Brett Wilkins Jun 16, 2025

Flight-tracking websites showed dozens of Air Force aerial refueling planes departing from military bases in the United States and heading to Europe on Sunday, fueling speculation of direct U.S. involvement in the widening Israeli-Iranian war.

Military-focused news sites reported that around 30 U.S. Air Force KC-135R and KC-46A tankers were identified by flight-tracking software in what The Times of Israelcalled an “unprecedented mass deployment” to Europe.

  • Gammelfisch@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    If the shit hits the fan, I want too see every single fucking MAGA voter at a US Army recruiting office signing up for 11 Bravo, Grunt Infantry.

  • Jaberw0cky@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Sounds like the perfect time for Canada, Greenland/Denmark and Panama to launch their preemptive strike and ensure regime change and eliminate US WMD.

  • sudo@programming.dev
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    6 days ago

    This would have to be the most unpopular war in US history and yet I think everyone Trump has surrounded himself with is telling him to do it.

  • MetalMachine@feddit.nl
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    7 days ago

    We need to fix the voting system. ALL pacs should be banned and campaign spending should be limited.

    • ikidd@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Everyone knew he wasn’t going to be able to curtail democratic elections without the excuse of a war. This is on schedule.

        • JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.ml
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          7 days ago

          I mean, Trump just illegally deployed the national guard and the marines in California. He needed the state’s permission (which he didn’t get) to deploy the guard and deploying the marines is on a whole other level of illegal.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          We’ve got an election in NYC right now, with a pro-Palestine Muslim threatening to upset Trump’s close friend Andrew Cuomo. Weird that nobody is claiming this election is being threatened by Trump, given that NYC has an enormous stock of Trump/Kushner accumulated capital.

        • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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          7 days ago

          Not anymore. The SCOTUS ruled already that they must have their ballots approved by the Feds, and feds can overrule their ballots.

            • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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              7 days ago

              So, Donald wasn’t allowed to appear on the Colorado ballot, being an insurrectionist?

              • RedditIsDeddit@lemmy.world
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                7 days ago

                That’s a state issue, not a federal issue.

                Donald Trump was allowed to remain on the Colorado ballot despite the challenge based on the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause, because the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that states lack the authority to remove federal candidates from the ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

                There is nothing about “approval” from feds, nor is there a process federally to approve such things. There’s courts. That’s it.

                • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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                  6 days ago

                  So, the SCOTUS ruled the feds control who is on the ballots in each state, right?

                  There is no such thing as a federal ballot.

        • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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          7 days ago

          Unfortunately the republican run states will bend over whenever Trump tells them to.

      • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        I always thought Trump could curtail democratic elections without the excuse of war … by relying on a convenient terrorist attack instead.

        • Dogyote@slrpnk.net
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          7 days ago

          Nah, a war in the middle east is normal. Nobody would accept a normal situation as justification to cancel elections.

    • Bluewing@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      No US president is a peace dove. Between supporting proxie wars to police actions to declared war, they all end up getting people killed by bombs.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      No.

      We had a lot of “I’m willing to make deals with anyone” rhetoric from the Trump campaign that low-info voters took to mean he was anti-war.

      But the underlying Pentagon leadership hasn’t significantly changed between Biden and Trump (or Bush and Trump, for that matter). Its all the same neoconservative think tanks writing variations on Project For A New American Century for the modern government.

      The idea that you were going to elect an anti-war president went out the window during the primaries. Vanishingly few federal office holders have shown opposition to attacking Iran. Less than what we had in 2003 against Iraq.

      Everyone from Richie Torres to Mike Lee seem on board with a brand new Holocaust in the Middle East.

      • capital@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        But the underlying Pentagon leadership hasn’t significantly changed between Biden and Trump (or Bush and Trump, for that matter). Its all the same neoconservative think tanks writing variations on Project For A New American Century for the modern government.

