“This decision, shortly thereafter, was to go to a mosque,” Bush said on Wednesday evening. “I did so because I was deeply concerned about stories of women in coverings being harassed at shopping centers, particularly in Michigan.”

Bush revisited his 9/11 response during a conversation with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at “A Legacy of Service: America at the 25th Anniversary of 9/11,” held at his presidential center in Dallas. …

“I want you to talk about a couple of those events. You talked about going to the Islamic Center and trying to make sure that our Muslim American citizens knew that we didn’t blame them for what had happened,” said Rice.

“I also made it clear that Islam was a religion of peace, not a religion of war, and that these people subverted their religion,” Bush added.

That turned out to be a greatly-criticized statement, for obvious reasons. At the beginning, however, it’s understandable he didn’t want vigilante justice wreaked on ordinary Muslim-Americans. But that could have been done by just saying it – that ordinary Muslims were not terrorists and should not be attacked in retaliation. To characterize Islam itself as a “religion of peace” was absurd then and is absurd now.

That’s not to say there aren’t Koran verses supporting peace, but there are Koran verses for almost anything, including many supporting war. Nor is the religious text the only point, although the Koran probably has more advocacy of war than exists in other religions. More importantly, it’s pretty obvious that, at least in the last few decades, people acting in the name of Islam are involved in an enormous amount of the terrorism and war-making in the world, both internal (Muslim on Muslim) and internationally.

Polls are an indicator of how much support violence has in the Muslim world, including in the US. For example, in a 2024 poll (obviously taken post 10/7), 37% of Muslims in the US saw Hamas positively. And in July of 2026 the Hamas approval rate among Muslims in America had risen to 44%.

Those are, quite simply, terrible figures.

The post George W. Bush: again with the “religion of peace” appeared first on The New Neo.

This is impressive, if true:

US special forces spent four months conducting a secret mine-clearing mission in the Strait of Hormuz in an attempt to open up the waterway, the Financial Times reported Sunday.

Iran has said it placed mines in international and Omani waters following the outbreak of the war. The International Maritime Organization estimated in June that roughly 80 mines had been deployed along important shipping routes.

The covert operation was carried out amid ongoing exchanges of strikes between the US and Iran in and around the Strait, according to people familiar with the mission.

Navy SEAL divers worked with unmanned vessels, robots, and specialized underwater equipment to locate and remove suspected Iranian mines, often operating at night.

Military engagements engender something called the fog of war. This is somewhat different, though – it indicates a secret operation, which are also common in wars. Those who don’t trust the Trump administration or the Jerusalem Post (or the Financial Times?) are free to say the report is a lie. It doesn’t sound like a lie to me.

Others who are against the Iran war will probably dismiss it as irrelevant or unimportant. But to me, it’s emblematic of how much in war goes on outside of our awareness, both good and bad.

The post The clandestine clearing of the Strait of Hormuz mines appeared first on The New Neo.

The Trump administration has been saying for a while that as many as nine million barrels of oil a day are traversing the Strait of Hormuz. That claim has been “fact checked” and derided by just about everyone. …

Only–oops–it turns out that President Trump and Secretary Wright, one of his cabinet’s most impressive members, were right all along, as Kpler now confirms:

“An average of 8.6 million barrels of oil a day have been flowing through the Strait of Hormuz — more than previously reported, maritime analyst firm Kpler confirmed in a new update that matches estimates from the Trump administration.
***
“Kpler and other trackers had initially put the number closer to 5 million, but new data includes “dark transits,” where ships turn off their transponders and secret ship-to-ship transfers, which the group wasn’t previously tracking.

“The nature of the transits left Kpler and other analysts to report only a handful of crossings every day, figures that were picked up by media outlets and used to point out the discrepancy between what was being reported and what the Trump administration was claiming.

“The White House has long-maintained that the data firms were missing a chunk of the exports due to the dark transits, with Kpler now confirming the fact as the dark ships start reappearing and painting a clearer picture of the oil flow.”

I seem to recall a considerable amount of discussion on this blog in the past about this topic.

The post The Strait of Hormuz appeared first on The New Neo.

By the way, about the idea that the Bush administration thought the Iraq aftermath would be easy (“a cakewalk”), I beg to differ and I wrote about it in this post from 2005.

