There’s a lot of talk about the Marines taking Kharg Island.
But the truth is the USS Tripoli, an America-class amphibious assault ship that carries the embarked 31st MEU, can’t get anywhere near the island—the Strait of Hormuz is closed.
To even try and enter the Persian Gulf is the kind of suicidal venture former Marine Commandant, General David Berger, warned about in his 2019 Commandants Planning Guidance, where he noted that “our Nation’s ability to project power and influence beyond its shores is increasingly challenged by long-range precision fires; expanding air, surface, and sub-surface threats; and the continued degradation of our amphibious and auxiliary ship readiness. The ability to project and maneuver from strategic distances will likely be detected and contested from the point of embarkation during a major contingency…it would be illogical to continue to concentrate our forces on a few large ships. The adversary will quickly recognize that striking while concentrated (aboard ship) is the preferred option.”
And yet here we are, seven years later, a prisoner of legacy doctrine and systems.
If Marines are to attempt to take Kharg Island, it will have to be an assault launched from ashore, not from the sea. Marines and their Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft will need to deploy to Kuwait or Bahrain, both of which are currently under attack from Iranian missiles and drones, and from their attempt an air assault.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because in May 1975, US Marines carried out a similar vertical envelopment on Koh Tang island in the Gulf of Thailand. Conceived as a rescue mission to free US merchant marine sailors taken prisoner by the Khmer Rouge, the Marines instead found no prisoners, but lots of dug in Khmer Rouge fighters who ended up shooting down three of the eleven helicopters used in the initial landing, and heavily damaging five others. In the end, 38 Marines and US Air Force personnel were killed, and another 50 killed before the Marines had to be extracted under heavy fire. In the confusion of the final evacuation, three Marines were left on the island, and were subsequently captured and executed by the Khmer Rouge.
Any attempt to land Marines on Kharg Island will end in a disaster that would make Koh Tang island look like child’s play.
General David Berger knew this.
I wonder what the current Commandant, General Eric Smith, has to say about this? Back in 1990 the Marine Corps Commandant, General Al Gray, formed an ad hoc planning cell to challenge the plans being put together by General Norman Schwarzkopf to liberate Kuwait.
Does General Smith (@CMC_MarineCorps) possess the kind of intelligence and courage that General Gray had in standing up to bad ideas, or will he stand by silently as history repeats itself in the Persian Gulf, where the 31st MEU may find itself in a repeat of the Koh Tang debacle so Donald Trump can falsely declare victory over Iran.
Moments ago, at my direction, the United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island. Our Weapons are the most powerful and sophisticated that the World has ever known but, for reasons of decency, I have chosen NOT to wipe out the Oil Infrastructure on the Island. However, should Iran, or anyone else, do anything to interfere with the Free and Safe Passage of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision. During my First Term, and currently, I rebuilt our Military into the Most Lethal, Powerful, and Effective Force, by far, anywhere in the World. Iran has NO ability to defend anything that we want to attack — There is nothing they can do about it! Iran will NEVER have a nuclear weapon, nor will it have the ability to threaten the United States of America, the Middle East or, for that matter, the World! Iran’s Military, and all others involved with this Terrorist Regime, would be wise to lay down their arms, and save what’s left of their country, which isn’t much! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP
This happened not too long ago, and if you focus on it really hard and think about it over and over, you will understand what is happening to White countries.
A Muslim was trying to stab Germans in Germany.
A brave German stopped the muslim.
The German police arrested the German defending his people instead of the m*slim attacking his people.
The Muslim then stabbed the police officer arresting the brave German.
White people are stopping white people from defending white people from all of the filthy third world monsters that have invaded our homes.
I don’t understand why any white man would do this to his own kind, but if they don’t stop, there will be nothing left in 10 or 20 years.
Donald Trump has deployed thousands of US Marines to the Strait of Hormuz amid mounting fears that America is set to put troops on the ground as the world’s oil supply is strangled.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth approved a request by US Central Command for the deployment of a Marine expeditionary unit, typically including several warships and 5,000 troops, three officials told the Wall Street Journal.
The Japan-based USS Tripoli, an amphibious assault ship, and its attached Marines are now headed for the Middle East, where they join other Marines already in the fight, the officials said.
The war spiraled on Friday as the US death toll climbed to 13 troops, domestic gas prices soared to $3.60 per gallon and Iran‘s security chief Ali Larijani defiantly taunted Trump on the streets of Tehran.
