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Trump Attacks Iran, IV

interestingly enough, i had tacos for lunch. turns out, it was taco tuesday once again

www.nytimes.com

Iran War Live Updates: Trump Extends Cease-Fire With Iran

The pause in hostilities had been set to expire within hours. The president said Pakistan, which is trying to mediate an end to the war, requested he hold off any attacks.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

President Trump said he was extending a cease-fire with Iran on Tuesday just hours before it was set to expire. The announcement came after Vice President JD Vance’s trip to Pakistan for a second round of peace negotiations was put on hold because, according to a U.S. official, Tehran failed to respond to American positions.

The president made the announcement on Truth Social. He said he had received a request from Pakistan, which is trying to mediate an end to the war, to hold off any attacks. Mr. Trump said a cease-fire would stay in effect until Iran’s “leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.”
 
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You want to get rid of fraud and waste in the federal government, then start with the war department.

Very interesting discussion on this podcast: The Cost of War - Search Engine

One thing she mentions at the beginning is that we don't fully grasp the scale of war spending because we don't really grasp the difference between millions, billions, and trillions.

1 billion seconds into the past would be roughly August 1994, or 31.7 years ago.

1 trillion seconds into the past would be roughly 29,663 BCE or 31,688 years ago.

Trump wants 1.5 trillion for the war department.

“It was very convenient for the administration and for Congress to fund these wars through emergency spending, because that way they didn't have to put it into the budget for the following year. So, they could every single year minimize the projection of what the deficit would be. So, they could say, oh, the deficit is going down, the deficit is going down, because they weren't accounting for the fact that we were going to be spending another $150 billion or whatever in emergency spending on the war, even though there was no way we could not be spending that.

But it made it look as if the deficit would be lower, and it also made it seem as if the end of the war could be right around the corner. And for quite a few years early into the Iraq War, if you look at the statements of senior officials, they were continually saying that the war was about to end, that we were about to turn a corner, we had the worst people behind us and so on, and that kind of made it seem as if that could be real, because we weren't budgeting for it for the following year”
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“Well, I mean, it was difficult to try and get up to speed on understanding how the accounting is done within the Pentagon. I mean, you have a obviously very large, complex organization which has a record of poor accounting. It has flunked its audit every year since accounting was required for federal agencies and is the only federal agency that has done so.”

“I didn't know that.

Yeah, well, I mean, flunked its accounting in a sense, up until about five years ago, it wasn't even able to submit its accounts for accounting. It was so bad.

Is that like because they're top secret or is it just they're bad at their bugs?

No, no, no.

I mean, it's just that they have not been able to account for their assets. I mean, they cannot account for at least 50% of their assets around the world. The GAO, the Nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, ranks the lack of financial accountability at the Pentagon among its top risks of government every single year, for years and years and years.”

“And many people have tried to work on this, but they have made only modest progress.

And in fact, the day before 9-11, Donald Rumsfeld, the then Defense Secretary, gave a speech about how the Pentagon needed to get a grip on its accounting failures and how important it was to account for where taxpayer money went.

Then of course, 9-11 happened, and here we are 25 years later, and we still don't have any kind of accountability for where taxpayer money is spent in the Department of Defense, or now Department of War. I mean, I teach cost accounting. I happen to believe that accounting for assets matters.”

“And if the Pentagon were a private sector organization, there would be extreme penalties for failing to be able to account for spending and where the spending goes. And this is separate from the relatively small portion of the defense budget, which is so-called secret.

So it's not, because the explanation my brain would supply is, well, the Pentagon is a bunch of spies, and the spies aren't going to tell you where the spies are spending money because it's top secret. You're saying, no, no, no, no, no, forget about that. It's a small proportion of the money they spend.

This is just like we do not know, they do not account for American taxpayer money that they are spending on things that are not secret, things like conflicts.”
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“So if you look at what actually happened, and based on our methodology, it cost between $5 and $6 trillion, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars together. Now, my colleagues at the Brown University cost of war organization estimated at $8 trillion. So it's somewhere in that range.

Expensive.

It's expensive.

That absolute highest estimate you heard, $8 trillion, the top estimate from the Brown University cost of war project, that's for every part of operation enduring freedom. It includes everything that sprung from 9-11. Iraq, Afghanistan, the spillover military operations that took place at the time in Pakistan and Syria.”

“But that war, which every major US politician now admits was a massive error, cost us a price that would have paid for a full century of free education at all public American universities. I'm not a devout Quaker. I don't think our country should never go to war.

But one thing Iraq teaches us is that of all the stupid mistakes a country can make, stupid wars are the most expensive one. So what then of our current conflict? How are we pricing that one?”
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April 27, 2026

In this episode of What's Going on With Shipping?, Sal Mercogliano dives into the eighth week of the intensifying maritime conflict between the United States and Iran. As both sides enforce competing blockades across the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman, and the Arabian Sea, the "choke points" are truly being choked, with significant implications for global trade and oil prices.

 
Huckleberry said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/2049525568924778856

PETE HEGSETH: “We took out Iran’s nuclear capabilities last year. This war wasn’t started because they were close to getting nuclear weapons, it started because they still had nuclear ambitions.”

Hegseth accidentally tells congress that Iran posed no imminent threat to America.
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the more he talks, the more obvious it is why he was relegated to 3rd string weekend work at fox news
 
Huckleberry said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/2049525568924778856

PETE HEGSETH: “We took out Iran’s nuclear capabilities last year. This war wasn’t started because they were close to getting nuclear weapons, it started because they still had nuclear ambitions.”

Hegseth accidentally tells congress that Iran posed no imminent threat to America.
Click to expand...
Certainly the dumbest, least qualified SoD in my lifetime. :(
 
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