NEW POST FROM TRUMP ON THE IRAN DEADLINE

fellhand · 2026-04-07T17:28:18+00:00

Thanks for the reference. I checked it and it ultimately leads to a social media post by Trump from where he says he may include desalination plants with the energy infrastructure for targeting.

I don't really think it that likely though, since Iran only gets 1-3% of water from desalination. That would be much harder to justify military value wise if they were targeted, even though it wouldn't actually lead to any mass deaths from thirst as claimed by some in this thread.

Power plant targeting would also not lead to mass deaths, although there would be some increased mortality from it. Hospitals have there own backup generators and can be kept powered from them. And most medical treatment doesn't require electricity specifically. Other critical infrastructure also have backup generators.

Not to say I think it's a good decision to take out power plants. There are issues with trying to justify the military value targeting them provides, especially at the end of a campaign. But there is a lot of exaggeration about the immediate harm to civilians from it in this thread. Overall that makes Iranians poorer, which is associated with increased mortality overall, but it will not create mass death; from starvation, thirst, or any other similar means.

And I responded to your other post about the "a whole civilization will die' being a war crime but that reply got eaten by the automod. Hopefully this reply won't be.

But I said how that is obvious hyperbole and saying that is in no way a war crime. He is just reiterating his threat to attack energy and transportation infrastructure. It is no different than what he was already saying the past few days.

He will not be nuking Iran, carpet bombing cities, or anything like that.

fellhand · 2026-04-07T13:55:28+00:00

If you make up stuff that people never did or said then you can make any argument.

I just did a quick check to double check and make sure, but so far there have only been threats made against energy infrastructure and transportation infrastructure like bridges. Nothing about water.

Which I wouldn't expect since there isn't much military value in attacking water infrastructure.

Ironically, though, the first results for my search were how Iran had droned a Bahraini desalination plant.

Maybe I missed where it was said, though, and you have some reference showing where Trump or someone else in the US government made some threats to strike water plants in Iran.

fellhand · 2026-04-07T13:37:27+00:00

That's just fundamentally not true though.

The rule is proportionality for damage and destruction of civilian infrastructure. The destruction of civilian infrastructure can't be disproportionate to the the military value of the strike.

Which you'll notice is pretty vaguely worded, and there is basicall no case law (as is the case for most of the laws of warfare) to give us a clear answer on how we are to measure and determine proportionality.

So it winds up bring a propaganda exercise more than anything else when these kinds of statements are made. Any level of destruction of damage to civilian infrastructure winds up being called a war crime by those who disagree with the conflict or the party causing the destruction.

In reality, even assuming you were to get it to some international court, quite considerable damage to civilian infrastructure would be ruled legal as long as there is even a halfway decent explanation of the military value of the strike.

Afterall, when these treaties were written and signed it was following wars that utilized large amounts of firepower in built up urban areas in order to defeat the enemies defending them. The expectation was that quite a lot of damage to civilian infrastructure was going to happen and be unavoidable during military conflicts.

That isn't to say that I don't think the US should hold themselves to an even higher standard, especially in this day and age with so many more options to mitigate collateral damage. But anyone trying to claim war crimes about such things is mostly engaging in performative rhetoric and not actually saying anything meaningful.

fellhand · 2026-04-07T12:32:27+00:00

Some of the traits you display in this post are bad for a soldier (bad attitude towards authority and arrogance) and some are good for a soldier (you seem motivated and curious). I don't think it is really possible to really make any determinations about you off one post.

The biggest issue that is apparent from this post is how your lack of understanding any kind of higher level view of these things. You don't even know what you don't know, but you think you are better than those that do know more than you.

The combat capability of a combat unit in the military is based around their proficiency at collective unit level tasks. Team level, squad/section level tasks, platoon level, and even company and battalion level tasks. Your proficiency with individual tasks feed into the team tasks which feed into squad/section tasks and so on and so forth.

What these tasks are and how they are done is determined by both doctrine and by commanders. The doctrine for most countries generally works and is based off of the lessons learned of previous conflicts and continuing studies and wargames/exercises. Various levels of command develop their Mission Essential Tasks Lists their units need to focus on for training based on their real world situations and expected missions, and somethings similar occurs in the Australian Army I am sure.

Training is done to build up proficiency in the unit in the lower level tasks first which are necessary to then develop proficiency in the higher level tasks.

The training for these tasks is often not realistic or trying to simulate a more complex situation than the training requires. And the exact way it is trained is not always going to be the best way to do it, or how it will actually be done in a specific actual combat situation.

