“As far as I’m concerned, Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza,” the senator said, using a phrase that refers to destroying something that is already destroyed.
“But as the pressure campaign devolved this week into death threats against lawmakers and their families, something unexpected happened: Positions hardened, and a ragtag coalition of roughly 20 House Republicans rose up to deny Jordan the speakership.“
https://news.yahoo.com/tom-cotton-says-israel-bounce-235521073.html
Days after the arrival of a United States armada off the coast of Israel, another three warships and a contingent of marines set off urgently in the same direction from Kuwait on Thursday and could be there by the middle of [this] week.
Republicans For Jesus and Trump have destroyed America. I am out of WARNINGS! It’s too late. Israeli soldiers do not want to fight in the Gaza and die by the hundreds each day. The two nations that make-up the Judeo Christian Religions – are dead in the water! For the first time in American history, our democracy is entering into a Religious War – as a non-secular Nation. For the first time Israel will be fighting in a International War – not as a secular nation – but as a right-wing religious nation.
Evangelical Republicans have the hots for Putin. The U.S. could not have a worse ally than Israel that empowers Rabid Punks on YHWH that refuse to join the military – and fight for their God. Tom Cotton is an evil supporter of Israel, and won’t fund the fighters in Ukraine. How – insane! Cotton wants to expel students at Harvard for being – for Hamas! He also thinks it’s moral for Israel to ‘Bounce the Rubble’ – bomb civilians in Gaza.
Cotton refused to condemn Russia for ‘Bounding the Rubble’ and killing hundreds of women and children. I am allowed to look for religious motives, because I suspect religious American are making death threats against fellow Americans. Why? Is Cotton of Jewish origin? What’s in it for him? He seems to be getting – something extra out of these conflicts. Is he a religious man – a Minister of War?
Above we see the real President looking tough with more – Joy Boys For Jesu!. Whatever Nero is guilty of, Trumpy Boy surpasses this degenerate Emperor – by far!
Write your President and Democratic Leaders and DEMAND the rightful President of the United States DISMISS all Election Deniers from office – after declaring we and our allies are at war! Our ships and our sailors have come under fire! This Dumb and Deadly Congress – is the most imponent in history! They are – deluded as all hell! They are Products of Putin. They are – Putin’s Punks – high on Hateful Patriarchs!
John Presco
Russia is operating a “ghost ship” in the Black Sea as part of a “unique fleet” to swerve restrictions in the waters around southern Ukraine, according to a new report.
Moscow has used “a unique fleet, composed of modern vessels able to move critical cargo undetected” through the Turkish-controlled straits restricting access to the Black Sea, according to research published by the NATO Defense College on Wednesday.
WASHINGTON (AP) — It was the thing that was supposed to make Rep. Jim Jordan the 56th speaker of the House.
An onslaught of pressure from the Republican Party base, allies predicted, would compel the GOP’s moderate and establishment members to support Jordan, a hero of the far-right, and help him secure the votes for the gavel.
But as the pressure campaign devolved this week into death threats against lawmakers and their families, something unexpected happened: Positions hardened, and a ragtag coalition of roughly 20 House Republicans rose up to deny Jordan the speakership.
In doing so, they defied a belief of many in Washington — that moderates have no backbone.
“Bullying don’t work,” said Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican centrist who has led the opposition to Jordan’s nomination.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States on Friday released a U.S. intelligence assessment sent to more than 100 countries that found Moscow is using spies, social media and Russian state-run media to erode public faith in the integrity of democratic elections worldwide.
When Republicans gathered on Dec. 14, 2020, claiming to be legitimate electors casting the state’s 16 electoral votes for Donald Trump, they met at the Georgia Capitol in a room just upstairs from the building’s public entrance. A Trump campaign official asked for the electors’ “complete discretion,” telling them to say only that they were meeting with two state senators who were there.
U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks says she has received “credible death threats” after she pulled her support Wednesday from U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio in the second round of balloting to choose the next speaker of the House.
Miller-Meeks, a Republican who represents the 1st Congressional District in southeast Iowa, supported Jordan in the first round of votes on Tuesday but cast her vote Wednesday for U.S. Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, a Republican who chairs the Appropriations Committee.
The Republican senator Tom Cotton refused four times on Sunday to condemn or even comment on Donald Trump’s repeated praise for Vladimir Putin, the Russian president who ordered the invasion of Ukraine.
Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) urged Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to deport any foreign national who has expressed support for Hamas since the militant group attacked Israel ten days ago.
The USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier refuels in the eastern Mediterranean Sea on October 11, 2023. U.S. Navy via AP.
RESPONSE
OCT. 20 2023
About the author
Stephen Peter Rosen is the Beton Michael Kaneb professor of national security and military affairs at Harvard. He writes frequently on foreign policy.
