Cole muses:
and if they were smart, they would ignore the big cities, who have the law enforcement to handle the chaos. Attack middle america where all the people are scared shitless already
— John Cole (@Johngcole) January 4, 2020
christ, they'd have all the gun humpoing gomers out in force, probably end up killing a bunch of innocent people who look like terrorists. Iran could start total fucking chaos here for basically nothing.
— John Cole (@Johngcole) January 4, 2020
Given the asymmetry in the types of military power between the US and Iran, as well as the ability to wield it, Iran’s response to yesterday’s strike that killed Suleimani and Muhandis, and tonight’s strike near Taiji (Taiji is where Abu Ghraib is for those wondering about where Taiji is – it is the northernmost of the agricultural districts, or qadas, that ring Baghdad and separate Baghdad Province from the surrounding provinces), will undoubtedly be unconventional. But it is important to keep in mind that an unconventional response doesn’t mean an unconventional use of military power. The Iranians, like all states, have other elements of national power that they can leverage and use to respond. We refer to these elements of national power as the DIME-FIL (Diplomatic, Informational, Military, Economic, Financial, Intelligence, and Legal). The Iranians also have a well developed and effective cyber operations capacity. And the cyber domain, the tools used to operate effectively in it, and the cyber operations themselves are all very effective ways of utilizing the non-military forms of power.
As we consider what the Iranians might do, we need to move beyond the low hanging fruit of attacks by their proxies on US and our Coalition partners in the region. Or attacks on the petroleum sector in our regional partners that would spike oil and gas prices. I’m not suggesting these won’t happen, I’m sure there will be some of them, but these are obvious and we can plan for them, to manage them, and to mitigate them. There are also less obvious targets and less obvious weapons and tools that the Iranians can use to strike back.
This past fall DHS, the FBI, the Secret Service, and the Arlington, VA Police Department participated in a table top simulation, dubbed Operation Blackout, focusing on the 2020 election. They were the Blue Team (the good guys). The opposing force, or Red Team (the bad guys), were a group of white hat hackers. The Red Team were not permitted to hack the actual election in the simulation, they couldn’t hack machines, voting systems, anything like that. So what did they do? They hacked everything else. And, as a result, within the simulated world of the exercise they created so much chaos that martial law was declared by the person on the Blue Team playing the president in the exercise and the 2020 election, within that notional world, was cancelled. You can read the Red Team’s write up of the exercise here.
In early 2018 I prepared a strategic analysis on Russia’s active measures campaign. I wrote:
Putin’s cyberwarfare has also targeted actual American infrastructure. Russian for cover officials have been tracked mapping US critical physical infrastructure, such as the communication and power transmission grid. This was in support of a cyberwarfare campaign to infiltrate and compromise another important American center of gravity: the US power generation and transmission grid. Putin’s ability to weaponize information and the platforms where American’s get their information combined with his ability to bring down all or portions of the US power grid should have every national security professional very, very, very worried. Putin’s cyberwarriors have already tried to create a response through planting false social media stories of actual fake news reports about a foreign terrorist attack on the US energy sector, an ebola outbreak, and a riot in response to a police shooting. All of which never happened. Imagine what happens when Putin starts turning parts of the US power grid off during extreme weather events while at the same time he’s spreading disinformation made to look like actual news reports or official municipal, state, and/or Federal responses to the disaster he’s created. This is the threat we face.
Now imagine what happens when the Iranians start doing the things that I described above or creating the type of chaos that the Red Team created in the 2020 election simulation. And not in or just in New York or DC or LA or Seattle or Miami or Atlanta or Chicago, but in more suburban and rural areas. In red states that have no where near the state and local capabilities to respond. Imagine what happens when they hack into banks and the financial service sector and start stealing financial information and manipulating the markest. Imagine what happens when they release the Signals Intercepts they have of US elected and appointed officials, as well as those of people running major corporations or the news networks and newspapers.
And this is where the embarrassment comes in. If you want to strike back at the President, you do so in a way that gets under his skin. Skin that he demonstrates daily on his Twitter feed is exceedingly thin. The President is noted for spending hours speaking to world leaders, his outside advisors and friends on an unsecured phone from the White House residence each night, or from one of his properties when he goes to Mar a Lago or plays golf at his clubs, presents a target rich environment all on his own. The Iranians have a target rich environment given the President’s well documented poor Op-Sec and Info-Sec practices. The Iranians have a target rich environment given Rudy Giuliani’s poor Op-Sec and Info-Sec practices. The Iranians have a target rich environment because Jared Kushner communicates with Muhammed bin Salman on WhatsApp, which is not secure. The Iranians have a target rich environment in the largely wide open US information and cyber domains. And they have the ability to exploit weaknesses in those domains to leverage power, other than military power, across the DIME-FIL. And they will leverage those capabilities to wage an unconventional war against the US and one of the strategic objectives will be to embarrass the President. And that embarrassment will be both an end in itself and done to goad him into badly overreacting out of anger, which will then provide the Iranians with further opportunities to wage their unconventional campaign.
Open thread!
Margaret Imber
They should go to the UN and The Hague and charge him with war crimes.