The bolstered deployment comes as the Trump administration weighs seizing Iran’s Kharg Island, around 16 miles off the mainland in the Persian Gulf, which handles 90 percent of the Islamic regime’s fuel exports.
Trump told Fox News Radio Friday about taking control of the island: ‘It’s not high on the list, but it’s one of so many different things, and I can change my mind in seconds.’
[i] Here, the monk, detached from sense-desires, detached from unwholesome states, enters and remains in the first jhana (level of concentration, Sanskrit: dhyāna), in which there is applied and sustained thinking, together with joy and pleasure born of detachment; [ii] And through the subsiding of applied and sustained thinking, with the gaining of inner stillness and oneness of mind, he enters and remains in the second jhana, which is without applied and sustained thinking, and in which there are joy and pleasure born of concentration; [iii] And through the fading of joy, he remains equanimous, mindful and aware, and he experiences in his body the pleasure of which the Noble Ones say: “equanimous, mindful and dwelling in pleasure”, and thus he enters and remains in the third jhana; [iv] And through the giving up of pleasure and pain, and through the previous disappearance of happiness and sadness, he enters and remains in the fourth jhana, which is without pleasure and pain, and in which there is pure equanimity and mindfulness.
This is a description of the first four states of Buddhist meditation or ‘concentration’, as it is sometimes translated. This is the eighth element of the Noble Eightfold Path. What is meant in this description is very clear. It is pure religious practice, the essence of prayer and contemplation. It is that which leads to the ‘presence of God’ in Christian mysticism. It is communion with the Divine, the experience of transcendent Cosmic Consciousness that underlies and oversees our small consciousnesses. The Buddha taught a path of ethical purity, diligent mindfulness and non-attachment to anything that detracts from a clear mind, an unencumbered mind. In this sense, Buddhism is a pristine spiritual elixir with no added vocabularies, stories, beliefs or ornamentation. The ‘going out’ or ‘cessation’ of all hindrances to achieving jhana and samadhi states is nirvana. In this sense, Buddhism is a universal religion that focuses directly on the goal of all ethical religious practice—direct knowledge and communion with ______; use your own word(s) for that. ABN
Full quote: “The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as DP [displaced persons] as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political, neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog.”
Handwritten note by President Harry S. Truman dated July 21, 1947, summarizing remarks made during a meeting with former Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr.
This is profoundly true. The Western failure to understand human savagery and differences in ethics and morality is a root cause of the downfall of the West. At one end of the spectrum of savagery are deranged savages as described above. At the other end are deranged savages who act in groups. The most sophisticated and dangerous group at this end of the spectrum is Jewish Supremists who are very clearly pursuing a strategy of lethal parasitism against the West and also annihilation of all of their perceived enemies, which will include the West once we have helped them destroy their neighbors. Their intransigent belief in their own superiority, coupled with what appears to be gene-based self-deception, has given rise to their religious fantasy of world domination. The sheer craziness of their ideas shows that group dynamics do not need to be based on reality; indeed, group bonds can be even stronger when they are based on delusion. I mention Jewish Supremacy in this context because they are very clearly the major proponents of mass immigration invasion of the West. This should be obvious to all thoughtful Westerners by now. They also very clearly have total control over the Trump administration, as they did over Biden, Obama, Bush, and Clinton… ABN
Most of us go through periods of stress in our everyday lives – but there are actually seven types of ‘hyperarousal’, according to a new study.
Researchers say the feeling of tension can be teased out into distinct subgroups.
This includes anxious, somatic, sensitive, sleep–related, irritable, vigilant and sudomotor – and each are characterised slightly differently.
Perhaps the most well–known, the ‘anxious’ feeling of tension, is defined by being worried or concerned about something bad happening in the future. It can also indicate feelings of guilt or fears about missing out on things.
Feeling ‘sensitive hyperarousal’ indicates emotional vulnerability and being easily startled, the scientists explained.
Another common source of tension is ‘sleep–related’ – defined by trouble falling or staying asleep and leading to trouble being mentally alert.
‘No previous study has addressed the unresolved question of whether hyperarousal may be one common…construct or rather has multiple dimensions,’ the team, from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, wrote in the journal EClinicalMedicine.
‘This study discovered seven different dimensions of hyperarousal and provides a concise instrument to assess them.’
Psychology gets lots of stuff wrong, but generally does a good job with descriptive overviews like this. This study is based on a questionnaire of 467 adults, all of whom had some sort of psychiatric diagnosis. Seems worth thinking about. Anything well described constitutes or can lead to useful explanations, which may yield methods of control or intervention. ABN
American Buddhist Net 