By Shabbir Rizvi
The US military may see a second consecutive year of failure to meet its recruitment goals.
Despite loosening restrictions, adding new “incentives,” and deploying massive promotional campaigns, various branches of the US military are struggling to enlist new personnel - a sign of not only the declining mental and physical health of Americans but also growing disdain for American wars.
Many have described the failure to meet the military’s recruitment goals as a “crisis.” After all, it was not too long ago when Americans, in a drunken flurry by the post-9/11 war drive, flocked to recruitment centers. The early 2000s saw some of the highest increase in numbers for the military.
Fast forward 20 years.
In 2022, the US Army missed its recruiting goal by 25 percent - some 15,000 soldiers. In a bid to meet its recruitment numbers, the Army invested $100,000,000 in schools meant to push potential recruitments into qualifying mental and physical shape.......more below
The spokesman for the General Staff of Iran's Armed Forces issues a stark warning to the senior authorities in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq against cooperating with the United States and the Israeli regime against the Islamic Republic.
Speaking during a televised interview on Friday, Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi cautioned the officials that any cooperation with Washington or Tel Aviv would bear severe consequences.
"If you cooperate with the United States and the Zionist regime, we will crush you; you will be trampled under our feet and will never enjoy security again," he said.
The spokesman also warned against allowing terrorist groups to use the region's territory as a corridor.
"If the leaders of Iraq’s northern region open a corridor for these [terrorist] groups, we will strike all the infrastructure and facilities of this region; we will show no mercy to our enemies."
'US military grappling with serious hardware....more below
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Iran strongly welcomes the escorting of oil tankers and the claimed presence of US forces to ensure passage through the Strait of Hormuz, a spokesperson for the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has said.
Brigadier General Ali Mohammad Naeini made the remarks on Thursday, responding to recent statements by the US president and the White House spokesperson.
“Iran strongly welcomes the escorting of oil tankers and the claimed presence of US forces to facilitate passage through the Strait of Hormuz,” he remarked.
“In fact, we are awaiting their arrival.”
Brigadier General Naeini further said Iran recommends that before taking such a decision, Americans recall the incident in 1987 when the American supertanker Bridgeton struck a mine and caught fire, as well as tankers that have been targeted recently.
US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the US Navy will escort tankers through the Strait of Hormuz if necessary to help restore.....more below
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Iraq's Nujaba resistance group has vowed to avenge the assassination of a resistance commander in a terrorist US strike.
In a statement on Friday, Nujaba offered its deepest condolences over the assassination of Iraq's Kataib Hezbollah Commander Abu Hassan al-Furaiji in a "treacherous and cowardly" American attack in Babylon.
The movement stressed that the killing of al-Furaiji, who played an important role in purging the country of terrorists, constitutes "a clear violation of Iraq’s sovereignty" and "a deliberate insult to the country’s official military institution, namely the Popular Mobilization Forces (al-Hashd al-Sha'abi)", which operates under the orders of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.
The statement stressed that al-Furaiji’s killing will "undoubtedly not go unanswered or unpunished."
"The fragile language of diplomacy is no longer effective against an enemy that understands nothing but the language of force and gunpowder," the movement said, warning ...
