FUN FACT: Bashar al-Assad's Syria was used frequently as a place to send Jihadists Western armies & intel services captured globally. It was part of America's "Extraordinary Rendition" Program (a.k.a. torture). In essence, Assad was *HELPING* the US fight al Qaeda. 1/ 2/ Ofc, people will counter that Assad also facilitated the movement of foreign fighters into and out of Iraq during the Insurgency years of the Iraq War (2003-06). Indeed, this is true. But Assad did this for two reasons...

Just to be clear, the Turkish-and-US-backed leader of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a 42-year-old man (pictured) named Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, likely killed and maimed scores of US troops during the Insurgency in Iraq (2003-2006). A 🧵1/ 2/ Born in 1982 is Saudi Arabia, as a young boy JOLANI moved to Damascus. Interestingly, 1982 was also the year that Hafez al-Assad, the dictator of Syria and father to recently ousted Bashar al-Assad, annihilated the Sunni Arab stronghold of Hama.

We were attacked on 9/11 by UBL, a general in the Islamists' Army. But let's call UBL & his comrades what they really are: they are Caliphatists. They explicitly called for the restoration of the Islamic Caliphate that had existed until the fall of the Ottoman Empire in WWI. 1/ 2/ al Qaeda means "The Base" in Arabic. It's based on an old Marxist-Leninist model of revolutionary organization. Like the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War, al Qaeda was meant to be the vanguard of revolutionary ideals that would force radical change.

The Iranian Regime will be no more by the end of Trump's term in office. Everything going on in the Mideast today is based on the notion that the incoming Trump administration will institute some form of a regime change operation directed against the mullahocracy in Tehran. 1/ 2/ Based on the key nat-sec appointments of the incoming Trump administration & things that have been said by Trump on the campaign trail, Trump will immediately resume the Maximum Pressure campaign against Iran that worked so well in the first term.

If you don't understand what's happening here, let me try to explain: for more than a decade, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been trying to rebuild the Ottoman Empire that collapsed at the end of WW1. It was an explicitly Islamist empire. 1/ 2/ Erdogan has long supported Islamist groups fighting in Syria against Assad, he was one of the original backers of the NATO move against Gaddafi in Libya, he was partial to the Arab Spring becoming the Islamist Winter, all because he believes that as an ethnic Turk

The "foreign threat actor" is likely China as a possibility. BUT there is also Iran, North Korea, even Russia who all have axes to grind. More ominously, however, is the possibility of an "inside job." 1/

https://twitter.com/EmeraldRobinson/status/1847705406136635835

2/ The toolkit is called "Marble" and it is designed to basically mask the true origins of a cyberattack. In this case, the US can theoretically use it to make it look like an insider attack is being waged by a foreign threat actor.securityaffairs.com/57586/intellig…

Pay attention to this guy. He may have just rendered our submarine force obsolete. We underestimate China to our grave detriment.wkjiang.sjtu.edu.cn/EnglishWeb 2/ Dr. Weikang Jiang is a distinguished professor of Shanghai Jiao Tong University(SJTU).  He is the chair of Technical Committee on Computational Acoustics of the Acoustics Society of China, the vice-chair of the committee of Environmental Acoustics of ASC, the chair of Noise and Vibration Control Committee on of Chinese Society of Vibration Engineering, and the member of China Acoustic Technology Standardization Committee

And this has been buried... media.washtimes.com/media/misc/202… Excerpts of remarks by Di Dongsheng, associate dean, School of International Relations at Renmin University of China on Nov 28, 2020 in Shanghai 1/ 2/ Trump waged a trade war with us. Why couldn’t we handle him? Why is it that between 1992 and 2016 we always resolved issues with US? Did you guys know?

Say Goodbye to Lauren Boebert - ⁦@19_forty_five⁩ I’m not her biggest fan. 1/ 19fortyfive.com/2023/04/say-go… 2/ Since the infamous battle for the Speaker of the House earlier in January, Boebert has shown herself to be far less reasonable than even MTG, who cooperated with the GOP leadership to ensure that Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was made Speaker.

