Mastodawn

George Dinwiddie 1d ago

"...NPR has learned that hundreds of sailors were evacuated back to the United States from their base in Bahrain after the base was attacked by Iranian missiles and drones. In addition to the base in Bahrain, NPR has learned that there have been evacuations at other U.S. military bases in the region, though the exact details are unknown at this point..... Around 8,000 people were stationed at the base in Bahrain before the U.S. attacked Iran on Feb. 28....Sailors have been arriving in Norfolk, Va., home to the world's biggest naval base, since at least the middle of March. Several groups that provide aid to military personnel say that the sailors arrived with very little. A call went out to community groups, asking for basic supplies like hygiene products.

"The base was asking for donations of toiletries and different things for the sailors coming back, because they were coming back with nothing,""

https://www.npr.org/2026/04/03/nx-s1-5770491/evacuation-bahrain-norfolk-troops

#Iran #War #Bahrain #military

JustaJason 🦜1d ago

@ai6yr i'm so tired of this.

AI6YR Ben 1d ago

@JustaJason007 So much winning

JustaJason 🦜1d ago

@ai6yr AdNauseam

Desert Square Gardener 1d ago

@ai6yr a United States military installation is asking for donations because they lack basic necessities? Unbelievable.

Annelies Kamran, Ph.D.1d ago

@desertsquare @ai6yr well, that's why they need billions more $

(End snark)

Desert Square Gardener 1d ago

@akamran
I can't remember if Trump campaigned on supporting service members, or if he continued to double down about them being losers?
@ai6yr

GhostOnTheHalfShell 1d ago

@desertsquare @akamran @ai6yr

YES

LabSpokane 1d ago

@desertsquare @ai6yr Morale in the military must be utterly in the shitter.

Desert Square Gardener 1d ago

@LabSpokane
Maybe.
@ai6yr

Grumble 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇬🇱1d ago

@desertsquare @LabSpokane @ai6yr Wait until the DoD starts enacting 'Stop Loss' to keep people in the service after their contract has expired. That's when morale really tanks. I'm unclear if morale recovered from the last needless foreign policy fuckup.

"EAS baby - you can't stop time."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoxdT2xhra8

EAS Song

YouTube

Magnus Ahltorp 1d ago

@desertsquare @ai6yr Fighting unnecessary wars and asking the community to pick up the slack seems like two things on the list of most American activities, so I’m not really surprised. I’m surprised that what they asked for wasn’t hamburgers.

Desert Square Gardener 1d ago

@ahltorp
Don't come at me talking shit.
@ai6yr

Magnus Ahltorp 1d ago

@desertsquare @ai6yr Or you what? Invade Greenland?

PedestrianError

@desertsquare @ai6yr All this at the department that uses more than half the federal budget and is the only cabinet-level department that has never passed an audit.

Ash-Miw-Re 1d ago

@ai6yr Not only chased halfway back around the world, but can't even resupply from the government's own resources. This is humiliating, and for nothing but a sick, stupid old man's ego.

Neil E. Hodges 1d ago

@ai6yr The US is a state that's failed so hard it's also failing its pride and joy: the military. :/

BakersRelay 1d ago

@ai6yr Have been watching this story. Bahrain wasn’t the only base with personnel evacuated under emergency circumstances…

From Robin with Love 1d ago

@BakerRL75 @ai6yr Sure is a challenge to dig out what’s really going on over there. I’m using about 10 different sources (and trying to vet for accuracy on each one).

Jeri Dansky 1d ago

@firefly @BakerRL75 @ai6yr And it's tragic that perhaps the least reliable source is the US government.

From Robin with Love 1d ago

@jeridansky @BakerRL75 @ai6yr
I trust them the least now.

@ai6yr So the US Military attitude really IS "No one would actually dare to attack us or shoot at our planes, so we don't need to really do anything of real meaning to prepare."

The entire Cold War was nothing but a Festival of Hollow Arrogance, but that only works against other superpowers.

BakersRelay 1d ago

@W6KME @ai6yr Vainglorious and ignorant leadership ahead of one of the largest military complexes in the world. Nothing to see here…

Dan KB6NU 🇺🇦1d ago

@ai6yr The Trump administration's level of incompetence is just mind-blowing.

Infoseepage 1d ago

@ai6yr This isn't what an invasion looks like. This is what a retreat looks like.

Virginicus 1d ago

@Infoseepage @ai6yr Boots on the ground in Norfolk is fine by me.

Guillotine Jones, Flâneur 1d ago

@Infoseepage @ai6yr
But it's an excursion, infoseepage.

Infoseepage 1d ago

@Guillotine_Jones @ai6yr Is that what we're calling this debacle now? Reminds me a bit of "expeditionary" forces, where the word also has the dual meaning of intrepid scientific and exploratory undertakings. The British army, which needed to get pulled off the beaches of Dunkirk was the British Expeditionary Force, for instance.

Infoseepage 1d ago

@Guillotine_Jones @ai6yr Here the US is having to pull back its presence in a bunch of Gulf States, abandoning major military installations which it has held for generations in some cases, presumably because it quite simply can't defend these installations from attack, and Trump doesn't want headlines about more dead and injured US soldiers. I'll tell you this, if the US does wind up invading Iran, there's going to be a lot of headlines about dead US soldiers.

