OF THE
TIMES
"A man's assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member."Was it the miasma of cognitive dissonance blackening the air-space over the DC swamp that caused the deadly collision of AA Flight 5342 and a Blackhawk Helicopter this week — an impenetrable fog arising from the fetid exhalations of so many hyperventilating swamp creatures brooding between the urges of fight-or-flight as Mr. Trump deploys his chosen pest-controllers across the Potomac Basin?
— White House Guidance
"In recent days several US Air Force C-17 transport planes ferried the missiles from an airbase in southern Israel to the Polish city of Rzeszow, NATO's logistics hub for supplying Ukraine."West Jerusalem informed Moscow of the move and said it was "only returning the Patriot system to the US" rather than supplying weapons to Ukraine. The official claimed this was the same thing as the US transfer of artillery shells from "emergency storage" in Israel to Ukraine two years ago.
The Israeli Air Force began fazing out the use of the Patriot system last year in favor of more advanced Israeli-made air defenses.
As the Patriot, which was known in Israel as "Yahalom" (diamond), was retired for good, its staff was retrained to work with the Iron Dome instead and the remaining batteries and interceptors have since been put in storage.
The US-made system officially entered Israeli service in 1991 but only made its first interception in 2014, downing a Hamas drone launched from the Gaza Strip.
Over the following decade, the system, designed to shoot down aircraft, intercepted only some 10 targets, according to the military, including Syrian fighter jets that breached Israeli airspace in 2014 and 2018.
Comment: One has to wonder if the helicopter that crashed into American Airlines Flight 5342 was equipped with this technology, and whether the autonomous mode can be remotely activated.