Mnemosyne
I have no actual knowledge or expertise, but I have a weird feeling that there will be a move against Saudi Arabia first. I have no logical basis for it, though, so there’s a good chance I’m wrong.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
That’s a question that’s been floating around in my head as I read people said to be experts on twitter: Will the Iranians want to hit back at the US, or trump, and do they make that distinction?
also: Republicans are already trying to gin this up as a bold move in the war on terror. Ro Khanna and Bernie are responding with a bill on blocking funding for a war with Iran, which war hasn’t been declared and which bill will surely become the new purity test (thanks, guys). Many of those purported experts of mine are saying that the Iranian response will not be quick, in which case I wonder to what extent they will be able to keep playing this up as a great victory, this killing of a guy most Americans, the ones between the MAGAts and the political junkies, never heard of before yesterday , if the result is more violence over there, that faraway place where trump said he was gonna get us out of, and is this really different than it was before?
Baud
Appropriate colors.
lumpkin
Just some low tech mischief like IEDs, poison, random shootings, etc at trump properties around the world seems like one of the easiest and most effective ways to provoke trump into going even more nuts. Maybe Iran wouldn’t do it because it’s one of the likely ways to get a nuke in response but there are plenty of other people out there that would love to see trump go berserk on Iran.
NotMax
Infiltrating to disrupt Twitter, rendering it an inert service has certain upsides.
Just sayin’.
scottinnj
Iran will release the pee tape.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
also, that debunked story about Eric Trump knowing before the Gang of Eight knew, maybe not so debunked:
“days before”– didn’t Lindsey say trump told him on Monday?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@lumpkin: let’s hope they stop with bedbugs and mice released in the kitchens
Immanentize
Who in the US government is most like Suleimani? Both strategic/tactical ‘leader’ in the Middle East and also iconically related to the current administration?
Mandalay
@Adam Silverman:
Not entirely O/T, I see that Mike Pence tweeted this earlier today about Soleimani:
Is that true? Is it even plausible?
Bill Arnold
@lumpkin:
They don’t even have to do it; they could just talk about plans in an apparent comsec lapse, or similar leak. If it were public, it would do permanent damage to Trump-labeled Trump properties.
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The bill won’t go anywhere. Even if it passes the House, it won’t pass the Senate. The whole reason that Khanna’s legislative language was removed from the NDAA was because the NDAA couldn’t pass the Senate with it in it. So it was either remove it or let the military run out of money. And no one is so politically stupid as to let that happen.
ThresherK
I want Nancy Smash to tell that red-state governor “Well, well. Look who’s come crawling back,” when they come to the House for aid bills.
I’d like to say I’m exaggerating, but I’m tired of helping these assholes without so much as a nod.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Adam L Silverman:
Legislatively? Of course not. But will “Establishment Dems wouldn’t even vote to defund war with Iran!” become a new hobbyhorse for Rose Twitter? Not impossible.
trollhattan
Can we build a wall around Iran and get Saudi Arabia to pay for it?
Jeffro
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: They also briefed the Israelis ahead of time according to Noga Tarnopolsky’s reporting in The LA Times. The only people who were actually required to be briefed by US law and still haven’t been are the Gang of 8 in Congress.
Adam L Silverman
@Immanentize: No one. We’re not structured that way. The Iranian government, specifically the real government that runs opaquely behind the scenes, as opposed to the parliamentary democracy facade, isn’t really comparable to any other government. And the role of the IRGC and especially the Quds Force within the actual government is unique.
khead
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Forever. That’s how long. Because Obama’s response was to let folks die in Benghazi and then give away pallets of cash to Iran. I wish I were kidding.
Jeffro
@Immanentize: Iran doesn’t have to ‘hit’ our equivalent official…they can, and likely will, hit us by multiple below-the-radar means and a couple that are slightly above-the-radar, just so that we (and the world) know that they got their paybacks.
It’s almost like we’re the only ones who can’t play this game. China, Iran, Russia…we’re just temperamentally unsuited (at least, at the present time) to move subtly and thoughtfully. Like, in anything.
danielx
I would like to think Iranian efforts would be directed towards embarrassing Trump, but…the US has been responsible for so many civilian deaths for so long. Not many people outside our borders will shed tears for asymmetric attacks that cause death and chaos here.
Adam L Silverman
@Mandalay: No. The 9-11 report debunked it. Also, there were 19 attackers on 9-11 and 15 of them were from Saudi Arabia.
ruemara
I felt any reprisals will take the normal form, terrorism. Why run the risks of an all out real war? Just use the already established terror networks by spreading some cash around. We already know our ass is hanging out both in security for buildings, airports, as well as digitally and for sensitive areas like watersheds. We elected a walking, talking ode to incompetence. And we got the government we deserve.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Oh, they were doing that within the first 2 hours of the murder.
Jeffro
@khead: It’s almost funny…I had a couple of high school FB friends come out of the woodwork at long last about the ‘pallets of cash’ BS in the past 24 hours.
‘Couple’ as in ‘two’. But still. It’s disheartening.
Dems, get your shit together and call a prime-time news conference every night if you need to. Call for a general strike. But let’s not keep fighting this disinformation war with one hand tied behind our smartphones and cable news remote controls.
