While most of the media has been in meltdown mode over Trump’s McDonald’s visit since the moment it happened, one of the surprises that came this morning was praise for Trump’s decision to do this…

Conservative columnist and political commentator Deroy Murdock recently appeared on FOX News and talked about the surge in black voter support for Donald Trump. Murdock suggested that Trump could be capturing…

Discover the Top Ten 1930s Hobo Repair Items that every resourceful traveler of the Great Depression would carry. From sharpening scissors to mending clothes and fixing pans, these essential tools served both personal needs and offered ways to earn a little money on the road. Whether patching up gear or providing small repairs for others, this kit was a vital part of a hobo’s pack and survival strategy. For more information on classes, to check out the required gear list, or buy Merch go to: https://waypointsurvival.com/ To support our work on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/WayPointSurvival Here's a link to my Teespring Merchandise: https://teespring.com/shop/WayPoint_Survival?tsmac=recently_viewed&tsmic=recently_viewed&pid=212&cid=5819 My Instagram link: https://www.instagram.com/p/CC3vPLhDSog/?igshid=vpjeb6tni3rb

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Weather Warfare, Toxic Chemtrail Whistleblower, Laser Control of Storms, Bill Gates Hurricane Control - A Compilation of videos below: - Weather Modification History - the Short Course - October 16th, 2024 Source: Silview.media - Scientists Using Lasers to Cause Rain. The Weather Channel in Florida - Gee. Didn't They See Lasers in North Carolina During Hurricane Helene??? - Lasers Wrecking Havoc in the Environment - University of Central Florida 2014 - The Weather Channel in Florida * Bill Gates "The Hurricane Tamer" - Bloomberg - DO YOU TRUST BILL GATES TO CONTROL HURRICANES? - SORRY, YOUR OPINION DOES NOT MATTER * Patent For Hurricane Control Technology - October 6th, 2024 - https://SILVIEW.media/ Check out our original memes site: https://truth-memes.com Buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/silview - FAIR USE FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES Mirrored From: https://old.bitchute.com/channel/silview/

In my 15 years of writing about American politics, I’ve come up with a few axioms that always seem to turn out to be correct. And perhaps the most on-point of them seems to be the Fun Rule. The Fun Rule is simple: Show me the team in an election that is having the most fun, and I’ll show you the winner. Maybe that’s a negative commentary on the seriousness of the voting public, but I’m going to say I don’t agree with that. For one thing, what makes politics fun is belief. The people who come out to rallies, who do the grunt work of a campaign, whether that might be phone banking, putting up yard signs, grinding out fundraising calls, and all the rest, had better believe that either their candidate is a great guy or gal worth having in office or else that their party will bring policies they earnestly want to see made into reality. Or preferably both. If neither are present, it isn’t going to be fun. And attempts to make it fun are going to come off as petty or pathetic, or probably both. Believers have more fun. And believers generally win. And candidates who can do things to make the grunt work of politics enjoyable for their believers, particularly when those things can generate a palpable difference in enjoyment vis-a-vis the other side, will win every time if all other things are equal. Sometimes they can win even when all the other things aren’t equal. There has never been an underdog who won an election without a huge difference in fun. That Joe Biden, who was not an underdog given the polls in advance of the 2020 election or the meaty thumbs pressing down upon the political scales that year, managed to beat Donald Trump is probably the exception that proves the rule. Look at what Biden needed just to eke out the smallest and shabbiest victory that year, and you’ll realize the power of the Fun Rule. Besides, Donald Trump and his supporters are having a whole lot more fun than in 2020 amid the disaster that was the COVID lockdown and George Floyd riot season. A couple of items in the past week utterly and completely drove that point home. The first was Trump’s appearance on some particularly hostile ground, that being the Al Smith dinner in New York. Trump took the podium at a dais that was covered with snarling leftists, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, state attorney general Letitia James, former mayor Mike Bloomberg, current mayor Eric Adams, and Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, and he spoke for nearly half an hour, telling bitingly hilarious jokes poking fun at people just feet away. Trump made fun of Adams’ legal troubles, claiming they’re the product of his heterodox (among Democrats) positions on illegal immigration. He said that when Adams first expressed consternation over the massive flood of migrants to the Big Apple, he predicted they’d come after the mayor, and he took credit for being right. He needled Schumer, who was seated directly to the left of the podium and well within the main camera shot of the event, again and again. He brutally trashed former Mayor Bill de Blasio, which brought the house down even among the Democrats. Trump admitted it was a somewhat hostile crowd and said it wasn’t easy to get up in front of a bunch of people who “hate my guts,” before claiming that 70 percent love him — something that was certainly not true but funny as hell nonetheless; it was clearly an example of Trumpian hyperbole that was obvious bait for the army of idiot fact-checkers who would come behind. Even joyless CNN scold Brian Stelter had to admit afterward that Trump was funny and engaging and got the crowd going. He probably didn’t move the needle among the mostly hostile audience, but that wasn’t the point. Trump spoke to them anyway and managed to entertain them. He held the room’s attention, and for a Trump supporter, the Al Smith dinner speech was gold. It was fun for the Trump camp, whether it moved votes or not. What was the reaction to Kamala Harris’ speech? Oh, there was no speech. She didn’t show up to the Al Smith dinner last week, despite the fact the event is always populated by some of the wealthiest Democrats in America. Instead, Harris mailed in a video starring herself and … former Saturday Night Live player Molly Shannon, whose armpit-sniffing Catholic school dork-girl character was lame three decades ago when it debuted and hasn’t particularly aged well now that Shannon is 60. The audience reaction after that video played in the hall was, to put it mildly, subdued. There was a smattering of golf claps laid over a low moan of disapproval at the lameness of the three-minute skit, and comedian Jim Gaffigan, who served as the event’s emcee, said it was reminiscent of what a parent FaceTiming into a kid’s piano recital would expect for a reaction. Harris didn’t go to New York because she was too busy slashing her throat not just with the Catholics watching the Al Smith event but with all the other Christians when this happened: What were the hecklers yelling? “Jesus is Lord.” How much fun is it to tell Christians that they’re at the wrong rally? For Kamala, apparently, it’s a real hoot. And for her snarling-lefty supporters in the audience, it looked pretty cool as well. But at the “smaller rally down the street,” or something kind of like it a few days later, a far better campaigner than Harris picked up on the issue: So Kamala’s message to Christians is that they don’t belong at her rallies and her message specifically to Catholics is a 30-year-old unfunny skit that mostly ridicules Catholic education. Sure, insulting people can be fun at times. But then, those people can turn that on its head and insult you. And woe betide the campaign whose candidate gets trolled in the most entertaining way possible. Which is exactly what happened to Kamala when Donald Trump showed up at a McDonald’s in Bucks County, just outside of Philadelphia, donned an apron, and worked the fryer and the pickup window to hilarious effect. The line about working 15 more minutes at McDonald’s than Kamala ever did was a steamroller, and it left Democrats howling with outrage over a “political stunt.” Perhaps no stunt in the history of U.S. politics deserves more ridicule than the grotesquely embarrassing mummery Trump put on at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s today The whole country got sh*ttier because of this The McDonald’s was closed, the customers were fake, Trump did nothing pic.twitter.com/qseSiRf2Hp — Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) October 21, 2024 Wait, this was a stunt? You don’t say! Piers Morgan called it “one of the best political stunts of all time.” This is one of the best political stunts of all time.. https://t.co/5tTWUGUVUh — Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) October 20, 2024 And Trump spokesman Steven Cheung got to drop a fuel air bomb on MSNBC for their unhinged reaction: MSNBC says working at McDonald’s is bizarre and strange. This is how @KamalaHarris and the elites think of everyday Americans who work everyday jobs. pic.twitter.com/VaSXiI5jyr — Steven Cheung (@TheStevenCheung) October 20, 2024 And then there were the attempts to cancel the McDonald’s franchisee who owns the store Trump worked in on Sunday: In the end we are going to know more about this one franchise location than we are about Harris' entire McD's "career". Which proves Trump's point. https://t.co/4GBT13Kxmg — Brittany (@bccover) October 21, 2024 Is Kamala Harris able to get earned media like this even with “news” organizations like CBS News not just editing her 60 