March 12, 2026

Six French soldiers injured in drone attack in Iraqi Kurdistan

This is probably related to drone attacks in the vicinity of Erbil and the Erbil airport / air bases last night.

Italian forces in Erbil were also hit (no injuries), and have moved to a safer location.

The French soldiers were rushed to hospitals - their current status is unclear.

This is from RAI News Italia

Six French Soldiers were Wounded in a Drone Attack in Iraqi Kurdistan
Six French soldiers were wounded in a drone attack in Iraqi Kurdustan, the French military announced tonight. The wounded soldiers were transported as quickly as possible to a nearby hospital. The seriousness of their condition was not provided (communicated).

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This report reminds me that we do not have any regularly scheduled discussion of US casualties coming out of DoD.

March 12, 2026

Giorgia Meloni, Trump's Friend in Europe, Seeks Distance on Iran

Source: The New York Times

During a visit to the White House last year, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy bonded with President Trump over their shared opposition to “woke” ideologies and migration. After the meeting, Ms. Meloni, the only sitting European leader to attend Mr. Trump’s second presidential inauguration, said she was proud of their “privileged relationship.”

Now, as an American war with Iran causes economic pain throughout Europe, Ms. Meloni’s once vaunted friendship with Mr. Trump is proving to be a liability, just as she is seeking to win a tight referendum later this month over a contentious judicial change.

Ms. Meloni has led one of the longest and most stable governments in Italy’s tumultuous postwar history — and her party still outperforms its rivals in the national polls. Yet the war and her handling of it is raising some of the thorniest political challenges she has faced since entering office in 2022.

Critics have condemned her for failing to wield any visible influence over President Trump’s wartime decisions and for her ambivalent response to his decision to attack Iran.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/12/world/europe/meloni-trump-iran-italy.html

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I'll also note that the Israeli actions in Gaza are reviled in Italy, and the IDF murder of Father Pierre el-Rai in southern Lebanon is causing further outrage in Italy:



https://www.ncronline.org/news/lebanese-maronite-catholic-priest-killed-israeli-tank-fire-southern-lebanon

March 12, 2026

One of the less covered stories in the war today: Citibank abandons its Mideast HQ

The Israelis and US announced that they view Iranian banking as targetable infrastructure, and there was an actual strike on a banking data center. The reasoning was that the bank datacenter processes paychecks for the Iranian military, so it is a military target. The strike on the data center reportedly killed numerous civilian employees. You can call it a military target, but it was a civilian facility.

In any case, the Iranians said "Oh, are banks acceptable targets now? Fine. Then we'll hit your banks, too." As far as I know, no bank in the region has been successfully hit by Iran, but they have made good on tit-for-tat retaliations, hitting a Bahrain desalinization plant after their own desalination plant was hit, so it was at least a threat that should be taken seriously.

And it was. The Citibank regional headquarters is located in the Dubai International Financial Center. Citi basically told its employees to get out of the office - run don't walk. No word on re-opening.

March 11, 2026

Can anyone name a terrorist attack that killed as many children as the Shajarah Tayyebeh school strike?

The three I can think of would be the October 7 attacks (36 children), the Oklahoma City bombing (19 children), and Anders Brevik's attack on the youth summer camp (in the area of 60 children, mostly teenagers).

March 11, 2026

Iranian Military Shows It Knows How to Adapt, U.S. Officials Say

Source: The New York Times

The Iranian military is adjusting its tactics as the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign progresses, senior U.S. defense officials said, even as the Trump administration insists that the United States is winning the war.

In the 11 days since the conflict began, Iran has targeted key American air defense and radar systems in the region, according to U.S. military officials and military experts.

Iranian-backed militias have attacked hotels frequented by American troops. One militia in Iraq launched a drone swarm attack on an upscale hotel in Erbil, demonstrating that Iran was aware that the Pentagon was housing troops in hotels in the region, a senior U.S. military official said.

He and two other officials said that Iran appeared to have accepted that it could not match the United States and Israel on pure firepower. But by simply surviving the barrage, the officials said, the government in Tehran can claim victory.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/10/us/politics/iran-military-tactics.html

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"The enemy is adapting" always precedes an orderly unwinding...

March 7, 2026

Halliburton/KBR facilities burned to rubble in drone strike in Iraq

Video at the link: RAI News Italia

https://www.rainews.it/video/2026/03/incendi-divampano-negli-stabilimenti-iracheni-di-halliburton-e-kbr-dopo-lattacco-dei-droni-35dcb93d-4b3e-494f-82d5-d65b9b9e6a7a.html

Translation
Iraq: Iranian Drones Attack US Facilities for Halliburton and KBR
Fire in the industrial areas: Iran continues to extend its attacks in the Gulf nations as well, claiming to have only targeted US bases and interests.

March 6, 2026

Hotel in Erbil (Iraqi Kurdistan) hit by drone(s) - US Ambassador to Iraq confirms

Link to RAI Italia story



Translation: Iraqi Kurdistan: Drone hits Erbil Hotel
A drone targeted the Erbil hotel Arjaan by Rotana in the Kurdistan region of Iraq Friday, security sources confirmed. The US Ambassador in Baghdad confirmed Friday that groups of militants trained by Iran could have sought to target the hotel frequented by foreigners in the region of Iraqi Kurdistan, according to a post on X.

