We know what’s coming and we are prepared.
🇺🇸🇨🇳🇮🇱 What will the surge of US forces to the Middle East cost the military?
The day the Middle East almost erupted into a full regional war this summer, Lloyd Austin was touring an Asian shipyard.
Just before the defense secretary visited Subic Bay, Philippines, the former site of a massive U.S. Navy base, Israel killed the political leader of Hamas, who was visiting Iran.
Austin’s July visit was meant to show his focus on Asia, the region America says is its top priority. Instead, he ended the trip distracted by the Middle East, spending hours containing the crisis on a flight back to Washington.
Since Oct. 7, when Hamas’ attack on Israel provoked all-out war in Gaza, the Pentagon has been on call. When the region has approached a wider war, the Defense Department surged forces there to calm it down. But after a year, some in Congress and the Pentagon are growing concerned about how to sustain that pace, and what it will cost the military in the long term.
Call it the U.S. Central Command squeeze. The Pentagon insists its surge has helped stop the Middle East from falling into chaos. But the longer the region borders on conflict, the more the U.S. tests its endurance for crises later on, most notably, a future conflict with China.
The pressure on the military increased even further this week. After their most intense attacks in almost 20 years, Israel and the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah are close to a larger war. On Monday, Austin yet again ordered more troops to the region, joining 40,000 other American personnel there, 6,000 more than normal. Another aircraft carrier may soon follow.
“We’re caught in this kind of never-ending quagmire of having to divert resources, and we’re burning [out] on the back end,” a senior congressional aide said.
Their message was that America’s military wouldn’t exhaust itself anytime soon, but that a year of unplanned deployments and spent missiles come with a cost. Even more, they said, the longer the crisis continues, the more the Pentagon will have to manage tradeoffs between the urgent needs of the Middle East and the rising challenges of the Indo-Pacific.
Pentagon leaders say they calculate the risk in pulling assets from one region to another, and that the choice to move forces away from Asia is a sign that they consider the region stable enough to do so.
“I have relayed messages that it is better to invest in deterrence where there is no overt conflict, rather than intervene in a conflict where there is one already,” the Philippines Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro said in an August interview. He wouldn’t specify who in the U.S. those messages have reached.
That said, the cost of this posture is also becoming clearer.
The first, and perhaps the most important, part of that tally is the military’s ability to meet future needs, known as “readiness” in defense jargon. By sending more forces to the Middle East, the Pentagon is accepting what amounts to a mortgage: higher costs on its forces to avoid an even bigger bill.
Without specifying the impact of these extensions so far, multiple defense officials and congressional aides said the U.S. is already having to manage “tradeoffs” between the needs of the Middle East today and other areas in the future.
This February, the Houthis shot a ballistic missile at the Navy destroyer Gravely in the Red Sea, one of many times the militia group targeted American ships in the waterway.
But this one came close. In fact, the ship used a short-range weapon — rather than the typical missile — to intercept the attack. The Houthis came within a nautical mile of success, according to Navy officials.
This is an example of the other two costs involved in the Pentagon’s response.
The Navy estimates that between Oct. 7 and mid-July, it fired $1.16 billion worth of munitions while on station in the Red Sea.
🇮🇷❌👑👑❗️ — Videos coming out of Iran, after the Internet ban, share some of the most gruesome and terrific images so far in this protest season
At least 10 protesters in Fardis, Karaj area of Alborz province of Iran, West of Tehran, were reportedly killed by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Troops under orders of the Islamic Republic Regime in Iran.
According to reports from netizens via Musk's Starlink, dozens of other deaths are being reported as having occurred in other locations on Iranian soil.
In one of the videos, it's possible hear in Persian/Farsi:
"Right in front of Fardis Police Station No. 11, a Toyota was pulled up and sprayed with gunfire.
People were mowed down with heavy weapons, machine-gun fire, indiscriminately."
🇻🇪 Call of Duty: Ghosts, PC Game, was released 12 years ago when Venzuela Maduro started his Presidency.
🇺🇸 In the game, US Military raid Venezuela at night and capture the Venezuelan Dictator.
In the game, it says this Event happens in the Year 2026.
- We are living in a Matrix
- We are in a Simulation
- There is a Script
- Remember the Charlie Kirk movie, Snake Eyes, which foretold his Death
🇬🇧 The Prevent video game that treats every teenager like a far-Right extremist
Youngsters threatened with referral to anti-terror programme if they question migration while playing
A state-funded computer game is warning teenagers that they risk being referred to a counter-terrorism programme if they question mass migration.
Pathways is an interactive game designed for 11- to 18-year-old pupils and funded by Prevent, a Home Office programme for tackling extremism.
Young players are directed to help their in-game characters – a white teenage boy and girl – to avoid being reported for “extreme Right-wing ideology” after discussing migration online.
Characters can face extremism referrals if they choose to engage with groups that spread “harmful ideological messages”, or join protests against the “erosion of British values”. Even researching online immigration statistics is portrayed negatively.
Other in-game pitfalls include sharing a video that claims Muslim men,...
IT KEEPS GETTING WORSE: A BURIED CIA VIDEO JUST SURFACED… AND ERIKA KIRK IS IN IT
https://x.com/hustlebitch_/status/2009688114923745442?s=46
A 10-year-old documentary about EMP attacks and U.S. power grid vulnerability has quietly surfaced - and buried inside it is Erika Kirk.
She’s not observing.
She’s not a host.
She’s in a role most civilians never get near, briefing national security professionals alongside a former CIA National Security & Energy Specialist on how an EMP or coordinated physical attack could collapse the U.S. power grid.
This isn’t casual footage.
It’s technical.
It’s inside-baseball.
And it’s the exact kind of material most people never get near, let alone present.
Which raises some very uncomfortable questions:
Why was she in that role?
What qualified her to brief on national security threats?
Who brought her into that room, and why is none of it explained?
Back then, this clip passed quietly. Today, with everything surrounding her, it ...
I don't understand why so many people are bewildered by Trump going for Venezuela and Greenland and Canada and Cuba and Mexico and Colombia, etc.
This has literally been the plot of the elites for the better part of a century.
Orwell wrote about it in 1949 as "Oceania".
1930s Technocracy Incorporated (scientific dictatorship), of which Elon Musk's grandfather was a member, planned for a supranational (globalist) EU-style American Technate (North American Union).
They likely first created the EU as the prototype given the opportunity they had in the aftermath of WWII. It is a known fact that the CIA and US State Department (alongside European globalist networks) financed 50+% of European integration.
Is it any mystery then, the Borg-like project to replicate the model to the rest of the planet? The EU is financing and advising policy and standards for the African Union and Southeast Asian Union and South American Union (e.g. UNASUR). Putin is also promoting the Eurasian Union.
...
