• 'The supreme international crime' - The assassination of General Soleimani
• Iran's entrapment of Trump by the Deep State
• Unintended consequences of the Soleimani assassination: Did Trump just gift the Middle East to China and Russia?

• Flynn pleads guilty of lying to the FBI
• This should scare everyone: Flynn never lied - was railroaded into guilty plea anyway
• Bombshell at Flynn hearing: DOJ memo exists exonerating Michael Flynn
• Bombshell: Sidney Powell shows how the FBI trapped Michael Flynn
• Powell's letter to Barr: General Flynn was set up to 'take out' Trump
• Powell says Flynn expects to ask judge to dismiss his case due to egrigious Brady violations by Mueller team

• Biden's Ukrainian ties: Nepotism and corruption scandal or merely 'conservatives pounce'?
• Joe Biden's cocaine-using, Navy-busted son now working for huge Ukraine company
• Not just Ukraine; Biden may have a serious China problem as Schweizer exposes Hunter's $1bn deal
• Steve Bannon: 'Joe Biden is the hand grenade, Hunter Biden is the pin' to blow up the Democratic establishment
• New book details private equity firm run by Kerry and Biden's kids - Includes billion-dollar China deal they made after Biden Sr. visit

The meeting in the Tank, a secure conference room in the Pentagon, were part of an effort to subdue Trump's insurgency against the top military's world view. and the presentation by top generals came off as a lecture which Trump immediately disliked:

An opening line flashed on the screen, setting the tone: "The post-war international rules-based order is the greatest gift of the greatest generation." Mattis then gave a 20-minute briefing on the power of the NATO alliance to stabilize Europe and keep the United States safe. Bannon thought to himself, "Not good. Trump is not going to like that one bit." The internationalist language Mattis was using was a trigger for Trump.

"Oh, baby, this is going to be f---ing wild," [White House chief strategist Stephen K.] Bannon thought. "If you stood up and threatened to shoot [Trump], he couldn't say 'postwar rules-based international order.' It's just not the way he thinks."

Bannon was right. Verbal scuffles about NATO, South Korea and U.S. bases followed. Then Trump took on the generals:

"We are owed money you haven't been collecting!" Trump told them. "You would totally go bankrupt if you had to run your own business."

The discussion turned to the war on Afghanistan:

Trump erupted to revive another frequent complaint: the war in Afghanistan, which was now America's longest war. He demanded an explanation for why the United States hadn't won in Afghanistan yet, now 16 years after the nation began fighting there in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Trump unleashed his disdain, calling Afghanistan a "loser war." That phrase hung in the air and disgusted not only the military leaders at the table but also the men and women in uniform sitting along the back wall behind their principals. They all were sworn to obey their commander in chief's commands, and here he was calling the war they had been fighting a loser war.

"You're all losers," Trump said. "You don't know how to win anymore."

When one reads the recent Congress testimony of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan one can see that Trump has a point. The war is long lost and the military is lying about it:

"There's an odor of mendacity throughout the Afghanistan issue . . . mendacity and hubris," John F. Sopko said in testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "The problem is there is a disincentive, really, to tell the truth. We have created an incentive to almost require people to lie."
...
"When we talk about mendacity, when we talk about lying, it's not just lying about a particular program. It's lying by omissions," he said. "It turns out that everything that is bad news has been classified for the last few years."

Trump's rant during the meeting with the generals continued:

Trump mused about removing General John Nicholson, the U.S. commander in charge of troops in Afghanistan. "I don't think he knows how to win," the president said, impugning Nicholson, who was not present at the meeting.
...
"I want to win," he said. "We don't win any wars anymore . . . We spend $7 trillion, everybody else got the oil and we're not winning anymore."
...
"I wouldn't go to war with you people," Trump told the assembled brass.

Addressing the room, the commander in chief barked, "You're a bunch of dopes and babies."

A drill sergeant act performed on recruits with four stars on their shoulders. I find that quite impressive. Those perfumed princes must have fumed.

16 US military men with fatal injuries sustained during Iran's retaliatory missile strikes on Ain Al-Assad base earlier this month have been taken to a hospital in camp Arifjan in Ahmed al-Jaber airbase in Kuwait, a leading Kuwaiti newspaper disclosed on Sunday.

The Arabic-language Al-Qabas paper quoted informed sources as saying on Sunday that the 16 US militaries, included some whose bodies had been severely burnt and some others who had sustained shrapnel wounds, have been transferred to a US military hospital in Kuwait under strict security measures.

It added that the wounded military men have gone under surgical operations and are still kept at the ICU section of the hospital.

According to the paper, several other US forces who had sustained mild injuries in Iran's missile strike are being treated in Iraq.

• Polish leader demands (more) WWII reparations from Germany
• Poland seeks to rewrite WWII history, excludes Russia from participating in war memorial
• Modern Poland rewrites its WWII past: Patriotism, negligence or something else?
• Declassified documents show that Soviet military gave vast assistance to Poland during WWII
• Poland's Senate passes bill to outlaw blaming Poles for Holocaust atrocities, triggers diplomatic row with Israel

• Netanyahu says he won't resign if indicted on graft charges
• Bid to keep Netanyahu out of PM's office after election because he's facing bribery charges shot down in court
• Israeli PM Netanyahu says he wants Parliamentary immunity from prosecution in multiple corruption cases
• Netanyahu puppet Zohar refiles bill granting PM Netanyahu immunity from prosecution
• Twitter-sphere battles rage over Netanyahu's decision to ask for immunity from indictments
• Most Israelis reject granting immunity to Netanyahu

• NewsReal: Interview With The Moriartys - New Light on Benghazi, And Liberating Libya
• Behind the Headlines: NATO Slaughter - James and Joanne Moriarty expose the truth about what happened in Libya

• Netanyahu "pleased" as Trump announces "crippling" new sanctions on Iran
• Bolton's threat: The US will squeeze Iran with sanctions 'until the pips squeak'
• Sanctions on Iran more like a demonstration of US weakness, rather than strength
• US praises sanctions for killing Iran's economy, then blames Tehran for people's suffering
• Sword of sanctions knows no scabbard: America's endless economic war on Iran