Trying to find out what is happening, there is just no point in reading the papers any more

A US military source told John Helmer:

“If there’s no coincidence, and if this isn’t a lucky strike for the Arabs, then this may reflect a step-change up in Russian military assistance to the Iranians. Maybe Tower-22 was selected as a small target for demonstration effect, so as to send a message about the bigger targets, Al-Tanf and Muwaffaq Salti. Hitting them next makes ‘regional war’, and then US ground forces are going to be in the thick of it — the Biden Administration will have a new war on its hands — and bodybags, instead of votes, for Election Day. “

No point in reading the papers any more for important stories. Even the Guardian in its account of the suicide attack on Tower 22 links to the arch neo-con Atlantic Council and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Wikipedia says 'The Washington Institute for Near East Policy is a pro-Israel American think tank'. Instead Helmer looks well informed.

M. K. Bhadrakumar says Tower 22 was a spy station with which the CIA gathered information useful to Israel.

Caitlin Johnstone makes a very important point. 

"The Biden administration immediately claimed the attack was backed by Iran, with profoundly influential news agencies like AP and Reuters regurgitating this claim as established fact in their headlines immediately thereafter. As DeCamp notes in the aforementioned article, back in October a US official acknowledged to CNN that that there’s actually a “persistent intelligence gap” as to how much these Shia militias are in fact beholden to the orders of Tehran, but apparently this attack being linked to Iran is now being treated as established gospel truth anyway."

She is always wonderfully passionate about Ukraine and the Holy Land and I usually agree with her. She is left-wing but conservatives say the same things (real ones, not pseudo-conservatives.) Later in the article she says:

"In that same statement Biden said the US troops who were killed in the “despicable and wholly unjust attack” died working “to fight terrorism”, which is of course ridiculous. People who live in the middle east have far more legitimacy attacking US troops in resistance to a US-backed genocide than US troops have in being in the middle east to begin with, and the US military presence they attacked is there to shore up geostrategic control, not to fight terror.

 

"As Aris Roussinos explains in a new article for Unherd, the US base by the Jordan-Syria border that was struck by Iraqi forces functions as a support base for America’s al-Tanf garrison, a sprawling “deconfliction zone” (read: illegal military occupation) in Syria which the US has for years been using to disrupt Iranian activities in the region and help Israel carry out its constant airstrikes in Syria. “Fighting terrorism” is just the pretense for the US military presence in the region; as always, the real reason is to facilitate the geostrategic domination of the US empire.

 

"Those three US military personnel didn’t die fighting terrorism. They didn’t even die advancing the interests of ordinary Americans.

 

"The real reason they died was summed up nicely by Responsible Statecraft’s Trita Parsi:

 

“They didn’t die defending US interests, they died defending Biden’s refusal to press Israel for a ceasefire. Their lives were put at risk by Biden to defend Israel’s ability to continue its carnage in Gaza.”

I agree with this tweet. Yes the NYT is a drain through which pours disinformation. However it was Trump who encouraged Gulf States to recognise Israel and who was working on the Saudis which led Hamas to launch its attack in October.  

Isn't it best if the USA stop interfering in the region and instead start sealing its own open border? 

Go thou, England, and do likewise.