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Monday’s Forum
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14 responses to “Monday’s Forum”
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Yesterday’s country music thread partially turned into a discussion of finding Cowboy and Rural culture in unexpected places. I was going to comment about going to a rodeo in downtown Chicago when I was a kid in the 60’s or 70’s. It seemed so improbable that I looked up the history only to discover that it still exists! It’s an indoor event in the same arena that the Bulls and Blackhawks play in. Don’t know if it’s true, but I remember the conventional wisdom about the rodeo and the timing was that it started when Chicago was the meat packing capital of the US and supposedly cowboys would have cattle drives in the fall to bring herds to market and there were enough of them looking for a good time that a rodeo was all but inevitable. Then, in the early twentieth century the general public became fascinated with Cowboy Culture and the Rodeo evolved into a big event.
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Military secrets are the most fleeting of all – Spock
Iran ‘blew the hell out of’ base in Bahrain, acting Navy Secretary admits
Iran’s attacks on the 5th Fleet’s base in Bahrain were severe, the acting Secretary of the Navy admitted this past week.
“They blew the hell out of Bahrain,” acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao said in an interview with The Epoch Times.
The military has largely been quiet on the extent of damage to Naval Support Activity Bahrain since the outbreak of the war, with Cao’s remarks being a rare admission of the severity.
At the outbreak of the war, Iran launched waves of attacks at U.S. installations around the Middle East, including deadly strikes in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Bahrain, home to the Navy’s 5th Fleet, was attacked repeatedly with drones and missiles. The base was evacuated, with personnel moved to nearby hotels or other buildings in Manama, Bahrain, which were also targeted.
After the initial attacks, the Pentagon said that operations were not significantly impacted. Earlier this summer, the Wall Street Journal, citing satellite imagery and interviews with personnel, reported that the base had suffered “extensive damage,” with command buildings and satellites hit.
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How about a nice game of chess?
Iran used Claude to target US Navy in Middle East, Anthropic says
A major artificial intelligence company said that Iranian bad actors used its publicly accessible software to target U.S. service members in the Middle East.
The Thursday Anthropic report covers the time period between December 2025 and August 2026 and highlights the misuse of its large language model Claude, which it says the threat actor used to make targeting recommendations against U.S. Navy forces in the region.
“The threat actor used Claude to compile targeting handbooks…to identify and track naval positions based on open-source information,” the report said.The bad actor used the AI software to collect information that included a list of U.S. service members it had sourced from public military photographs, ship and aircraft transponders — which broadcast a specific code that identifies them — commercial satellite-imagery query scripts that help locate exact geographic visuals, and a breakdown of public websites that track U.S. Navy movements.
The Iranian threat also used Claude to learn more about weaknesses in U.S. Navy shipboard systems that could be exploited.
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Is that all you get for your money? – Billy Joel
Saudi crown prince sought US military help with Houthis, sources say
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sought assistance from U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday to help fight Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis, two sources familiar with the matter said on Friday, as the Houthis stepped up their threat to the Red Sea.
The Saudi Arabia ranks #12 of 170 militaries worldwide in 2026, with 257,000 active troops. The Saudi Arabian Army fields 5,608 ground vehicles, including 840 main battle tanks; the Air Force flies 914 aircraft, including 384 combat aircraft; the Navy operates 30 warships.
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One needs to wonder what naval planners were thinking in siting the base in Bahrain. The most likely enemy being Iran, that unlike Sarah Palin’s view of Russia, the Iranians can see the base.
RE: the Saudis, when I read they asked for US assistance my first thought was, they’ve bought lots of shiny weapons, why don’t they use them. The felon, ignoring their request, shows how desperate he is to disentangle himself from his gulf mistake.
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RE: the Saudis, when I read they asked for US assistance my first thought was, they’ve bought lots of shiny weapons, why don’t they use them
Because the job of the Saudi military is to protect the royal family and give princelings an excuse to strut in uniforms, not to actually fight. The GCC countries see US troops as their bought and paid for mercenaries, no different than their Bangladeshi maids and Filipino pool boys.
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It looks like in Yemen the Saudis have made the mistake on relying on local militias, much of whom are even more useless, and riven by internal squabbles.
And also the recent arguments between KSA and UAE over who is up to what in Yemen.Outcome: an absolutely epic piece of pooch-screwing.
Alos, rather contrary to my previous guesses, neither Pakistan nor Turkey, despite the recent “Mecca Alliance” fanfare, seem at all inclined to step in.
At least yet.Riyadh now has a choice: either large scale use of its own ground forces, with all the risks that entails.
Or try to patch up a deal with the Houthis, who are likely to have a very high price.
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I read somewhere that Saudi military organization is very fragmented. By design, to deter a coup. But it also severely limits their military effectiveness. Workable as long as GOP presidents were willing to act as mercenaries for them.
I forget which book twenty or so years ago opened with a scene of W. Bush and the Saudi Ambassador, Bandar bin Sultan, both ex-playboy fighter pilots, smoking cigars on a balcony of the White House. Bin Sultan had a relationship going back to HW that earned him the nickname “Bandar Bush”. Once you dismiss the absurd bring-democracy-to-Iraq and WMD BS, there never was a credible stated reason for invading Iraq. Gee, suppose it might have revolved around oil and the Saudis.
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