WW3?

[zorkan]

Woke up to a new world this morning.
It won't be like the Iraq wars.
Potential collapse of the world economy if it persists too long.

[Icarus]

The Persians have already attempted harm to the Arab contingent around the strait of Hormuz. Considerable parts of the worlds oil supply moves through that body of water which the Iranians can control.  That is a starter for influencing the world economy.

[Recusant]

All the bleating from MAGA about Trump being different, not one of those warmongers. Now for the most part they're happy to cheer on his war. The principles they claim to believe in are meaningless--whatever the deteriorating shit-heel does is wonderful to them regardless of how much it contradicts previous talking points. A ground invasion next? Don't completely rule out the possibility. How this shakes out is anybody's guess.

[Dark Lightning]

People whose opinions (not government people) I trust say that this excursion will wrap up in a few weeks. They think that is is another distraction from the Epstein Files. Concerning that one person wields this kind of power.

[Icarus]

One of the dead US soldiers, is from my home town (Lakeland Florida). Madness has moved much  too close to home now.

[zorkan]

Sorry to hear that. 

Iran has a population of 93 million.
It's surrounded by high mountains enclosing a vast plain.
Land area is nearly 7 times that of UK.
USA and Russia could not win in neighbouring Afghanistan.
I have visited both many years ago, so I know what the terrain is like.
UK and other European countries should stay out of this.

[Recusant]

Seems pretty much confirmed now.

"US responsible for deadly missile strike on Iran school, preliminary inquiry says" | The Guardian

It's the malevolent buffoon's war, so naturally on the first day of attacks the US uses its precision weapons systems to murder well over 100 school children and teachers. Yeah, a holy war. After all, the Judaic/Christian/Muslim god is bloodthirsty and not particularly averse to killing children, per scripture.

[zorkan]

WW1 was not started in Sarajevo, but by railway timetables and canned food.

WW2 was not started by Germany and Japan, but by China.

WW3 was not started by Iran.
The failing American empire the most likely cause.

[Recusant]

You can throw hundreds of billions into your armed forces, but that doesn't necessarily produce competence. An advanced "precision" weapon might as well be a 500 pound bomb dropped at random from a B-17 if the targeting isn't  accurate. It appears that it's twice that we know of now: the US military carrying out strikes on schoolchildren. It wouldn't surprise me if the targets were chosen using AI. The alternative could be that the most expensive military in the world is using intelligence that is years out of date. 

In my opinion there is no way within reason to deny that Making America Great Again is nothing less than building a dismal and cruel dystopia. Given a choice this is not the sort of science fiction I would have wanted to live through.

"Children Among Those Killed by US With Mysterious New Weapon Fired on Iran: Reports" | Common Dreams

As experts and investigators analyze one of the first strikes carried out in the US-Israeli war on Iran, mounting reports point to a ballistic missile that had never been used before by the US military in combat—but which may have struck a residential area, a sports hall, and a school in the southern city of Lamerd.

Along with being accused of bombing a school in Minab, killing more than 160 children and teachers, the US reportedly attacked several facilities and civilian areas near an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps facility in Lamerd, killing an additional 21 people, including children.

While analysts have found a US Tomahawk cruise missile was used in the Minab attack, munitions experts interviewed by the BBC and The New York Times in recent days said footage of the attacks and images of the targets after they were struck suggest a short-range ballistic missile called a Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) was used to bomb a sports hall, school, and residential neighborhood in Lamerd.

The missiles are newly developed and are designed to detonate just above a target and propel small tungsten pellets into the surrounding area.

As the Times reported, the PrSM is manufactured by Lockheed Martin and has the capability to hit targets at a 400-mile range, "but additional details about the weapon, including its expected accuracy and the quantity of explosives it carries, remain unknown to the public."

The Times reported that munitions experts had analyzed footage of a weapon in flight over a residential area about 900 feet from the sports hall and school, showing the missile erupting "in a large fireball midair."

Another video showed an explosion in midair just above the sports hall and nearby school, and photos of the aftermath showed the sites with numerous holes, presumably from the tungsten pellets.

[Continues . . .]

I'm willing to conditionally believe that these are accidental killings, but Trump has declared his willingness to intentionally kill innocent civilians. Thus the Department of War Crimes.