Bill Arnold
I do hope that the Iranians go for unconventional and embarrassing, their choice of overt or covert but probabilistically attributable.
Trump’s weaknesses include (a) assertions/evidence that his net worth is low or negative (b) humiliation (c) dementia/his intelligence (father-related)
also, since he’s big on projection, perhaps (d) being revealed as a puppet if he is one (e) fear of going to jail (f) fear of being executed/assassinated.
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne:
I reckon this makes rather more sense, given what passes for the Trump administration’s foreign policy.
mrmoshpotato
@ThresherK:
A nod? Haha. The “Fuck you, libtard!” from the Trump trash red states isn’t enough for you?
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Do you really have any doubt? They’re already whining that what Trump did is NBD compared to The Monster Called Obama. ?
NotMax
Read that up to an additional 3500 U.S. military (thus far) now being sent to to be stationed in Kuwait.
The Kuwaitis must be thrilled about that. Not.
Amir Khalid
@Adam L Silverman:
It was reported at the time, as I recall, that there 19 because No. 20 (there were four five-man teams) was prevented from boarding his plane.
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan: Why isn’t Mexico paying for it? Oh right, because they’re covering the tab for MedicareForAll and Dump’s stupid, racist, climbable wall.
mrmoshpotato
@Jeffro: Shut up libtard!
George W BushTrump is a wartime preznint! Why do you hate the troops?Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: The 1st BCT/82nd ABN was mobilized and deployed forward. They’ll stage out of Kuwait. And from what I know of the Kuwaitis, they’ll be fine with it.
Adam L Silverman
@Amir Khalid: Correct.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@khead: on MAGAt twitter and FoxNews, sure. But your average lumpenmittel voter, the ones who will decide the election, have already forgotten who Baghdadi was after that twenty minutes when they knew, and if Iran’s response isn’t immediate and bloody (with American blood), I don’t think those voters will connect an increase in violence with anything trump did.
I don’t like to be ghoulish and callous about human lives, but trump et al are going to do their damndest to portray this as a “tough” move that saved American lives. Just speculating about whether the effort to get normal people to rally round the flag will work. This may suggest people aren’t quite there:
dr. bloor
I do so look forward to Adam’s cheery “Open thread!” to close of his patented If-You-Think-Mad-Max-Was-Fucked-Take-A-Look-At-Your-Immediate-Future posts.
Jeffro
@mrmoshpotato: 48 hours and counting down…you know he won’t be able to help himself.
“IMZ WARTIME PREZNIT!! NO IMPEACHY!!1!”
(or furiously retweeting the equivalent)
(or both)
Dems, seriously, just put up, 24-7, that video of him claiming Obama will strike Iran to save his re-election chances. Stand up.
Gin & Tonic
@Jeffro: Not just “the present time.” The US has been stepping on its dick with respect to Iran more or less forever.
Adam L Silverman
@dr. bloor: I’m here to bring sunshine to your lives.
Gravenstone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m actually quite pleased the Selective Service site blew up. It may show a significant cohort of (likely younger) people aren’t exactly on board with getting themselves tossed into a meat grinder for the self aggrandizement of Trump.
Brachiator
Trump would love this.
ruemara
@Jeffro: Ok, for all you people who demand press conferences to explain shit to our dumb populace – you can call all the press conferences you want, this does not mean the media will cover it. There have been many, many press conferences you have not heard of because no one was there, or the footage was not broadcast on the local news much less the national. This is not how the media works. No, they cannot just show up at a news chat show, the bookings are the purview of the producer. Yes, that’s terrible. I agree, they need to be heard. If only lefty tv wasn’t dedicated to hating the Democratic party, so oh well.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
Will take your word for it, but for a country and governing dynasty so recently overrun by invasion from a neighboring state (a state with much closer association with Iran now than then), having a big(ger) target painted (okay, repainted) on their soil seems short-sighted in extremis.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: As a Democrat and a Bruin, I agree.
(For jl: DING, DING, DING!)
Butter Emails
Adam, Iran’s issued rhetoric painting the US as a rogue state, but do you think they actually realize that the statement is actually true and not just a piece of propaganda? And if so, do you think it will impact their reaction to this?
One of the particularly irritating and galling things about the Trump era is all the institutions, groups, nations, people, etc. that seem to think that everything is just some slight variation on the traditional model. That things still fall within or will soon return to the old, familiar paradigm and act accordingly. I worry that Iran will respond to the attack as if the US still felt itself constrained by international law and norms as opposed to the new reality where an overt attack against a high ranking Iranian official in response to actions by an Iranian proxy is now a a favored option.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
Alexa, order the SPF 500 lotion.
;)
khead
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The average voters, the ones you think decide the election, are currently being buried in bullshit on social media from the GOP flying monkey brigade. That brigade is currently out in full force and swamping all social media – not just MAGA Twitter and Fox – with the “Trump already did more than Obama” bullshit. See, you start with what Jeffro and I have noticed – Benghazi, pallets, etc. – and then you build on that narrative. I’ve been watching it all day long.
