Baffled European

Category: Pete Hegseth

  • Just trust us

    They are lying and it’s funny to see. That bombing raid on Iran, it “obliterated” the Iranian nuclear programme. That’s what they keep telling us, and we’ve just got to believe them.

    There was going to be a presentation to congress to prove their claims, but this was inexplicably delayed. It has since been delayed again, with no new date given for the briefing.

    Somebody leaked the intelligence reports to a CNN journalist. The enriched fuel has not been affected. The purifying centrifuges are intact. Some ground-level buildings have been destroyed, but that’s as far as it goes.

    The president was furious and called for the journalist to be sacked and to treat her like a dog. Usual fake news complaints and insults. He later blamed the Democrats for the leak. But last week, they said the Dems were not briefed. It can’t have come from then, so what is it?

    Pete Hegseth is also on the case. Completely unhinged, he rants on about how this was “the most complex and secretive military operation in history, and it was a resounding success”. More so than D-Day, I guess. Furthermore, it is offensive to question the results because everything went so flawlessly.

    Karoline Levitt gave it away: “When you have a totalitarian regime, you have to save face. I think any common sense, open-minded person knows the truth about the precision strikes on Saturday night. They were wildly successful.” No more to add.

  • Forgive me, godfather

    Typically, my complaint about closing Dupont Circle to spoil the pride celebrations only lasted one day. It will remain open. As compensation, Pete Hegseth has personally ordered the USNS Harvey Milk to be renamed because woke. He deliberately chose pride month to do it. It’s bad luck to rename a ship, Pete, everybody knows that.

    Since I’m looking for forgiveness, let’s see how this works in the USA.

    About 1500 people have been pardoned for their role in the 6th Jan 2021 uprising. Releasing a group of convicted traitors is supposed to lead to “national reconciliation”, whatever. Corruption and bribery cover most of the rest.

    Dread Pirate Roberts stands out. He’s been a folk hero to the Bitcoiners since before he was unmasked – the tech bros must have been pushing for his release. Once you’ve established that Mexico and Canada are responsible for all the drugs in your country, Ulbricht must just have been some helpless innocent, caught in the middle of it all. And such a visionary.

    It’s striking, the way they seem to regard all of these convictions as being political in some way. That somebody is being convicted for being maga rather than say, for stealing lots of money or beating up a policeman.

    “No MAGA left behind,” says Ed Martin. He’s the one who reviews pardons and then puts a piece of paper in front of the president to sign. He’s got a blank cheque, hasn’t he?

  • I’m a loser

    One of the few successes of the 45th presidency was the end of the war in Afghanistan. Started by Bush Jr, this continued with Obama because nobody could see any way out. Our great commander changed that by simply surrendering to the Taliban, then declaring victory. His supporters cheered him along for this great achievement. His opponents were stunned – they hadn’t thought of this approach, but they wanted out as well. The result was a chaotic retreat from a war that should never have started in the first place.

    This approach to military engagement has continued. The challenge was to stop the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The president wanted to crush them and wanted it done in 30 days. Many in the military thought this would not work, but they were sacked.

    The US strategy was to fire lots of missiles at the Houthis. The Houthi strategy was to hide in underground bunkers and wait until the missiles had gone away. The Houthis had the right idea, because they were fighting an enemy who not only had a deadline, but had also broadcast their war plans to the whole world in a “secret” video conference.

    The costs of this are staggering. The US burned through $1bn in this month-long campaign. Stocks of munitions are severely depleted, particularly high-precision and long-range missiles. It has achieved precisely nothing – there has been no change to Houthi operations.

    The president declared “victory” of course.

  • Fox government

    I gotta get me a fix of Pete Hegseth. The latest disaster is that another jet has fallen off the USS Truman. That’s three now, meaning that they have transformed approximately $200m worth of aircraft into wrecks fit only for seeding coral in less than three months. That’s not counting the damage done to a merchant ship that the aircraft carrier accidentally collided with.

    There are obviously problems onboard, and these didn’t start in January, with the accession of the new regime. On the other hand, Hegseth extended the tour of the USS Truman, rather than calling it back home to find out what was going on. He’s got other stuff to do: those books won’t burn themselves.

    Usual rule applies: each dollar they waste on vanity and incompetence is one dollar less they can use for evil stuff.