Guillotine Jones, Flâneur 21h ago

@Infoseepage @ai6yr
"Excursion," is a word that Trump has used publicly for his ill-conceived and ill-executed military shambles in Iran.
It's emblematic of his failure to grasp reality, his narcissism, his lack of concern for the lives of others, and his sadism.

Brian Gordon 1d ago

I thought the US military took care of its own? This is like Russian families having to buy their son's gear.

"The base was asking for donations of toiletries and different things for the sailors coming back, because they were coming back with nothing,""

Magnus Ahltorp 1d ago

@elasticsoul @ai6yr It has been quite apparent for a while that the US likes to parade its veterans, but throw them to the curb in-between parades. So why not with active military personnel?

Lazarou Monkey Terror 🚀💙🌈1d ago

@ai6yr sounds like Dunkirk...

@ai6yr Doesn't the US military have a fucking commissary system? Don't they have a huge, goddamned unauditable budget? Does the base contribute into those community groups when they have surplus?

Magnus Ahltorp 1d ago

@log @ai6yr Maybe it is *because* the budget is not audited? Audits tend to find bad practices.

Log 🪵21h ago

@ahltorp @ai6yr The bad practice is right out there in the open. The budget goes to the contractor companies and privileged Beltway Barons of the military-industrial-congressional complex. None of that cash will ever do any good for the people of this planet, and is used almost exclusively to provide lives of ease and comfort to amoral assholes who make machines to be pointed at the brown people of distant lands. Fueled by oil. An audit would reveal how little of it goes to *actual defense*.

Magnus Ahltorp 20h ago

@log @ai6yr Yes, I agree, and I should have been clearer. What I meant by "bad practices" was from an internal logic sense.

Log 🪵20h ago

@ahltorp @ai6yr Like how they pay the enlisted soldiers so little that their families have to shop at the subsidized commissary system in order to not go hungry? The folks that have to actually service and operate all those millions of dollars worth of materiel?

George Dinwiddie 1d ago

@ai6yr largest most well funded military in the world and the public is being asked to crowdfund basic necessities? SMH.

Stephen Bannasch (316 ppm)1d ago

There’s this report from The New Republic dated March 26:

"Iran’s retaliatory strikes have rendered many of America’s 13 military bases in the Gulf region “all but uninhabitable,” forcing U.S. military service members to work remotely from hotels and office spaces, The New York Times reported Thursday.

Within the first two weeks of the war, Iran’s attacks on U.S. military bases caused an estimated $800 million in damage …”

https://newrepublic.com/post/208211/us-troops-abandon-military-bases-persian-gulf-kuwait-iran-strikes?utm_source

U.S. Troops Abandon Military Bases Amid Iran Strikes

Service members have been forced to work remotely.

The New Republic

AI6YR Ben 1d ago

@stepheneb 😬yikes

grrl_aex 1d ago

so considering that we aren't dealing with a "rational actor" here....

*He just replaced multiple top generals with more sycophants.
*Lots of "god talk".
*Lots of "armageddon" talk.
*russians evacuating Iran
*war in a stalemate with no end in sight and phenomenal pressure to resolve asap.
*ground war a non-starter.

what to do?

I feel he is prepping for a nuclear strike on Iran. and, as with Hiroshima, it will be justified by "saving american lives from a protracted costly invasion."

Dark Phoenix 🇺🇦🇨🇦🇬🇱🇵🇦🇵🇸🏳️‍🌈1d ago

@kitkat_blue @ai6yr FUCK

@kitkat_blue @ai6yr

And what will the United Nations do about that?

Anything?

Mason Loring Bliss 1d ago

@kitkat_blue @ai6yr We can't let that happen.

Wulfy—Speaker to the machines 1d ago

@ai6yr @kitkat_blue

If there is a nuke on Iran
I suspect Russian will deliver a couple to drop on Israel.

KanaMauna 1d ago

I know Trump and company are complete idiots for starting this war, but Iran just didn’t beam down to the planet surface. We’ve had a very long time to think about this event. What the hell has the military been doing in the region for the past 40+ years?

7leaguebootdisk𓅽 1d ago

@KanaMauna @ai6yr Not provoking Iran too far. Certainly we were unhappy with Iran, there was the Iran/Iraq war, Soviets in Afghanistan, Iraq invading Kuwait, and that just gets us though 1990 or so.

KanaMauna 1d ago

@7leaguebootdisk @ai6yr

True. It just seems like if you’re gonna have a war in that neighborhood every decade or so maybe, just maybe, you harden your bases a little bit.

Orrock LXXXVI XLVII 1d ago

@KanaMauna @7leaguebootdisk @ai6yr See #julianKtrescott

Magnus Ahltorp 1d ago

@KanaMauna @ai6yr The American military payed good money in the ’50s and ’60s to be able to read Russian *cleartext*, by funding research in machine translation.

Instead of, you know, having personell learn Russian.

The treatment of Arabic and Pashto translators and interpreters has been really bad.

The cultural incuriosity is systemic.

Starraven 1d ago

"Best military" can't supply soldiers with soap and toothpaste. Hilarious.

salguod, man 🍂🍁 lazysupper 1d ago

@ai6yr So they... ran away?

Mary Margaret 🇨🇦🌈🇺🇦 ☮️ 🍸1d ago

The US can't afford hygiene products for the navy??????

Michael Wyman 1d ago

@Babcia54 @ai6yr @samiamsam something something should be left up to the states because we’re busy fighting a war argle bargle