Kamala.Harris.2020
Re Cole’s scenario:
Middle America might not be the best place, as shown by the fact that armed civilians were pretty quick to kill/disable shooters in the two recent Texas church shootings.
But Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco would be like shooting fish in a barrel.
(The fact that something like this has not already happened is, in my mind, pretty strong evidence that the overall terrorism threat facing the US has been very, very low. It would be, a piece of cake to kill hundreds at a shopping mall, concert, football game, etc. Of course, that could change now …)
Jeffro
@ruemara: Trying to think of the last time that national Dems called a prime-time press conference to call the president* a Russian tool, a wag-the-dog troop-betraying desperado, money-laundering scam artist, etc.
not quite remembering those incidents. Lemme know.
Take a stand. Over half the country is with you, with us, Dems. We’re already at majority “impeach and remove” and that was before US troops were overtly in danger, before Jared and Gaetz and the patrons of Mar-a-Lago were informed of this strike before Congress, or even the blessed ‘group of 8’.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
Add it to the Articles.
Bill Arnold
Open thread, so this is positive:
Experiments show altruistic behaviors reduce pain (January 3, 2020, Bob Yirka)
Paper itself is paywalled except for the abstract;
(Still not clear how it evolved.)
debbie
@Bill Arnold:
Fix it so his pants fall down during his next copter chat.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@khead: I’ll worry when polls show my lumpenmittel voters think trump is a hero for killing that guy
Adam L Silverman
@Butter Emails: I do not know.
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne: I was just reading yet another disquisition there on how Trump’s war proves Obama was the real villain, because electing him killed the antiwar movement.
I guess we need Republicans in power so that Democrats will be antiwar–I think that was Matt Stoller’s liberal case for Mitt Romney, actually.
ruemara
@Jeffro: I hope 1 of your majority owns a tv station then, because it matters not one speck when it comes to coverage. They have taken a stand. The fact that it’s not the stand you think it is, that’s not their fault. And removal requires the Senate, so next time there’s an opportunity, grab a bunch of your like minded friends and vote against republicans. In fact, if you’re so inclined, more time yelling at republicans and trying to impeach and remove them from their seats would do more than a Democratic party member press conference.
@Bill Arnold: Explains why I give a lot. Or used to.
@Matt McIrvin: These are the dumbest “progressives” ever.
Adam L Silverman
@Kamala.Harris.2020: The most recent Texas church shooter shot two of the church’s security team before a third, a retired FBI agent, was able to get a head shot on target. I’m sure he’s a good shot, but that is hard to do in those circumstances. And he made it clear he took that shot only because he didn’t have any other – like a center mass shot, which is higher probability shot – because congregants were in the way.
Bill Arnold
@debbie:
That’s an oddly specific wish. :-)
FlipYrWhig
@khead:
Say, what ever happened to Osama bin Laden, anyway? :/
Mike J
debbie
@Bill Arnold:
It’s something that would really embarrass him.
Butter Emails
@Kamala.Harris.2020:
The guy in the church shooting was actually taken down by church security. They actually pegged him as someone suspicious when he walked across the entire parking lot and one of the security guys was standing directly behind him when he opened fire. Despite this, the gunman still managed to kill two people in 6 seconds with a shotgun before being killed himself.
mrmoshpotato
@Bill Arnold: How about they call him what he is – a mob-money-laundering, broke-ass, Soviet shitpile conman who’s been sucking the Kremlin’s ass since at least ’87?
NotMax
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
Triggered a dusty brain cell to fire up as a reminder about, of all things, an obscure Monkees song.
Mnemosyne
@Kamala.Harris.2020:
Oh, honey. You really, REALLY need to get out more. ?
Jeffro
@ruemara: Not really understanding here but ok. I think the Dems need to get louder, more frequently, on more ‘channels’ than they have been. They can’t assume that the facts/narrative will carry the day…even though both the facts and the law are on their side, they need to ‘pound the table’ (in the media, in media of all kinds) as well.
We’re already in an ok place. A 51-55% majority wants trumpov impeached and removed, and this dumb move in Iraq won’t diminish that. But they really do need to ramp up, and they need to mobilize the country (the majority that wants to see sanity restored, anyway)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: That’s why we call you Dr. Sunshine.
Mnemosyne
@Jeffro:
So you missed Nancy Pelosi’s press conferences? You ARE aware that Trump has already been impeached, right?
Adam L Silverman
@Kamala.Harris.2020: There are plenty of people in Chicago, Seattle, and San Francisco who are armed and capable. Just like in tiny little towns outside of Ft. Worth.
mrmoshpotato
@Mnemosyne:
Oh for the sake that belongs to fucks!
Said before, and I’ll say it again – I’m fucking tired of fighting the Nazi trash aka GOP and the leftist purity fucks who want to burn it all down because they didn’t get a g’damn unicorn for their birthday!
Butter Emails
@Adam L Silverman:
Whether they’re armed or not isn’t necessarily even relevant. Mass shootings have also been stopped by quick thinking and acting people who are not armed.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
Sorry, I’m still laughing that Chicago, which lives in racist memory as a city where you can’t turn a corner without being shot, is now being touted as a soft target. ?
