There's something in the news that I'm not going to talk about, because quite frankly, I'm sick of politics. And that's the attack on the oilfield in the (out)House of Saud. I'm not going to talk about it because while driving around yesterday morning and listening to the news, most of the consensus emerging was pointing the finger to Iran. Now, I'm not surprised, but I'm not going to talk about the nut cases running that country, nor about how I wouldn't put it past them. Nor am I going to talk about my profound distrust of the American creep state, which would do just about anything to create false flags to get us into another war, nor am I going to talk about the problems of such a strike raising the price of oil, and therefore not only putting the West in a crimp, but also Tehran's close ally China. I'm not going to talk about that being a reason to question the "logic" behind the attack. As I say, I put nothing past the nutcases in Tehran, nor in Swampington, D.C. Yosemite Sam Bolton (and thanks to K.M. for that comparision!) may be gone, but there's plenty more cartoon characters to draw from in the neocon stable of cartoon characters.

What I do want to talk about is that strange comment Mr. Trump made recently (on the anniversary of 9/11, in fact, a little point of timing that may be significant) about the USA having some sort of "superweapons" in its arsenal that means we don't even need to use nukes to wreak nuclear-level destruction on an opponent. This story was shared by a lot of people, so thank you to all who passed it along:

Trump says the US military has super weapons that are even bigger and better than its nuclear arsenal

Now, before I crawl once again to the end of the twig of high octane speculation, I want to pose a question, or rather, a difficulty for what I'm not talking about. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Mr. Trump's statement is true. Personally, I think it probably is true; after all, a missing $21,000,000,000,000 dollars can by a lot of exotic toys. But even if one is inclined not to believe it, the President's statement pose a difficulty for this whole Iran attacking the (out)House of Saud thing that seems to be the latest in the push for some sort of direct action against Tehran: if, indeed, such capabilities exist, then why are we so exercised over Iran getting nuclear weapons? Recently, the President tweeted his "condolences" to Tehran after satellite photos showed a burned out Iranian rocket launch site. The message was "clear:, namely, that the site had been "taken out" somehow. There are, of course, other ways to deliver nuclear weapons than rockets: breifcases, cargo containers, packages, ships, and so on will do. The problem with such methods is that they're even more subject to interdiction than rockets, and hence riskier to a country with relatively few warheads to spare. Then there was that strange comment made some months back when an American general was asked, in regard to North Korea, if "all the options" that were being considered included "kinetic weapons". The reporter who asked this asked it very loudly, so that the question could not be missed. And the general's answer was "Yes."

In reading the article, however, the possibility of kinetic "rod of God" weapons is not even mentioned, and the narrative is steered once again to conventional weapons:

Nuclear arms control expert Jon Wolfsthal, who served as a special assistant to former President Barack Obama from 2014 to 2017, raised the possibility that Trump does not know what he is talking about. "Nuclear weapons remain the most powerful weapons in the US military arsenal," Wolfsthal told Task & Purpose on Wednesday. "While we have a vast array of conventional military weapons and many means of delivery, none come even close to the explosive or destructive power associated with our nuclear arsenal." "I will assume that this is consistent with the president consistent effort to say anything he does is better, smarter, stronger, bigger than anyone else, but is not based on any facts or real world assessment," Wolfstahl continued. Trump has been known for making bellicose statements. Before his rapprochement with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, the president had threatened to subject the rogue communist regime to "fire and fury."

So we can all relax: there's no such thing as other kinds of weapons. It's all Mr. Trump just sounding off once again.

But I doubt that very much; it wasn't just Mr. Trump hinting at "something else", it was also that general in response to the reporter. And that raises another possibility that I'm not going to talk about, namely, the possibility that Mr. Wolfsthal is telling the truth, at least as far as he (and possibly President Obama) were made aware of it: no such things existed in the US arsenal. And that might mean that they were kept deliberately out of the loop, while Mr. Trump was kept in that loop. And let's not forget the Chinese chemical plant explosion at Tianjin, and the suspiciously narrow and deep crater left by that event, which led me and others to speculate that perhaps one was looking at a "rod of God" attack.

Oh, and while we're not talking about stuff, I also don't want to talk about other means of interference, like some sort of possible electro-acoustic means of detonating all those ammo dumps and munitions works that seem to be exploding lately (along with the Iranian rocket site). And, while we're not talking about stuff, there's always the possibility that they're bluffing, too.

They simply don't exist. After all, someone in the government said so. But wait, they do, because someone in the government said so.

See you on the flip side...