I wish I knew the identity of the commenter Quickwrit. He/she contributes remarkable insights. This blog is dedicated to education and democracy. But our leaders are so arrogant and irresponsible that they endanger education, democracy, and our survival.
Here is the latest from Quickwrit:
IT’S NOT JUST the USS Abraham Lincoln: MOST of the U.S. ships on patrol in the Iran war are in sad-to-dire condition. Recall that the USS Benfold, a key guided-missile ship, drifted without propulsion and internal power for four days, during which time it was a sitting duck for Iranian missiles. Inside the ship, the lack of internal power meant that the crew had no working toilets (most U.S. ships don’t have flush toilets and rely on vacuum power to suck waste away), no air conditioning in the cramped quarters below deck, and no way to prepare food for the crew.
And among all the ships on Iran patrol that are in need of repair, the one that’s most likely to fail next is also the most critical in the blockade: The USS Boxer. Boxer is far overdue for a two-year complete overhaul. It was supposed to be in dry dock in San Diego through October of this year, but was instead deployed in March to Iran.
Dry dock overhauls aren’t just like going in for an oil change — the ships are virtually gutted and rebuilt from the inside out because of the tremendous wear and tear on the machinery during deployment at sea. USS Boxer is in sad shape right now and the current photos of the rust all over her hull only hint at that band aids being applied to the equipment inside to keep her somewhat combat ready. Her crew had expected to be on leave with their families during the dry dock period; instead, they just turned around and went to Iran. They and their families are justifiably furious.
Many other U.S. ships and crews are near the breaking point, mechanically and psychologically.
The food situation for the entire fleet in Iranian waters is critical because of TRUMP’S RETREAT that has had nearly zero coverage by U.S. media —
TRUMP RETREATS — The U.S. has been forced by Iran to move resupply operations from Bahrain to Diego Garcia, a U.S. base more than 2,000 miles away in the Indian Ocean, making it more difficult and dangerous to resupply U.S. ships and bases. Some supply lines are even longer than that now.
THE REASON FOR THE RETREAT, just at a time when the difficulties of resupplying U.S. carriers and other ships has made headlines, is because China has armed Iran with a new generation of missiles and drones that can easily penetrate U.S. defenses, and because of the critical shortage of U.S. defensive missiles.
CHINA has declared that “China is A STRONG STRATEGIC PARTNER” of Iran, and “China STRONGLY SUPPORTS IRAN on safeguarding its sovereignty, security, and national dignity.”
So, during the cease-fire, China has supplied Iran with a new generation of missiles and drones that can evade U.S. missiles and electronic countermeasures
Iran’s new missiles from China operate with China’s own “BeiDou” BDS-3/B3A global positioning system (GPS) to guide missiles accurately to hit U.S. and Israeli targets.
The Chinese BDS-3 military-tier B3A system makes U.S. targeting and electronic countermeasures basically useless because “BeiDou” BDS-3/B3A is based on highly-complex frequency-hopping technology and incorporates Navigation Message Authentication (NMA) that prevents “spoofing”.
Before Iran switched to Chinese BDS-3/B3A technology, when Iran fired missiles or sent drones at U.S. bases and ships or at Israel and other nations, the Iranian missiles and drones could be electronically jammed or “spoofed” with false target coordinates.
But, now the U.S. and Israel must rely on old-fashioned radar and fire volleys of large numbers of defensive missiles in the hopes of hitting an incoming Iranian target. THAT’S WHY the U.S. and Israel are depleting their stocks of defensive missiles.
All this information about Iran’s DBS-3/D3A missiles/drone guidance system was available in the Pentagon before Trump’s Iran war, but He-Man Hegseth fired any general who tried to tell him this and tell him that it was a bad idea to launch a war against Iran.
MEANWHILE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan have just signed a mutual defense agreement that LEAVES OUT THE U.S. because Saudi Arabia and Turkey have come to recognize that America’s military can’t defend them and so they have joined with Pakistan, which is a nuclear power and is no friend of America. That spells a BIG LOSS of influence for the United States.
AND NOW desperate Trump is flailing around and attacking U.S. allies — he told Fox News host Trey Yingst that “If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the sh*t out of them!” Oman has been trying to negotiate a settlement with Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, acting on America’s behalf at Trump’s request. The Middle East nations are now all asking who Trump will abandon and target next in his desperation.
PLUS — China has been watching and counting as Hegseth has been stripping defensive missiles from U.S. bases and ships in Asia, to the point that the U.S. Asian bases and ships have barely enough missiles left to defend themselves, let alone challenge China when it invades Taiwan.
AND NOW, Trump has announced that he is withdrawing America’s last supercarrier from Asia and sending it to the Iran war. China must be very pleased.
When China invades Taiwan soon, the entire U.S. economy will crash because U.S. industry — as well as the U.S. defense industry — depends on computer chips made in Taiwan.
This is a disaster that has been caused by Trump thinking that by winning a quick war against Iran, he could distract American voters from his continuing withholding of the Epstein papers.
(Share this strategic information because the public isn’t receiving it from the media.)
Less national “defense” (sic) would actually make us safer. Most of the threat to the U.S. is blowback from the “defense” we’ve inflicted on other countries. Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, etc. have no interest in attacking the U.S., they simply want to protect their own sovereignty. They see what we’ve done to countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Honduras, Venezuela (and what we already did to Korea and Iran before) and they’re trying to prevent that from happening (again). If we pulled all our bases away from their borders and kept our fleets in our own waters we would be much safer. And as a bonus, we could drastically reduce the military budget which could then be used in ways that would make us healthier and happier. But rule by propaganda and paranoia is much more profitable.
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I’ve always been skeptical of the enormous amount of taxpayer money the U.S. spends on defense, but the recent conflict with Iran has made me question it even more. We maintain hundreds of overseas bases, aircraft carriers, advanced fighter jets, helicopters, and missile systems, yet history suggests that this overwhelming military superiority rarely achieves its stated political goals. Air power alone seldom changes regimes, and when we commit to large-scale ground invasions, the results have shown how difficult—and often impossible—it is to reshape another country’s government. What’s the point of all this spending when it rarely achieves our objectives?
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Why is it our business to change other countries’ regimes or reshape their government? We can’t scream about Russia violating Ukraine’s “sovereignty” when the U.S. does the same thing regularly.
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We can scream about Russia’s unprovoked and vicious invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine is fighting to save its sovereignty, its culture, and its freedom. We don’t want to reshape Ukraine’s government. We want to help them survive aggression.
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Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Indonesia, El Salvador, Argentina, Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Honduras, Venezuela and many, many others were all fighting to save their sovereignty, freedom and culture but the U.S. and its puppet media and cheerleaders never gave a rat’s rear. Quit pretending we care about Ukraine as anything other than a proxy for our aggression against Russia.
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And don’t pretend we don’t reshape other countries’ governments routinely. Any country that tries to go remotely “left”, even vaguely progressive, we invade/bomb/proxy war/etc., kill off all vaguely left-leaning people and install right-wing governments like the Contras or Pinochet.
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