Minutes answers but then posting political attacks on Trump as they defend the indefensible? Not really. And are Harris’ ads fun? I don’t know, you tell me. Is this fun? An aging, has-been celebrity who won’t even take off his sunglasses while spewing partisan rhetoric about a hurricane that hit Puerto Rico (and therefore reminding voters about the hurricanes that just hit the Southeast and which the Biden–Harris administration was deficient in their response to). That’s what she’s got. Oh, and she has this: A couple of no-name swamp rats calling Trump a dictator. Most people think the administration Harris is now fronting is a lot more dictatorial than Trump’s was, and yet this is what they have to offer the airwaves. And when a couple of medical emergencies derailed a Trump rally a few days ago, he instead turned a speech into a dance party to the amusement of the crowd — while Democrats screeched that Trump was too deranged to finish his speech and commenced to demand that he divulge his cholesterol levels. At some point, it starts to become very clear who the “joyful” candidate is — and it’s not the one they told you it was. This race is a great test of the Fun Rule. It’s starting to look like it’ll hold up nicely. READ MORE: In Georgia, GOP Districts Dominate Early Voting Kamala Harris Is Melting The post The ‘Fun Rule’ Would Suggest Kamala Is Toast appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Members of the intellectual Left in America are increasingly showing signs of political desperation in the waning days of the 2024 presidential election. The latest example of this desperation is Anne Applebaum’s recent article in the Atlantic, in which she compares Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric to that of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini, and warns that Trump’s rhetoric is meant to dehumanize his political enemies so that “you can more easily arrest them, deprive them of rights, exclude them, or even kill them.” Trump, she says, is deliberately using “the tactics of the 1930s” (meaning tactics used by Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini) first to win the election, and second, if he loses, to cultivate hatred of immigrants and his political opponents to foment a post-election “bloodbath.” Applebaum cites a report on NPR that quoted Trump at a recent campaign rally pledging to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” Trump, Appelbaum writes, has called some illegal immigrants “animals” and cold-blooded killers.” Trump’s remarks were made in the context of justifying his campaign proposal to institute a policy of massive deportation of illegal immigrants. Trump has claimed that many dangerous criminals have entered our country illegally, and that during the Biden–Harris administration, the number of dangerous illegals entering the country has skyrocketed.  Recent news reports support Trump’s claims. In March 2022, an illegal immigrant from Haiti was charged with the murder of a Florida couple. In July 2022, an autistic woman was raped and killed by a Salvadoran national who was released into the custody of a relative after crossing the southern border. Later that month, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala was charged with raping a 9-year-old child. In August 2022, North Carolina authorities arrested two Mexican illegal immigrants for murdering a deputy sheriff. Later that same month, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala was charged with stabbing eight people in Las Vegas. Two of the victims died. In April 2023, a Salvadoran national who entered the United States in 2009 as “an unaccompanied minor” was arrested for killing two men in California. In Texas that same month, an illegal immigrant who had been deported five previous times was charged with murdering five people, including a young boy. In May 2023, a Salvadoran illegal immigrant was charged with raping a woman and a teenage girl. In June 2023, Virginia authorities charged a Honduran national who entered the country illegally in 2018 and who had five ICE detainers lodged against him that were not honored by the sanctuary county where he resided, was charged with attempting to kidnap a four-year old girl. In August 2023, a Venezuelan national was charged with raping a woman in the presence of her 3-year old child. In September 2023, a Mexican illegal immigrant who had been deported nine times was charged by Texas authorities with killing his roommate and shooting a police officer in a subsequent car chase. In December 2023, a Mexican national who overstayed his immigrant visa and who had previously been sentenced for committing a burglary, was charged with killing a 16-year old girl in Jackson County, Texas. That same month in Colorado, a Salvadoran illegal immigrant with four previous deportations and three previous DUIs was charged with a DUI killing of two people. In