Wesley Morgan
@wesleysmorgan
Followers
23,401
Following
2,920
Media
3,422
Statuses
32,762
Author of THE HARDEST PLACE ( @randomhouse 2021). Reporting on America’s post-9/11 wars and their aftermath. DM for Signal.
Joined August 2009
Don't wanna be here?
Send us removal request.
Explore trending content on Musk Viewer
#ใจซ่อนรักEP5
• 852203 Tweets
LINGORM TSOU EP5
• 831235 Tweets
Cheatle
• 630858 Tweets
#OccupyJKIA
• 403757 Tweets
Secret Service Director
• 331617 Tweets
Kesho
• 194723 Tweets
#HappyBirthdaySuriya
• 154498 Tweets
Nancy Mace
• 83601 Tweets
Kris
• 72871 Tweets
Jamaican
• 69259 Tweets
Reduce
• 68056 Tweets
Where is Joe Biden
• 68001 Tweets
Roro
• 56092 Tweets
travis
• 54161 Tweets
Our Shining Star Yoon Jaehyuk
• 45233 Tweets
Montel
• 44220 Tweets
Doritos
• 22021 Tweets
#انصفوا_النصر_بالميزانيه3
• 21530 Tweets
Chalobah
• 20616 Tweets
Bodrum
• 17462 Tweets
$AMC
• 14298 Tweets
灼熱カバディ
• 14025 Tweets
Temuco
• 13914 Tweets
KHKlarGidecek BizDöneceğiz
• 10737 Tweets
Pinned Tweet
Now that THE HARDEST PLACE is out, I'm going to do a photo thread—there was only room in the book's photo insert for 20ish, but people I interviewed shared hundreds more fantastic ones with me.
Books books books—THE HARDEST PLACE is here! In bookstores Tuesday 3/9!
22
20
123
48
133
674
Taliban searching my former interpreter’s house (he’s hiding out elsewhere and can see it via the app on his phone from his home security cameras)
26
2K
10K
6,000 bombs into Gaza in 6 days.
For comparison, during the air campaign against ISIS in 2014-19, the US-led coalition dropped 2,000-5,000 munitions per *month* across all of Iraq and Syria.
US monthly bomb drops only exceeded 4,000 during the 2017 destruction of Raqqa.
Dozens of fighter jets and helicopters attacked a series of terrorist targets of the Hamas terrorist organization throughout the Gaza Strip.
So far, the IAF has dropped about 6,000 bombs against Hamas targets.
8K
4K
17K
205
3K
6K
Third report I’ve seen that the largely female 414th Intelligence Battalion—responsible for Gaza border surveillance—sent specific warnings about the coming attack up their chain of command, only to be ignored and have their base overrun (at least 20 414th KIA, plus hostages).
"A senior Israeli military intelligence officer dismissed a detailed warning predicting Hamas's raid of October 7, calling it an 'imaginary scenario'... soldiers also warned their analysis of several videos showed Hamas was rehearsing taking hostages."
107
962
2K
67
1K
4K
“Some platoon members were so distraught by the chief’s actions, investigators said, that they tampered with his sniper rifle to make it less accurate, and fired warning shots to scare away civilians before the chief had a chance to shoot them”
225
3K
4K
On Sept. 11, 2001, then-Capt. Chris Donahue was working at the Pentagon as special assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He led a Delta Force squadron in northern Afghanistan during the surge a decade ago, and was the top special operations commander there in 2019-20.
The last American Soldier leaves AfghanistanMajor General Chris Donahue, commander of the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division,
@18airbornecorps
, boards a C-17 cargo plane at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan.
