US Navy Shoots Down Missiles Fired from Yemen (but there's something fishy in the Red Sea)

streiff reporting for RedState 

Wednesday night, the Arleigh Burke-class Aegis-equipped guided-missile destroyer USS Carney engaged three cruise missiles and approximately eight drones launched by Iran-backed Houthi terrorists operating in Yemen. The missiles were all destroyed, as were the drones. The Carney incident is covered starting at 1:15 in the video below.

Key Facts

The USS Carney is part of the USS Gerald Ford carrier strike group. The Ford was on station in the Mediterranean when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel on October 7 and slaughtered over a thousand civilians. The Ford was on the cusp of rotating home upon being relieved by the USS Eisenhower carrier strike group. The Ford's stay has since been extended. 

The Carney transited through Suez into the Red Sea on Wednesday afternoon.

It appears that the Carney has been detached from the Ford CSG and is now working with the group ordered to the Red Sea on Tuesday: Pentagon Issues 'Prepare to Deploy' Orders to 2,000 US Troops.

The Carney was not under attack. It was in the area of the Houthi missile launch, serendipitously or not so much, and engaged outbound Houthi missiles. In theory, the missiles could have been headed toward Israel. Realistically, they were probably heading in the direction of Saudi Arabia. This was the first time a US warship has engaged a Houthi cruise missile.

Speculation

The purpose of these forces is to deter other groups, especially Iranian-backed proxies like the Houthis and Lebanese Hezbollah, as well as Iran itself, from attacking Israel. As Defense Spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder said, " to protect our partners and our interests in this important region.” The decision to engage the Houthi missiles was a clear sign to the Houthi puppetmaster, Iran, that the US was prepared to act aggressively to keep the fighting confined to Gaza.

While the engagement was clearly meant to signal Iran to back off, in my opinion, it was also an offering to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is the linchpin in the Abraham Accords, which seem to be rapidly unraveling after the "hospital bombing."

In addition to showing our intent, the incident clearly demonstrates what the US Navy can do if it takes a break from being woke and focuses on its mission. Missiles and drones were engaged from the sea and shot down. 

During the Vietnam War, there was a saying about using military force as a demonstration of intent. It was, "If you want to send a message, use Western Union." It will take more than shooting down missiles that don't belong to Iran to deter Iran if, and it is a big if (Reality Sets in and Iran Walks Back Its Threat to Enter the Israel-Hamas War), it decides to enter the fray. Based on our past experience with Iran, I'd say that we can expect them to do something to show the Houthis, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah that they aren't intimidated.

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Something Sketchy – Pentagon Claims U.S. Destroyer in Red Sea Intercepted and Shot Down 3 Missiles and 8 Drones Launched from Yemen to Target Israel

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse

Something about this story just doesn’t pass the proverbial sniff test.

It is 1,300 straight line miles from Yemen to Israel; add in the Red Sea path claimed, and you add another approximately 200 miles.  So, the claim is around 1,500 +/- miles.

The Raytheon built Tomahawk cruise missile, with GPS enabling, some of the most advanced cruise missile tech in the world, has a max targeting distance of 1,000 miles [LINK].  How the hell did Yemen get missiles and drones capable of flying 1,500 targeted miles?

Additionally, if Yemen had this level of missile technology available, the Houthi rebels would have flown them at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, over the past decade during their war.

Now that I have shared that context, look carefully at how the statements are worded (emphasis mine).

(VIA ABC) – The USS Carney, a Navy destroyer in the Red Sea, on Thursday shot down multiple missiles launched by Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen that the Pentagon said were potentially headed toward targets in Israel.

The ship intercepted three land attack cruise missiles and about eight drones, Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said at a press briefing.

The preliminary U.S. assessment was that the USS Carney was not the target of any of the Houthi missiles or drones.

Information about the engagements was still being processed, Ryder said. “We cannot say for certain what these missiles and drones were targeting but they were launched from Yemen heading north along the Red Sea potentially to targets in Israel.

It’s unclear from where the Houthi militia’s missiles were fired but they were headed in a northerly direction, an official said.

The incident occurred during the early evening hours Thursday local time and the missiles were taken down over water, not land, the Pentagon said.

The missiles fired by the Houthis were engaged by SM2 missiles carried aboard the USS Carney, an official said. (read more)

[Source]

On the afternoon before pudding brain gives his national address on the Israeli war, the Pentagon is reporting on a fleet of missiles and drones, eleven in total, flying from Yemen to Israel, thereby exceeding the capacity of U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile systems by 50%.    You buying this?

…Oh, AND they collectively would have flown over Egypt to arrive in Israel if not intercepted.