The problems in the present campaign against Iran – and they are many – stem from the fact that Iran is a much bigger country than Iraq with a larger population and a more religiously fanatical leadership unafraid to kill vast numbers of its own people, plus the IRGC has a structure that makes it exceptionally difficult to break, with power to control or threaten to control the vital Strait of Hormuz. In addition, we no longer tolerate having any boots on the ground, or nation-building of any complexity or length, and the Iranian leaders are well aware of that fact.

The post How did that war on terror go? appeared first on The New Neo.

But the article I linked to in the above paragraph balances what I consider a suitable amount of skepticism with a suitable amount of hope, and a realistic acknowledgment that we simply don’t know:

Hamas says it’s finally ready to lay down its weapons, a feat that could reshape the Middle East after nearly two decades of war and bloodshed — but even President Trump had questions over whether it will actually happen during a Cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday.

If implemented, it would mark the first time Hamas has formally agreed to dismantle its military wing since seizing control of Gaza in 2007. …

Now, a 14-day period of implementation will begin, with an official with Trump’s Board of Peace describing it as the “rubber-meets-the-road” phase.

“An IRGC terror proxy — and that’s clearly what Hamas is — is saying we are going to disarm,” the official said. “These are a historic set of accomplishments in the Middle East against all odds.”

As Phase 2 moves forward, here are the five questions likely to determine whether it’s a historic breakthrough — or just another false dawn.

1. Will Hamas really surrender all of its weapons? …

2. Who makes sure Hamas isn’t hiding weapons? …

3. Will Israel trust the process enough to leave Gaza? …

4. Who takes over Gaza? …

5. Can Hamas survive without its guns?

I’m not especially optimistic. But I’d be extremely happy if things work out better than I think they will.

The post Remember Hamas? appeared first on The New Neo.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the U.S. and Ukraine plan to build a drone factory in the U.S. as part of a new defense partnership combining American manufacturing with Ukraine’s battlefield-tested drone technology.

Speaking in an interview with far-right influencer Laura Zoomer, Zelensky said the agreement would expand on an initial drone cooperation deal reached with the U.S., describing the project as beneficial to both countries. …

Zelensky told Loomer that Ukraine’s drone capabilities continue to advance, with some systems now capable of operating at ranges more than 1,800 miles, adding that engineers are working to extend the distance even further.

A White House official told Reuters that the details of the agreement were under discussion ahead of Zelensky’s planned meeting on Tuesday with President Trump.

It’s a little bit like our military partnership with Israel, which has much greater depth and width. The Buchanan wing of the right is against both, but has mostly ignored the obvious benefits or lied about them.

This is a very interesting part of the article, however:

Zelensky met with Loomer this week in Kyiv after the far-right influencer, who is a loyal ally of Trump, reversed her long-held vocal opposition of U.S. military aid to Ukraine amid the Russian war.

She cited her firsthand experience witnessing air raid sirens while visiting Ukraine helped change her perspective and issued an apology to Ukraine and its government for her past critical comments.

It’s not common to change one’s mind so publicly on such an issue.

Drone warfare seems to be the wave of the future, and we need to play catch-up on it.

The post Ukraine will help us with drone warfare appeared first on The New Neo.

Hasn’t that been the case for quite some time? Their approach at the moment continues to be to make passage through the Strait difficult and to bomb the Gulf States and other Arab countries in order to harm US military personnel based there and to get those states to pressure the US to stop.

None of this is new.

Two or three (two killed, one missing) US military members were killed over the weekend in Jordan:

The Pentagon said the soldiers were supporting Operation Inherent Resolve, the name for the U.S. mission against the Islamic State group.

One more military member died from a drone attack in Iraq. However, the article says that was a “controlled detonation” – so was it an accident in which an unexploded drone was being purposely detonated and something went wrong? Seems that way, but the articles I’ve found on the subject aren’t entirely clear.

RIP.

The post There’s plenty of news on the Iran war appeared first on The New Neo.

From commenter “Gregory Harper”:

Do the mullahs really seek martyrdom? Probably not. They’ve had their chances and have always declined. They like wealth and power and martyrdom is for the gullible little people. Do I want them to obtain a nuclear weapon to test the theory that they wouldn’t actually use it? Nope.

