food you need to do this right now....
https://t.co/jS9BNQSsDI
I believe the U.S. attack on the Iranian regime was justified, but it is not surprising that so many aren’t buying it after so many decades of the government and media crying wolf about countries we had no business attacking or supporting their destruction