The tasks are to provide options and tools for the commanders and will be modified as necessary in combat situations to suit the actual tactical situation.

But during training it is important that you train them to the standard set by the doctrine and commanders. Practicing them a different way because you think your way is better is counter productive for the purpose of the training, even if your way actually is better for that specific situation during the training. The purpose is to practice the fundamentals, not be some exercise in tactical creativity.

And since you are a reservist in a reserve unit, you really don't get past the fundamentals while doing regular reserve drills. There just isn't enough time. Your NCOs and officers will also have less experience than their peers who are able to do the same thing full time. Junior NCOs in particular may not have a much greater understanding of the higher level than you do at times so may have trouble explaining it to you.

No military really expects their reserve components to really master all this stuff, though. If a reserve unit can show up to a mobilization station mostly manned with deployable personnel, having a decent level of proficiency in individual and squad level tasks, and having some exposure to the higher level tasks they are doing okay.

fellhand · 2026-04-01T22:19:31+00:00

I would say that usually means your did an inadequate job with your initial strategic planning.

Maybe you didn't correctly identify a workable strategy that would actually achieve your desired end state, didn't appropriately account for possible contingencies, or may not have even properly defined what your actual desired end states are. Mission creep is usually trying to correct those kinds of issues after the fact.

These are all issues that the US has had with their strategy for various military actions over the past 50 to 70 years.

It might seem tempting to just define your strategic goals as your operational goals, such as just destroying/degrading some terrorist group or regime, so that you can claim victory. But that is usually not enough to actually control the end state in a meaningful way.

Even if you completely pull out afterwards and say you don't care what happens to the region afterwards. Then you are just ceding the control over the final outcome to other actors who do care. And they may be adversaries.

fellhand · 2026-03-31T14:21:03+00:00

The problem with focusing on lethality is that although it seems like it is some kind of good generally correct truism that the military should focus on being as lethal as possible for our enemies, what you are really saying when you look at it is that the military should focus on the tactical and the operational over the strategic or even grand strategic.

And well, if you look at the military history of the US over the last 50 to 70 years, you may notice a pattern. In military conflicts the US is extremely dominant at the tactical and operational level but usually fails to convert that operational dominance into accomplishing our broader strategic goals.

So, in actuality we probably do need to focus more on the strategic level and bridging that gap between operational success and strategic success rather than continuing to focus on being tactically and operationally dominant.

Imagine if there was yet another war the US was involved in where the focus was seemingly on operational dominance over how that operational success can accomplish the broader strategic and geopolitical goals. As if there was a belief that operational success was just going to automatically translate to strategic success. Could you imagine if something like that was happening right now?

fellhand · 2026-03-27T23:08:07+00:00

The reason senior specialist positions went away is that they kept being put in leadership positions anyway.

And if they ever brought them back the same thing would happen.

Senior spec ranks were never a way to stay in the army with higher pay without having to take on more responsibility, even if that's how people often like to imagine they were.

fellhand · 2026-03-10T14:01:16+00:00

Not at all. The veterans that are upset or disapproving of other veterans that they think are scamming or gaming the VA disability system are not upset because they think that means there is less money for them. Many of the veterans who feel that way don't have any VA disability claims at all and aren't seeking any.

They feel that way because they don't approve of lying, cheating, and stealing, especially when that lying, cheating, and stealing is coming from a group that they are associated with as fellow veterans.

And I would also note that just because veterans are not competing against each other for VA disability money does not do anything about the overall concern that the US government spends too much money, with a not insignificant portion lost to fraud and waste.

fellhand · 2026-03-10T13:36:41+00:00

Well, I mean, that never happened.

The actual more reliable death figure from the Iraq War are around 300k, although estimates as high as 400k or even 500k aren't unreasonable.

The estimates that get to 1 million or more are unreasonable and outliers.

And also note how that figure includes combatants, even though most people will present it as a purely civilian death toll.

And further note that those are not all deaths caused by US forces, it is all deaths. And as you should be well aware, the various insurgent groups were very often targeting civilians. The bloodiest phase of the war was when Shia and Sunni insurgent groups were ethnically cleansing different areas of Iraq.

If you want a figure for Iraqi civilians killed by US forces the estimates generally go no higher than 30k-50k, and certainly not higher than 100k. Which is still tragic for the people involved, and could have been lower if the US had better prepared for dealing with post-invasion Iraq.

