Jerry Dunleavy IV 🇺🇸
123K posts
@JerryDunleavy
Chief Investigative Correspondent @JustTheNews — Author of KABUL — Former @HouseForeignGOP & @DCExaminer — James 2:26 — Dad — Married to @CarlyLDunleavy
Time to settle this once & for all: the best Great American Novel is To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee & the best great novel by an American is The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The best novel of all time is, of course, The End of the Affair by Graham Greene, but alas he was a Brit.
The veneration Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has for Winston Churchill is a bit mystifying—assuming, of course, that he has actually read Churchill. Like many of his time and class, Churchill was a rank antisemite, at least until word of the Holocaust spread. 1/n
NOW - Netanyahu: "Jesus Christ has no advantage over Genghis Khan. Because if you are strong enough, ruthless enough, powerful enough, evil will overcome good."
Gomez to Gabbard and Racliffe: "If the president can just ignore what you're doing, why do you even have a job? Why even advise him? You're saying the president can say tomorrow China is an imminent threat no matter what the intelligence says, and then he can take his own action."
Ok, I'm apparently not good at writing parables, because nearly everyone interpreted it wrong. I used a parable because I want to respect others' service records, especially when not all the facts are out yet. So let's pivot to a much more direct analogy. In 2016, career intelligence professionals, people who had genuinely spent their lives fighting America's enemies, became convinced that a foreign power had compromised the incoming president. They had data points. Real ones. Trump had business dealings in Moscow. He said nice things about Putin on camera. People in his orbit had meetings with Russian nationals. A dossier appeared with salacious claims. Each data point individually was... a data point. But they were looking for Russia. So they found Russia. Everywhere. They were so certain they were right that they leaked to the press. They used classification authority to spy on American citizens. They presented unverified opposition research to a FISA court as intelligence. Peter Strzok texted about "insurance policies." Andrew McCabe authorized leaks. They were experienced professionals who genuinely believed the republic was in danger. Their service records were real. Their concern was sincere. And they were wrong.
This question and answer from the Pentagon briefing this morning was so thorough and interesting. My friend @JerryDunleavy asked a tough, but substantive question. You can ask those in power real questions without it being a "gotcha" or trap.... Dunleavy: “As part of the justification for the war against Iran, the White House has laid out in fairly comprehensive fashion that Iran — the Iranian regime is 47 years of terrorism aimed at the us, including pointing to the IRGC’s provision of weapons and efforts to help kill Americans in Iraq. The Pentagon in 2019 assessed Iran was responsible for the deaths of at least 603 service members in Iraq, but there hasn’t been a similar accounting — public accounting by Iran’s role helping the Taliban in Afghanistan. And that also hasn’t been part of the White House’s public argument. I was wondering if you could speak to Iran’s role in helping the Taliban during the war in Afghanistan. And, chairman, as — as you and the Secretary eloquently spoke, about, 13 U.S. service members have been killed so far during Operation Epic Fury. I was wondering what lessons have been learned from those deaths, both from Iranian strikes from an aircraft refueling accident? How are those lessons being applied to the current conflict, and how are those lessons going to be applied to a potential conflict in Indopacom?” Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Caine: “Thank you.” @SecWar: “Well, thank you for the question and it’s — it’s true. In a town that can have a very short memory, President Trump does not. He remembers what this regime — Iranian regime was founded on, what their declaration has been from the beginning death to America, death to Israel. They’ve stated that. they’ve attended to in every way, try to accomplish that, killing Americans in any theater they can. Embassies for a long for quite a long time. In Iraq, that was the deadliest weapon was the EFP, the explosively formed penetrator. I was there when that tactic and technique started to emerge, and the realization was it wasn’t just jihadis putting together one, five, five rounds, daisy chained. It was an entire state, a country with its apparatus — apparatus able to mold steel in a way that was specifically designed to penetrate American armor and