>>24438452

USS Gerald R. Ford arrives in Croatia for maintenance

SPLIT, Croatia — The USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, which has been part of Middle East war operations, arrived at the Croatian city of Split today, the US embassy says in a statement.

AFP journalists saw the vessel arriving this morning as it headed toward the port, with the embassy saying it was part of a “scheduled port visit and maintenance.”

The carrier left a naval base in Crete earlier this week after returning to the base following a laundry fire onboard, which injured two crew members.

“During its visit the USS Gerald R Ford will host local officials and key leaders to recognize the strong and enduring alliance between the United States and Croatia,” the embassy statement says.

The United States and Israel launched a massive air campaign against Iran in late February following a major US military buildup in the Middle East that included the Ford and another aircraft carrier, the Abraham Lincoln.

Both ships — which have air wings made up of dozens of aircraft — have played key roles in Iran operations, and the withdrawal of the Ford leaves a gap for US forces in the region.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/uss-gerald-r-ford-arrives-in-croatia-for-maintenance/

fear not, bootlickers, it's just "scheduled maintenance" in the middle of a tactical engagement. no need to panic, USrael is kicking ass and taking names. iran is about to be permanently destroyed. thank you for your attention to this matter.

>>24438452

Is a Ground War With Iran Imminent, or Inevitable?

The answer is an unqualified 'No.'

If you watch or read the media, you would think that a “ground invasion” of Iran is “imminent” — either to land on Kharg Island, a five-mile speck that processes 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports, or to take some coastal strip adjacent to the Strait of Hormuz.

It is not imminent and not even inevitable.

Military sources tell me that for weeks, the Pentagon has exaggerated the readiness and potency of the Marines, setting in motion a media frenzy that is part stupidity, part disinformation to spook Tehran, and part manipulation to please Donald Trump.

“We got two Marine expeditionary units sailing to this island [Kharg],” Sen. Lindsey Graham told Fox News Sunday. “We did Iwo Jima. We can do this.”

Sounds scary, right? Here’s the reality.

On March 13, headlines blared that the “three-ship” USS Tripoli Amphibious Ready Group, carrying the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, was ordered from Japan to the Middle East. Over the next week, news outlets across the globe literally tracked the supposed 2,200 Marines making their way moving west through the Strait of Malacca into the Indian Ocean.

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/is-a-ground-war-with-iran-imminent?triedRedirect=true

Ken Klippenstein is a world-renowned American national security journalist

>>24438621

>the same cia hippies of the past, that have survived the drugs, that is, are the same old folks protesting today.

we were not CIA, assbreath. we were patriots and the conscience of our nation, saving americans from dying for moloch, and corporate greed

>>24438639

>You really are one dense motherfucker

sad how many of them are still here

bootlickers and/or retards, IDK

>>24438656

>this act of Treason

see

>>24438654

don't hear everything you believe

>>24438629

2/3

In actuality, one of the three ships, the USS San Diego, never left Japan and is still there. And the other two ships, carrying just 1,500 fighters, are sitting at Diego Garcia, roughly 4,260 kilometers from Iran’s coastline.

And that second Marine Expeditionary Unit? Contrary to some reporting that said that the USS Boxer Group left Hawaii on March 19, it departed San Diego. It will have to cover approximately 22,200 kilometers to reach the region and wouldn’t be able to arrive until mid-April at the earliest. Navy sources in San Diego say it is still unclear to the unit itself whether it is headed for the Gulf or just moving to the Pacific to cover the departing Tripoli group.

Not exactly imminent!

And yet here’s NPR, implying an ominous military buildup:

“Between 2,000 and 3,000 U.S. Army paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division have received written orders to deploy to the Middle East … The deployment, combined with two Marine Expeditionary Units already moving toward the Persian Gulf, could bring 6,000 to 8,000 U.S. ground troops into close proximity to Iran.”

CBS went even further, linking the 82nd Airborne explicitly to the “Iran war.”

