James Hasson Profile picture
Catholic. Afghanistan Veteran. Attorney. I write things sometimes. Author of Kabul: https://t.co/2VWJwTRnfx
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Apr 20 6 tweets 2 min read
After “reopening” their investigation into the Kabul bombing and finally admitting the bomber escaped from Bagram after we abandoned it, the Biden DoD still insists the attack “was not preventable” because…some other suicide bomber would have done it anyway. 1/ Image The administration began with the conclusion that the attack was “not preventable” and worked backwards, and they refuse to admit otherwise no matter what. 2/
Sep 7, 2023 8 tweets 4 min read
There’s one part of the Afghanistan fiasco that's been mostly ignored, and it’s been nagging at me. It was a decision Biden made himself.

It led to more Americans left behind and factored into the bombing.

We detail it in Kabul, but here's a summary: 1/ amzn.to/3PuzSNy Right after Kabul fell, the administration got lots of heat about the low numbers of people evacuated. At the time, we were only evacuating Americans and Afghan allies. Of course, the numbers were tiny because the administration failed to plan and no systems were in place yet. 2/
Jun 1, 2020 4 tweets 2 min read
It's an absolute disgrace that the taxpayers pay this activist's salary. This isn't journalism, and the American people shouldn't subsidize it. Like, FFS. There was a story today about people lighting homes with children inside on fire and then blocking fire engines from responding. They're burning family-owned businesses and beating up elderly women. How much more evidence do you need, @Yamiche?
May 23, 2020 4 tweets 1 min read
It’s hard to think of something more vile than exploiting a sacred day like Memorial Day to push for universal mail-in voting. The point is to honor those who gave everything for this country—not to push domestic political perspectives. This is just gross. I might add that this is an especially gross coming from a dude who pushed the Iraq from the safety of his desk, assured everyone that our troops would be welcomed as liberators, and said it would last “weeks, not months.”
Apr 9, 2020 4 tweets 1 min read
Project Lincoln folks in 2016: “This is not a binary choice between Trump and Clinton. Do the moral thing and vote for McMullin.”

Project Lincoln folks in 2020: “This is a binary choice, and real conservatives must vote for the guy who wants to repeal the Hyde Amendment.” Once you realize that it’s nearly been a decade since any member of the Lincoln Project was involved in a successful GOP campaign, you understand why this collection of individuals is jumping on this bandwagon. If you’re a strategist who can’t win, gotta stay relevant another way
Apr 6, 2020 10 tweets 3 min read
A thread on the election of China's handpicked Director-General, Tedros Ghebreyesus (the first non-physician to ever lead the organization, FWIW), and how he came to lead the organization tasked with out global health. (Spoiler: he was supported by many current armchair QBs)
1/
The procedure for choosing the Director General changed in 2016. "Previously, the WHO’s leaders were selected by the executive board, and merely ratified by the Assembly five months later." humanosphere.org/world-politics…

2/
Apr 3, 2020 4 tweets 1 min read
A reminder that, on February 1st, China begged the EU for medical supplies. Now that Europeans are dying by the thousands across the continent, China is selling defective supplies back to Europe. Just a truly diabolical regime.

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7… China also promised that, in exchange for the supplies, it was "willing to strengthen information, policy and technical exchanges and to cooperate with international communities including EU."

Of course, that was a lie. It continued sending infected tourists to Italy during this
Mar 31, 2020 4 tweets 1 min read
Tom's formal professional activities haven't changed in the last several years, but Tom appeared on cable news only a couple of times prior to 2015. No one cared what he thought.

Now he's appearing quite a bit.

Draw your own conclusions.

imdb.com/name/nm6214307/ The funny thing about Tom is that his whole shtick is that people should defer to experts in a given field, but he feels entirely comfortable weighing in on a whole host of fields that are outside of his nominal expertise (see, e.g. judicial nominees).
Feb 28, 2020 9 tweets 3 min read
Never forget that after the left predicted an absolute catastrophe if Net Neutrality was repealed. It was—as history proves—100% false, but it led to @AjitPaiFCC and his family getting death threats. He canceled events. A man threatening his family went to prison.