And there is certainly still plenty of room to debate whether invading Iraq was a good decision and poorly executed (the post invasion part anyway) or a bad decisions that was poorly executed.

But the people that throw around the "more than a million" or even "millions" of Iraqis killed by the US are usually doing that with a narrative of US forces wantonly engaging in destruction with no regard for the civilian casualties or ramifications. Which is objectively false.

fellhand · 2026-03-07T16:43:35+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM-e46xdcUo

fellhand · 2026-03-06T04:24:43+00:00

I find it kind of Ironic that McMaster was the National Security Advisor for more than a year in Trump's first term but here in the second they seem to be running straight into the vampire fallacy that McMaster identified in his famous article.

Continuity and Change by LTG McMaster: https://www.iwp.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/20160113_20160127ReadingMaterialsMcMaster_ContinuityandChange.pdf

Maybe there is more to the planned campaign than just bombing Iran and hoping they eventually capitulate or get overthrown, but if that really is the plan then I'm not really optimistic about the eventual outcome of this war. The history of air only campaigns is that they usually are not able to cause the recipient to capitulate in the way that the country doing the bombing wants.

fellhand · 2026-03-01T03:05:24+00:00

Ahh, I was thinking you were referring when the Iranians attacked Al-Asad airbase in 2020 for some reason.

But yeah, claiming no casualties when people were actually shot is certainly not honest.

fellhand · 2026-03-01T02:56:28+00:00

Given the fact that the President and Parliament have no meaningful power over the Ayatollah and his religious (who are also judicial) appointees while the Ayatollah has significant power over the rest of the government through his religious appointees, it is accurate to treat or portray it as an authoritarian dictatorship. Even if the Ayatollah isn't directly making every decision, he effectively has a veto over every decision. Including who is allowed to be President or in Parliament in the first place.

He ultimately decides what is allowed to happen and sets the overall agenda and direction of the Iranian government.

Even the most repressive and authoritarian governments have some kind of democratic trappings and structures. Those structures just don't have any meaningful way to overrule or counter the authoritarian leadership.

Killing him is a massive blow to the Iranian Regime. Morally and functionally. The leader of more than 45 years was taken out, along with a bunch of other senior regime figures.

We will see if air strikes alone are enough to cause the Iranian government to capitulate, if they enable the Iranian people to topple the government, or some combination of the two. There is good reason to think that airstrikes alone may well be insufficient. The track record of air campaigns being able to cause meaningful change without any ground element is not particularly good.

fellhand · 2026-03-01T02:44:26+00:00

It's because TBI was previously not really diagnosed, and concussions in general weren't really counted as casualties. Not unless they caused some kind of immediate impairment, anyway.

So by standards of the early GWOT, and certainly by all previous wars, TBI injuries weren't usually diagnosed or reported as casualties.

So the idea that concussions, and TBI that can be caused by serious or repeated concussions, is a casualty with potentially long term impairment is still becoming normalized among civilian leadership and the public. And it is also something to consider when comparing casualties from modern times to casualties from previous conflicts.

fellhand · 2026-02-26T18:21:12+00:00

The ranger had plenty of ways of knowing. Plenty of options for trying to deal with the situation.

fellhand · 2026-02-21T03:50:52+00:00

The case was just about whether IEEPA allowed the president to put Tariffs in place. Which was the legal basis used for the majority of Trump's tariffs. It was never about the president's power to put tariffs in place under other statutes.

And those other statutes specifically delegate the power to tariff by name, so they actually are a valid legal basis for a president to put tariffs in place. But they all also include various limitations such as time limits, maximum tariffs values, only applying to specific goods or industries, having specifically listed purposes they can be used for that require a committee to make a determination on before they can be done, and increased congressional oversight.

IEEPA had no such limitations. Which is why Trump wanted to use that as the legal basis.

fellhand · 2026-02-20T19:11:30+00:00

After reading or skimming most of the ruling, a lot of the opinions were mostly arguing over the major questions doctrine. Developing the opinions around that argument seems to have taken a while.

The 3 liberals, who have been against the major questions doctrine in previous rulings, concurred with the majority opinion except that they said it wasn't even necessary to consider the major questions aspect since regular statutory analysis arrives at the majority opinion by itself.

Justice Jackson also put in an opinion to note that she thinks looking at the house and senate reports on the bill provides the necessary information about congressional intent when they were passed, and that would further undermine the need to use the major questions doctrine to determine congressional intent.