583
2K
6K
40
586
3K
After VP Pence got the Navy to let Greitens re-join the Reserve in 2019, the
@KansasCityStar
FOIA'd internal Navy comms where the brass were struggling to figure out what to do with him, and the excerpts are pretty funny:
27
719
2K
Great, the police department of a major American city is having Eddie Gallagher train its officers
184
572
2K
This is a funny meme, but the premise that the US-backed mujahidin parties became the Taliban has never been true and still isn’t. An ignorant myth that just won’t die. Many former mujahidin joined the Taliban or allied with it; many others fought the Taliban for decades.
51
444
2K
Autopsy of bald eagle confirms that loon stabbed it in the heart with its beak
169
449
2K
Compare and contrast these POTUS-posing-with-SEALs-downrange shots
171
796
2K
Brandon Thomas is missing, last seen in LA area. Former members of his old unit (2-503 Infantry, 173rd Airborne) are worried & want help finding him. During 2-503’s 2007-8 deployment to the Pech valley he was wounded three times & received three valor awards.
75
2K
2K
The CIA's in-house journal apparently reviewed "Sicario."
They kind of liked it—it's "beautifully filmed and well acted"—but have some tactical quibbles about how that cross-border tunnel operation at the end was run
23
179
2K
The tit-for-tat continues (I maintain that Kobe was killed in retaliation for the Soleimani strike three weeks earlier)
11
89
2K
American surgeon describes a group of children all brought in to a hospital in Gaza with fatal single bullet wounds to the head
58
1K
2K
Hard to imagine more alarming IDF findings on the 3 killed hostages:
—They were shirtless and waving a white flag when a soldier opened fire and killed 2 of them
—Another soldier killed the 3rd *after the battalion commander, who was at the same position, gave cease fire order*
The IDF provides new details of yesterday's tragic incident in Gaza City's Shejaiya neighborhood, during which three Israeli hostages who managed to escape Hamas captivity were shot dead by troops.
According to a senior officer in the Southern Command, citing an initial probe,
152
308
992
38
271
2K
Man, what a Mark Milley news cycle
Milley “spun around in his seat and pointed a finger directly at [Stephen] Miller. ‘Shut the f--k up, Stephen,’ Milley snapped, according to the excerpts”
45
309
1K
Senior Chief (Ret.) Newbold here did deployments to Latin America & Kosovo, owns a company that trains law enforcement & had a multimillion dollar SOCOM training contract as of 2019, & is listed on a pre-SEAL recruiting program site as a Navy contractor
210
1K
1K
Really enjoying seeing hikers and infantry veterans coming across this tweet
One other thing: if someone you know is hiking, they need to prepare their boots. Plastic bag on your bare foot, then sock over it, then put boot or shoe on. There are lots of places where you sink into the mud down to your ankle. You need the plastic bag to avoid being soaked
930
490
5K
31
71
1K
Just so much going on in this quote:
• The idea that America somehow owes SOF a war
• The weird dissonance of criminality being blamed on *lack* of war instead of on the war itself like usual
• Mayyyyybe SF is bigger than it needs to be anymore, post-Afg?
57
143
1K
Look at this photo of some of the first CIA paramilitary officers into Afghanistan in 2001 and compare to the operator aesthetic that has evolved since
58
180
1K
Every new detail about the killing of the 3 hostages is worse than the last. This article alleges IDF troops coaxed the third hostage (who they believed to be Gazan) out of hiding before shooting him—and links the same IDF battalion commander to a previous apparent execution.
Far from an aberration, the 'mistaken' killing of three Israeli hostages in Gaza last month is the result of Israel giving its soldiers license to kill innocent Palestinians without repercussions, writes
@brown_johnbrown
.
12
392
832
15
473
1K
Former Army infantry, civil affairs, foreign area, and DIA officer describes the opening of the Israeli campaign in Gaza last October: “We saw, even from the first days of the Israeli air campaign, willingness to inflict very high civilian casualties.”
Harrison Mann, a Jewish former U.S. Army major, resigned to protest U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza.
In an exclusive interview, he told
@JimAxelrod
why he can no longer serve in the Army: “I didn’t really feel like I had that much of a choice.”