Sorry, I don’t mean to sound like a conspiracy nut, but this just doesn’t add up.  This sounds like the seeds of an expanded war narrative to me.

In combination with the ‘couched’ Pentagon statement, Suspicious Cat remains, well, suspicious.

Will Americans Fight for Globalism?

If globalists want Americans to fight for them, 

they need to give back a future worth dying to protect

by Edward Ring for American Greatness

Imagining a cascade of catastrophic escalations plunging humanity into the next world war is no longer a stretch, and it could happen fast. Israel invades Gaza to destroy Hamas, and Hezbollah goes to war. America targets Hezbollah to help defend Israel, and Iran and Syria, with Russian assistance, attack Israel. Hezbollah cells strike targets within America, and Israel and America strike targets inside Iran. Russia launches a major new offensive in Ukraine with support from Belarus. China openly supports Russia and Iran with weapons. All of this is more plausible than ever.

It also shouldn’t be necessary to debate moral distinctions. Gaza, Lebanon under Hezbollah, and Iran, are all ruled by ruthless Islamic extremists. Syria and Russia are corrupt and brutal dictatorships. China is a fascist ethno-state. Whatever Israel and America’s shortcomings may be, they don’t begin to rise to the level of oppression of these rivals.

During the Cold War, when memories of the 2nd World War were still relatively fresh in the minds of Americans, that sort of moral argument was enough. We weren’t perfect, but the Soviets, who had to build a 4,000 mile long fence to keep millions of their most talented subjects from migrating to Western nations, were obviously much worse. That moral distinction got us through the Korean War, and though more fitfully, it got us through the Vietnam War. And then it was enough to justify massive defense spending during the Reagan years. Ultimately, this containment doctrine worked. In 1989 an exhausted Soviet Union dissolved and the Iron Curtain came down.

Today, though it shouldn’t be, it is necessary to revisit all these premises. To begin with, the American people have changed. When the Cold War began, 90 percent of Americans were of various European descent, and the conflicts of the early 20th century had a unifying impact on the culture, erasing much of the bitterness left over from the Civil War as well as most of the tribal animosities their families might have brought with them from Europe. That has all changed.

Starting in the 1960s, America’s demographics have been transformed at a pace never seen before in its history. Newborns in America today are less than 50 percent white, and these nonwhite students are growing up in a nation where, primarily in Democrat dominated urban areas, they are taught in public schools to resent and distrust white people. For at least the last 30 years, in a process that has worsened every decade, every unifying norm in American society has been under assault by the institutions we have traditionally relied on to protect and reinforce national unity.

One must wonder what America’s leaders are thinking when they endlessly assert that “diversity is our strength” at the same time as they’ve spent years saturating mainstream news commentary with warnings about white supremacists and “systemic racism.” If you want to convince people to go to war with a foreign enemy, you might refrain from encouraging them to go to war with one another.

This is one of the conundrums of incorporating such a flawed model of globalism into a national agenda. If you fracture a nation’s ethnic homogeneity at the same time as you anoint the new arrivals as victims of oppression by the people already living there, you’re going to divide and weaken that nation.

Globalism as it is currently expressed has other flaws, particularly if the goal is to convert a nation into a powerful and persuasive agent of a globalist agenda. Indoctrinating children that are barely old enough to talk to think they can choose their sex is guaranteed to set an unacceptable percentage of them onto a road fraught with confusion and worse, while infuriating millions of parents. Moving from tolerance to obligatory endorsement of LGBT culture across every cultural institution is divisive; shifting the abortion debate from the heartbeat threshold to no restrictions right up until the ninth month is evil. And yet these are some of the terms of mainstream conformity in America today.

Is this what Americans are going to be asked to fight for, if the conflicts we’re heading into expand into war commitments that can’t be fulfilled by a volunteer military and a peacetime economy? Shall we be drafted, trained, and sent to die so America’s establishment institutions can continue to marginalize if not explicitly demonize white people, straight men, Christians, and concerned parents as oppressors, at the same time as they teach nonwhites, LGBTQs, atheists and people of non-Christian faiths to believe they are victims who live in a hostile nation?

Who will be left to fight, and what will they fight for? Not America’s historic traditions or values, which are now controversial if not toxic. Nor may we fight to preserve our standard of living, which is now seen as unsustainable.