Dallas, Texas, that same month, an illegal immigrant was charged with murdering two women. In January 2024, a former ICE detainee allegedly killed three people in Minnesota. That same month in New York City, a group of illegal immigrants beat a police officer. In February 2024, a Venezuelan illegal immigrant allegedly killed Laken Riley on the campus of the University of Georgia. The suspect had been released into the U.S. in September 2022, after being encountered by Border Control. The same month, a Honduran national who crossed the border into Texas in 2023, was charged with raping a teenage girl in Louisiana. In July 2024, Houston authorities charged two illegal immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally earlier in the year and were subsequently released pending a hearing, with the murder of a 12-year old girl. In August 2024, an illegal immigrant in Brooklyn, New York, was charged with raping a woman. That same month, an illegal immigrant from Brazil was charged with raping a minor in Massachusetts. In September 2024, Aurora, Colorado police arrested Venezuelan illegal immigrants who crossed the southern border in 2022 and 2023 for a shooting. NBC News recently reported that more than 13,000 immigrants with homicide convictions are in the United States “living outside of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention.” ICE Deputy Director Patrick Lechleitner told Congress that “435,000 undocumented migrants with criminal convictions have been released by the agency to cities around the United States.” In addition, there are more than 226,000 such illegals that have “pending criminal charges.” Of that total, more than 62,000 have assault convictions, nearly 16,000 have sexual assault convictions, and more than 53,000 have drug convictions. Presumably, these are the people that Donald Trump said “live like vermin.” The dictionary defines vermin as “people perceived as despicable and as causing problems for the rest of society” — an apt description of murderers, rapists, violent criminals, and drug dealers.  As for communists and Marxists, earlier this year U.S. border officials noted a sharp increase in border crossings by Chinese nationals. In the seven years between 2014 and 2020, the total number of Chinese nationals crossing the southern border was 10,840. Between 2021 and May 2024, the total Chinese nationals crossing the border was 53,846. Presumably, many of these are communists and Marxists, and may present a national security problem as war clouds gather in the western Pacific.   Trump wants to deport the dangerous illegal immigrants that he said live like vermin within our borders. Most Americans, according to recent polls, agree with him. Anne Applebaum does not. That policy disagreement over the issue of illegal immigration is fair game for the left. Comparing Donald Trump to Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini is not. It is a sign of political desperation.         READ MORE: Xi Jinping’s Policies Are a Continuation of Mao’s and Deng’s 46 Years Ago, the Soviet Empire’s End Was Set in Motion Bob Woodward’s War on Trump The post Anne Applebaum’s Comparison of Trump to Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini Is a Sign of Political Desperation on the Left appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

By now, I feel like I’ve become something of a wedding expert. In addition to planning my own upcoming nuptials, I’ve attended four weddings just this summer, with a fifth around the corner. Not to mention, I served my time as a bridesmaid last summer. My closet may not be bursting with all twenty-seven dresses quite yet, but I now own navy blue regalia for every dress code, which I can wear without fear of accidentally matching the bridal party. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our fall 2024 print magazine, which includes this article and others like it.   Until I don that white gown and walk down the aisle this fall, however, my understanding of marriage will remain incomplete and secondhand. And even after my wedding, my knowledge will only grow as the months and years pass. The wedding, after all, is only the beginning.  Still, I’m quite looking forward to getting married. From my perspective as a bride-to-be, the benefits of marriage are obvious. I’ll build a life with my husband, who conveniently happens to be my best friend. I’ll have someone with whom to share joys, sorrows, minor inconveniences, and, hypothetically at least, household chores. We hope to have children and grow together as parents. I’ll never again have to participate in the bouquet toss at future weddings. This article is taken from The American Spectator’s fall 2024 print magazine. Subscribe to receive the entire magazine. By national standards, I’m a bit early to the altar. In 2023, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that the average age at first marriage was 28 for women and 30 for men. Some of our friends have gotten married younger than us, tying the knot at 22 or 23, rather than our wisened 24 and 26.  