146
1K
3K
21
442
1K
These guys are looking more and more like 2015-era Iraqi Shiite militiamen
39
76
964
It continually astounds me how often I talk to fairly well-informed Americans who are under the impression that Afghan gov't troops "didn't put up a fight," and for whom the massive (and extensively covered) death toll Afghan forces suffered 2015-21 is completely new information.
34
175
938
Saruman spent all that gold on *modernizing* his army, but yes-man Uruk-hai commanders gave him false confidence in the force’s *professionalization*
24
95
930
To reach French’s conclusions on the Blackwater guys you have to a) believe the testimony of the accused, b) disbelieve the testimony of Iraqi witnesses (who he sees as presenting a monolithic false story), & c) ignore the FBI’s conclusion that 14 of 17 killings were unjustified
The Blackwater pardons should NOT be lumped in with the pardons of Trump allies. Last year I took a close look at the Blackwater cases, and I was deeply troubled by what I saw. I wrote it up at length last year. Trump made the right call:
587
144
667
14
168
881
Well this is certainly an exciting new twist in the Havana Syndrome saga
33
117
909
Twenty years ago this week, US forces across much of Iraq were embroiled in the toughest fighting since the invasion a year earlier—in fact some of the toughest of the entire war.
Full extent of the April 2004 fighting is often forgotten (and wasn't totally clear at the time).
21
106
927
@alanna
I have a great/obnoxious friend who enjoys asking new people "so, like, what's your deal?" right away and seeing what happens
best answer was the woman who named her favorite bar with half-priced margaritas on wednesdays or something
17
14
894
That Scott Miller—the longest-serving US four-star in Kabul—is not being required to testify publicly as part of this is bizarre
Happening now: Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on
#Afghanistan
@DeptofDefense
@SecDef
Lloyd Austin,
@thejointstaff
's Gen Mark Milley &
@CENTCOM
Cmdr Gen Kenneth "Frank" McKenzie testifying
6
23
75
30
257
833
I enjoyed "Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado" as much as the next guy but I think at this point we may need to take it off streaming services (or at least revoke streaming privileges from US politicians)
How many Hamas sleeper cells have crossed our southern border under the Biden Administration’s policies?
We are not prepared.
6K
6K
20K
21
100
875
Best comment on this: "A note to pasteurize the rich prior to eating them"
LA's richest neighborhoods have vaccination rates lower than the poorest parts of Africa, reports Olga Khazan
301
1K
2K
8
265
836
So when will US companies/battalions/brigades/divisions start having embedded Ukrainian advisor teams before and during their NTC/JRTC rotations
18
72
844
Unsure whether that video is really of today’s combat in Ukraine, or really depicts what it purports to depict? Just don’t share it. The real stuff will rise to the surface after being vetted by pros—you don’t need to be the first to retweet in the meantime.
5
265
833
The Afghanistan JSOC task force has been using SIGINT to figure out where the Taliban needs help against ISIS in Kunar, then delivering it via drone strikes, troops involved told me.
They jokingly nicknamed the targeting team the “Taliban Air Force.”
37
395
759
Upon learning that these guys are not JSOC operators but just State Police *dressed* like JSOC operators, my relieved/disappointed friend compared them to “false killer whales” and she’s absolutely right
The manhunt pics about to go crazy on their IGs
173
238
7K
34
53
790
Look at the
@511Tactical
ballcap on one of the Taliban fighters behind Khalil Haqqani in Kabul here, mimicking the aesthetics of the western SOF who’ve fought them
Quite the evolution that company’s fan base has undergone over the past 20 years, from climbing pants to this
53
163
719
Even if we accept the IDF claim that the ratio of Gazan militants to civilians killed is 1:2 and not worse, this spokesman's claim that this ratio is "unprecedented in the modern history of urban warfare" (and thus admirable) is false.
*Fallujah,* of all places, disproves it.