I agree that they don’t seek martyrdom. They could do that easily enough, by becoming suicide bombers or standing in the middle of the street holding a sign saying, “Great Satan and Small Satan, here I am!” What they do seek is the destruction of the Jews and the West, and the spread of Islam – particularly their own brand of Shia Islam – all over the world, with them in charge.

But despite this, they’re willing to become martyrs if along the way they happen to meet that fate. It’s a win/win situation for them. They try to avoid martyrdom because they like power, plus they think they will be able, while alive, to steer the world towards the glorious goal of Islamic supremacy and takeover for which they aim. So they try to stay alive if they can. But not at the expense of wreaking havoc and seeking to wreak more.

And they’re fine with martyring their own people, even children. Those supposed keys to paradise they gave the mine-clearing children during the war with Iraq, for example – I don’t think that was just a cynical ploy. They were fine with the children dying because their belief is that those children would become blessed martyrs, too. The children’s lives are cheap; their deaths would be in order to effect the same victory for which the mullahs yearn, and their deaths are of no real consequence to the mullahs. And of course killing infidels, or apostates, or Iranian women whose hair in insufficiently covered – that’s okay too, to the mullahs.

The post Do the mullahs seek martyrdom? appeared first on The New Neo.

Yesterday Vance appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast and said some things that indicate agreement with Carlson. Here’s a report:

JD Vance has claimed he is the target of an Israeli-funded propaganda campaign over his Iran peace push, and that Jeffrey Epstein had ties to the ‘highest levels’ of Mossad.

The vice president made the explosive allegations during a nearly three-hour sit-down with podcaster Joe Rogan.

Vance pointed to a Time magazine report he said proved American influencers were being paid to attack the Iran deal. The report notes that money has flowed through a former Trump campaign operative and is bankrolled by elements of the Israeli government.

‘My response to that is, well, go to hell,’ Vance said of those taking the cash to smear him. The vice president, who complained he has been branded an anti-Semite, declared that Israel is losing the public opinion battle in America.

He also said that ‘figures’ inside the Israeli government are manipulating American public opinion to keep the war going ‘indefinitely.’

Vance then shifted to the administration’s handling of the Epstein scandal, revealing that the disgraced financier ‘clearly had connections to the highest levels of American intelligence’ and ‘Israeli intelligence.’

These are claims that have been aired by the Tucker wing for quite some time, and the evidence for them is extremely poor and mostly rumor and innuendo. The following is about Vance’s allegation about Israel sabotaging the peace negotiations, which he says he based on an article in Time:

… [T]here is apparently a “very discreet, extremely well-funded campaign” to derail negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, according to Vice President JD Vance on Joe Rogan’s show last night. Why is the Vice President perpetuating this dubious claim? The reason is simple: it benefits him too.

Much like other theories that find a home on Rogan’s podcast, this one is thinly sourced and vastly misinterpreted. The article Vance cites for this conspiracy does indeed point to an Israeli-funded influence operation—a FARA-registered, Israeli-government-funded campaign, run through political consultant Brad Parscale’s Clock Tower X, pushing pro-Israel content into the MAGA ecosystem, including through paid influencers who reportedly received suggested language via private group chats and compensation tied to engagement.

Where the article cuts against him is on the one point his whole story depends on: that this was a deliberate campaign built “to derail the negotiations” and keep the war going indefinitely. The Time magazine reporting establishes no such intent. Per the article, the contracted goal was preventing young conservatives from turning against Israel—a reputation campaign, not an anti-ceasefire operation. The sabotage motive is Vance’s attribution, not the reporting’s finding.

And the two people best positioned to know deny his version.

So, whatever you think of Vance’s using a Time story as support for his allegations, he’s not even citing it properly.

Vance was heavily involved in the negotiations with Iran. Now he’s indicating that he didn’t fail; Israel stabbed him in the back. I wonder if this sort of statement on Vance’s part represents a rift between Vance and Trump on this or whether Vance is doing this with Trump’s permission, to keep the Tuckeresque right in the GOP camp for the midterms.

Another statement of Vance’s is somewhat in the same vein:

Vance then shifted to the administration’s handling of the Epstein scandal, revealing that the disgraced financier ‘clearly had connections to the highest levels of American intelligence’ and ‘Israeli intelligence.’

When Rogan noted that most people believe Epstein was working for Mossad, the vice president did not dispute it. Vance noted that it was Mossad ‘or CIA or some other deep state, whether in America or Israel or another country or both.’