Well, no one ever claimed that they were consistent. I also love how Chicago has been magically transported out of the Midwest.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@NotMax: listening to that, and I did listen to some of it, I thought of the movie (that I’ve never gotten around to seeing) “What if they gave a war and nobody came?”, which I always thought Mike Nesmith had something to do with, writing or producing. And imdb says he did not. I must have heard that song at some (forgotten) point and conflated the two.
Viva BrisVegas
Can’t the Iranians get Trump’s tax returns from Putin? Or does Putin still see Trump as too a valuable an asset to burn?
Because if anybody knows where every single one of Trump’s dollars came from, it’s Vladimir Vladimirovich.
khead
@FlipYrWhig:
Who? Pretty sure if Jim is correct those lumpenmittel voters have long forgotten him. //
mrmoshpotato
@Jeffro:
I just made a noise half laugh-half groan. You caused it, so you get to name it.
Kamala.Harris.2020
@Adam L Silverman:
That’s correct.
Adam L Silverman
@FlipYrWhig: He’s enjoying the sun, surf, and sand with Whitman, Price, and Haddad!
mrmoshpotato
@Kamala.Harris.2020:
Go. Fuck. Yourself.
khead
@Adam L Silverman:
No. Last season’s losers
Edit – Heh. Might should’ve looked at the second video before posting.
Kamala.Harris.2020
@Adam L Silverman:
Legal concealed carry rates are considerably lower in Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, etc.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: I have walked all over Chicago at night, several times, several years at a row (I used to go to an annual professional conference held at the Palmer House) and not only have I never once been shot, I’ve never even once been accosted. The closest was some drunk homeless guy who wanted money.
Kamala.Harris.2020
@mrmoshpotato:
Iran doesn’t even need grand gestures or major coordinated plots. Just a couple dozen guys with Chevy Caprices and rifles you can get at Walmart and they could shut this shit down for months and if they were smart, they would ignore the big cities, who have the law enforcement to handle the chaos. Attack middle america where all the people are scared shitless already
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: Who needs the Iranians, right? Can’t the Trump administration just play both the Blue Team and the Red Team? (Or is there too much Deep State out there for that?)
Kamala.Harris.2020
@Adam L Silverman:
Yeah, I lived in Chicago for 8 years and somehow managed not to get shot.
Some people just love to talk up the dangers of Chicago because it allows them to cloak their racism in “concern” about crime.
Raven Onthill
Two related thoughts:
And here we have Cohen the Barbarian on kings:
This could explain a lot.
jc
Regardless of what Iran does, I think Trump is so desperate to win in November, he and his minions will stop at nothing. I won’t be surprised if Putin’s team hacks our election system with the Trump team’s help. I won’t be surprised if the election is deeply flawed and the results are highly suspicious. Trump doesn’t care if he wins dirty, as long as he wins.
mrmoshpotato
@Mnemosyne: I guess we’re North Korea in the Axis of Booga, Booga, Booga.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
I myself have never had an issue in Chicago, and I used to wander around the city with my friends in the (alleged) bad old days of the 1980s.
I still find the idea that the city would be a sitting duck for a shooting attack by Iran with no way to respond to be ridiculous to the point of hilarity.
Butter Emails
Maybe they can take over a wildlife refuge.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Mnemosyne
@Kamala.Harris.2020:
Dude or dudette. Do you have multiple personalities? Because you are directly contradicting yourself in each post you make. What the fuck?
mrmoshpotato
@jc:
2016 says hi. :)
Mnemosyne
@jc:
He proved in 2016 that the MSM doesn’t give a shit if Republicans cheat to win and will even give them cover to do it.
So, yeah, massive cheating on a scale never before seen is to be expected.
Mainmata
@Immanentize: Jared, of curse./s
mrmoshpotato
@Mnemosyne: I wonder if one of their personalities is fucking itself right now.
Kent
Why waste time hacking power plants and banks and such. If they REALLY want to get under Trump’s skin they should hack the IRS and steal the last 20 years of tax returns for Trump and all of his spawn.
Then just dribble them out, one return at a time every Monday morning during the months of September and October.
Mnemosyne
@mrmoshpotato:
I bet someone in Moscow screwed up the schedule and accidentally assigned two different trolls to the same nym at the same time. Probably Dimytry — he’s always fucking up like that.
mrmoshpotato
@Kent: And of course highlight the parts that show Dump is the Kremlin’s bitch.
mrmoshpotato
@Mnemosyne: Sad, broskovich! Sad!
AxelFoley
Already happening:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/3/1909204/-Bernie-Sanders-Being-Right-on-Foreign-Policy-Again-Iran-Anti-War-Edition?utm_campaign=trending
Kent
@Immanentize:
No one. He would be more equivalent to Eisenhower or MacArthur during WW2. A famous general who’s considered presidential material.
Matt McIrvin
I’ve been wondering about that too. If Iran wants to embarrass Trump, they shouldn’t escalate in a way that hands Trump a terrorist crisis to exploit, 9/11-style. But if they want to damage the United States, that’s exactly what they should do–with the goal of reelecting Trump and handing him as much power and public support as possible. Trump can do more damage to the American empire than any bomb.
