B-2 Stealth bomber flying at night. Photo: Staff Sgt. Jonathan Snyder / U.S. Air Force.

After midnight
We’re gonna let it all hang out
We’re gonna cause talk and suspicion
Give an exhibition
Find out what it is all about

– JJ Cale, After Midnight

Trump mega-bombed a mountain in Iran and called it peace. Unfortunately, he didn’t bomb what was beneath the mountain. If anything.

If the objective was to destroy Iran’s nuclear research facilities, Trump’s Operation Midnight Hammer was a dud. The bombs exploded, craters were left behind, but Iran’s nuclear facilities were mainly left in tact, damaged but not crippled and certainly not, in Trump’s word, “obliterated.”

Two intelligence sources told Rolling Stone that Trump’s attacks on Iran were based on “vibes,” not new intelligence.. “There is no intel. The intelligence assessments have not really changed, ” one of the sources said.

The Defense Intelligence Agency’s bomb damage assessment suggests there’s a Whole Lotta Lyin’ Goin’ On (for Not Much): “Before the attack, U.S. intelligence agencies had said that if Iran tried to rush to making a bomb, it would take about three months. After the U.S. bombing run and days of attacks by the Israeli Air Force, the report by the Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that the program was delayed less than six months.”

This assumes that Iran intended, at some point, to pursue building a nuclear weapon of some sort. Yet all indications before Operation Midnight Hammer were that Iran wasn’t intent on building a bomb.

But now the US/Israeli airstrikes may have changed their thinking. Now Iran might feel that getting nuclear weapons as soon as possible may be their only protection against offensive airstrikes by Israel and the US. And they don’t have to build a bomb to possess one. In fact, Russia suggested they might give Iran nuclear weapons and the North Koreans will probably be open to selling them some.

Trump’s Hammer of the Gods turned out to be the Hammer of the Frauds…

Why did Iran’s nuclear facilities survive the MOAB bombs? According to a piece in Yahoo News, “Iran [is] a leader in the new technology of Ultra High Performance Concrete, or UHPC, and its latest concrete advancements were evidently too much for standard bunker busters.”

Surprise, Americans are sick of war. Too bad neither Trump nor the Democrats understand that. CNN poll finds 56% disapprove of Trump’s bombing of Iran. Reuters poll finds only 36% approve. No doubt they’re even sicker now that another double-fraud has been perpetrated upon them: a. waging war on a fraudulent basis; b. lying about destroying a nuclear program that didn’t exist.

Tom Stephenson on Trump’s Midnight Hammer:

As for the 400 kg of highly enriched uranium that was supposedly the reason for the US joining the attack, neither Israel nor the US knows where it is, and they don’t much care. Since Israel’s attack on 13 June, it has been obvious that Iran’s nuclear programme – which in the assessment of both Israeli and US intelligence is not an active weapons programme – was a diversionary justification rather than an actual motive. Both the US and Israel have wanted to strike at Iran for a long time for quite other reasons. In Israeli security circles an attack was pushed for even more strongly after 7 October 2023. Yet the US isn’t only fighting Israel’s war: decades of American policy have also helped lead to this moment.’

Too bad Trump didn’t show the Iranians the same consideration they showed US troops. Instead, he lied, saying he was giving Iran two weeks to negotiate, then bombed them two days later, at a time when Iran was defenseless against US airstrikes, thus maximizing the human slaughter at no risk to US forces, when he could have just destroyed or damaged the structural targets.

Talk about political theater. Trump says the Iranians asked him if it was ok for them to launch a retaliatory strike on the sprawling US base in Qatar and he gave his permission: “Some missiles were shot at us the other day. They were very nice. They gave us a warning. They said, ‘Is 1 o’clock ok?’ I said, ‘It’s fine.’ Everybody was lifted off the base, so they wouldn’t get hurt. Except the gunners. They call them the gunners.” I can’t imagine this is true, and if it were, wouldn’t it be a treasonous act? It certainly would have been seen as such under any president other than Trump.

Lucian K. Truscott IV: “Fake man starts fake war makes fake peace.”

Vice President JD Vance: “I empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East. I understand the concern, but the difference is that back then we had dumb presidents.” I don’t make this shit up. Who could?

Vance went on the Sunday talk shows, trying to assure people that the US wasn’t interested in Regime Change in Iran. By the time he got back to Usha and the kids at the Naval Observatory, Trump had tweeted this…

Laleh Khalili: “As an Iranian friend pointed out, ‘Are you MIGA’ (Trump’s Make Iran Great Again) in Farsi is ‘To miga-yi?’ which also means “do you fuck” (but even more vulgar).”

This would indeed be a remarkable achievement for Hegseth, except it’s not true. Someone, perhaps several someones, leaked the plans to Seymour Hersh…

There were leaks before the strike and after (and almost certainly during)…

Fuming about the leak of the bomb (not much) damage assessment, which exposed his lies about the Midnight Hammer operation, Trump says he’s........

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