Reason.com

The Iran War Is Back, Sort Of

6 days agoCenter Right

The U.S.-Iranian peace memorandum has broken down, and violence is slowly ramping back up to a full-on war. Four Americans paid the price this weekend.

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GOP Louisiana Sen John Kennedy Says Bailing on Iran War Would Be A ‘Huge, Huge Mistake’

The Daily Caller

22 minutes ago

GOP Louisiana Sen John Kennedy Says Bailing on Iran War Would Be A ‘Huge, Huge Mistake’

‘I support the president in Iran. We all need to do a better job messaging’

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Trump's own DEA blows up his drug war claims as smugglers adapt

Raw Story

23 minutes ago

Trump's own DEA blows up his drug war claims as smugglers adapt

A previously unreported Drug Enforcement Administration assessment has undercut one of President Donald Trump's signature claims about his military campaign against drug traffickers.The Washington Post reported that the DEA assessment, as well as a closed-door congressional briefing and interviews with current and former officials, showed months of deadly strikes on suspected smuggling boats have done nothing to reduce the flow of cocaine into the United States.“Smugglers have adapted to the intensified pressure,” DEA analysts wrote. “Price and availability have not been noticeably affected.”Cocaine's price and purity in the U.S. have remained essentially unchanged since Operation Southern Spear began in September, the assessment found. Traffickers, rather than being deterred, have simply changed course — swapping go-fast boats for larger vessels that hug the coastline, leaning more heavily on clandestine aircraft routes through Colombia and Venezuela, and in some cases bribing officials for warning of U.S. ship movements.The findings directly contradict Trump's repeated assertion — made publicly more than a dozen times — that the strikes have slashed maritime drug trafficking by 97 percent to 98 percent. DEA analysts instead reported that early disruptions to smuggling routes reversed within months, with prices and availability returning to normal.At least 221 people have been killed in strikes on more than 67 boats since September, drawing criticism from legal analysts who call the attacks extrajudicial killings. The White House has defended the strikes as both lethal deterrence and a demonstration of resolve, while acknowledging traffickers have shifted tactics.“When you squeeze the balloon on one side, it always expands on the other side,” one DEA official told the Post on the condition of anonymity. “They always find the weak spots and exploit them.”A senior Colombian security official said the strikes have had only a limited effect, pushing more cocaine through legitimate ports and onto stockpiling ships instead.The strikes may also be undermining the U.S. government's own investigative capacity. Informants who once fed intelligence to build cases against trafficking networks are reportedly being pulled from the field, out of fear they could be killed in a strike.Meanwhile, the broader supply picture looks worse, not better. A recent United Nations report found global cocaine production at record highs, with cultivation and manufacturing having surged over the past decade. Research has tied that boom directly to rising U.S. overdose deaths — deaths that experts say are driven far more by production at the source than by what's intercepted at sea.Administration officials defended the strikes as necessary and effective.“These measures have not only eliminated narcoterrorists themselves, but also discouraged bad actors from trying to smuggle drugs into our country should they meet the same deadly fate,” said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly. “President Trump is using every tool at his disposal to save lives from the scourge of illicit narcotics, and any suggestion that these efforts have not been effective are laughable.”

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Reason.com

9 hours ago

Brickbat: We Can Sort It Out

In California, Sacramento officials are now inspecting residents' garbage, recycling, and organic waste bins to make sure people are sorting… The post Brickbat: We Can Sort It Out appeared first on Reason.com.

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Pentagon Changes How It Reports Casualties in Iran War

NYT > U.S. > Politics

10 hours ago

Pentagon Changes How It Reports Casualties in Iran War

The changes separated the casualty numbers into two separate web pages, potentially making it more difficult to tally the war’s full toll.

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Pentagon reports more than 600 Iran war casualties in quiet database update

US news | The Guardian

12 hours ago

Pentagon reports more than 600 Iran war casualties in quiet database update

Figures are source of dispute as US defense department days ago reduced record of troops killed and woundedThe Pentagon updated its official war casualty database over the weekend, adding more than 140 wounded service members. The Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) also introduced a new casualty category labeled “Overseas Operations” for personnel killed and wounded “starting July 7”.According to the updated database, the official toll for the earlier phase of the US-Iran war, known as Operation Epic Fury, now stands at 14 service members killed and more than 400 wounded in action. Continue reading...

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Zelenskyy accuses Russia of helping Iran target U.S. bases with satellite images

Politics - CBSNews.com

13 hours ago

Zelenskyy accuses Russia of helping Iran target U.S. bases with satellite images

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's accusations of Russia helping Iran target U.S. troops are not the first.

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Mike Waltz, US ambassador to UN, insists country has enough munitions for Iran war: ‘People that are leaking this nonsense deserve to be in jail’

New York Post

14 hours ago

Mike Waltz, US ambassador to UN, insists country has enough munitions for Iran war: ‘People that are leaking this nonsense deserve to be in jail’

"I want to be crystal clear: The US military -- and I've verified this every which way -- has everything that it needs to conduct this campaign as effectively as it needs to be," Ambassador Mike Waltz told NBC's "Meet the Press."

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GOP rep: Trump ‘would be derelict in his duty’ if Iran had nuclear weapon, despite war’s unpopularity

The Hill News

15 hours ago

GOP rep: Trump ‘would be derelict in his duty’ if Iran had nuclear weapon, despite war’s unpopularity

GOP Rep. Byron Donalds (Fla.) on Sunday defended President Trump’s handling of the war with Iran. “Nobody wants war. I think if you were going to ask Americans at large, whether they’re MAGA Republicans or any other American, nobody wants to be involved in another military conflict,” Donalds said to host Chris Stirewalt on NewsNation’s…

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The Iran War Is Back, Sort Of

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The Iran War Is Back, Sort Of

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