        That isn’t congress or the president. Pentagon leadership doesn’t declare war. Congress has the power to declare war which hasn’t happened for some time and since then the president has basically done so, although arguable that it’s been a “formal” declaration of war.

        This is what people voted for, up and down the ballot. US voters put Trump at the top and yes men in the house and senate.

        Vote better next time, I guess.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          Congress has the power to declare war

          That they fully abdicated with the 2001 AUMF, which they keep renewing specifically so they don’t have to ever make these decisions.

          This is what people voted for

          The people vote for candidates, not policies. And they candidates they vote for routinely talk out of both sides of their mouths. NDAAs regularly pass with overwhelming bipartisan support, even as a super-majority of Congresscritters campaign against this or that component of them.

          Vote better next time, I guess.

          I was told to VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO because there is a Cheeto In The White House. If both major parties field pro-war candidates, what’s the move?

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        But the underlying Pentagon leadership hasn’t significantly changed between Biden and Trump (or Bush and Trump, for that matter).

        That’s not strictly true. Trump purged a lot of leadership that was loyal to the Constitution rather than personally to him.

        But your overall point about the war-hawkishness remains valid.

  • Jhex@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    worry not. remember this is TACO Don… he’ll chicken out again

    • kreskin@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      He openly calls service members suckers and losers. I dont know that he much cares whats done with them.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      7 days ago

      Yeah, it seems fairly impossible he’ll get fully into the war, and even lending a few bunker busters would be surprising when that’s risking a blowback on American forces.

      I would guess that Trump is expecting Khamenei to cave, because that’s what he’d do. Most likely, he won’t, Trump will be confused, and this will drag on and on until a regional nuclear exchange is on the table.

        • Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          Hasn’t Iran been talking about ramping up nuclear weapons production since like the end of last year? I don’t think they’re actually a nuclear capable nation but I could see them posturing like they are

        • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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          6 days ago

          Iran or Iran’s splinter states. They have several bombs worth of uranium that’s almost ready.

          I doubt the US would get involved, and nobody else is going to for sure.

  • skozzii@lemmy.ca
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    7 days ago

    US is going to be bankrupt by the time he is done his second term.

    • CitizenKong@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      I mean, that’s just on brand for him. If anything, he has shown a talent for bankrupcy.

  • catty@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    I fucking hate this rhetoric which is: OIL! GAS! BUY OIL! BUY GAS! KEEP PUTIN HAPPY! OIL! GAS!

    No one was taking the ‘war’ between Israel and Iran seriously last week after the initial surge in oil price because the USA was like… “yeah, nah”. Now, after a quick call from Putin and bam, all this BS about how the US is pandering for war to drive commodity and share prices up when it’s a nothingburger.

    Remember kids, buy oil, buy gas and do as you’re told.

  • kreskin@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    A-10 movement always preceeds ground deployments. They moved those to Kuwait at the end of March. This has been coming for a while, its not an unplanned thing like it appears.

    • outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      7 days ago

      Ueah. Yeah its pretty fucked.

      The shitty thing is: this mother fucker woild love iranian culture. It’s super good at all the shit he fakes like gold plated shit.

      • AES_Enjoyer@reddthat.com
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        6 days ago

        Please, don’t talk like that of Iranian culture. Iran was well on its way towards progressivism, secularism and ending absolute monarchy during the early 1950s, under the presidency of Mosaddegh. This implied developing the country and Iran profiting from its own oil, instead of giving all the profits to British Petroleum, so the US and UK did a military economic embargo of Iran, and staged a coup that reinstated the Shah. Iran could be a perfectly progressive and developed country today if it weren’t for the west destroying every country that attempts to take control of its own future.

        • outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          6 days ago

          No im saying iran does the good version of the ‘incredibly baroque luxury’ shit trump kind of shittily imitates. Iranian culture has the not-entirely-tacky-shit version of that.

          And yeah, imperialism sucks.