(A previous story reported explosions - plural - at the hotel).

Let's hope they weren't housing US military personnel there. It's odd to me, anyway, that the US Ambassador is commenting on this, though.

March 5, 2026

Another F15 downed, this time over Western Iran - crew rescued by Israeli and US forces

This is being reported in the Israeli and Euro media - no word yet from US sources.

Here's RAI News, qualifying that it is a media source and not official:

Link

My translation: An American F15 warplane went down in western Iran and the pilots were rescued by US and Israeli military, according to Channel 14 (Israeli source). "The crew managed to eject from the plane and were rescued in a complex joint operation by Israeli and American forces," according to the Israeli media website.

On Edit: CENTCOM currently denying this completely, per post below.

March 3, 2026

Euro media reporting accounts that the American Embassy in Riyad is in flames

https://www.rainews.it/maratona/2026/03/morto-nei-raid-anche-ex-presidente-ahmadinejad-missili-su-teheran-in-israele-e-nel-golfo-5e9a8410-8275-4023-b52a-048743321656.html#5ffd759f-589d-450f-a9c1-f44bb7f0f61f

Esplosioni a Riad, sotto tiro l'ambasciata americana
Testimoni raccontano di forti esplosioni e fumo del quartiere diplomatico della capitale saudita, Riad.
Due fonti dicono che l'ambasciata americana è in fiamme.

Explosions in Riyad; American Embassy under fire
Witnesses report strong explosions and smoke in the diplomatic neighborhood of the Saudi capital, Riyad. Two sources say that the American Embassy is in flames.

This is RAI News Italia, essentially the BBC of Italy. They have reported accounts that turned out not to be true over the last several days, however.

February 27, 2026

RFK Jr., the Martha Moxley Murder, and MAGA's Ever-Present Racial Underbelly

I listen to podcasts when I run. I often listen to - I know, cringe - true crime podcasts of various kinds. If it's a series on a single true crime topic with episodes in the 45 minutes to an hour and thirty range, all the better, as that will occupy me for several runs of different kinds. That's what brought me to Dead Certain: The Martha Moxley Murder, a recent NBC News podcast series about the 1975 murder of 15 year old Martha Moxley in tony Greenwich, Connecticut. As you may remember, Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel, a neighbor of Ms. Moxley, was eventually convicted of the murder, served about a decade in prison, and was then released when his conviction was overturned.

The conceit of the podcast series is that the narrator was once convinced of Skakel's guilt (like everybody else, goes the usual genre convention), but has since come to view the case more broadly and thinks Skakel was factually innocent. OK, that's the set up. But what does this have to do with RFJ Jr. or MAGA?

First, let me just say this: I think RFK Jr.'s decision to support Trump in the 2024 election was the deathblow to Harris' chances. I think it was the single most important event of the 2024 campaign. It gave permission to a lot of MAHA moderates to vote for Trump, and the MAGAs were triumphant about grabbing the mantle of the Kennedys. If you don't interact with a lot of MAGAs you will probably underestimate the importance of RFK Jr.'s endorsement. For me, it was the major event. I get this is a controversial point.

Back to the murder in Greenwich. RFK Jr., who is, of course, Michael Skakel's first cousin, took an interest in the case and wrote a book about it, also attempting to absolve Skakel. The book, called Framed, was published in 2016. The theory espoused in the book is covered in Episode 10 of Dead Certain, an episode called The Out of Towners. Without going into details, the theory goes like this: Martha Moxley, the young, blonde teenage girl, was not killed by any of the white suspects from Greenwich, but by a group of black teenagers visiting from New York City. Indeed, according to the account, one of the black teenagers couldn't stop talking about "going caveman" on a white girl from Greenwich. This is all based on the account of one of the black teenagers (strangely, Koby Bryant's cousin) who denies involvement, but points to his two then-friends. Notably, Tony Bryant turns out to be a criminal and fraudster, but let's put that aside.

The remarkable thing about Kennedy's claims is that they play on tropes pulled directly from something like Birth of a Nation: the marauding black "out of towners" raping and viciously murdering the young white teenage girl. They don't belong there, they're poor, they're violent, they want to go caveman, primitive. This is MAGA race politics at its finest (or lowest), and if there is a blameless rich white kid who is falsely accused for it all, so much the better. I point to this mainly because RFK Jr. has mostly gotten a pass on the race politics of MAGA. He's been seen as this MAHA kook, perhaps, but is largely outside the vicious racism exhibited by Miller, Cheung, and, of course, Trump himself. But we're talking about a guy who became so invested in a goofy racial theory of the murder of a white teenage girl that he wrote a book about it. RFK Jr. is never far from the Trump of the Central Park Jogger case: they're all of a piece.

Even where you least expect it, MAGA politics are racialized (and - which is the same thing in the US - deeply sexualized).