Of course, this would likely also involve great damage to Iran, but maybe the domestic politics of that would redound to somebody’s advantage as well.
Adam L Silverman
@Kamala.Harris.2020: I love Chicago.
Aleta
A US president has announced he has no problem ordering murder of a foreign official in public, no matter the resulting risk and danger to US citizens and to other civilians. By drone on foreign soil. And the GOP is trying to make this seem normal.
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: This is why you NEVER INCLUDE THE MOST DEADLY COURSE OF ACTION OPTION with the most potential negative effects on the decision point slide.
Mike in NC
The Iranians have been laughing in our stupid faces for decades. I was deployed to the Persian Gulf for six months in 1984 and my DDG was overflown by their P-3s almost every single day, but we had to read them some lame warnings per the ROE that must have been written by idiots that make Jared Kushner look like Patton.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
“It’s presented as a last resort, Sir.’
“Resort? Just look around – no one knows more about resorts than me! Do it!”
//
Kamala.Harris.2020
@Mnemosyne:
Here is what Cole’s tweet said in part:
I responded
You posted:
Have another glass of pinot.
Kamala.Harris.2020
@Adam L Silverman:
Yeah, it’s okay but it’s no Ft. Meyers.
Kent
The Iranians are not stupid. And they most certainly have entire office buildings full of bright people who’s sole job is to game out unconventional warfare strategies against the US and their other enemies in the gulf region, namely Saudi Arabia and it’s allies.
They aren’t foolish enough to send agents on suicide missions to the US. Nothing would really be gained by that. I think they are much more likely to escalate actions to undermine US influence and allies in the region. Like use their militias to bring out a shitload of grief to whatever US business interests remain in Iraq. Exxon has operations in Iraq, for example. They could go after them and leave the Russian and Chinese oil interests alone. And ramp up whatever mischief they have already planned in the gulf states.
Kent
I doubt the Iranians want to go anywhere near the Hague. They have plenty of blood and war crimes on their own hands. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMIA_bombing
Omnes Omnibus
@Kamala.Harris.2020: Jebus. Please tell me you are some kind of parody troll. Please.
mad citizen
Seems like DIME-FIL should become DIME-FILC to add cyber. Or is cyber considered part of Military? Cyber of course being the Fifth Domain.
When I muse through the DIME-FIL areas, I’m just not that worried about Iran being able to do anything to us. And the article linked on cyber notes at the top that “It is still not in the top rank of cyber powers”
Mnemosyne
@Kamala.Harris.2020:
Chicago.
Is.
In.
Middle.
America.
That’s what “the Midwest” means in American English.
Tell your boss in Moscow to get you a better map, or at least a better Russian-to-English phrasebook.
Lyrebird
@Aleta: Yeah.
I am needing some Reba McIntyre (sp?) right now. Not because I think thoughts ‘n prayers are sufficient, but because sometimes a gal needs some inspiration to keep going in the face of all this.
Best wishes to your pets and to all BJ folk.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m telling ya. Russian troll who doesn’t get that “Middle America” and “the Midwest” are synonyms.
Kamala.Harris.2020
@Mnemosyne:
Bill Arnold
@jc:
It’s not hopeless; there are tools out there and enough monitoring that culprits wouldn’t have confidence that they would not be caught.
States Can Get an Election Security Assist from Albert Sensors – The widespread implementation of this network security tool is helping protect future elections. (Alexander Slagg, 2019/11)
The Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center
The ALBERT sensors only forward information on events that they detect; personally, I’d log as much network traffic as possible for election week, and there are certainly such sensors in place; it’s a big country. (Heck, I log all network traffic (not full content) on my home network (4 people + 25 devices ATM) and the logs take like 2+ months to roll over; trivial to do with a Linux box.)
Another Scott
@Amir Khalid:
NyMag – According to the 9/11 Commission Report, as many as 10 men were recruited to be the 20th hijacker.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
was there a threat of “imminent attacks”? or was the ghost of Fred Trump calling his boy a pu$$y as he lay awake at night?
Aleta
@Lyrebird: Thanks for the pet wishes. (Don’t know how you divined that, but timely.)
Hand On the Plow Fast Rattler (w/Bodhi Busick)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Concerned, considering, thinking out loud… none of this, more or less sourced to Lindsey Graham, sounds like “imminent threat”
Aleta
@Aleta:
Hand on the Plow: a traditional song made famous by Mahalia Jackson that was sung during the days of slavery. Its message is simple: keep working and tending to the pursuit of Justice and better times will come.
The Pale Scot
In response to J.C. I meant to put up a link to the classic Twilight Zones “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” and discovered that it is a frequent project performed by high school film and drama classes.
Adam, you gotta stop sharing your nightmares with us..I mean me before bedtime. Glasgow is playing at 8am EST, I wanna go to sleep man.
Observation on “The Crapification of everything”. I’m looking online to replace long handled brushes my mum used to clean showers and tiles. Every item has reviews saying that they had replaced an older version of the same product and the new one is a piece of crap. I’d pay the price for a brush that doesn’t end up in the garbage after one round about my parent’s house, that doesn’t seem to be an option. Niche market; “Artisan Toilet Brushes”, it’s going to happen for sure.