Younger generations increasingly view marriage as the “cherry on top” that follows other adult goals like launching a career and starting to crawl out of the student-debt pit. And with the erosion of taboos around cohabitation, more young adults are moving in together prior to marriage. The percentage of adults ages 25 to 34 who were married declined from 2012 to 2022, but the number of adults in that age range who were cohabitating increased over the decade. As marriage is delayed or eschewed — one in four 40-year-olds have never married — so too is the decision to have children. In 1972, the average age of first-time mothers was 21. By 2021, the average age had risen to 27.3. And the number of couples who are “childless by choice” is on the rise even as birth rates plunge. Less than half of women between ages 18 and 34 who are not yet mothers want children in the future. Rightly concerned by the drop-off in marriage rates, some conservatives seek to make the world’s oldest institution appealing by emphasizing its practical benefits. After all, the data is on their side. Studies show that married men and women experience a “20-percentage point advantage” when measuring satisfaction with life, and marriage often boosts household income — among other positive data. Children, too, can be justified with economic logic: The investment in childcare and education pays dividends later when the kids support dear old mom and dad in their later years.  All this is well and good, but very few people proceed through life with such detailed attention to the optimization of their personal satisfaction. (And, frankly, those few are usually weeded out by the third date, forever stymied in their quest for felicity maximization.) Art by Bill Wilson That’s not to say that financial arguments aren’t employed by young adults as factors impacting their decisions not to get married or not to have children. But economic reasoning is often just the tip of the iceberg — a practical justification for deeper, far more personal hesitations. While it’s worthwhile to address the discrete barriers to family formation, people consistently act on their priorities, and they prioritize what is appealing.  It’s not impossible to find positive examples of marriage and family life in culture, but they’re few and far between. Husbands and fathers are often depicted in film and TV as pushovers or comic fools — if they’re even present in the story. “Wine mom” culture turns a nightly bottle of rosé into an escape hatch from the grubby horrors of life with young children. Widespread acceptance of contraception, abortion, pornography, and no-fault divorce have displaced the center of gravity in relationships by giving heightened priority to individual desires, shifting the emphasis from “we” to “me.”  Despite this, marriage could be viewed as an expression of the security of a long-term, exclusive romantic partnership — until polyamory (formerly known as cheating) rose to prominence in public discourse. With major outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal writing sympathetically about the latest phenomenon in cultural dysfunction, even exclusivity isn’t necessarily a marital guarantee.  At best, marriage means warm fuzzy feelings and joint tax filings. At worst, it’s a trap, an imbalanced power dynamic, or a bond that’s just as susceptible to a breakup as a dating relationship.  No amount of financial prosperity can smooth over the wounds of broken relationships, prompt the emotional vulnerability necessary for a healthy marriage, or repair the trust needed to start a family. At the end of the day, the positive case for marriage and family can’t be made purely through practical logic and sociological data. Ironically, the romance of the relationship — of joining two lives into one — is often sidelined. But younger generations need an antidote, not an argument.  Marriage is order and mystery wrapped up in one. It’s an adventure of constructing a shared world as a couple into which new life can be brought. It’s the union of two persons who, despite knowing each other deeply, can never grasp the full mystery of their spouse. It’s a relationship predicated not on selfish spontaneity but on order and reciprocity.  Marriage and family life bear witness to the reality that order and freedom are two sides of the same coin. Through married life, individuals cooperate with God’s creative genius to bring about children and domestic order. This is fairly apparent to Christians, who understand marriage as an imitation of the communal life of the Trinity, but it’s lost on much of our culture.  