Let's review: CNN's front page carried the headline "the end of the internet as we know it." thehill.com/homenews/media…
Jan 24, 2020 7 tweets 3 min read
Journalists have spent the last 72 hours portraying Adam Schiff as a straight-shooting hero of the republic, so its worth revisiting his last few years:

03/17: “I can’t go into the particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence" of collusion
politico.com/story/2017/03/… 11/17: "The person they nominated to run the criminal division of [DOJ] just happens to be the lawyer for the Russian Alfa Bank that was in communication with Trump Tower, which is the subject of our investigation." (Mueller debunked the Alfa Bank story.)

apnews.com/d29a9c0369fd4a…
Jan 22, 2020 6 tweets 2 min read
A few thoughts on this:
-Impeachment is, above all, a political process with political consequences both on immediate events and long-term practices
-Each impeachment—supposed to be extraordinarily rare—makes the next more likely and normalizes the given justification.

So,

1/ Because impeachment is a political device that is divisive but ultimately designed to ensure the long-term political health of the republic, *how someone is impeached* and *the perceived reasons why* are as important to our political future as *what they're impeached for.*

2/
Jan 5, 2020 6 tweets 2 min read
This has gone viral and has been shared by the Obama bros, among others, but it's not a real quote from the NYT article. It combines various sentences and presents them as a single quote. Regardless of your opinion on the strike, context matters. Here's an accurate version: 1/ (And, FWIW, based on the the NYT authors' track record on the topic, it's fair to view their presentation of the issue with a little skepticism) 2/

Jan 4, 2020 7 tweets 3 min read
This NYT piece about the Soleimani operation manages to slip in a number of biases and editorials under the guise of straight news reporting.

1/ "Bush’s administration made a conscious decision not to kill General Suleimani when he was in the cross hairs, and Mr. Obama’s administration evidently never made an effort to pursue him."

Obama didn't "evidently not pursue" Soleimani—he actively kept Israel from killing him

2/
Oct 7, 2019 6 tweets 2 min read
We’re not only abandoning the Kurds, but we’re doing it after we convinced them to deconstruct defensive fortifications aimed at deterring a Turkish incursion. The humanitarian cost will be huge, but so will the short and long-term strategic consequences. What happens to the 70k radicalized ISIS family members living in al-Hol guarded by the Kurds when the fragile stability in the region melts down? The Kurds warned *3 days ago* that they were already strained on resources to control and defend the camp.
Sep 4, 2019 5 tweets 2 min read
Now seems like a good time to remind everyone that Brian Karem—who works as a CNN political analyst and was defended by the WHCA—has a remarkable record of encountering folks on the street who give him twitter-ready quotes that magically confirm his worldview. There was the time that Brian was apparently working alongside a 85+ year old German reporter who compared the Trump era to Nazi-era Germany
Aug 30, 2019 6 tweets 2 min read
This is the second excerpt from my chapter on Ranger School. The Obama DoD told a member of House Armed Services that records he requested—some of which I published—had been shredded.

Theres a second aspect to this coverup, tho: the Obama DoD smearing a female nat sec journalist Journalist @SKatzKeating nailed this story shortly after the first female candidates graduated. The Obama DoD accused her of publishing "pure fiction" and not engaging in "serious journalism." Her story, they said, "failed...every man and woman" who earned the Ranger tab.
Aug 18, 2019 10 tweets 4 min read
A timely reminder that in 2016, several major journalists were revealed to be explicitly coordinating with the Clinton campaign or—at the very least—favoring it and working closely with it. None suffered consequences. These folks will help shape 2020 coverage.

A review: 1/ WaPo columnist Dana Milbank, who recently accused Mitch McConnell of being a Russian asset ("Moscow Mitch"), apparently asked the DNC in 2016 for oppo research on Trump. 2/ dailycaller.com/2016/11/06/wik…
Aug 13, 2019 5 tweets 2 min read
The biggest bias in media is not how things are covered, but which things are covered and which are ignored. There's been no media pushback on the lie that Stacey Abrams should have won. But Snopes has repeatedly "fact-checked" the Babylon Bee since 2018.
vogue.com/article/stacey… The claim that Abrams was cheated out of victory is contradicted by all available evidence, but it's been repeated by Dem 2020 candidates as if it were the gospel truth.

Abrams lost by 54k votes. There were only 30k provisional ballots cast denied. The math just doesn't add up.
Aug 9, 2019 9 tweets 3 min read
Good afternoon, political twitter. I tried to put my last twelve months in Twitter Siberia to good use, and I'm thrilled to announce that I'm releasing a book with @Regnery Publishing on the 27th about how the social justice movement has migrated to the military and is weakening its abilities.