Jackie
@NotMax: OMG, I actually remember this song!
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
i’m from chicago and i’ll be damned if i consider it to be ‘middle america’. that’s some bible belt shit if you ask me.
JaySinWA
I doubt the Iranian response would be limited to Trump, but one line of attack would be to disable his enablers. Real or manufactured scandals that undermine Javanka DJT Jr, Miller et al. would put him off balance. Jared plotting with MLS to green light the Kashoggi killing for 666 funding? Jr Eric and Ivanka plotting to rest control of Trump enterprises from the old Dotard? A little truth and some manufactured evidence could rattle his cage.
Mnemosyne
@Kamala.Harris.2020:
The phrase you’re looking for is “suburbs and exurbs.”
Seriously, Misha, you need a better dictionary of American idioms if you’re going to pull this off.
Lyrebird
@Aleta: Thanks, and glad I went with the impulse to mention the good wishes… Thanks for reminding me of an awesome song I have not heard in ages.
Mnemosyne
@chopper:
I’m from Lake County. It’s WAY more “Middle America” than you think. Big parts of Cook County are still “Middle America,” too (my spouse is from Oak Park).
Misha the troll needs a better dictionary of idioms.
Aleta
@Lyrebird: Looking forward to maybe more pics of your beautiful daffs again this spring
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
hey, if you think waukegan is one of ‘the big cities’ knock yourself out.
honestly, i can’t believe you’re nitpicking so hard over john cole’s tweet about ‘middle america’ vs ‘the big cities’. this is moronic. it’s clear what cole meant.
mrmoshpotato
@chopper: What suburb? ?
Redshift
@The Pale Scot:
A friend of mine who lives in a ramshackle old house had to replace her stove, and to get one that had knobs instead of digital controls, she had to buy a “retro” model.
Mnemosyne
@chopper:
Hang on, I think I see where the miscommunication is — I’m arguing with the troll, not with John Cole. I actually think Cole is right.
And name-checking Waukegan made me laugh a little too hard. ?
Kamala.Harris.2020
@chopper:
Yeah, it was clear what Cole meant and what I was responding to.
It seems this Mnemosyne dude just likes to argue.
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
the guy is quoting cole’s tweet from the top of the post.
i guess quoting the blog owner makes me a Russian Troll(tm) too.
*jesus christ, by the way, is anyone else starting to get sick of the fucking ‘i don’t like you, so you’re a russian troll!’ shit at this point? it’s getting fucking old.
mrmoshpotato
@Mnemosyne: :P Why do you hate Jack Benny and Ray Bradbury? ?
chopper
@Kamala.Harris.2020:
mnem isn’t a dude. you’re new here or you’d know that shit.
Redshift
Bizarre experience visiting NYC yesterday. We were out to dinner, and I happened to glance at the table around to my left, and there was Geraldo Frickin’ Rivera!
I was tempted to ask him if the price for selling his soul to the organization destroying America was worth it, but he seemed to be with family, and I’m not that much of an asshole. (I did overhear a comment from one of his dinner companions asking another not to start an argument about politics, so at least he may not be immune to that from his own people.)
mrmoshpotato
@Redshift: “What’s in Capone’s vault?!”
Redshift
@mrmoshpotato: LOL. Yeah, that would have been clever.
mrmoshpotato
@Redshift: Also “Why did you give away American soldiers’ location?”
Another Scott
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-security-airstrike/u-s-led-coalition-did-not-conduct-air-strike-near-taji-iraq-camp-spokesman-idUSKBN1Z3065?il=0
Hmmm…
Cheers,
Scott.
Mnemosyne
@chopper:
Right, and then the troll’s response was that Cole was wrong and the Iranians should attack Seattle, San Francisco, and Chicago where people don’t have guns.
One of those things is not like the others … ?
Mnemosyne
@mrmoshpotato:
True story: two of my stepbrothers attended Jack Benny Junior High.
mrmoshpotato
@Mnemosyne: Chicago doesn’t start with ‘S’?
mrmoshpotato
@Mnemosyne: Excellent. Do either play violin?
Mike J
@mrmoshpotato: Chicago and Seattle come from native words and names. San Francisco is a European name.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Only one of them has a proper hockey team.
Mnemosyne
@mrmoshpotato:
Drums. ?♀️
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
You’d better mean Chicago, because I think I may be legally required to open a can of (verbal) whoop-ass if not. Not my fault, it’s Illinois state law.
Kamala.Harris.2020
@chopper:
Really? S/he sure does like doin’ some mansplainin’.
mrmoshpotato
@Mike J: Seattle is the only city on Krusty the Klown’s list of funny words.
Mnemosyne
@Mike J:
The Oregon Historical Society in Portland has some nice Native American goods from the region, but I forgot to check if the city had an earlier name. ?
mrmoshpotato
@Mnemosyne: Throw an octopus at him!
Mnemosyne
@Kamala.Harris.2020:
Yes, my androgynous nym makes the issue so confusing. ?
Google is your friend.
Mnemosyne
@mrmoshpotato:
Nooooo, not the innocent octopodes!
????
