DC Tom

You know what they have in common? Neither one killed themself.

Probably not. Asymmetrical warfare still takes time for planning and staff work, particularly when it's as well-organized as the IRGC is. And the nature of asymmetrical warfare is that it doesn't really degrade. As long as you maintain any sort of threat, you have a viable capability. And Quds force is still a very viable threat - they demonstrated that last week, and killing Soleimani didn't degrade that at all. "Not to attack US targets." Or "Not to attack US targets yet?" And does that mean targets IN the US? Or international targets representing the US? Does that include Doha? Destroyers docked in Aden? It's a rather ambiguous statement by Pence.

One thing that's missed in all this: missiles are an arms-length response that is not typical of Iranian methods in general, nor Quds operations in particular. Quds is roughly equivalent to JSOC, which isn't a "bomb them from miles away" force. They're a "get in to knife-fighting range and kill the target" force. This isn't over. The missile attack was just a quick face-saving response so Iran didn't look weak in the short-term.

Michael's bodyguard from Godfather 2 hasn't lost it... ******************************************************************

Quickest cloning ever.

Those missiles are not that accurate. Most have a CEP on the order of a thousand meters or so. If they Iranians "chose" to aim at dirt, they would have missed and hit something of value.

Yes, it's the same foreign policy principle Clinton pursued with North Korea: "Just don't do anything during our administration, and we'll reward you."

There's not a single clip of me saying "Trump" anywhere either. So why the ***** hasn't my life insurance paid out yet?

Good Lord...look at all the replies saying the House has the right to determine Senate procedure. People really are stupid.

Improperly turning "QAnon" into a verb is the most Krugmanish thing imaginable.

That's about the failure rate I would have expected - little better, actually. Like I said last night, Iran has a significant aerospace capability, but little opportunity to test. And Western failure rates are better...but not by much. 10% or so. depending on the platform and weapon. As I recall, the Minuteman III's reliability rate was only around 70%.

And Boeing. It's like we hit the 2019 trifecta.

Not since we assassinated him, at least.

Erbil's an important archaeological site and important to Kurdish and Assyrian culture, btw. "But...Trump!" Idiots.

Personally, I think the embassy attack, the tanker attacks, and the constant low-level conflict he was fostering in Sunni Iraq justified his assassination.

He's not on TV, so he's not addressing the troops? Shut the ***** up, idiot. You don't know what he's doing right now.

Yep, those are technically ballistic projectiles. So's a rock thrown from a trebuchet. That's why I made the distinction between "technically" and "practically." The bases were hit with either cruise missiles (powered flight), or ballistic missiles (free ballistic trajectory).

Probably. I mean...in the Iran-Iraq war, in the "War of the Cities" phase, Iranian ballistic missiles were roughly equivalent to the German V-2 - they could reliably hit the ground, but that's about it. I assume they're equipment has gotten better in the past 30 years, since Iran's aerospace industry is surprisingly decent, and they've had 30 years to develop things. But they've also been under sanctions, isolated, and doing it largely on their own with little opportunity for testing. So their reliability is probably not very high.

That has interesting command and control implications. Fortunately, Iranian ballistic missiles are roughly as accurate as Tibs' posts, so I'm not too worried.

Third wave? What's the second? I assume the current missiling of Iraqi bases is the first.

A "simple rocket" is the definition of "ballistic." A ballistic missile is a rocket that follows a ballistic path determined by its initial impulse. Technically, that's anything from an Estes rocket to a Saturn V...but realistically, that's any substantial rocket with minimal guidance, from a FROG-3 with a six mile range to an LGM-118 Minuteman.

Iran cooperated closely with US intelligence after 9/11, in no small part because Iran was already at war with Afghanistan, as the Taliban had a nasty habit of killing Iranian diplomats, which kind-of torqued them off. Maybe they allowed transit before 9/11 - doubtful - but if they did, they've assuaged their guilt.

Yes, I know. Redundancy can be pretty redundant sometimes.

That's crazy. You...don't actually know what "ballistic" means, do you?

The Post and NYT wrote up the Fat Leonard scandal, too, so I wouldn't be that quick to accuse DR of tossing around baseless conspiracies in that case.