Joe Biden's Presidency Is a Disaster (But He Can Still Win) - My latest ⁦@19_forty_five⁩ 1/ 19fortyfive.com/2023/04/joe-bi… 2/ these polls are giving the Democratic Party’s powerbrokers real heartburn. Because the closer that we move toward the election, the harder it will be for the Democrats to find someone else to replace Biden.

Something Is Wrong with AOC - 19fortyfive.com/2023/04/someth… My war @AOC continues at @19_forty_five 1/ 2/ Up until recently, AOC could be ignored as an ignorant backbencher in Congress who got the perks of having a safe seat in Congress with no real responsibility.

"George H.W. Bush was not a Reaganite and instead favored moderate, technocratic solutions to some of America’s most vexing problems. This did not appeal to voters." My latest @19_forty_five 1/ 19fortyfive.com/2023/04/george… 2/ Bush ’41 was a political moderate from an elite northeast family with a technocratic bearing. He had a tendency to turn people off because of this.

My latest piece @19_forty_five 19fortyfive.com/2023/04/joe-bi… Joe Biden and Those Cognitive Problems: Should We Worry? 1/ twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 2/ “We hold these truths to be self-evident!” Joe Biden began his campaign speech strong, making a powerful reference to the Declaration of Independence. With his audience spellbound, Biden continued with the words that almost everyone knows.

Trump is many things. Senile is NOT one of them. My latest @19_forty_five 19fortyfive.com/2023/04/is-don… 1/ 2/ People are understandably questioning whether the forty-fifth president is all there mentally. This is especially so, given the fact that Trump’s behavior is so erratic.

This has to have something to do with the dreaded Chinese Spy Balloon incident. airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-… 1/ 2/ Six leaders — including two commanders and four of their subordinates — were fired from a key Air Force nuclear base in North Dakota without explanation Monday.

More Than Just a Balloon lawliberty.org/more-than-just… My latest at @LawLiberty "The spy balloon was a giant, floating symbol of China's military advantages and brazen attitude" 1/ @LawLiberty 2/ The United States military is failing to “close the gap” in hypersonic weapons development with both China and Russia, according to my colleague, Gabriel Honrada of the Asia Times. Sadly, he’s correct.

Biden’s mission from God taking NATO straight to hell – My latest @asiatimesonline asiatimes.com/2023/02/bidens… "For Biden and the foreign policy establishment, NATO expansion is ‘sacred’ and supporting the Ukraine war a sign of faith" 1/ @asiatimesonline 2/According to US President Joe Biden, America’s commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is “sacred.”

Even Fiona Hill knew it was a TERRIBLE idea to admit (or even say we were thinking about admitting) #Ukraine into #NATO Another horrific legacy of the terrible G.W. Bush Legacy and his "FreeDUMB Agenda" businessinsider.com/fiona-hill-adv… 2/ Hill was the national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia for the National Intelligence Council at the time, and warned Bush that backing the NATO bids of Kyiv and Tbilisi could be problematic and viewed as a provocation by Russian President Vladimir Putin,

Here is the full, unedited interview that one of America's (whether you agree or disagree) foremost international relations scholars today gave to the Chinese state-owned CGTN This was an excellent interview so all the hacks on Twitter need to calm down.1/ 2/ Despite what the WW2 cosplay-types are claiming, Mearsheimer is NOT talking about appeasement in the slightest. He is talking throughout this piece for the status quo ex ante; a divided Ukraine that looks an awful lot like Korea, though like me he is skeptical it'll happen now

Kamala's Humiliating 'Please Clap' Moment Shows How Bad Things Are for Dems redstate.com/nick-arama/202… Let's hope this piece is correct. I think the writer may overstate Biden's weakness, though 1/ 2/ Among those alternatives is Biden’s “second” — Kamala Harris, known for her word salads and her cackles, but not much else. Indeed, it would be hard to point to one solid achievement that she’s had since she came into office.

My God. They really think that he’s FDR reincarnate. Biden isn’t “saving” Europe or NATO at all. He’s destroying it. politico.com/news/2023/02/1… 1/ 2/ He will mark a second year of war by denouncing Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and publicly declare that the United States will support Kyiv until the final moments of the conflict.