However, the instinct toward order is natural. Some young women — often in Christian or conservative circles — push back against dominant narratives about female empowerment by embracing a more traditional vision of femininity that emphasizes marriage and children. The “trad wife” aesthetic glamorizes domestic hobbies like baking sourdough from scratch, cooking homemade meals, and cultivating interior decor. But the reversion to seemingly traditional gender roles in an increasingly nontraditional culture leaves women adrift when faced with ordering the home.  Domestic delights like sourdough are fun, but they are primarily aesthetic elements of order that can only be appreciated when other aspects of home life have been tended to. The irony is obvious when a woman prides herself on her “trad wife” abilities while neglecting external order in the home — leaving the space cluttered and disorganized or failing to follow through on unglamorous chores.  And, ultimately, internal order is less obvious but far more essential for marriage and family life. To embrace the freedom intrinsic to marriage, both parties need to cultivate virtue, bringing their own impulses and desires to heel for the benefit of the other. Many happy marriages have flourished without sourdough loaves, and house cleaners can be hired — but there is no substitute for the internal order brought about by continuous self-discipline.  The simultaneous order and freedom found in and brought about by marriage spills over and brings order to the rest of life. There’s no sufficient logical argument for marriage and family life because those relationships transcend the spare logic of practical reality. Far better to argue by example — I certainly hope to do so. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our fall 2024 print magazine. The post How to Renew Society’s Commitment to Marriage appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

On the morning of Oct. 15, two U.S. Air Force C-17 heavy-lift aircraft left Alabama and landed at the southern Israeli Air Force base of Nevatim. The aircraft carried the essential components of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery. By the end of the following day, seven additional C-17A Globemaster III heavy lift aircraft — with payload capacities of 170,900 pounds — had landed at Nevatim to offload THAAD auxiliary components and U.S. service members to operate the systems. The arrival of the THAAD battery comes in the wake of Iran’s Oct. 1 missile strike on Israel. On Oct. 9, Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated that a retaliatory strike on Iran, “[W]ill be lethal, precise, and above all, surprising.” The deployment of THAAD is part of Biden’s “ironclad” commitment to Israel’s security against further Iranian strikes. What Is a THAAD Battery? A single THAAD battery contains a long-range radar unit that detects ballistic threats and communicates with a mobile command and control center. The command center operates six truck-mounted launchers, each containing eight interceptors. The entire battery is operated by approximately 100 U.S. soldiers. The THAAD system is designed to detect hostile ballistic missiles inside and outside the Earth’s atmosphere and launch high-speed interceptors to collide with and neutralize the incoming missiles during the descending phase of flight. It is manufactured by Lockheed Martin, with radars built by Raytheon, and comes with a price tag of $1 billion apiece. The technology and effectiveness of the THAAD is highly sought after and was included on the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense’s “wish list” given to Congress on Dec. 6, 2023. The Ukrainian government hoped it would be effective in intercepting Russian Iskander and Kinzhal missiles. During the U.S. negotiations with Saudi Arabia, a THAAD battery was also on the table in exchange for recognizing Israel as part of the normalization Abraham Accords. The U.S. Congress, however, denied Kiev the THAAD — despite its two-year war with Russia. The deal with Riyadh has since been derailed following the Oct. 7 hostilities. Israel’s Defenses The rapid deployment of a THAAD battery to Israel leaves many speculating over the status of Israel’s munition stockpiles, the nature of U.S.–Israel relations, and the future of direct Iranian involvement in Israel’s conflict. The London-based Financial Times was the first to report that Israel had a severe shortage of defensive missiles. The deployment of THAAD is perceived as the U.S. rushing to fill the deficit as Israel prepares for a major strike on Iran — an act that will, undoubtedly, trigger retaliation. “Israel’s munitions issue is serious,” noted Dana Stroul, a former senior U.S. defense official. She further added that, “[T]he U.S. can’t continue supplying Ukraine and Israel at the same pace. We are reaching a tipping point.” Most of Israel’s defensive interceptors are manufactured at the State-owned Israel Aerospace Industries. Chief Executive Boaz Levy noted that production lines are working 