@BarakRavid
may have a point. I should have said that while every loss of life is sad, a ratio of 1:2 is unprecedented in the modern history of urban warfare.
33
33
207
22
133
687
I absolutely cannot get enough of these people who think the US has been in Afghanistan for oil.
The US has spent about as much time and energy searching for oil reserves in Afghanistan as it has for the Hidden Imam, because doing so would make as much sense.
42
95
658
Sixteen years ago yesterday, Marine Maj. Doug Zembiec was killed in East Baghdad while on detail to the CIA, leading a team from the Special Tactics Unit, the agency's Iraqi surrogate force, on a mission called Objective Barriga Mash.
14
77
667
The rubbled road here is the work of IDF combat engineers—they tear up the paved roads when they go into rough West Bank areas, ostensibly to neutralize IEDs.
To anyone with GWOT experience, this will seem very backwards—the US spent millions *paving* roads for counter-IED…
Tulkarem |
Early this morning, the Israeli military invaded the camp and their unit was ambushed by fighters.
In retaliation, they executed two Palestinians: a woman and a child. Then they withdrew, leaving behind huge destruction.
20
470
634
22
84
658
Detailed and disturbing investigation of IDF targeting practices in
@972mag
by
@yuval_abraham
, with both anonymous and official sources describing the bombing of "power targets" and loosening of intelligence and collateral damage standards since Oct. 7.
27
288
628
Twelve KIA makes this the deadliest attack on US troops in Afghanistan since the shootdown of Extortion 17 in 2011—and excluding helicopter shootdowns, the deadliest of the war, surpassing the 9 KIA at the 2008 battle of Wanat and 9 KIA in 2011 Kabul airport green-on-blue attack.
Gen McKenzie, CENTCOM head -- attack believed to be ISIS. Bombs were followed by shooters.
AMERICAN CASUALTIES: 12 killed, 15 injured
Don't know totals of non-US hurt right now.
4
42
47
30
361
603
Funny example of when someone puts SEALs on such a pedestal, and knows so little about the rest of the military, that they attribute to SEALs a phrase that actually comes from a completely different military community (aviation) and is also super common tons of other places
45
38
613
With like 3 of these distasteful movies coming out, surely at least one will end with the interpreter and his family stranded indefinitely at a refugee camp in the UAE with no legal path forward or backward while the hero moves on to the inspirational podcast circuit…
Right?
An act of courage. An act of honor. Guy Ritchie’s
#TheCovenant
, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Dar Salim, is only in theaters April 21.
17
57
229
13
92
608
Yet another reminder to be cautious about first reports from the battlefield in Ukraine, especially those that provoke a strong emotional response.
BREAKING:
It’s official - 🇺🇦 Snake Island sailors are alive, Navy confirms.
They were taken prisoner by Russia.
3K
28K
226K
13
146
595
Great thread illustrating how Americans will bend any piece of information to fit existing partisan, conspiratorial worldviews. This information—3/4 ID to Germany, 2-503 Infantry to Latvia, etc.—is being reported by news outlets *because the Pentagon announced it*…
Ummm.... Fox just went into specific detail about what U.S. military units are readying for deployment to Germany to surge for this conflict. They stated two specific units, what the units specialize in, and who their commanding officer will be. Why would they do that?????
3K
4K
17K
11
77
591
I’ve known Maj. Harrison Mann since we were teenagers, through his 13-year Army career as an infantryman, civil affairs officer, and Middle East foreign area officer.
Whatever you think of his resignation, I can tell you that he is completely genuine.
BREAKING: another resignation from USG, this time from
@DeptofDefense
Intelligence Agency, by Cpt Harrison Mann. His resignation letter cites "the nearly unqualified support for the government of Israel, which has enabled & empowered killing & starvation of tens of thousands of
102
2K
4K
32
170
605
@RonaldJMoeller
@JimLaPorta
When you visit CJSOTF units as a member of the media, you sign ground rules agreeing not to publish photos of any of their faces. Either those are unnecessary restrictions, or there’s a double standard, or someone was careless today.