The impact of the globalist green agenda has only begun to be felt, but it is already further alienating millions of Americans from their government and the utterly corrupt corporations that are complicit in the project. To allegedly save us all from a “climate crisis,” development and use of oil, natural gas, and coal is being halted. For reasons clearly unrelated to climate change, but apparently equally compelling, development and use of hydroelectric power and nuclear power is also being slowed down if not completely stopped. Instead, energy is now going to come from wind, solar and biomass energy, with massive battery backup systems to buffer their intermittency. These are horridly destructive to the environment, require more raw materials than we’ll ever manage to extract, and cannot possibly deliver the amount of energy the nation (or the world) requires to prosper.

The consequences of “Green” policies are the primary reason why most Americans can no longer afford to own homes or pay rent, buy gasoline, or pay their utility bills. And these elevated prices for essentials factor into price increases for everything else. How will doing this make America strong enough to withstand a prolonged military conflict with peer adversaries?

In a nation with a divided people, most of them alienated from their government, saying we’re not as bad as our enemies may no longer be enough to make people willing to fight and die. If all that globalist visionaries who inform our government, and the corporations that control it, and the uniparty puppets who pretend to be our representatives have to offer us is a future where we’ll own nothing – eating bugs, replacing faith with narcissism, exchanging love for AI, fearing encounters with actual living people whenever we take off the VR goggles, packed into “pods” inside megacities like cattle, wasting away, childless, aimless – and be happy, who cares?

Green. Woke. Such are the globalists who control America today. Unless that changes, this is what we’re going to be asked to fight for, and impose on any nations that resist, whether it’s tomorrow or years from now. We will be told we are going to war to save the planet from regimes that deny the climate crisis, and to liberate the world from fascism, racism, tribalism, nationalism, sexism, homophobia, and now, transphobia.

To be sure, if this plays out among the actors confronting us today, the nations we may be asked to fight are undeniably worse. They commit atrocities. They don’t bother with psyops to manipulate their people into compliance, they just brutalize and slaughter them. But those nations, and the regimes that control them, also reject globalism for all the repellent features that presently define it. For just that one thing, and not in any way to excuse the rest, can we honestly blame them?

Perhaps the globalists that run America should reconsider their strategy. If they want Americans to fight for them, they need to give back a future worth dying to protect. Get the monopolistic corporations under control so they have to compete with each other and make goods affordable again. Knock off all the divisive “woke” garbage. Quit pretending there’s a climate crisis when it’s obvious that the true motivation is to consolidate property ownership and control of resources. Stop flooding the nation with millions of people who are then trained to hate us, if they don’t already.

Make America overwhelmingly strong again. Make America affordable again. Modify if not entirely scrap the globalist agenda that’s being imposed on the rest of the world. Nobody wants it. Then, and only then, ask Americans to fight. At that point, if those things were done, it probably would no longer be necessary.

X22, Red Pill News, and more- Oct 19

 

President Trump Speaks of Failed Policy Leading to Hamas Attack on Israel

President Trump delivered remarks to reporters before entering the New York City courtroom yesterday, noting the hospital blast in Gaza City -the result of a failed Hamas missile launch- that killed hundreds.

“It’s a terrible thing, it’s a shame,” President Trump said. “The attack on Israel should have never happened. And it would not have happened if we had a different president, I can tell you that.” WATCH:

The Pentagon Would Rather Fund Troops’ Abortions Than Their Overseas Living Expenses

Shawn Fleetwood reporting for The Federalist 

The Pentagon is reportedly planning to cut overseas service members’ cost-of-living allowances next month, even as it continues to subsidize travel for its employees to get abortions.

According to Military.com, the Defense Department “announced in May that service members stationed overseas, including troops in Alaska and Hawaii, would see cuts to their cost-of-living allowance.” While the first cut in allowances occurred on May 15, the second is slated to happen on Nov. 15 and will be reflected in service members’ Dec. 1 paychecks. More than 230,000 military members receive these payments, according to the outlet.

The purpose of overseas cost-of-living allowances, or OCOLA, is to help service members stationed in remote locations offset costs of basic necessities that are typically more expensive due to their base’s distance from the contiguous United States. Increased inflation and changing currency rates, however, have supposedly resulted in “the gap … diminish[ing], leading to the cuts.”

“OCOLA is based on a service member’s spendable income and does not consider money a spouse earns,” Military.com explained. “It’s calculated by comparing the price of goods and services overseas with the average cost for equivalent products in the States, which creates an index for the cost-of-living allowance. Service members receive an increase only if costs are higher overseas compared to prices stateside.”

Unnamed senior defense officials tried to justify the cuts, claiming in May that an “across-the-board” pay raise for service members this year will result in a “higher take-home pay even with OCOLA reductions than what they had in 2022.”