kill Americans. This was not, oh, maybe we send him a couple of thoughts about how to build a bomb. This was Iran’s specifically passing technology and wherewithal and personnel into Iraq to kill Americans specifically. I know the number is said to be 600. A lot of us think it’s higher than that, given the amount of capability they brought in. So they have been at war with us, whether we acknowledge it or not, for 47 years. The same goes in Afghanistan. Name the Islamist enemy, whether they are Sunni or Shia, because this is a Shia regime, Sunni or Shia, and Iran’s been willing to harbor them as long as that group is willing to try to kill Americans. So, the enemy of their enemy has been their friend as well. And the Islamist world. So, Iran, whether it’s Iraq, whether it’s Afghanistan, whether it’s around the world, has been targeting Americans and what they wanted in this context — and what President Trump would not tolerate — is a regime of that nature being closer and closer to nuclear capabilities, a capability they would have said they would want to use. And we all believe what our enemies say they would do if they got the most dangerous weapon in the world. So, it’s been across every theater that Iran’s been — been a threat to America. And sometimes we have to remind folks of that. But thank goodness we have a commander in chief who, on behalf of this country has internalized that and said, hey, we’re going to do something about it.” Caine; “Jerry, I do want to talk about the lessons learned question because it’s important to me. I won’t share particular tactical lessons. And the KC-135 incident is under investigation. But I do want to talk about how I think about this and how we think about it. And this is something that I’m pretty passionate about. I believe the Joint Force has to be a very fast learning organization early, often and always. And so, in each case, both at the strategic, operational, and tactical level, we’ve charged a joint force to look at themselves and say, what was our plan? Well, first, did we have a plan yes or no? The answer is always yes because we plan for literally everything. Did we execute our plan, yes or no? If we did, did it work? If not, why not? If we didn’t execute our plan but did something better, what’s the lesson learned associated with that? And then how do we quickly capture those lessons after every loss or every engagement, and quickly adopt those lessons, and then share them across the entirety of the joint force. And inside the joint staff, we’ve tasked our J7 Directorate, under the lead of General Lieutenant General Laszewski, a United States Marine, to be extremely entrepreneurial in harvesting and capturing those lessons in a proactive and not reactive way. In fact, we’ve got teammates from the J7 who are now spread out across the CENTCOM theater, both here in the States and forward, to ensure that in every opportunity, we do not miss a chance to grab that lesson and quickly accelerate it into the practice that we adopt inside the joint force so that if there’s a loss or if there’s something that we can learn from, that we learn it not only in the CENTCOM, aor, but we adapted across all of the combatant commands, not just Indopacom, and it’s across all of the warfighting functions. I’ve asked them to look rigorously, to check our egos at the door, to remember this is about what’s right, not who’s right, and to be clinical around the way we look at lessons learned, because we owe it to the force to do that. Thanks for that question.” Hegseth: “Absolutely.”
Pete Hegseth says one of the objectives of this war is to destroy “Iran’s DEFENSE industrial base so they cannot rebuild.” Why shouldn’t a sovereign nation in one of the world’s most volatile regions retain the capacity to defend itself? Isn’t the real aim to ensure that Israel can pursue an aggressive, expansionist agenda across the region without resistance? Which country are you going to target next, Mr. @SecWar, at Netanyahu’s behest?
.@CIADirector: "Iran possesses at least 440kg of uranium enriched to weapons-grade 60% — which doesn't have a civilian use. The only use for that would be the development of nuclear weapons."
The Secretary of Defense tells the American public to pray for our troops on bended knee and invoke Jesus' name....
NEW: Pentagon recently axed a bunch of Ivy League schools from its military education program… but included on the list of potential replacement schools is one filled with Hunter Biden laptop letter signers & where Andrew McCabe is a longtime professor. justthenews.com/government/sec…
“When everything’s made to be broken/I just want you to know who I am” is one of the worst lyrics in pop history.
This kind of stuff happens during war. We should be on guard.