27
156
547
Misread this as some kind of 7/11 Pumpkin Spice Fallujah joke at first and was really scratching my head
Sure, it’s 95 degrees out now, but it’s officially that time again.
3
4
14
14
33
578
Twenty years ago today, U.S. warplanes acting on CIA orders launched a devastating attack on the settlement of Ataza in the Waygal valley (marked on the maps of U.S. Army troops who hiked up to assess the damage as Objective Winchester), starting with a strike from a B-1B bomber.
11
93
569
There were some very stupid takes yesterday but this one spreading today—that Hamas’s M4-style rifles must have come from the collapse of Afghanistan—takes the cake.
These have been standard among both Palestinian security forces and militants for years, not to mention the IDF.
Stupidest commentary of the day. The whole deal with weaponizing off-the-shelf commercial drones is that they put airpower cheaply and easily in the reach of non-state actors, as ISIS showed by pioneering their use.
5
16
141
19
139
556
People who are only or primarily able to think about the tragedy in Afghanistan through a lens of US partisan politics are revealing something ugly about themselves.
19
98
536
Revelation in
@David_Philipps
’s ALPHA: when Eddie Gallagher killed an unarmed farmer in Marja in 2010 while tagging along with a Green Beret team, the SF captain who decided to “quietly get [him] out of there” rather than report it was…Matt Golsteyn (future Trump pardonee).
33
203
520
It's interesting—& a bit puzzling—that CIA conducted this strike rather than the military, which has a task force in Qatar specifically for "over-the-horizon counterterrorism" strikes in Afg (which it hasn't done any of since last Aug).
I can think of a couple possible reasons.
Two people briefed on the matter say it was a CIA drone strike that killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri Saturday.
@NBCNews
20
112
1K
20
144
542
Oh *this* David Sacks, who claimed after the fall of Kabul that the Afghan branch of ISIS didn’t exist because he couldn’t remember hearing about it before and couldn’t fathom how an organization’s foreign-language name could be abbreviated in multiple ways
Your article does not contain a single reference to “ISIS-K”. The Pentagon concocted a cover story for killing innocent civilians using a scary new code word, but somehow we’re the ignorant ones? Only the Washington Blob could fall for this because it makes them feel like experts
32
9
141
8
48
526
Close readers of Clancy know that he refers to major and minor female characters' pregnancies *constantly,* awkwardly, and often without the slightest obvious reason. By popular demand I have quantified this as well:
Number of times the phrase “and that was that” appears in Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novels, in order of their publication:
Hunt for Red October: 1
Patriot Games: 3
Cardinal of the Kremlin: 2
Clear & Present Danger: 4
Sum of All Fears: 7
Debt of Honor: 8
Executive Orders: 13
21
15
246
35
53
526
Something I didn't notice before but now seems glaring—when Hersh wildly mischaracterized the first JSOC raid after 9/11, he quoted a source calling it a "goat fuck."
What did he quote his source saying about purported Nord Stream attack planning?
...a "goat fuck."
Too much!
For example, look at Hersh’s reporting on the first JSOC raid into Afghanistan in Oct 2001, Objective Gecko. Hersh was correct that this raid occurred and was a big deal! But his New Yorker story on it is full of very precise (and bold) details that later accounts do not support.
1
12
159
15
97
508
Anyone who’s been deep in the weeds on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and then read Woodward’s distorted, DC-centric versions of those wars, will recognize this—the facts right, some of them new and interesting, but the context and analysis all wrong
18
104
496
The Joint Staff’s Maj. Gen. Taylor just said several hundred Afghan troops continue to help the US with its evacuation effort. He’s talking about NDS units 01 and 03—the unit whose escape from Kandahar I wrote about here yesterday—and 02s and ANA Commandos who have joined them.