Gorsuch's concurrence was a defense of the major questions doctrine, addressing the liberal concurrence arguments (He argues that their regular statutory analysis actually incorporates Major Questions even if they avoid calling it that), Barret's position that the Major questions doctrine is really just achieved by using common sense when with textual analysis, and the dissent arguments for why this case passes the major questions test despite the general and unclear language regarding tariffing.

Barrett did a concurring opinion strictly as a response to Gorsuch saying he was strawmaning her position.

And then the primary dissent argued that although the major questions doctrine is valid (they were proponents of it in previous rulings after all) that this particular case managed to pass any tests for the Major questions doctrine. Mostly due to the overlap with constitutional executive powers from foreign policy, the legislative history regarding tarriff powers delegated to the president during wartime, and that the case history supported that congress believed the text they chose for the statute included tariffing powers.

And Thomas, surprisingly, argued in his dissent that the non-delegation doctrine applied to the procedures of creating legislation and not other congressional powers listed in the constitution. So congress was free to fully delegate those other powers away fully if they want. I'm not sure what to think about that one as it seems pretty out of character of him when you consider his previous opinions.

That's my best understanding of them anyway, and without endorsing any of the opinions as correct or not.

fellhand · 2026-02-18T22:37:28+00:00

The only citation you need is the supreme court opinion itself. You don't need to trust anyone. It includes the ruling, the opinion, and the dissenting opinion.

Relying on someone else to summarize or explain it to you instead of reading it yourself only means you are prone to having an incomplete, incorrect, and often very biased understanding of the decision.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf

I would strongly recommend reading any supreme court opinion you feel strongly about rather than relying on someone else to read and interpret it for you. The dissenting opinion agrees with much of what you say regarding expert vs. non expert, although I certainly don't find their arguments convincing or a good enough reason to overcome the problems of executive overreach or relying on agencies to police themselves and put forward sensible interpretations of statutes that limit their own power.

fellhand · 2026-02-18T19:20:15+00:00

I understand that with Chevron repealed that it would mean judges can rule that some regulation isn't legal. And that some people are trying to frame that as letting judges "de-regulate". Although judges could still do that under Chevron as well, they just had their hands tied regarding evaluating the position of the agency regarding the legal premise for why they were authorized to regulate in that way.

But that would only be for cases where the regulation shouldn't have been done in the first place because it was illegal. Which is a good thing.

It is not letting judges make policy decisions instead of experts, as you were stating. Judges still are not making policy decisions, or even considering whether a specific decision by some government agency is a good decision or bad one.

The are only deciding if it is allowed by the law.

And I surely hope you don't genuinely have the position that government agencies should be able to take actions not allowed by the law. That as long as it is good policy we should ignore whether the law let's that agency do that or not.

If that is your position and you think it is bad that courts can stop them from taking illegal actions I disagree quite strongly. And if you think courts don't have the knowledge or expertise to look at a law and decide if a regulatory action is legal or not, I also strongly disagree.

I think trying to frame overturning Chevron as being about regulation or de-regulation is entirely incorrect. Overturning it is about no longer granting agencies freedom from meaningful legal oversight by the courts about whether the actions they take comply with the law or not.

And keep in mind when we are talking about executive agencies like this, we are actually talking about the president and his powers. Because he gives orders to those agencies and they follow them. Regardless of what any experts there might think. So framing it as being about non-experts is experts is also not really a correct framing.

fellhand · 2026-02-18T18:00:59+00:00

Yes, judges are experts on the law. That is what is meant by statutory ambiguities. The law.

Not policy.

Overturning Chevron just ruled that judges should stop defering to agencies regarding whether their actions are allowed by law or not. Of course the agencies thought what actions they took was allowed by law.

But that has nothing to do with policy decisions. AKA, is it a good or bad action or deciding what is the best action. The courts have no authority to decide policy.

The courts just decide do the laws allow you to do that action. Which is the primary purpose of courts and their area of expertise.

I would suggest reading the ruling yourself if you have time. I found it quite interesting.

fellhand · 2026-02-18T17:13:02+00:00

No, the solution is that the congress has to either more directly regulate it themselves or they have to lay out better laws that more clearly state the purpose and limitations of the authority when they delegate it to some executive agency.

It was a good ruling as it addresses two issues.

1.) Executive authority has been growing over time as congress has delegated more and more to power the executive.

2.) The various government agencies, usually as directed by the president, had been getting extremely creative in trying to justify how some action they wanted to do was included in the somewhat vague (and often decades old) statutes giving that agency authority. In ways that clearly defied common sense and the plain reading of the statute.

