Don Dechert

The U.S. Built a Blueprint to Avoid Civilian War Casualties. Trump Officials Scrapped It. The Pentagon dismantled its civilian protection mission as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made “lethality” a top priority and the Trump administration reorganized national security around two principl...

Just out @propublica.org: How did the Pentagon make the horrible mistake that left more than 150 school children dead? Perhaps because it cancelled an effort to limit such harm in favor of Hegseth’s lust for “lethality.”
www.propublica.org/article/trum...

Democratic members of Congress need to attack this war as a crime, because that’s what it is. “The president did not plan out his war of aggression as well as he could have” is a foolish and self-defeating position to take.

Entering the chat to share that my article, Cooperative Oversight and the Separation of Powers, is forthcoming in the Emory Law Journal. Feedback welcome! Available for download @ssrn.bsky.social here: papers.ssrn.com/abstract=635...

The book cover for “The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost” by Cathal J. Nolan

images-us.bookshop.org/ingram/97801...

bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

how do you not do this before launching a war on iran

CENTCOM's supposed to have gamed out this outcome for ~40 years. Presumably some sort of OPLAN exist in a break glass in case of emergency, but it might also be a big lift.

Hopefully it's also updated & not 40 yrs old; then again, my old BN CDR pointed out that hope & hopefully were not doctrinal.

Right there with you. Really should have come up the moment the WPR vote failed.

for the record, I agree that we need more (and better) ships, EW, missiles, cyber, etc so we can do the maritime equivalent of combined arms in a really big ocean.

Its just that some of the loudest "5000 ship navy" guys also loudly voted for the exact opppsite thing, and now we're fucked

I wonder if that had something to either do with the judge or if there was something like a already using a one refile which the opinion is silent on.

Which might explain why there wasn't local counsel at the outset. Like this case being the refile after losing non conveniens elsewhere.

they’re repealing the right to culture, fight for your right to culture hyperallergic.com/how-to-prote...

So why isn't this leading to impeachment? How is this not maladministration and part of the high crimes of the highest order?

As opposes to gas bills to bail out bad decisions?

So no better than Russian emigres post-Russian Revolution?

Really taps that dictum from Machiavelli about not trusting exiles planning regime change in their prior homeland (or their descendants).

Also seems like a troop sink to maintain coercive power.

How

Let me clarify something for those not steeped in FloriDUH politics. Should Rubio, who was born into & grew up in one of the Cuban-American cartels that devolved out of the Bay of Pigs militias (VEOs), & his fellow travelers get their way, they WILL NOT be greeted as liberators. 1/

This wasn’t even true in early modern England!!!! It is just stupid.

I'd like to think they'd think that's too obvious and go with Operation Skid Row or Operation Whitesnake or something like that.

Fun fact: at CENTCOM, the Iran-focused Jim Mattis developed a plan to open the Hormuz strait. It revolved around rapidly speeding a multinational force to the strait to *prevent* mine laying; and then minesweeping what Iran already laid.

Problem is: then the ships are in range of Iranian missiles.

I wonder if someone has gamed out JAG retention problems with this. Hakes-Rodriguez probably is around pinning CPT, and...well, if this is what you're going through and it's not actual deployment, why stay & do 20?

Chalk it up to another area of decimation that will have to be rebuilt.

Congratulations!

Not only am I now the first tenured Latina law prof at Tulane, I am also its first full Latina law prof.

And there will be more, I promise.

To be fair, all CENTCOM can do is register a demand for mine clearing missions

It’s the Navy that has consistently under prioritized and under invested in mine countermeasures capabilities for decades

this hearing is a fucking bloodbath

Any ship can be a minesweeper. Once.

Ha!

I’ve said it before, but People magazine should get a Pulitzer for its coverage of this administration.

So break the law to follow the law get it?

Higher education is not w/out issues. These tactics do nothing to address them and everything to degrade what has made American higher ed successful indeed invaluable.

Vote for Our Cookie Castle Help support our troop by voting for our cookie-box castle in the Medieval Times Cookie Castle Build.

My daughter’s Girl Scout troop is trying to win a contest to go to a local Medieval Times so they built a cookie box castle. Most votes online win. (All you have to do is click vote, no info required!)

Oh, it gets better.

I am listening to this now. Wurman just implied that people who enter the country illegally are, on his understanding of the Constitution, subject to our criminal laws but not entitled to sue or be sued in US courts. This is not the law and he knows it. Nor should it be.

A lawyer for the United States federal government just testified that he used quotation marks not to indicate quotation but for emphasis, like at a used car lot?