Vance, who described himself as a ‘conspiracy theorist’ on Epstein, said that anything tying the pedophile to spy agencies was likely destroyed after 2006 – when the financier was first arrested.

Get it? Epstein was a Mossad agent but he conveniently destroyed the evidence, so we can never know.

Actually, Epstein had “connections” to a lot of people who had nothing to do with his pedophilia; he was a famous guy with a lot of money and influence. I would have hoped this sort of insinuation would be beneath Vance, but apparently not:

On Epstein, the vice president agreed with Rogan that the financier was running an operation to pressure or compromise powerful people.

‘I will go to my deathbed believing there’s a story there,’ Vance said, though he admitted he cannot prove it.

‘And I promise you there’s not some document, at least that I’m hiding, that allows us to prove exactly what was going on and how.’

There, Vance sounds like Candace Owens, who likes to say she doesn’t know-know but she knows.

More here:

Asked by Rogan how he was being attacked, Vance pointed to social media posts and leaks to reporters.

“They’re attacking me obsessively, saying that we should not be negotiating with Iran. We should just keep the military campaign going indefinitely,” he said.

Vance said critics had accused him of being influenced by Qatar and other foreign governments and of taking “marching orders from Tucker Carlson.” …

“When I open up the pages of Time Magazine and I see that there’s a literal foreign influence campaign being funded to tank the very deal that I was pursuing, and, oh, by the way, many of the people who were receiving that money were actually attacking me in completely dishonest ways, you know, my response to that is, well, go to hell,” Vance said.

Boo hoo, those Israeli-funded meanies were attacking him and that’s why Iran didn’t just give in to his brilliant negotiations.

It’s also of relevance that Vance chose the Joe Rogan podcast to air these grievances against Israel and these excuses for himself. Rogan is not Israel-friendly, nor is his main audience. I doubt Vance would go on Tucker’s show – Vance is smart, and he knows better than that. But Rogan’s show is the next best thing without being especially controversial.

For quite some time I’ve hoped that Rubio is the GOP presidential candidate in 2028. I’m certainly open to other possibilities, but so far Vance is not one of them.

[NOTE: When Carlson decided to split from the Republican Party, I wondered who he’d be supporting for the presidency in 2028. For a while I considered that Tucker himself might want to run. But now it occurs to me that it’s possible that he’d be supporting Vance for the head of a third party. This would be disastrous, IMHO, and could easily cause a Democrat to win if enough people ended up supporting Vance.

I’m not saying this will happen. I still think Vance wants to be the GOP nominee. But if he doesn’t get the nomination, I can easily imagine a situation in which he goes third-party to ally with Tucker and Tucker’s followers.]

The post Vance reveals himself, and it’s not pretty appeared first on The New Neo.

Another conundrum trying to understand the mind of leftists. I know…an impossible task. But someone explain to me why the ones I know enthusiastically cheer every drone strike the Ukrainians make on Russia? Why is that such a just war? I’m not saying it isn’t, but their hypocrisy in not supporting the US getting rid of the 50 year threat of Iran having a nuke. Ukraine good, US bad.

The answer has several elements to it. The first is that the Ukraine War, and our position of helping Ukraine, began during the Biden administration. Had Trump been president and done the exact same thing as the Biden crew in taking Ukraine’s side, the reaction from the left probably would have been much less supportive of Ukraine. In fact, the left might have been against it. On the other hand, Trump’s war against Iran obviously must be condemned by the left, much like everything Trump does.

That’s not all, though. Another factor is that Putin is still connected in their minds to Trump, either by a continuing belief in Russiagate, or just by the idea that they’re both dictators and birds of a feather. Therefore of course the left will support Ukraine rather than Putin in the war (and by the way, I also support Ukraine, but for reasons which I’ve aired before).

Then there’s Israel. The left has come to uniformly hate and demonize Israel, and Israel is a major beneficiary of and military partner in the current war against Iran. Therefore the majority of the left must be on Iran’s side, just as it is mostly on Hamas’ side and on the Palestinians’ side.

So the whole thing is not hypocrisy or even inconsistency if you understand that the left’s guiding principles go like this: Trump bad, Israel bad.

The post Leftists, Ukraine, and Iran appeared first on The New Neo.