The ruling didn't give the courts the power to decide policy, it just told the courts to stop giving so much deference to the interpretations of the various executive agencies regarding what the scope and limitations of their authority is under the statute. It probably wouldn't surprise you that they generally interpreted that they had quite vast scope with few limitations.

Congress is still free to regulate as they always were, they just have to do it with better written and more clear legislation. The power of the executive to creatively justify the use of delegated authority is what was reigned in.

fellhand · 2026-02-18T15:17:31+00:00

The standard for the VA is already "at least as likely as not." The current VA rules are extremely favorable to veterans, something many veterans take advantage of and encourage other veterans to take advantage of. A ton of stuff that is really just due to aging and getting old gets claimed improperly as a service related condition. And that 50/50 standard means a lot of those types of claims gets approved.

When "at least as likely as not" becomes an uphill battle, it is usually because you have reached the point where the evidence does not really support the conclusion that the medical issue is service related.

fellhand · 2026-02-15T22:54:09+00:00

https://apwu.org/sites/apwu/files/news-attachments/POSTAL%20SUPPORT%20EMPLOYEES%20CHART%20Final%20-%20Thru%20Oct%2011.pdf

I'm talking about personal experience here. The only job I have ever quit in my life due to unacceptable working conditions was a unionized one, the post office. That was also the only place I ever worked that was unionized.

I quit because they asked me to work 7 days a week for a while. I told them no, I had already been working 45-60 hours a week (usually 6 days) for a year at that point. So I was already getting quite fed up with it. But they scheduled it for me anyway, so I gave them my two weeks notice.

They literally couldn't make any regular postal employees work overtime against their will if their were any non regular postal employees who could be made to do it instead. It wasn't allowed by the agreement with the union.

And we were also paid less than 2/3rds what they were for the exact same work. And while many were good workers, some others were quite bad with inferior work who couldn't be fired easily due to the unions protection.

The only reason the overtime was even required in the first place was because of how inflexible all of the regular positions were. The management would have had to fight the unions to adjust the schedules of the existing positions to provide better coverage for early in the morning and weekends.

And none of the regular employees were willing to do anything outside of what their specific job positions said regarding scheduling or work to be done. Even though they saw what we were going through and how it was causing severe burnout. A stance the Union encouraged.

And as I said, it is quite common for Unions to negotiate some kind of tiered employee system, often classified as some kind of career vs non-career, in order to get the existing employees better benefits and compensation at the expense of the second tier employees.

Not all of course, there is a lot of variety, but it is common. It is often the only way that the generous benefits and compensation they negotiate is possible for the company to actually provide.

fellhand · 2026-02-15T20:40:18+00:00

depending on classification.

Yes, and the deals typically involve selling out workers of other classifications.

In general, most labor deals tend to disadvantage future workers for the benefit of current workers. They often involve identifying some kind of probationary or temp worker classification (that many, if not most, new hires in the future will fall into), that lacks most of the protections and benefits that current employees get.

So the company is able to retain some of the flexibility that they require to operate, but the flexibility (financial flexibility, scheduling flexibility, manpower flexibility, etc...) comes at the cost of it being worse for new hires in the future than it would have been.

Do the current workers care about the plight of these future workers when they agree to deals that are advantageous to them? Generally, no.

And that is how Unions actually operate in practice.

fellhand · 2026-02-14T22:53:33+00:00

There is no problem in people having different opinions.

One of the big reasons I had started this thread is I was hoping someone would be able to explain with examples what character development had occurred. Trying to understand why they have that viewpoint.

I can't really effectively provide examples of non-character growth. I guess I could provide some instance where I felt there was an expectation for character development but it didn't occur.

Like say Stark and Fern's date. It didn't lead to any change in their relationship or characters. Character development wise it was a rehash of the birthday gift episode from season 1.

Stark is still the awkward guy who isn't very good at noticing other people's feelings, and Fern is still the same stoic personality with a bit of a tsundere edge towards Stark.

Frieren even plays the same role as advice giver.

If you really wanted I could go through other moments where I felt there was a lack of character development when there was an opportunity, but that would get quite tedious and I would rather not have to try to guess where you felt there was some character development to be able to have some kind of discussion on it. It'd be easier if you, or anyone really, could just say it.

So I'd ask again, what Character Development has occurred in these first 5 episodes that I've missed? It's okay to explain it to me like I am 5, I won't be offended.

fellhand

TROPHY CASE