While the Pentagon seemingly can’t find enough funds to support service members in acquiring basic needs, it’s been more than willing to spend countless U.S. taxpayer dollars for its female employees to get abortions.

In February, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that the agency would financially cover abortion-related travel expenses for service members and their dependents. This prompted Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville to launch a protest of the policy the following month. Using his position on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Tuberville has been slow-walking military promotions requiring Senate confirmation.

To be clear, Tuberville is not blocking votes, but is forcing the Armed Services Committee to vote on each nomination individually rather than voting “en masse on large numbers of nominations.”

The Alabama Republican has since come under a barrage of attacks from Austin, top-ranking military officials, and Democrats (I repeat myself), who have baselessly claimed Tuberville’s protest is harming U.S. “military readiness” and “national security.” Former CIA Director Michael Hayden — a Trump-Russia collusion hoaxer who joined more than 50 former intelligence officials in signing a letter claiming Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation — took his unhinged criticisms a step further by apparently calling for Tuberville’s assassination.

Despite Democrats’ hysteria, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer tacitly admitted he had the power to bring military promotions to the Senate floor the entire time last month after he filed cloture on several Biden nominees. Meanwhile, Tuberville has since doubled down, reaffirming in a Tuesday tweet that he’ll continue his protest until the Pentagon lifts its abortion policy.

“To be clear, I don’t care if Senate Republicans break with me or not. I’m not dropping my holds until the policy is revoked,” Tuberville wrote. “The DOD should be worried about defending our nation instead of forcing the taxpayers to fund elective abortions.”

Department of Defense Warns of Over 180 Provocative Encounters with Chinese Aircraft

Ward Clark reporting for RedState 

The world's attention may be largely on the Middle East, but China is continuing a provocation campaign in the western Pacific. In the last two years, there have been over 180 unsafe approaches by Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force aircraft to American and allied aircraft operating in international airspace over the western Pacific. These acts seem tailor-made to provoke a response from U.S. aircraft.

The U.S. Department of Defense is telling the media that aircraft are experiencing an uptick in "coercive and risky" interactions with Chinese planes.

DOD officials outlined the trend at a press conference Tuesday and provided newly declassified photos and videos of relevant incidents.

"Since the fall of 2021, we have seen more than 180 such incidents," said Assistant Defense Secretary for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner. "More in the past two years than in the decade before that. That's nearly 200 cases where PLA operators have performed reckless maneuvers or discharged chaff or shot off flares or approach to (sic) rapidly or too close to U.S. aircraft."

It's plain that the Chinese intend to make free and open transits of international airspace in the western Pacific as stressful and difficult as possible.

Ratner continued, "All as part of trying to interfere with the ability of U.S. forces to operate safely in places where we and every country in the world have every right to be under international law."

The People's Liberation Army (PLA) has utilized swift, disruptive violations of airspace norms to harass and irritate aircraft from the U.S. and its allies.

"And when you take into account cases of coercive and risky PLA intercepts against other states, the number increases to nearly 300 cases against U.S. ally and partner aircraft over the last two years," Ratner added.

China is also warning the United States against intervening in the aforementioned Middle Eastern conflict, stating that "...those who play with fire will perish by it." It's difficult to see what China means by that, as they lack the capability to directly project power that far from their shores — unless they use their sea-launched or land-based ballistic missile capacity.

It's hard for the casual observer to see what China has to gain by these actions, but they surely must think they stand to gain something that is commensurate with the risk they take. China is a nation beset with problems, not least of which is a demographic crisis that is one of the worst in a world teeming with demographic cliffs; China's real estate market is falling down, the ruling Chinese Communist Party is now headed up by a dictator who has seized more direct personal power than anyone since Chairman Mao; the Middle Kingdom is in danger of collapse, and yet they provoke a response from Western aircraft in international skies?

The answer may lie in that very fear of collapse.

It's been said that war is armed robbery writ large, and that may explain many of China's actions in the Pacific. Since the Second World War, the United States Navy has enforced a Pax Americana on the world's oceans; trade has been safe, reliable, and easy because international shipping traveled the seas protected by American might, just as two thousand years before, European trade caravans traveled under the protection of Roman legions.

But Rome fell, the legions faded away, and the United States Navy is hardly the world-spanning force that it was in 1945 when the United States Pacific fleet boasted more combat ships than the rest of the world's navies combined — including the United States Atlantic Fleet. Add to that the fact that today's Navy seems more concerned with diversity training than war-fighting, and it becomes apparent that China might see an opportunity to seize greater resources.

Watch Taiwan. That may well be the flashpoint.

