Would the Afghanistan war had been as long as it had been if the Lion of Pashir (Northern Alliance) had not been assassinated?

With all due respect, Don, how the hell are we supposed to comment intelligently on that? That question is so deep into the poppies that I'm getting a contact high.

IIRC training was done in Britain and Scotland using similar beaches/cliffs.

Training was being carried out all over the place for all sorts of things. The ski industry as it is today in the western US was (in my opinion) heavily influenced by Camp Hale being constructed in the Colorado mountains specifically to train thousands of soldiers to fight in the Alps, using donkeys, skiing, mountain climbing, etc.

After the war the ski areas were developed with former soldiers.

There's two movies about the fake corpse, some of Britain's finest intelligence work.

Good movie to see exactly how many things like Hogan's Heroes were real.

Operation Mincemeat

The Man Who Never Was (1952)

Operation Mincemeat (2021)

Don't even forget about Big Week and the air campaign

Years of work went into it. They sent operatives to collect sand samples, planted fake evidence on a corpse, and even ran drills off the coast of england. The latter one almost gave it all away when some German submarines interrupted their practice.

Window pane refers to LSD as far as I've ever heard, like on blotter paper.

Literally meth.

Also, he was called 'The Little Corporal' because he'd worked his way up the ranks.

He was considered small because of British propaganda, and that, as I recall French inches were longer than English ones. Napoleon was average height, but he did surround himself with particularly tall body guards

It was considered to be a concern for the cabinet, but Reagan was functional enough to not get a 25th amendment vote. A lot of Reagan's memory issues for presented through the Iran-Contra scandal, so a lot of the public heard "I don't recall" as a legal tactic over mental deterioration. The administration was also a lot more strategic in their use of Reagan during his second term and had a far more competent cabinet to cover for Reagan.

I don't think the public knew at all while he was in office. There may have been some early signs those closest to him noticed. There was certainly nothing at the level of Rump. Regan could easily hold on to the thread of a whole sentence from start to finish.

Most people read the paper, watched the nightly news and that was about it.

The only 24/7 information hose was neighbor gossip.

Life is easier in ignorance. The sort of access we have into everyone’s lives now wasn’t a thing. Easier to tell stories of great men when they aren’t tweeting obscenities.

On the other hand. Nancy being his puppet master towards the end did gain traction. And rumors and myths had no easy to verify answers.

We had local news at 5, national at 530, and world news at 6. We saw what they wanted us to see.

Wow... I must have found the racists with this number of down-votes.

*Rothschilds
Although rot-child is a funny misspelling.

Ya zionism needs to die.

It works because generally people are greedy and cheap, so you can paint pretty much anyone with that brush.

And then, since compound interest is one of the most powerful forces in the universe, once the Jewish population became wealthy after decades of compounding interest, then they were villainized because they had money and money meant resources to be plundered.

If you're a Christian, the best way to plunder somebody of a different religion is to remind all of your Christian followers that they are of a different religion, and then you have the ethical and moral responsibility to alleviate them of their material possessions in order to save their eternal souls, or failing that to at least bolster the kingdom of God.

Same reason atheists say “god damn it” etc

It’s cultural/societal.

Well, ever hear the story of the boy who cried wolf? That's the origin of that one. And, as someone else already covered, the wolf in sheep's clothing is biblical in origin, though it has been through some other usages over the years.

Your be amazed how many of Aesop's fables are still in the consciousness of people that have never directly read them just because they're so deeply engrained into culture.

It was also extremely convenient for European rules that if the debt load got away from them, they could always just expel the lenders or order a pogrom. Simple!

This is kind of an interesting one historically. My understanding is it goes back to minor scriptural differences with Christian practices. Essentially early Christians had a rule against usury or the practice of taking interest on lending. Jewish people of the same era had a similar rule, but it was interpreted at the time to only apply to lending within the faith.

Now with banking taking off as being a useful thing to have for business, Christians had a stigma against being lenders, so instead they legally enforced a code restricting Jewish people to essentially only being able to take those professions.

So a combination of preexisting antisemitism and cultural disdain for moneylending combined to force Jewish people to be the lenders, and then Christians grew to hate Jewish people more because of the situation they created.

Correct usury is a sin in Christianity so bankers tended to be Jewish and they charged usury which meant turning a profit on money lending ie. Being more greedy than faithful.