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: It’s either support the Blackhawks or whatever team Minnesota has this week. I am still upset about trading Chelios to Detroit.
mrmoshpotato
@Mnemosyne: This seal needs a talking to then.
Art! Art! Slap!
Mnemosyne
Anyhoo, gentlemen (and lady? ?), I need to get ready for the arrival of Morpheus and, tomorrow, our cleaning people. Good night!
Mnemosyne
@mrmoshpotato:
Clearly co-conspirators. Good night! ?
mrmoshpotato
@Mnemosyne: Night!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kamala.Harris.2020: Having met Mnemosyne on several occasions, I can assure you she’s a she.
Origuy
@Aleta: The Plow is also another name for the constellation we usually call the Big Dipper. Hidden in the lyrics is a reference to the Underground Railrond.
Mike J
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m hoping Seattle sticks with the name “Seattle NHL Team”. White unis with black sans text.
joel hanes
@Bill Arnold:
Still not clear how it evolved
Kin selection
and/or
sexual selection
joel hanes
@Raven Onthill:
My spouse wonders why no-one in the chain of command objected to the kill order as illegal.
I’m gonna bet that if we ever find out what happened, we’ll find that they _did_ object.
Thanks to Just Security, we know that the DoD and other parts of the government objected, strenuously, to Trump personally and illegally ordering the withholding of the defense aid to Ukraine.
But our form of government gives the President the power to order the Joint Chiefs to do things to which they object.
joel hanes
@Mnemosyne:
trolls don’t care about consistency
they contain multitudes
Llelldorin
@Kamala.Harris.2020:
Is that necessarily true, though? From a very brief poke around the internet, the concealed carry rate in CA is about 3.2%, which isn’t all that much lower than, say, Texas’s 5%. In the big cities I could believe that the rate is lower, but the population is much higher, so it wouldn’t take a particularly high rate to have a respectable number of armed people about. Cities also have a much easier job with rapid police response (for the same reason—much higher density) and are similarly likelier to have armed security guards or the like relatively nearby
(This is at least partially guesswork—I’m not an expert in anything beyond poking at balky software—but it seems at least plausible from my lived experience in large cities.)
BruceFromOhio
But her emails.
Jay
@joel hanes:
the Operation Menu article linked by another commenter,
https://look.substack.com/p/first-comes-the-secret-then-comes
noted that Nixon secretly bombed Cambodia for 14 months, day in, day out, with hundreds sworn to secrecy, a completely parallel command and reporting system, and thousands of fake mission reports,
keeping Congress, the Joint Chiefs and the Pentagon completely in the dark,
with only one whistleblower ever coming forward, 3 1/2 years later.
joel hanes
@Jay:
Yes.
(Although a narrow slice of the public did “know”. I myself spent several days of spring 1972 in large anti-war protests in Iowa City that were inspired in part by the bombing of Cambodia)
But Trump is not Nixon, and does not have the organizational relationships or skills to pull off that kind of thing. The Trumpists are malevolent but inept
Jay Noble
@Another Scott: The link to Reuters gets hijacked by some probably bogus sweepstakes thingy
Celebrity Bowling
Low tech. High impact.
otmar
@Adam L Silverman: ha! The Palmer House. I’ve also attended a conference (IETF) there. 2003ish.
artem1s
Interesting article. Given how stupid the Dolt family is about their and our info security, I guess the best we can hope for is that the Secret Service decides to keep the Idiot in Chief barricaded in the most secure place possible. Hopefully away from populated areas. IOW, no more golf outings to M-A-L or anywhere else for that matter. Personally, I’m hoping for the same unnamed location W, the coward, hid out in the days after 9/11. Hopefully some super secure underground bunker in east bumfuck nowhere. Let him and his awful spawn experience the natural habitat of his cult followers for awhile.
Meanwhile the rest of us will be doing our best not to get shot by those same cultists as they ‘keep ‘murica safe’ with their
gunsdildos.Another Scott
@Jay Noble: Sorry about that. It still works Ok for me (MBP, Chrome, uBlock Origin).
Cheers,
Scott.
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
(slaps forehead). this is just…oy gevult, i’m out.
J R in WV
I wonder if Iranian leadership will distinguish between Trump and the US, perhaps hitting several of the “Trump Tower Worldwide” facilities, while leaving “Mr and Mrs America” alone for the time being?
There are Trump Towers in several mid-east nations aren’t there? I would think Iran could make those facilities effectively deserted with small but flashy attacks for very little investment in dollars or lives. Put the Trump Org out of the real estate naming business instantly. Wonder if Trump thought of that possibility for even a second? Nah, who am I kidding, Trump thinking, nah!
The Moar You Know
@ruemara: no joke. Just got back from Scotland last night. Their New Years celebration (which needs to be seen to be believed) basically became a massive anti-Brexit rally. Over a hundred thousand people there.
Not one paper, local or national, reported on that at all. I was there. It happened. To anyone who wasn’t, it didn’t. That is some scary shit to actually witness.
tam1MI
@mrmoshpotato: Iran wanted to embarass Donald Trump, blowing up his Yuge Byootiful Wall would be avery low-risk way to do it.