Lt. Col. Mohammad Iqbal Nuristani spent his adult life helping U.S. soldiers. Now, he’s desperately fleeing Afghanistan,
@wesleysmorgan
writes in
@PostEverything
4
36
66
13
134
484
For anyone who thinks it’s alarmist to say it’s “hazardous” for modern soldiers to venerate Sparta: remember that Australian SAS operator Ben Roberts-Smith, nicknamed Leonidas for his big Spartan helmet tattoo, murdered an elderly Afghan man by kicking him off a cliff a la “300”
I'm back writing for
@ForeignPolicy
on why ancient Sparta is unworthy of modern emulation and in particular the US military's love affair with all things Spartan is both inappropriate and hazardous:
133
479
2K
10
91
496
I think it would be fun to make t-shirts with skulls and Punisher logos and crossed rifles and so on on them, but the text is COIN mantras like “RESTRAINT IS COURAGEOUS” and “THE MORE FORCE YOU USE, THE LESS EFFECTIVE YOU MAY BE” and “SOMETIMES DOING NOTHING IS THE BEST SOLUTION”
21
60
480
I was trying to estimate the size of the IDF force in Gaza earlier by looking at the battalions IDF-announced casualties have come from—26 battalions (see image).
If all 4 brigades of the 252nd Division are in Gaza, seemingly along with 7+ out of 10 regular brigades...it's huge
IDF releases new information on the operations of the 252nd Reserve Division in the Gaza Strip during Israel’s ground offensive which began late last month.
With the 252nd Division fighting in Gaza, it marks the first time since the 1982 First Lebanon War that an entire IDF
53
161
850
18
130
471
Details on IDF 162nd Division illustrate a fundamental diff. between what US forces did in OIF/OIR and what the IDF is doing in Gaza.
US forces attempted a clear-hold-build methodology. The IDF is clearing, but it’s not holding. It’s clear-withdraw-clear-withdraw-clear.
The commander of the IDF’s 162nd Division says his forces are increasing their operations against remaining Hamas operatives and infrastructure in the northern Gaza Strip.
The IDF, after largely capturing northern Gaza and dismantling Hamas’s fighting force in the area, withdrew
19
96
469
14
65
473
Seeing speculation that these guys who won’t identify themselves are contractors.
But as
@jwcglaser
’s image shows, some have Bureau of Prisons badges & SORT (BOP Special Ops Response Team) on sleeves.
Thanks
@JasonFritz1
and
@stcolumbia
for the help.
35
296
454
Against all odds, this commander has escaped to Kabul Airport with his commando unit, which was surrounded by the Taliban at Kandahar Airfield. Story on the emergency airlift he orchestrated—during which he made it out but went back for the rest of his men—coming via
@PostOutlook
Over the last 48 hrs I’ve been speaking irregularly with an Afghan paramilitary commander (and former Kunar interpreter) in between bouts of heroics of a type that few, if any, US servicemen have had occasion to perform over the last 20 yrs. It’s unreal, and he may not live.
3
49
291
5
126
456
If you want to talk about shortsighted US policies aiding the Taliban…there’s enough *real* stuff there to write books about. Look at the weapons Taliban fighters carry and the vehicles they drive: a huge proportion of them were originally supplied by the US to the Afghan govt.
6
47
438
That meme is what you get when people’s understanding of Afghanistan is limited to a few things they sort of remember from “Charlie Wilson’s War” (the movie, not the book, which they didn’t read) and they are unwilling to distinguish different Afghans from one another.
5
39
435
UPCOMING PENTAGON PRESS RELEASE: “Overnight, in order to reestablish deterrence, forces assigned to NORTHCOM conducted air strikes against two vacant Buc-ee’s locations near Eagle Pass previously frequented by the Texas National Guard.”
The Biden Administration has truly abdicated its responsibility to enforce the immigration laws on the books.
