Wesley Morgan

Happy St. Crispin’s Day! Remember to put a bodkin arrowhead under your pillow tonight so the ghost of old Sir Thomas Erpingham can replace it with a silver half-groat

Happy St. Crispin’s Day! Remember to put a bodkin arrowhead under your pillow tonight so the ghost of old Sir Thomas Erpingham can replace it with a silver half-groat

This long Der Spiegel piece interviewing 10 IDF Gaza veterans does a remarkable job describing in detail from a first-person perspective the looseness of ROE, especially during the opening stages of the war, both for air strike cells and ground forces. But I don't see an English translation, so...

This soldier describes "retroactive incrimination" where justifications for strikes were manufactured after the fact, in this case the Reuters camera crew killed by tank rounds in Aug 2025, who she believes were actually killed *because* they were journalists, not mistaken for Hamas observers.

This long Der Spiegel piece interviewing 10 IDF Gaza veterans does a remarkable job describing in detail from a first-person perspective the looseness of ROE, especially during the opening stages of the war, both for air strike cells and ground forces. But I don't see an English translation, so...

...meaning civilians or detained fighters who were sent into buildings/tunnels ahead of troops after the working dogs initially used for this purpose took heavy casualties. This company second-in-command also talks about that. (It's widely judged to be a war crime.) www.nytimes.com/2024/10/14/w...

This long Der Spiegel piece interviewing 10 IDF Gaza veterans does a remarkable job describing in detail from a first-person perspective the looseness of ROE, especially during the opening stages of the war, both for air strike cells and ground forces. But I don't see an English translation, so...

This soldier describes much the same thing as his unit demolished the Netzarim Corridor, as well the ways some soldiers and junior commanders would describe who they were seeing so as to be sure they'd receive authorization to shoot (even if a drone operator was contradicting them):

This long Der Spiegel piece interviewing 10 IDF Gaza veterans does a remarkable job describing in detail from a first-person perspective the looseness of ROE, especially during the opening stages of the war, both for air strike cells and ground forces. But I don't see an English translation, so...

This drone operator's account of the loosened "Naza" (expected civilian casualty) levels that different IDF echelons could sign off on during the war's early, deadliest weeks closely matches what +972 and NYT reported in 2023 and 2024: www.972mag.com/mass-assassi... www.nytimes.com/2024/12/26/w...

This long Der Spiegel piece interviewing 10 IDF Gaza veterans does a remarkable job describing in detail from a first-person perspective the looseness of ROE, especially during the opening stages of the war, both for air strike cells and ground forces. But I don't see an English translation, so...

What do you think is inside Liberty Biberty, if you chopped it open? What’s the bone structure, and if it’s just a skull, where are the other organs besides the brain? What would be the best cuts of meat?

You can find lots of internet art addressing this question with regard to Minions, all of which seems downstream, to me, of how Shmoos were said to work in Li’l Abner

Laith al-Khazali being named Iraq’s deputy prime minister immediately after the final US withdrawal feels like a grimly symbolic representation of who really won the war. In 2007, while advised and supplied by the Quds Force and Lebanese Hezbollah, Laith famously was captured by JSOC and proved…

…to have helped orchestrate a sophisticated kidnap operation that killed 5 US soldiers, along with his brother Qais and Lebanese Hezbollah operative Ali Musa Daqduq (whom Israel killed in Lebanon earlier this year). All 3 were released by the Iraqi government after the initial 2011 US withdrawal.

“Adam Isacson…said he could not recall any deployment of US troops to the region ‘that ever came close to 600, except for contingencies like invasions.’” Besides Haiti and Just Cause, and thousands of forces based in Panama until 1999, I think the answer is probably Op Golden Pheasant in 1988…

…when the Reagan admin deployed about a division’s worth of troops to Honduras (a brigade each from the 82nd and 7th Light Division, plus a couple Marine battalions) in reaction to Nicaraguan attacks on Contra bases. If that doesn’t count because it was a contingency operation, then I think the…