Doubts have been cast over reports that the MOAB dropped by US forces in Afghanistan killed 36 Islamic State fighters, in light of its strength and the speed at which the death toll was reported.

The Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) was dropped on a tunnel complex in the Achin district in Nangarhar province near the Pakistan border, said to be used by affiliates of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) on Thursday.

While Afghan officials were quick to announce there were no civilian casualties as a result of the bomb, and US Central Command said forces "took every precaution to avoid civilian casualties with this strike." Yet the weapon's documented force and the remote location of the blast has caused some to question how quickly, and with what degree of accuracy, death could be tallied.

In a move likely indicative of a coming resurgence in the long-running "war on drugs," the Trump administration has appointed extreme marijuana prohibitionist, Pennsylvania Rep. Tom Marino to serve as U.S. drug czar, according to a report by CBS News. As drug czar, Marino would be responsible for coordinating drug control strategy and federal government funding of the "drug war."

Marino is known as a rabid hardliner on drug policy, going so far as to proclaim that nonviolent drug offenders should be placed in a "hospital-slash-prison." Congressman Marino is set to resign his position in the House to direct the Office of National Drug Policy Control, which advises President Trump on drug policy.

Since 2011, Marino has voted against amendments on three different occasions that would have prohibited the U.S Department of Justice from interfering with state medical cannabis laws and allowed Department of Veterans Affairs doctors to give military veterans medical cannabis recommendations, according to MassRoots.

On the morning of April 4th 2017, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, on the verge of a military victory against the terrorist insurgency in his country and on the eve of peace talks that would secure his position as president, decided to use chemical weapons he didn't have against a target of no military significance in front of as many cameras as possible to cross the one red line that would insure his own government's downfall.

Soon after, the Academy Award-winning White Helmets - noted for their Oscar-worthy performances, persistent proximity to Al Qaeda, and financial dependence on USAID - bravely risked their lives, handling Sarin victims barehanded against every protocol in the book.

Without presenting a shred of evidence, President Donald Trump boldly launched a military strike against Shayrat airfield because "national security interest," promising to help the "beautiful children" (*offer does not apply to babies in Gaza, Yemen, Pakistan, or basically anywhere else).

Some 5,000 EU nationals are currently fighting in Syria among the ranks of Islamic State and other jihadist groups, according to a senior Syrian official, who warns it'll be a disaster for European security if these militants are allowed to return.

"We have statistics that about five thousand terrorists fighting in Syria have come from the EU countries," Syria's Deputy Minister of Expatriates and Foreign Affairs Ayman Susan told Sputnik on Thursday.

"Imagine that these 5,000 terrorists will return to Europe ... they can do it," the diplomat warned.

"This will be a disaster for the security and stability of European countries and their populations."

Media say,
the United States may
or may not
kill a number of North Koreans
for this or that
or no good reason
but call North Korea
'the volatile and unpredictable regime'

Now consider what the U.S. media don't tell you about Korea:

BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- China proposed "double suspension" to defuse the looming crisis on the Korean Peninsula, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Wednesday.

"As a first step, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) may suspend its nuclear and missile activities in exchange for the suspension of large-scale U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK) military exercises," Wang told a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress.
...
Wang said the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula is mainly between the DPRK and the United States, but China, as a next-door neighbor with a lips-and-teeth relationship with the Peninsula, is indispensable to the resolution of the issue.

FM Wang, 'the lips', undoubtedly transmitted an authorized message from North Korea: "The offer is (still) on the table and China supports it."

After going back on Turkey's commitment to peace process in Syria agreed with the Russians, Turkish President Erdogan brought to heel by threat of Russian sanctions.

The aftermath of the missile strike on Sharyat air base further illustrates a fundamental problem standing in the way of a peaceful resolution of the Syrian conflict: the compulsive duplicity of Turkish President Erdogan.

Erdogan's overweening "neo-Ottoman" ambitions - intended to carve out a role for Turkey as a Great Power achieving a sphere of influence in the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean - are one of the primary reasons for the Syrian war.

A "small number" of F-35 stealth fighters will be sent to Europe for a planned NATO exercise, the US Air Force has announced. The move comes amid renewed tensions with Russia following the US missile strike in Syria.

"The US Air Force will deploy a small number of F-35A Lightning II aircraft this weekend on a long-planned training deployment to Europe," the Pentagon said in a statement, quoted by Sputnik.

The deployment will last several weeks and is part of the European Reassurance Initiative, a US build-up of troops and weapons in Europe launched in 2014 to "deter Russian aggression."

Back when the mainstream media cared about Trump's collusion with Russia, and Fox News was pushing the narrative that Obama collected Trump's conversations in an effort to politically assassinate a presidential candidate, Fox News contributor Judge Andrew Napolitano went on Fox and Friends and floated the possibility that former President Obama circumvented US law, and employed British intelligence surveil the Trump campaign.

Napolitano said that his assertion was confirmed by 3 separate sources.

The Obama administration and foreign intelligence agencies issued immediate denials, as expected. The liberal left, mainstream media labeled Napolitano's statement as pure "conspiracy theory".

After detailed decimation of President Trump's 'intelligence' 'justifying' his invasion of Syria, the MIT specialist on such intelligence-analysis, Dr. Theodore Postol, concludes:

I have worked with the intelligence community in the past, and I have grave concerns about the politicization of intelligence that seems to be occurring with more frequency in recent times - but I know that the intelligence community has highly capable analysts in it. And if those analysts were properly consulted about the claims in the White House document they would have not approved the document going forward.

I am available to expand on these comments substantially. I have only had a few hours to quickly review the alleged White House intelligence report. But a quick perusal shows without a lot of analysis that this report cannot be correct, and it also appears that this report was not properly vetted by the intelligence community.

This is a very serious matter.

President Obama was initially misinformed about supposed intelligence evidence that Syria was the perpetrator of the August 21, 2013 nerve agent attack in Damascus. This is a matter of public record.

President Obama stated that his initially false understanding was that the intelligence clearly showed that Syria was the source of the nerve agent attack. This false information was corrected when the then Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, interrupted the President while he was in an intelligence briefing. According to President Obama, Mr. Clapper told the President that the intelligence that Syria was the perpetrator of the attack was "not a slamdunk."

The question that needs to be answered by our nation is how was the president initially misled about such a profoundly important intelligence finding?

It's been 85 days since Donald Trump was sworn in as President of the United States — and one has to admit, he's turning out to be the worst Russian agent ever elected to the White House.

Hillary Clinton's campaign for president against Trump was almost entirely fueled by Russophobic hysteria and conspiracy theories. So, it's amusing, though not entirely unexpected, to see how quickly Trump's administration has managed to co-opt the hysteria and use it in his favor.

Trump ridiculed Democrats for months over their constant focus on Russia and Vladimir Putin. Now his administration is using some of the exact same talking points because suddenly, it's convenient.