    With any luck, we will see more vanity and incompetence. The godfather has appointed Janine Pirro to be the new Attorney General of Washington DC. She is another former Fox News host, taking the number of alumni now to 39 in the administration. Like Hegseth, she’s also an alcoholic, so she’ll fit in well.

    Her greatest hit was the lies she told about Dominion Voting Systems, claiming they fraudulently awarded Biden the election. The company sued, winning $800m in damages. This, alongside her rabid, unswerving loyalty to the president, is what got her the job.

    He always picks the best people.

  • Streamline, modernise, innovate

    Pete Hegseth appears to be bulletproof. For weeks now, people have been briefing newspapers about his vanity, incompetence and arrogance. Lots of people, even his own, at every possible level. He seems to be hated by everybody who comes into contact with him. And yet he remains in his job.

    This television presenter turned military genius has now revealed his plans for the future of the US armed forces. He wants bulletproof soldiers. Specifically bulletproof straight white cis male soldiers.

    One of the main reforms is to move away from heavy armour to light, mobile units that are nimble and quick to react in a modern warfare situation. Sadly for everybody, this has already been tried. A scourge of Gulf War II was the IEDs which would explode at the roadside, turning the vehicle going past into a motorised coffin.

    Still, that was a long time ago and humans have probably evolved since then. In any case, Pete is doubtless looking at the success of the Russians when they adopt such tactics. This is fine unless you also consider the Russians do this because they can’t afford anything better, and that their soldiers get blown to smithereens by anything resembling a well-equipped opponent.

    So these new units will be useless for any sort of war. Maybe controlling civilian areas? Not in the USA, surely? The population is too heavily armed. Mexico? Greenland? 51st state? All this policy will do is reaffirm the effectiveness of the Molotov Cocktail.

  • Snafu

    There were a few issues counting against Pete Hegseth when he was proposed as SoS for Defense. There was the wife-beating, the far-right tattoos, the philandering, the lack of any relevant experience outside of presenting a show on Fox News, and him being an alcoholic. His confirmation was close-run, with JD Vance supplying the casting vote.

    His actions since then have shown his determination to stamp out wokeness. First by sacking trans, black and female soldiers. Evidently righting historical wrongs, he has renamed an army base after a Confederate general. He has also gone through naval libraries, removing books such as “Memorializing the Holocaust”, but keeping “Mein Kampf”. Priorities.

    A recent memo instructs the army to suspend all recreational activities other than those for sport or fitness. Soldiers will no longer be allowed to play pool, darts or cards to unwind. I guess the beatings will continue until morale improves.

    I guess he thinks these are all steps in the right direction, but he has overlooked the danger posed by the straight white cis males that he appointed. A leak enquiry has implicated his chief of staff, the deputy and his senior advisor in releasing top secret operational information to the public.

    They have all been sacked. Combined with previous purges, this leaves a huge hole in the leadership at the Pentagon, with more chaos expected. Hopefully this will prevent them from starting any wars in the near future.

  • Secret Service

    “Dominos Pizza Service, how can I help?”

    “Yeah, hello, do you have any war plans?”

    “I’m sorry sir, we don’t have any war plans on the menu.”

    “Then they need to be on the menu. You gotta get used to the idea of – yeah, bourbon, please… large, thanks – yeah, the idea of war plans. We’ll get these war plans rolling and then it’ll be margarita time!”

    “One Margherita. Do you want coke with that?”

    “Obviously. I tell you, if you haven’t got your own war plans – another bourbon, yes, that’s lovely – I got some war plans of my own that I made myself. Those Pentagon plans, that’s for those goddamn pathetic Europeans. They just freeload off of us – if it looks like it’s going down, just top it up, cheers – like they’re on vacation in Hawaii.”

    “One Hawaii. With extra pineapples?”

    “As many as possible. Yeah, where are they then? Anybody seen the war plans? Don’t tell me I left them on the S-Bahn, I was sure I had them when I got off. What’s that James? You got a copy on Google Drive? Email it to me, but remember what happened last time – what, empty? there’s a bottle of Drambuie in the cabinet, I think there’s some left in that – got them, great. War plans, now listen. You remember what happened to Hallo Pizza, you don’t want that to happen to you …”