“There was no let-up in attacks by both sides early on Tuesday, with Iran launching missiles on Israel overnight, underscoring that Tehran retains the capacity to carry out long-range strikes despite more than two weeks of pounding by US and Israeli weapons.”
Yes, they’re able to launch the very occasional ballistic missile, but their ability to try and overwhelm air defences by saturating them with hundreds of missiles is gone.
Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, announced his resignation on Tuesday, citing his concerns about the justification for military strikes in Iran and saying he “cannot in good conscience” back the Trump administration’s war.
“Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent said in a statement posted on social media.
For those who may not remember, Kent was the MAGA favorite that Trump drafted to run for Congress against Jaime Herrera-Beutler after she voted to impeach him. He beat her in the primary, which was for a safe red seat in rural Washington… and then lost to a Democrat.
Trump then appointed him to run the NCTC last year.
Of course, now Trump never liked him and is glad he’s gone.
We had the closest explosion so far about an hour ago. It was loud, even in our bomb shelter. The news said it killed two people and smashed up Tel Aviv’s biggest train station. Let’s hope it’s the last for the night.
The aircraft carrier Ford that experienced a “minor” fire in the laundry (lasted 30+ hours it turns out and displaced 600 sailors to sleeping on decks and tables) is being withdrawn from the fight.The vessel is now heading to Souda Bay in Crete for repairs.
Rumour has it (probably complete BS but hey) that the fire was started by disgruntled sailors who were pissed that they were being sent to a stupid war started by stupid politicians.
As I say, probably BS, but one never knows. (And we’ll never know)
The fire on the USS Ford in the laundry is a little surprising. Not that there was a fire, laundries are prone to said. But the Laundry on large Navy vessels like carriers usually has an excellent fire suppression system as they are prone to fire. Lots of heat and lots of lint is a bad combo. Those machines are huge and numerous and serve 4500+ crew.
Even back in the 80s the USS Ranger had a serious fire suppression system. I repaired some of those dryers back then.
I would have expected the fire to be put out far faster than it was. Possibly another defect though in the troubled build that is the USS Ford. Doesn’t have to disgruntled sailors involved.
Googling, it looks like they’d been at sea a long time - nearing record-breaking, in fact - and piling up a lot of “deferred maintenance”. So it’s quite possible the answer is the system was broken and nobody knew or fixed it if they did.