DL Open Thread: Tuesday, March 3, 2026

The Unholy Holy War: Hey, ya gotta get the troops ready to die:

A combat-unit commander told non-commissioned officers at a briefing Monday that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that Pres. Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” according to a complaint by a non-commissioned officer.

From Saturday morning through Monday night, more than 110 similar complaints about commanders in every branch of the military had been logged by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF).

The complaints came from more than 40 different units spread across at least 30 military installations, the MRFF told me Monday night.

The MRFF is keeping the complainants anonymous to prevent retribution by the Defense Department. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to my request for comment.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has enshrined evangelical Christianity at the uppermost levels of the U.S. military, airing monthly prayer meetings throughout the Pentagon. Last year, the Pentagon confirmed to me that Hegseth attends a weekly White House Bible study. It’s led by a preacher who says God commands America to support Israel.

Monday’s email from the NCO said that their commander’s remarks “destroy morale and unit cohesion and are in violation of the oaths we swore to support the [C]onstitution.”

MRFF President and Founder Mikey Weinstein, a veteran of the Air Force and the Reagan White House, told me that since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran early Saturday morning, the MRFF has been “inundated” with similar complaints:

These calls have one damn thing in freaking common; our MRFF clients [service members who seek MRFF aid] report the unrestricted euphoria of their commanders and command chains as to how this new “biblically-sanctioned” war is clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian “End Times” as vividly described in the New Testament Book of Revelation.

Many of their commanders are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100% accordance with fundamentalist Christian end of the world eschatology.

BTW, once again, it appears that Netanyahu has played Trump for a sucker.  This time, with American deaths:

Ever since the US joined Israel in launching strikes on Iran, President Donald Trump has done little to explain why it was necessary to start a war now or America’s need to get involved in it. His excuses have veered wildly — from ending Iran’s nuclear program that he claimed last year to have wiped out to protecting the US and its allies. The hara-kiri and the lack of a clear endgame in sight for Trump have led to questions about whether the US was dragged into the war with Iran by Israel. Has ‘America First’ become ‘Israel First’ for Trump?

There have been tell-tale signs, with the clearest indication coming from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Speaking to reporters, Rubio said Israel’s determination to attack Iran and the certainty that US troops would be targeted in retaliation forced Trump to undertake pre-emptive strikes.

“We knew that if Iran was attacked, and we knew they would be attacked, they would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded,” Rubio said.

If that’s not an admission, I don’t know what is.  The NYTimes verifies:

Emboldened by its partnership with the United States, feeling its own military strength, and sensing the weaknesses of its two fiercest adversaries, Israel is seizing the new war as an opportunity to pursue its own geopolitical agenda.

“We will end this campaign with not just Iran being struck, but with Hezbollah suffering a devastating blow,” the Israeli military’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, told division commanders on Israel’s northern border on Monday. He hinted at a long fight with Hezbollah, saying it would not end “before the threat from Lebanon is eliminated.”

This is also a war that Israel started opportunistically. And that fact reflects an important shift in the country’s strategic thinking since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and the catastrophic intelligence failures that made it possible.

Wonder if Delaware’s Propaganda Ministers for Israel have anything to say.  If one of these stalwarts represents you in Dover, ask them:

Iran will almost certainly be out for blood now that U.S. and Israeli forces took out Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow said on Monday — but the very group of U.S. counterintelligence officials tasked with keeping Americans safe from their retribution is out of a job because of a longstanding Donald Trump grudge.

“They’re really good at this,” Maddow said of Iran. “They can reach all around the globe to kill people when they want to, and they have done it … They’ve killed or tried to kill their own dissidents and whistleblowers and political opponents, not over not only just over, you know, all over the Middle East, but throughout Europe. They have killed people. They’ve even tried to kill people here in the United States before.”

Thankfully, Maddow continued, the U.S. has for years had a top-notch team of counterintelligence officials at the FBI, known as CI-12, tasked with thwarting Iranian assassination plots. There’s just one problem: Trump’s FBI Director, Kash Patel, just gutted that unit, firing numerous agents because of their involvement in the investigation of Trump’s classified document stash at Mar-a-Lago.

During the Joint Finance Committee hearing, legislators also expressed concerns with a new medical school proposed by Gov. Matt Meyer, which he intends to fund for the next five years using federal dollars meant to bolster rural health across the country.

During the hearing, lawmakers and DHSS Secretary Young sparred over the impact a proposed four-year medical school would have on the state’s health care workforce.

One of those lawmakers, State Sen. Trey Paradee (D-Dover), who also chairs the Joint Finance Committee, questioned the cost of building and sustaining a medical school when the Delaware Institute of Medical Education and Research (DIMER) already places medical students in nearby medical schools like Thomas Jefferson University and the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Young replied that the goal of the medical school is to keep young, learning physicians within the communities they train and to “greatly reduce the friction it takes to lure people” back to Delaware if they study out of state.

Paradee also expressed concerns about sustainably funding the school long term, when the state already funnels hundreds of millions of dollars to multiple public universities.