Viral Meme-Maker Who Joked About Hillary Clinton Sentenced To 7 Months in Prison For ‘Election Interference’

Election interference is coming from the DOJ itself, not meme lords.

Evita Duffy-Alfonso reporting for The Federalist

Douglass Mackey, the man who posted a Hillary Clinton meme ahead of the 2016 election, was sentenced to seven months in prison Wednesday for the crime of “conspiracy against rights,” meaning, in this case, election interference. Mackey’s sentencing is unprecedented. It means America is now a place that puts citizens in prison for posting information disfavorable to the left, including satire, a form of speech protected by the First Amendment.  

Mackey is going to prison for posting a fake Hillary Clinton ad prior to the 2016 election telling voters to “vote from home” by texting  “‘Hillary’ to 59925.” 

Anyone with a working brain — especially pre-Covid, when voting was done overwhelmingly in person — knew that casting your vote via text was ridiculous. The meme posted to Mackey’s now-suspended troll Twitter account was clearly a joke, and no one appears to have been foolish enough to actually cast a sincere vote for Hillary via the provided phone number. Neither of those things, however, stopped the feds from going after Mackey.

Ironically, Mackey’s post was making a mockery of Democrat election interference. The Clinton campaign would have loved it if votes could be cast via text, as would all Democrats who persistently push to dismantle voter security rules and regulations, like requiring individuals to vote in person on election day and provide identification.

Even more ironic is that Democrats within the federal government, corporate media, and Big Tech have engaged in real widespread election interference and waged real disinformation campaigns to annihilate election integrity but have so far faced zero consequences.

For instance, none of the Russia collusion hoaxers in the federal government, Hillary Clinton campaign, or corporate media have been charged, let alone put in prison. Recall that Russia hoaxers used false information and illegal tactics to undermine the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s presidency and literally attempt to overturn the 2016 election results.

There have been no charges brought against current Secretary of State Antony Blinken or his dozens of co-conspiring ex-national security officials who, ahead of the 2020 election, falsely claimed the Hunter Biden laptop was somehow Russian disinformation. 

Nor have there been any charges brought against the Big Tech giants who systematically suppressed the reporting surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop, which contained evidence implicating then-presidential candidate Joe Biden in a foreign pay-for-play scheme. 

It’s important to note that polls after the 2020 election indicate that, had the Biden laptop story not been suppressed, Joe Biden might not have won the 2020 election.

The DOJ has done nothing about the various leftist organizations funded by Mark Zuckerberg that changed election rules and regulations ahead of the 2020 election in key swing states in order to help Democrats electorally. 

There have also been no criminal charges brought against employees within the deep state, such as those working for the Department of Homeland Securities’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), who, ahead of the 2020 election, directly suppressed largely conservative voices critical of mass mail-in voting and leftist Covid measures. The censorship of information disfavorable to the left, including information CISA knew was true, undoubtedly swayed the 2020 election in Democrats’ favor.

According to Internal Revenue Service (IRS) whistleblowers, DOJ officials, such as Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, thwarted an investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax crimes prior to the 2020 election. If true, this obstruction covered up links between then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his son’s sketchy foreign business deals before the election. 

Election interference is indeed prevalent in the U.S., but it’s not perpetuated by meme lords. Instead, the federal government, including the DOJ itself, in partnership with its corporate media PR department and Big Tech oligarchs, is annihilating election security and censoring conservatives in the digital public square to ensure Democrats win elections.

Mackey’s sentencing is emblematic of the Biden DOJ’s push to criminalize all of the left’s political opponents. As Federalist Senior Contributor Jonathan S. Tobin wrote: “The timing of the prosecution speaks directly to the political implications of the case. Mackey wasn’t arrested in an FBI raid on his home until Jan. 27, 2021, the week after Biden took office. The decision to try to jail him didn’t take place until the supposedly moderate Attorney General Merrick Garland took control of the Department of Justice.”

Mackey is just one of the Biden regime’s many enemies. He is joined by countless peaceful pro-lifer protesters, traditional Catholics, and Biden’s primary political opponent, Donald Trump. Not only is Trump facing over a lifetime in prison thanks to charges brought by Biden’s DOJ, but a federal judge overseeing one of the former president’s cases issued a gag order prohibiting him from criticizing his prosecutors on the campaign trail. If inhibiting a presidential candidate from campaigning isn’t brazen election interference, I don’t know what is.

Like a third-world country, America is now a place where politicians and unelected bureaucrats use the power of the state to destroy their political opponents.

Mackey’s prosecution and sentencing was an exercise of power meant to send a message: There will be severe punishment if you dare deviate from leftist orthodoxy or criticize the deep state — even as a joke.