[War] Trump declares war on Iran for regime change

Look, the guy is like a Ken Doll in a suit playing Mr. Macho GI Joe Maga Warrior.

Trump hired him for 7 reasons:

1. He loves Trump.
2. He looks good on camera.
3. He was a Fox commentator for years.
4. He was a racist bigot who wanted to remove all women from positions of power and use DEI hires as his reasoning for everyone else he fired.
5. He would demand Trump loyalty from troops, above all else.
6. He would lie to cover up wrongdoings.
7. He would say woke this woke that repeatedly.

It didn't matter to him if he was far far less experienced than all those 4 or 5 star Admirals and Generals. It didn't matter to Trump that he had a lying cheating ugly past. It didn't even matter that all he ever led was a platoon. Nope. He wanted a yes man who wouldn't question the legality or humanity of using military forces for what ever he wanted to.

 

The whole approach to bombing the terrorists out of Islam will never work.

The focus needs to be the ground game they are working on in the US. Don't bend over backwards to accommodate those who want to take over and dominate under the guise of victimhood. America can never become the Middle East or 21st century London.

 

@astros123 has reduced himself to believing Iranian propaganda. What a sad state of affairs! Loser mentality!


GOOD DAY

 

Have you heard one of his "briefings"?

Sadly, with precision drones and AI, war can start to look disturbingly like a video game, moving pieces from headquarters, far from danger and in the comfort of a control room. Operators can sit thousands of miles away, watching targets on screens and pulling triggers with joysticks.

But now, combine that distance with the macho culture Hegseth has brought to the job, and lives can start to feel less real, not just the "enemy's" lives, but our own soldiers' lives too.

When Hegseth gives a briefing, he sometimes sounds like someone playing Call of Duty. Paraphrasing: "We're playing for keeps. Death and destruction all day." That might fire up a crowd, but it is the language of someone who has confused confidence with callousness.

Then, when tragedy struck and six Americans were killed by an Iranian drone, he attacked the media, unable to grasp that the deaths of Americans are not just a PR problem. He stated, paraphrasing: "When a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it's front-page news. I get it. The press only wants to make the president look bad."

Those were not drones that "got through." Those were sons and daughters who did not come home.

And that was not a briefing. It was a performance. Hegseth was not answering to the American people. He was playing to an audience, casting journalists doing their jobs as the enemy. But asking how six Americans died is not a political attack. It is exactly the question a Sec of Defense should want to answer.

But not this one. This one is not working for the American people. He is working for only one person: his boss, prioritizing how it reflects on the boss above everything else.

War is not a game. It is so horrible that our civilian leaders' primary obligation, beyond winning, is to never lose sight of the human cost. When Americans die, that is not a performance problem to manage. It is the full weight of the responsibility they accepted when they took the job.

In any normal time, that responsibility would end a Sec of Defense's career.

 

https://www.csis.org/analysis/37-billion-estimated-cost-epic-furys-first-100-hours
The first 100 hours (H+100) of the operation are estimated to cost $3.7 billion, or $891.4 million each day. Some of these costs are already budgeted, but most ($3.5 billion) are not. The shift of U.S. forces to less expensive munitions and the steep decline of Iranian drone and missile launches will drive costs down. However, future costs will depend mostly on the intensity of operations and the effectiveness of Iranian retaliation.

 

A classified report by the National Intelligence Council found that even a large-scale assault on Iran launched by the United States would be unlikely to oust the Islamic republic’s entrenched military and clerical establishment, a sobering assessment as the Trump administration raises the specter of an extended military campaign that officials say has “only just begun.”

The findings, confirmed to The Washington Post by three people familiar with the report’s contents, raise doubts about President Donald Trump’s declared plan to “clean out” Iran’s leadership structure and install a ruler of his choosing.

The report, completed about a week before the United States and Israel initiated the war on Feb. 28, outlined succession scenarios stemming from either a narrowly tailored campaign against Iran’s leaders or a broader assault against its leadership and government institutions, the people familiar with its findings said. In both cases, the intelligence concluded that Iran’s clerical and military establishment would respond to the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by following protocols designed to preserve continuity of power, these people said.

The prospect of Iran’s fragmented opposition taking control of the country was described as “unlikely,” said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a classified report.

The National Intelligence Council, or NIC, is composed of veteran analysts who produce classified assessments meant to represent the collective wisdom of Washington’s 18 intelligence agencies.

 

Let me guess -- the same 18 intel agencies that said that Hunter Biden's laptop had all the trappings of Russian disinformation? You guys never learn! How many hoaxes ginned up by ex-intel community deep staters does it take before you adjust? There's always a 20% that is super slow to learn, but this is getting ridiculous, amigos!