Texas has a constitutional right to defend and protect itself.
We will continue to hold the line.
4K
9K
47K
12
39
461
Wow, just learning now that tactical callouts are an invention of Today’s Woke Military, rather than a common JSOC tactic for the past 15 years that Delta Force embraced to avoid losing more operators in houses that AQI emirs who slept in suicide vests had rigged into giant IEDs
29
57
443
…what the fuck? Is what I’m feeling reading these tweets what the Mandela Effect people feel like all the time?
51
44
454
General Honoré is wrong about this. As other photos show, these are US Marshals wearing personal “cell tags” for identification to one another: ZT1, ML8, AP1 (and one pic is a CBP guy with Z-26). Thanks
@JakeGodin
and
@mikenelson586
for flagging.
53
245
411
Also having a bit of a hard time with the implication that these same problem SF guys would be behaving well and coloring within the lines if only they were in a war zone
13
18
437
One of the most impressive US military veterans I’ve ever interviewed died of cancer last weekend at 89.
Ray Fuller, Sr was a Marine veteran of Korea and Vietnam and an honorary Ranger who deployed with his beloved 2/75 Rangers as their armorer on 2/75’s first Afg tour in 2002.
16
60
433
Looking at the website of some company trying to sell an email system to DOD and however good the product may be, this user endorsement is just hilarious
13
53
435
Most damning detail in this BBC story about UKSF rejecting resettlement applications of Afghan Interior Ministry commandos who fought alongside them:
One Unit 333 officer they’ve rejected is the guy who blew the whistle to the SBS on the SAS murders at OBJ Tyburn in Feb 2011.
Really important story. It is not just that UK special forces have been given veto power over resettlement of former Afghan SF colleagues. It’s that this is a stark conflict of interest, given long overdue investigations into UK SF wrongdoing.
13
145
429
7
129
437
Conflicts in which the US is an active combatant via air campaign: Iraq/Syria, Somalia
Conflicts where US has troops on the ground as advisors: Iraq/Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sahel, Lake Chad Basin, Philippines
Today is the first day in 20 years that the US is not at war. Dangers and challenges abound and we will always meet them in the moment. But Joe Biden has chosen to end forever war. A powerful new chapter for America.
257
393
2K
14
131
411
This is hilarious—in this FOIA-declassified account of a joint Ranger/CIA mission, references to the Rangers’ Carl Gustaf recoilless rifle seemingly redacted on the basis of privacy rather than national security—as though Carl Gustaf were the name of a participant in the mission
In at least two instances, the reference to the recoilless rifle is redacted under a privacy exemption.
These could be errors in notation.
But they make me wonder if the reviewers redacted the term Carl-Gustaf, as if it’s a person’s name.
1
2
56
12
47
423
Glynn was deputy commander of SOJTF-OIR in Iraq in 2017-18, in the aftermath of the battle of Mosul.
Maybe more relevant to Gaza: he was the battalion commander of 2/4 Marines during the 2006-7 battle of Ramadi, which at the time was often compared to a miniature Stalingrad.
SCOOP: The Biden administration sent a Marine three-star general to Israel to advise the Israeli military leadership ahead of the ground operation in Gaza. My story on
@axios
100
506
1K
9
114
416
Former commander of JSOC and SOCOM Tony Thomas on Esper’s “dominate the battlespace” line to governors
@peterwsinger
@EsperDoD
The “battle space” of America??? Not what America needs to hear...ever, unless we are invaded by an adversary or experience a constitutional failure...ie a Civil War...
106
882
3K
12
219
382
Ah, and here we have a member of Congress repeating this ignorant myth.
That’s what this is: the horrible consequences of endless war and failed US policy going back to the 1980s when we backed the Taliban against the Soviets. Innocent people suffer the horrors of war while political leaders and arms-dealing corporations sit back and make billions.
