All you new people are making life tedious. I have been teaching this course for twelve years and one can always hope that some lessons are absorbed but then a new wave of you come on the scene, asking questions like "what part of the defense and intelligence establishment is worthwhile?" If you want to ask me questions or anyone else at SST please look first in the archives of the blog and don't expect someone here to write you a summary course on government organization. I have quit working but I used to collect a reasonably high fee for such a task.
There are a few mildly interesting things in the news today:
1. The LA Times referred to Adam Schiff today as an "attack labradoodle." This adequately conveys the impression of a person straining to be fierce when it just ain't in him.
2. It seems that regime change in Syria is no longer the policy of the US. Well, thank God. Syria is infested with various kinds of jihadis and everyone needs to concentrate on exterminating them.
3. Fariid Zakariya had on his newsie today a pair of film makers who have generated a documentary that is clearly AQ propaganda, These two, a man and a woman had jihadi written all over them. If she had been any more covered up she would have been invisible and the man was glowering mass of beard and smoking eyes. These two claimed that the Syrian government had never fought against jihadism. They claimed that it is only against the freedom loving FSA that the dastardly bastards of the Tiger Forces, Syrian Marines, etc. have been fighting all this time. This was particularly funny given their clear visual representation of the jihadi ideal way of death. BTW if you are a non-troll and don't know that the SAA and friends are fighting IS out along the dusty trail to Deir al-Zor , as well as AQ derivatives in northern Hama, then you are ill informed. Ah, yes, there are also the SAA troops fighting their way eastward south of Lake Assad against IS. One can only wonder if Zakariya believes this drivel himself. I sure hope they had that woman searched before they let her on the set. You could hide anything under all that loose cloth.
4. And then there is the Gorsuch caper. McConnell made it very clear on FNS today that Gorsuch will sit on SCOTUS by the end of the week. He pointed out that it really only requires a majority for confirmation on SCOTUS. The 60% thing is a recent requirement for cloture to shut off debate in order to have a floor vote. OK Democratic Base! Go for it!
5. We killed a lot of civilians in Mosul as the R+6 killed a lot civilians in East Aleppo? Well, pilgrims, there is moral equivalence. Civilians get killed in war. Sometimes they are deliberately killed as in Hamburg, Tokyo and on 9/11. Sometimes they are killed per misadventure. War is a savage business. Sherman, whom I detest, had it right. It is not possible to avoid such horrors. Only civilians think it is possible to fight wars that are not murderous affairs.
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