GOOD DAY

 

I wonder what all the Iranians who were supposedly dancing in the street and thanking America are thinking when they see what Pete Hegseth said? Or when we bomb the latest school?

We want them to take control of their government, but we’re going to kill them and bomb their children?

not to mention all the toxic fumes that are spreading with each bombing campaign…say hello to a generation of birth defects

 

This administration is the perfect object lesson for why you need all the experts and professionals that Donald Trump fired so they couldn't constrain him from sticking his finger in a metaphorical light socket.

Donnie running the most powerful country in the history of the world by the seat of his pants is one of the lowest-IQ moves of all time.

 

Right. His business history speaks for itself. Failed businesses, bankruptcy. The only thing he did that was smart was buy real estate but even that wasn’t on purpose.

Bottom line: to run any sort of large organization you need to delegate to the right people. Trump inherited an absolutely massive cadre of experts with institutional knowledge and replaced them with sycophantic idiots. Good job, business expert.

The Trump Family is literally a mafia organization.

 

Wrong, and embarrassingly so. Those were 51 former senior intelligence officials signing a letter, not "18 intel agencies."

You were wrong about U.S. intel calling it Iranian propaganda. When called out, you shifted the goalposts. Now you're wrong about the basic facts of the thing you shifted to. That takes real dedication.

 

I'm not wrong at all -- you guys fell for typical WaPo / Deep State propaganda again! Common cause with Iran?


GOOD DAY

 

Exactly right on the delegation point. There are still a large number of good career people doing the actual work. The ones with real institutional knowledge, but the managers placed above them are another story entirely. Dangerous, ideologically driven, and incompetent. The people who know what they're doing have been systematically sidelined or replaced by loyalists whose only qualification is telling the boss what he wants to hear.

 

If you genuinely believe U.S. intelligence is Iranian propaganda, that's a red flag worth discussing with a mental professional. But if you're just playing political hack, credit where it's due: the commitment is impressive.

 

In any normal time a guy like Pete wouldn't even be considered for that position to begin with.

 

The idiots who voted for him were warned. They decided to believe the snake oil salesman in a suit instead. They love the mad MAGA hatter. They chose not to listen to the experts about how dangerous and unfit he was to serve.

• National Security Team: A 2026 analysis of 32 senior leaders who served on Trump's National Security Council found that at least 19 of them publicly or privately warned of his instability, unfitness for office, or authoritarian desires.
• GOP Official Letters: In 2016, a group of 50 senior Republican national security officials signed a letter calling Trump "dangerous" and stating he "lacks the character, values, and experience to be president".
• Former Cabinet/Senior Staff: Dozens of former staffers and cabinet members have raised alarms, including former Vice President Mike Pence, former Defense Secretaries Jim Mattis and Mark Esper, former Attorney General Bill Barr, and former National Security Advisors John Bolton and H.R. McMaster.
• Defense Leadership: All 10 living former secretaries of defense (at that time) signed a 2021 letter warning against involving the military in election disputes.
• Mental Health Professionals: A letter signed by more than 200 mental health professionals in 2024 warned that Trump’s alleged "malignant narcissism" makes him an "existential threat to democracy".

 

There are people who need to leave and their governments won't pay or assist them. There's people with medical issues, seniors, babies, lots of people with PTSD from the levant and Africa, etc.

For example my sister in laws cousin had to return to Lebanon, his grandparents were alone in a town that is in danger. They said no to him for one week, he got a call saying there's a seat available if he can make it there quickly and is willing to take the risk. Despite all this danger, he bravely got on the flight and made it back to protect them.

Thousands of stories like that. Couple million Middle Easterners here. Pakistanis and Afghanis currently facing similar issues. Brits and Americans shitt!ng themselves, threatening to call journalists if they don't get on flights. I need to get my parents out they're very old, my dad has dementia, can't walk and forgets that alerts ended so he sometimes panics for an hour after the alarm goes off.

****'s real real. That's why I wish you wouldn't talk about Dubai as if the people here are any less human than you.

 

Turning the military into HR culture and removing terrorist designation from groups like the Houthis and Iran is what allowed Hamas to strengthen. Don't forget they killed 40 Americans in the attacks. Biden's admin may have pleased you with the safe space words they used, but it was a detriment to the nation from a strength perspective.

From a military standpoint alone, 16 servicemembers were killed during the Biden era from Iranian proxies. Post Gaza War, militia groups supported by Iran have executed more than 170 attacks on US bases in Iraq, Jordan and Syria. The phrasing from Hegseth is to undo the HRing of the military and the emboldening of all these proxies, which exists for a reason.

The US, from an execution standpoint, is light years more accountable than the Iraq war years.

 

Somewhat related.... Prosecute, serve time in the Atlanta Pen (the worst) and then DEPORT




GOOD DAY