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/is-a-ground-war-with-iran-imminent?triedRedirect=true

>>24438688

3/3

The 82nd is just a light infantry battalion. The idea that we’re going to parachute the 82nd for a ground invasion is absurd. We didn’t even do that at the height of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, when a good part of the entire U.S. Army was poised to strike Saddam. (And the 82nd made a near-identical movement in January 2020 after the assassination of Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani.)

The 82nd has a quick reaction brigade to serve exactly as a “ready unit” to quickly deploy anywhere in the world, but CENTCOM sources tell me that with the majority of the brigade is in training in Louisiana and the battalion ‘on its way’ is going to perform a force protection role in the interim, waiting for you know who to decide to do something stupid.

Then there’s the “increase” in U.S. forces constantly being referred to, as if ground troops are building up in the Gulf or more and more aircraft are constantly flowing. But the truth is that almost all of what has augmented the forward deployed forces are maintenance, ordnance, and logistics to sustain a bombing campaign that started as a quick strike and is now extended to a weeks-long campaign for who knows how long.

That augmentation, if you believe the news media, includes a “Third Aircraft Carrier” on its way. “Third US aircraft carrier heads to region as Trump signals long war with Iran and demand for surrender,” YNet news reports.

There is a third carrier that is potentially ready, the USS George H.W. Bush, which could go to the Gulf, especially to relieve the exhausted USS Abraham Lincoln, which is well overdue for rotation, but it is sitting in Virginia, with a liberal leave policy over Easter Week.

And even a second carrier? The USS Gerald Ford — the carrier that’s been bombing Iran from the Mediterranean Sea, has been in port at Souda Bay on Crete in Greece this week, not for combat operations but because it suffered a significant non-combat fire that originated in the ship’s laundry spaces. The blaze rendered more than 100 berthing spaces unusable and displaced several hundred sailors. The Ford isn’t projecting power toward Iran; it’s getting its laundry room repaired.

If you squint, an invasion seems inevitable. But look closer at the actual state of each force being cited, and a very different picture emerges. How is it possible, for instance, that every news organization from the New York Times on down, can report three ships leaving Japan with the Tripoli group when there were only two? Secrecy. Sloppiness. Sops.

With Trump in charge, one never knows. But even if there were a ground operation against Kharg Island, it would most likely involve Army Rangers and special operations forces, Green Berets and Navy SEALs — not some conventional ground assault à la Normandy. The idea of the U.S. Marines storming the beaches while the 82nd Airborne drops on parachutes from above is a cable news fever dream.

This frenzy echoes the panic after Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro was arrested in January, when breathless coverage of military movements convinced many that a conventional U.S. intervention was hours away. It wasn’t.

The panic has even reached active-duty service members, several of whom have contacted me worried they were heading into ground combat.

It also reminds me of another media freakout Iran’s mining of the strait of Hormuz, giving the impression that Tehran had mined the entire passage. It later became clear that Iran either hadn’t mined anything at all or had only planted a few as a signal.

Which is what all of this is about, signaling to Iran. From the beginning of the bombing, signaling that the U.S. is serious this time, that the enemy will be given no quarter, etc. Then came the Marine and then the 82nd Airborne, and a third aircraft carrier, and threats of hell and damnation coming from the mouths of Trump and Hegseth.

It’s the White House’s prerogative to scare the shit out of the Iranian government. But does the media need to do that to the public?

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/is-a-ground-war-with-iran-imminent?triedRedirect=true

>>24438686

>>24438710

i don't see (You) enlisting, ya bloviating gasbag

put up or shut up

>>24438452

‘Raising 10 red flags’: Is Israel’s army exhausted?

After years of regional forever wars, Israel’s chief of staff warns the army is on the brink of collapse

Israel’s Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir issued a stark warning to the country’s cabinet this week: unless urgent measures are taken, the Israeli army is on the brink of collapse.

According to a report by Israel’s Channel 13 on Thursday, Zamir told ministers that he was “raising 10 red flags”, urging the government to move quickly on long-delayed legislation to alleviate the strain on its “exhausted” military.

The army has been overseeing what rights groups and the United Nations have determined is a genocide in Gaza, the de facto annexation of the occupied West Bank and numerous incursions into Lebanon and Syria.

