Lots going on. There’s lots of commentary on the absurd Zhou trip to the Middle East and the way he was played by the Saudis. He went there with hat in hand and came back with nothing to show for it. The Saudis clearly see their future linked to Russia to a greater extent than with the US.
Did you notice that almost immediately after Zhou said we would never allow Iran to have nukes—implying military action—Iran announced that they had the ability to build nukes, but hadn’t yet decided whether or not to do so? They’d never said anything like that previously. Now we see a sort of power broker meeting:
Who thinks Erdogan got our permission for this meeting?
Doug Macgregor offers a pretty frank assessment: “NATO is falling apart.” Why Sweden and Finland want to join is a bit of a mystery. Almost as much of a mystery as why their governments didn’t consult their nations on the issue:
Macgregor believes the Russians are about to launch a major offensive. Here are two passages that I found striking, but it’s all pretty good:
Q: Will imposing wokeness have a catastrophic effect on recruiting?
[17:00] I think they've already seen it. We're already confronting this catastrophic impact on recruiting--we can't recruit the people that we want. Their attitude is: It doesn't make any difference. We'll just drop the standards. We'll start recruiting people that we would normally never take into the armed forces. People that are far below the desired IQ levels, people that have criminal records, people that may have serious problems, drug problems or something else. This is already happening. I think they view it as: None of these things matter any more. We live in the era of push button warfare. Fire a missile. We're still the biggest, most powerful, richest country in the world. We can do pretty much as we want, and the important thing in the backs of their minds, is that we're building a force that reflects our leftist ideology and values. ...
...
[21:00] Remember, when all this money moves from Capitol Hill to DoD to the Military-Industrial Complex that we know as the defense industries, that money also involves donations [big sh*t eating grin] for people on The Hill.
And the good Colonel wrote this excellent piece:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/worshipping-dead-horses/
Filling those technical nuclear weapons positions with low IQ, criminal, immoral social outcasts sound like a great plan. But if that's all you've got, there will have to be some new waiver criteria drafted and approved. That should help the civilians sleep better at night.
If losses to the force quickly become acute, Brandon may have to employ 'stop loss' just to maintain force structure. In the past, stop loss was used to retain certain highly skilled personnel such as special operators, aviators, etc. It could be much broader if retention does not improve, and eligible personnel opt to retire at their earliest opportunity.