24 hours, seven days a week. “It is no secret that we need to replenish stocks,” Levy said, although Israel does not officially disclose the status of its stockpiles. The Iranian Threat Fast tracking the deployment of the THAAD battery to Israel comes in the wake of two Iranian aerial assaults. Further Iranian aggression is anticipated as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) progressively dismantle Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The first Iranian attack in April consisted of Iran launching roughly 300 cruise missiles and drones at Israel. The country’s Iron Dome and David’s Sling air defense systems effectively neutralized all of them — with the help of U.S. and allied naval and air power. The second Iranian strike on Oct. 1 saw over 180 new Iranian Fattah-1 hypersonic missiles ascend into the atmosphere, alter trajectory, and descend toward targets at immense speeds, posing significant challenges to traditional air defense systems. Most of these missiles were intercepted by Israel’s third line of aerial defense — Arrow 2 and 3 — which sent interceptors at hypersonic speed to intercept in the upper atmosphere. The Israeli Arrow manufacturers noted, “[The system] performed as expected, with wonderful results against the Iranian strike.” (READ MORE: Israel Fends Off Massive Iranian Missile Barrage) Although the October attack resulted in only one death — a Palestinian in the West Bank from shrapnel — almost two dozen missiles slipped through the defensive shield and landed near the Nevatim Air Force base. Another landed in the vicinity of the Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv. I witnessed several others landing in the highly populated, but open area of Ra’anana and Kefar Sava. Questions emerged whether these slipped through because of system failures or because of strategic defensive decisions. “It’s only a matter of time before Israel starts to run out of interceptors and has to prioritize how they are deployed,” noted Ehud Eilam, a former researcher at Israel’s Ministry of Defense. It is hoped that THAAD will be effective at intercepting Iranian Fattah-1 missiles — although this has yet to be proven. U.S.–Israel Relations The deployment of a THAAD battery also signals a shift in U.S. policy. Although the U.S. has been Israel’s main supplier of arms throughout the war — more than 50,000 tons worth of weapons in the last year — the Biden administration has been tough, at least in verbal rhetoric, over Israel’s military engagements with Hamas and Hezbollah. The White House has long maintained that a diplomatic resolution must be reached to secure the return of Israeli hostages taken on Oct. 7 and that the fighting in Gaza and along the Lebanon border end. This policy has caused many in Washington to threaten to withhold arms to Israel should Jerusalem act outside the constraints of U.S. directives — as was seen during the IDF ground incursion in Rafah and the recent precision strikes of Hezbollah strongholds and arsenals in Beirut. The arrival of THAAD, along with the necessary 100 U.S. service members to operate the systems, is a clear shift away from diplomatic solutions to a defensive bolstering of strength to deter belligerency. The Pentagon described the deployment as, “[P]art of the broader adjustments the U.S. military has made in recent months, to support the defense of Israel and protect Americans from attacks by Iran and Iranian-aligned militias.” Last week, however, was not the first appearance of THAAD or U.S. soldiers on Israeli soil. A battery was temporarily deployed to Israel in 2019 for training exercises — although Israeli forces never operated the system and it was handled exclusively by U.S. personnel. Unconfirmed reports late last year also claim that an earlier THAAD battery had been covertly deployed as early as November 2023 in response to increasing Houthis missile attacks. Furthermore, the current THAAD battery is presumed to operate by utilizing the top-secret AN/TPY-2 radar facility that the U.S. military has long maintained on top of Mount Har Qeren in southern Israel, dubbed “Site 512.” Around 300 U.S. service members of the 1st Space Brigade have been operating this largely unknown radar facility to detect early missile warnings. The increased presence of advanced U.S. equipment and personnel in Israel is a hopeful sign of a strengthening partnership amid an escalating and expanding war. However, an administration change in November could alter the level of strength or leverage this partnership maintains. READ MORE on Israel: Israel and the Twilight of the Terror Masters A Growing Nightmare for Kamala Harris: The Israel–Hezbollah Escalation One Year After Oct 7., the Heartbreak and Hope of Israel and the Jewish People The post US Equipment and Troops Deployed to Deter Iranian Aggression Against Israel appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.