Addressing ministers, Zamir stressed the need for a “conscription law, a reserve duty law, and a law to extend mandatory service”, adding that without these measures, “before long, the [Israeli military] will not be ready for its routine missions and the reserve system will not last”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has since said that plans will be made to extend mandatory military service. However, this is not the first time the alarm has been raised that the military is straining under the pressure of repeated operations, which have seen it involved in the killings of tens of thousands of civilians across the Middle East.

The first came as early as June 2024, just eight months into the genocidal war on Gaza, when France24 reported on shortfalls in troop numbers, exhaustion and a lack of supplies.

That situation has only worsened since.

So, how large was the army before October 2023, how active has it been and how has the current era of unprecedented regional aggression sapped the military’s reserves? Here is what we know.

How suited is the Israeli army to its country’s forever wars?

Not very.

Launched in 1948, the idea of an Israeli military made up of a relatively small standing army backed by a large reserve corps of mobilised citizenry was the plan from the outset in order to instil a narrative of social cohesion, national identity and shared responsibility within the new country’s populace. Reservists would move between civilian life and military service to achieve this.

Before the war on Gaza began on October 7, 2023, Israel’s standing army numbered just 100,000. This was immediately bolstered by calling up 300,000 reservists, pulling Israel’s “citizen soldiers” from their jobs and families to take part in the bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza in response to the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel.

Ultimately, this means that the majority of troops serving are reservists rather than career soldiers.

Where are Israeli troops now?

On March 1, the day after US-Israeli strikes on Iran began, Israel announced the mobilisation of another 100,000 reserve soldiers.

That was in addition to 50,000 reservists currently on duty as a result of the Gaza war.

At the time, military sources said the additional troops would bolster existing positions along the border with Lebanon, its frontier and occupied positions within Syria, as well as in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.

Additionally, Israel’s Home Front Command called up 20,000 reservists, primarily for search and rescue operations, with reinforcements also deployed to the Israeli Air Force, Navy and Intelligence Directorate.

Israel has since deployed “thousands” of those troops to take part in its invasion of southern Lebanon, which it resumed in response to rocket fire from Iranian ally Hezbollah on March 3.

1/2

>>24438732

2/2

Addressing the same security cabinet meeting as Zamir, Central Command chief Major General Avi Bluth told ministers that government policies in the occupied West Bank were also placing increasing pressure on the military’s already stretched manpower.

According to the report, Bluth told ministers that over the past year, the government has approved the construction of multiple illegal settlements in the Jordan Valley and elsewhere in the West Bank as part of a wider operation characterised by rights groups and more than 20 countries as Israel’s “effective annexation” of the occupied Palestinian territory.

Bluth added: “This is your policy, but it requires security and a full protection package, because the reality on the ground has completely changed – and that requires manpower.”

Are Israeli troops exhausted?

According to many of the army’s own members, particularly reservists, they are.

Speaking to the Ynet News outlet, which is typically supportive of Netanyahu and his ruling Likud party, one reservist told the newspaper in December of his decision not to report for duty.

“We have battles to fight at home,” he said, explaining his decision. “There are guys on the team who were fired from their jobs, others whose families are barely staying afloat, or who have been dragging out their studies for a very long time. This is a problem, a complexity that is hard to describe.”

Resentment of the apparent exemption offered to members of Israel’s ultra-religious Haredim community, whose refusal to enlist for service is often overlooked by politicians, is also growing, Israeli media reports.

Responding to Zamir’s comments to the security cabinet, Israel’s opposition leader, Yair Lapid, took to Twitter to address the government directly.

“The government must stop the cowardice, immediately halt all budgets to the Haredi draft dodgers,” he said of the extensive social benefits many in Israel’s ultra religious community rely upon. “Send the military police after the deserters, draft the Haredim without hesitation,” he said.

“The warning has been given. It’s on your heads. It’s in your hands. You cannot continue to abandon Israel’s security, in wartime, for petty politics.”

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/3/27/raising-10-red-flags-is-israels-army-exhausted

>>24438721

>every man has his price

that's true

but what stings most is the fact that these pieces of shit in congress sell out our country for a few shiny baubles