2K
183
847
12
38
391
On the West Point class of ‘86, which produced the current secretaries of state and defense, the vice chief of staff of the Army, a key presidential defender and advisor, and one impeachment subpoena recipient so far. With
@dlippman
and
@BryanDBender
23
225
376
@MatthewKoontz4
@leftwardbound
The Bush photo was not a publicly released photo at all at the time. It leaked years later, and whoever leaked it did the pixelating.
8
72
350
A weird memory being dredged up here—in 2001 the NYT ran a photograph of my middle-school, G.I. Joe-centric way of processing 9/11 and the US invasion of Afghanistan. That photo apparently appears in a new book, “American Childhood: A Photographic History,” by
@ToddBrewster
Last, Wesley Morgan was just 13 when U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001. The 8th grader built his own miniature model of Kandahar. He later worked as a freelance reporter embedded with U.S. troops. In 2021
@WesleysMorgan
published his book on the Afghan war, The Hardest Place.
3
6
59
21
48
396
Amazing that not only has this guy not apologized for or explained his false claim that all 13 Americans killed in the HKIA attack were men, he hasn’t even deleted it. He’s been sharing posts about the troops killed all day…but none about the two women Marines. Shameless.
13
74
390
I’m not a doctor, but it’s my understanding that cabin fever—the worst thing you can get by just staying inside—has a very high survival rate and is not communicable
20
86
377
“Oh no, Trevor is unzipping me. What fresh humiliation will this bring? Ah, he is getting another Lara Bar from one of my pouches—one of six designed to hold extra 40mm grenades. I hope he chokes.”
11
112
372
Greitens dropped Pence's name constantly with Navy brass, suggesting that he only wanted to come back in so that he could go work for Pence on the NSC, but "was very cagey in all of his discussions with us":
1
71
381
This Somalia detail in the Atlantic profile of Milley (which he hasn’t mentioned publicly before) is a good example of how routine low-profile SOF train/advise missions were during the Cold War—but, importantly, *not* ones that called in US airpower for their side like today
10
41
380
Two of the weirdest Army helicopters, right in one shot. Unfortunate that the surplus of Hueys available for Vietnam movies has caused the Huey to supplant in the popular memory of the war all the other strange species that were flying around in the early years
A CH-37 Mojave, better known as ‘Deuce’ due to configuration of its piston-engine pods which were often painted with eyes giving it the moniker ‘cross-eyed monster’, picks up a downed CH-21 Shawnee “Flying Banana’ northwest of Saigon 29 August 1963
#VietnamWar
1
4
46
10
37
369
Israel recreating the greatest GWOT hits….the problem with the deck of cards, if I’m remembering right from Iraq, was that in the course of working their way through it, the US created a much more numerous and more radical crop of new enemy leaders
17
56
379
Worth reading this 2020
@Beltrew
piece on how the IDF targeting apparatus for Gaza works—and its susceptibility during and since 2014 to pressure to get strike numbers up by hitting expired target locations without fresh intelligence.
9
93
371
In 2009, the JSOC task force that SEAL Team 6 headed in Afghanistan was called TF 373.
Soldiers in the Pech joked that 373 stood for the 3 minutes it took SOF operators to kill everyone in a house, the 7 months of hard COIN work this undid, and the 3 yrs it would take to fix.
A minor but recurring theme in this excellent book by
@wesleysmorgan
is that Soldiers kept running into SEALs and other spec ops who were killing people for no clear reason.
18
59
310
10
131
363
@dave_doors
@ltgrusselhonore
@JakeGodin
@mikenelson586
I certainly don’t object to anyone raising questions about the deployment and behavior of these federal paramilitary units (or about their habit of wearing camouflage that makes them look like the military to most people). He’s right to do so and hardly alone in doing it.
14
74
340
The former Green Berets and SEALs who took this undercover PLA special operations soldier’s money were just running a “train the trainer” program without knowing it!
10
124
365