The monstrous killings of October 7 were a flash of lightning that illuminated a landscape Israel and its allies could previously ignore. Killing Jews was both an end in itself as well as a strategic action backed by Iran that was meant to create a cascade of chaos that could lead to the destruction of Israel and the expulsion of the United States from the Middle East. Alas, it was not the only such challenge in recent years.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was, similarly, an act of hatred against the Western liberal order led by the United States as well as a strategic action meant to demonstrate the inability of NATO to take effective action and thereby open the way for further Russian expansion. The actions ordered by Xi Jinping to increase its military pressures on Taiwan and the countries of the East and South Asia are more coldly strategic than those of Iran and Russia, but he is also determined to eliminate the military role of the United States in the western Pacific and East Asia that underlies our economic relationship with Asia. Taken together, these three fronts reveal the possibility of an upending of the world order that makes our lives possible. Defeat at the hands any one of these nations increases the threat to the United States and to Israel.
The urgent problem for Israel is to ensure its survival. The problem for American friends of Israel, meanwhile, is to figure out how to handle all three of these problems at the same time. As the Israeli war against Hamas in Gaza goes forward, we cannot lose sight of the global problem. Fifty years ago, in October 1973, when Henry Kissinger was briefed on the simultaneous Egyptian invasion of the Sinai and the Syrian invasion of the Golan Heights, his first question was “What are the Russians doing?” Today, we must look around and pay attention to what the Iranians, Russians, and Chinese are doing.
The government of Iran has said that the opening of additional military fronts against Israel will depend on the actions of Israel. This is a thinly veiled threat to support military action by Hizballah from Lebanon and Hamas from the West Bank as well as Gaza. Putin, previously relatively neutral regarding Israel, has thrown in his lot with Iran, ending his friendship with Netanyahu, refusing to condemn the attack by Hamas, and blaming American intervention in the Middle East for the problems of the Palestinians. Outside of the Middle East, he is taking measures to support a multi-year war against Ukraine. China has refused even to acknowledge that Hamas has conducted an attack on Israel, and is calling for an immediate cease-fire, another form of siding with Hamas. Further east, it is increasing its military operations around Taiwan and also building up its military infrastructure in the regions opposite India and its nuclear forces.
In other words, each of our adversaries is hoping that the other challenges to the United States will reduce the American ability to stand up to it—and preparing to act based on that hope. The hold on military aid to Ukraine and the political chaos in Congress may contribute to the perception that the ability of the U.S. government to respond to external challenges is reduced.
What is to be done to dispel that perception?
It is wrong to argue, as some on the right have, the United States should enable an increase of support to Israel by reducing support for Ukraine or Taiwan. If the United States fails to handle any one of these three problems, the world order it built—and the survival of Israel, which depends on that order—will be in jeopardy. A Russia that is not defeated in its war against Ukraine will help Hamas and the other enemies of Israel because doing so will help Russia defeat the United States globally. A China that triumphs over Taiwan will have greater influence in the Middle East and will be a stronger friend of Iran. The best course of action for us now is suggested by what the United States did the last time we faced multiple external military threats.
As the countries of Europe and Asia went to war, in 1940 the Republican Party nominated an internationalist presidential candidate who supported Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s measures to oppose fascism and militarism around the world. Before Pearl Harbor, FDR pushed for higher levels of naval spending and asked Congress to fund a “Victory Program” of military spending sufficient to defeat all of America’s enemies. And, at his urging, the House of Representatives in 1941, by a margin of one vote, renewed the first peacetime military conscription in the history of the United States.
Today, friends of Israel in both parties should announce that they will support senators and representatives who are willing to support a broad increase in military spending sufficient to pay for the weapons and other capabilities that would enable the United States to help Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan, and the other friendly countries threatened by China to defend themselves. As was said in 1940 and 1941, in a dangerous world the best way to defend America is to help the nations fighting those countries on the front line while building up America’s own military capabilities. A tax surcharge to pay for this effort will be necessary and should be passed.
Politically, friends of Israel should support President Biden but call for him to put his weight behind the necessary defense buildup. And friends of Israel should rally behind the Republican presidential candidate most able to conduct the foreign and military programs necessary to keep America safe. Joe Biden is determined to be a two-term president. He deserves support. A Republican presidential rival who criticizes him but shares his understanding of what needs to be done will reassure the international community, friendly and hostile, that this country will remain a strong and reliable actor in defense of its interests and friends.
In other words, as we watch Israel’s struggle for survival, American friends of Israel can help by getting our own house in better order.
The US Navy has assembled one of the greatest concentrations of power in the Eastern Mediterranean in 40 years. Any assumption that the large and growing US naval force in the region is simply there as a demonstration force, unlikely to be used, was dispelled on October 19 when the destroyer USS Carney shot down cruise missiles and drones in the northern Red Sea. The USN said the munitions had been launched from Yemen and were potentially aimed at Israel.
The US government has now deployed a very extensive range of naval force in the Eastern Mediterranean following the murderous Hamas attack against Israel on October 7.
The force will be composed of two carrier strike groups centered around the USS Gerald R. Ford and the USS Dwight Eisenhower, the latter currently on its way to the region. The former had been scheduled to end its six-month deployment, but this has now been extended for an indeterminate period. Together, they have nine escorts.
In addition, the Biden administration is moving the USS Bataan Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) and embarked 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) to the area. It has also been reported that the command ship USS Mount Whitney has deployed in support of Eastern Mediterranean operations, which suggests that the US might form a joint task force in the region with a senior officer taking command of that effort at sea on the command ship.
This combined force represents one of the largest US naval deployments in these waters since June 1983, when four US carrier groups were in the Eastern Mediterranean and, later in the year, when two carriers and the battleship USS New Jersey bombed and shelled terrorist positions in Lebanon. US Marines have also been present many times in the region and ran non-combatant evacuation operations from Beirut in the summer of 1983, before the barracks bombing. US naval forces are no strangers to the Eastern Mediterranean and its Byzantine mix of terrorist groups, many directly supported by the Islamist Iranian theocratic government.
They face a range of threats.
While Hamas has not used cruise missiles in past combat, two other terrorist groups, Hezbollah and the Yemeni Houthis, have both employed such weapons in combat, likely supplied by Iran. Some experts also worry that Hamas has developed so-called surprise weapons, including explosives-packed submersible drones that it may be holding back.
In 2006, Hezbollah attacked the Israeli warship INS Hanit with a cruise missile. The weapon did only minor damage, but other weapons sank a nearby merchant ship. In October 2016, the Yemeni Houthis fired Chinese-made cruise missiles at US warships in the Red Sea. These weapons missed or were shot down (details are still classified).
The Houthis were successful, however, in targeting and attacking the former US high-speed vessel Swift, then operated by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as a transport ship. The vessel was hit by a C802 Chinese cruise missile, caught fire, and burned to the point of being a total loss. Cruise missiles, suicide boats like that which attacked the destroyer USS Cole in 2000, as well as drones (that have also been employed in the Russo-Ukraine war) could all threaten US naval forces, especially closer to shore.
Nonetheless, the US will soon have an impressive naval force assembled in the Eastern Mediterranean. This is unusual. US operations, at best, include just a few ships and, usually, no carriers. Deploying two allows their aircraft to fly 24-hour/round-the-clock missions.
This amounts to eight strike fighter squadrons, in addition to electronic warfare, airborne early warning aircraft, transport aircraft, and helicopters totaling upwards of 150 aircraft. The carriers’ cruiser and destroyer escorts are all Aegis warships equipped to track thousands of air, surface, subsurface, and land targets in the region, and the external links to track many thousands more, many through allies and partners in other regions that might affect the Eastern Mediterranean.
Just adding up all of the AEGIS ship vertical launch system (VLS) missile cells amounts to over 800 cells, assuming 122 in each of the cruisers and 90-96 in each of the six destroyers. No outward appearance suggests what types of weapons those cells hold, but they will include surface-to-air weapons capable of shooting down aircraft and cruise and ballistic missiles, as well as the well-known Tomahawk cruise missile.
The USS Bataan ARG, with its 2,400 embarked marines, is also en route. Centered around the Bataan, a large amphibious ship with MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, it has two additional amphibious warfare ships, as well as the Marines from a special operations capable unit. These amphibious ships can provide hospital capabilities, conduct non-combatant evacuation operations, and are also proficient at humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR).
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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is requesting U.S. Capitol Police preserve all surveillance footage and photos, police reports and arrest records from all House office buildings Wednesday following a large protest on Capitol Hill that demanded a cease-fire in Israel and Gaza.
A large group of protestors began a demonstration inside the Cannon House Office Building on Wednesday, urging Congress to act on a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls the Gaza Strip.
The Navy‘s fleet commander in Europe and the command-and-control ship USS Mount Whitney are deploying to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea amid a U.S. military buildup in the region to support Israel as it wages a bloody war against Hamas, the service announced Wednesday.
In a released statement, the Navy said the Mount Whitney — the 6th Fleet’s flagship — departed its port at Gaeta, Italy, “in support of U.S. operations.” A Navy spokesman confirmed to Military.com that the commander of 6th fleet, Vice Adm. Thomas Ishee, and his staff were aboard.
The sailing of the Mount Whitney and Ishee’s putting to sea comes just days after defense officials confirmed that the Navy would send a second aircraft carrier strike group into the region and move a pair of ships carrying a Marine Corps expeditionary unit there as well.
he USS Carney, a U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer in the northern Red Sea, on Thursday shot down multiple missiles and drones launched by Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen that the Pentagon said were potentially headed toward targets in Israel.
It is the first time in recent memory that a U.S. Navy ship in the Middle East has engaged missiles and drones that were not directly aimed at the vessel.
It’s also the first U.S. military action taken to defend Israel in the current crisis and with the U.S. and other countries trying to contain the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the possibility that an Iranian-backed proxy group fired missiles and drones at Israel is sure to increase growing regional tensions.
The ship was in the Red Sea on Thursday evening local time when it intercepted three land attack cruise missiles and several drones, Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said at a press briefing. U.S. officials on Friday told ABC News that the Carney had brought down four cruise missiles and 14 drones launched by the Houthis, an update from the three missiles and eight drones reported earlier.
Christian leaders have much explaining to do.
Rosamond Press 
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